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You’re all good - harsh or not, critical and passionate feedback is what I look for and love; it motivates me to keep going, revising, and trying new things.  :)

:)

Was looking for other areas to sneak in Nethack references… might have to save them for future Jams

Thanks for the kind words!

The goal was that they reflected some ideas of classes and characters available in games we’d play before Draw Steel, and making those options available now.  I’ll admit it’s a bit of a stretch, but of the options I came up with, it was the one I thought would be most interesting & diverse.

Thank you so much for the detailed reply!  I’m still starting out on my journey as a game designer, and this feedback is genuinely helpful for moving forward.  Hopefully I can answer some of the points you raised here:

(re: Theme) this is maybe the third or fourth idea I had while figuring out what I could bring to the game jam; and I went with it because I figured it’d be the most broadly applicable and actionable.  The idea in my head was to look backward in time a year ago to the other TTRPGs I/we were playing, and bring some of those fantasies forward into Draw Steel, filling niches that weren’t covered in the core rulebooks.  Sorta a celebration of the journey we’ve been on - I can definitely see and understand that that might not have been super well communicated, and you aren’t the first to raise this concern.

(re: the Ascetic) That is the way the design is meant to work, Rules-as-Intended - if you are bleeding, you gain the bonuses, otherwise you take the damage shock… and then gain the bonuses as well.  Looking back, I should be able to update the Power Roll chart to include that information and streamline the Effect text in the eventual revision.

(re: the Intercessor) I think I mentioned it in another comment here, this is the Kit option that I’ve been genuinely the most interested to see people’s responses to, because of how far in a different direction I took it.

A lot of the ideas that went into this Kit was my desire to have a healing-focused kit that didn’t step on the design of other character creation options in Draw Steel.  That’s where the “recover spent recoveries” mechanic came from - it fulfilled the fantasy and was broadly unique, design-wise.  But there’s the inherent complication there: it disrupts the gameplay loop of chasing victories and burning through recoveries until a respite is required; so I figured to include this type of ability it’d need to be modulated by some sort of attrition mechanic (which I figured needed to be actionable, “complicates the plot further”, and overall just *more* to fit into the no-oatmeal ethos).  Ergo, Missions - you have to pay it back.  Since the kit doesn’t imply what god or saint responds, I figured the dramatic moment could be one-upped by perhaps receiving your boon from an opposing force (Ajax intercedes on your behalf, and now you owe him… what do you do now?).

Your take on this not really feeling like the classic signature abilities in Draw Steel isn’t lost on me either.  Noting again that where this is where I pushed the design the most, I played a bit of a semantics game and figured that the text on the tin said “signature ability” and not “signature attack”, so there might be design room for kits outside of *exclusively* pairing them with attacks… and also “signature” doesn’t *have to* mean always-active, just what the character archetype is *known for doing* - my thought process there is that ascribing a signature in that way can come from frequency (having an always active ability that you use often) or from a larger/dramatic demonstration (happens less frequently, but changes the nature of the encounter immediately, and the adventure going forward).

Honestly, just talking the design through here helps me to see some of the weaknesses I introduced with it.

(re: the Valkyrie) This was actually how an earlier draft of this ability worked!  The reason I pivoted to what it is now was so that players and GMs could have the roleplay moment, even if the kill was made by another party member.  Looking back, maybe a middle ground would be a K.O. with the ability, and/or just having it be an automatic against Solo and Leader-types?  Tag restrictions would absolutely simplify the trigger mechanic.

I suppose I also didn’t think of the option where the player chose not to engage with that narrative “consequence” to the kit…  I’ll definitely take that into account when I make the necessary adjustments!

(re: Witchblade) The Weakened condition auto-apply being too strong - I hear you loud and clear!  That’ll be one of the first fixes I make jumping back into the design of the document; and plus, being unshackled from the page count post-Jam will help a great bit with formatting and presentation.

(re: Wilder) Really glad you like that one!  It was one of my favorites to design!

Thank you again for the detailed comment and critique; and opening a spot here to ramble about my thoughts during the design process.

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback!

You’re absolutely right - a small blurb at the top would help to tie it all together; unfortunately the fight with Page Count von Glauer put me in a rough spot (and due to scheduling, I already had to halve my layout time), and that nicety slipped my mind.

The design for the Ascetic was all about trying to balance the push-pull mechanics with the performance shock and the inflicting of the bleeding condition, since that’s a condition the core kits don’t engage with.  What I ended up with in the doc was the simplest/most streamlined version of my pitches (I tried a self-inflict EoT bleeding; I tried to modulate the bleeding condition damage-wise, scaling to a d3, or experimenting with a ‘save ends’ option)… for each one, they didn’t quite mesh well linguistically for the mechanic, and I wanted the player to have the shock be consistent between uses for speed of play at the table; hence where it ended up.

I kinda like the fact that because it’s flat, it incentivizes using the shock at lower levels, and taking advantage of the bleeding condition at higher levels; since that fits the theming I had in my mind.

The Intercessor is (honestly) the kit I figure will get the most scrutiny, since it re-introduces an attrition mechanic into Draw Steel when the developers went out of their way to pull back from them.  Mechanics-wise, the other members of the party do not need to take part in the action (or mission) — you spend you Victories, toll your dice, and can recover 1-4 expended recoveries that can be divided up among party members in the burst; the goal is that the signature ability is a ‘hail mary’ play that thematically disadvantages the Intercessor in the short term (you lose two Victories, and therefore go into encounters at a Heroic Resource deficit compared to your party members) so your party can keep fighting or survive a deadly encounter; until they can complete the mission to gain those Victories back.

Good call on moving the Title first.  That will be one of my tweaks I implement for the eventual post-jam update.

The “cures of bloodcunning” (curse my typo in the doc lol - that’s another thing I’m itching to fix once the grading is over) effect is meant to be a single-apply ability.  Rules as intended, using the Signature Ability with that curse doesn’t proc bleeding damage for that Main Action instance.

Thanks again so much for the detailed feedback!