Draw Steel

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• Announcements·16 Sept 2026Official

  Version 0.0.831

  New Features & Content Beastheart: Implemented the Shared Maneuvers feature. Beastheart: Treasure implementation completed. Complications: Complications that grant a treasure -- Amnesia, Betrothed, Secret Twin -- are now automated. Item | Thunderhead Bident: Implementation completed. Monsters | Lightbender: Implemented the malice ability Everything The Light Touches. Stolen Abilities: You can now switch between area types on a stolen ability -- e.g. swap a Cube for a Line or a Burst. Character Sheet: Perks, Traits, and Inciting Incident are now included in character sheet exports. Enhancements Beastheart: Companions now gain the benefits and drawbacks of the Beastheart's Perks, Titles, and Complications. Beastheart: Now receives the kit range/reach bonus on abilities with the weapon keyword. Conduit: Improved automation level on Sanctuary Ward. Brawler: The Duck! title feature is now gold. Forced Movement: Being force-moved into something you are already adjacent to now plays a small impact animation. Previously there was no movement and no animation, so it was not clear anything had happened. Game Mode: Choosing Draw Steel! from the top status bar now launches the Prepare Combat dialog. Downtime: Rolling as the hero when the follower is not on the map is resolved -- the follower is now placed on the map automatically. Respite: Hero participation is now shown with checkboxes for clarity. Tokens: The radial menu now dismisses when an item is clicked. Triggers: Performance improvements to triggers that retarget, e.g. Clever Trick, Duck!. Bug Fixes Beastheart: Feral Strike riders for Guardian and Prowler now affect only enemies. Shadow: Careful Observation now grants the surge to the caster on their next attack. Tactician: Improved Field Arsenal was not activating due to a missing kit keyword. Fixed, along with Master of Arms and Grandmaster of Arms. Item | Hellcharger Helm: Fixed the speed bonus and the free knockback maneuver. Item | Shrouded Memory: The level 5 tele...
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• Announcements·2 Sept 2026Official

  The Body Banks!

  Version 0.0.825 of the Draw Steel Codex is now available! New This Week Respite Redux! Respite got a major facelift. We tried to make this super cool and automated everything we thought we could. We're looking forward to your feedback! Directors can start a Respite via Game -> Respite or by changing the game mode to Respite in the title bar. Directors can then set # of days elapsed, # of downtime activities (formerly rolls) to grant to each hero, whether non-participants can do downtime activities, which downtime activities are available, and details about them (like water name & type for fishing). Then the Director offers the Respite to players and the game pops up a window for them. For each hero they control, each player can decide whether to participate. Participating means the game's Respite mechanics, like conditions ending on respite and resetting stamina & recoveries and converting victories to XP, will be applied to that hero. Once the players complete their selections, the Director can start the Respite. This immediately executes start-of-respite actions like terminating conditions that last until next Respite. While the Respite is running, players can use their Respite window to take actions like fishing and rolling on downtime projects (if the Director enabled them). The Director can watch progress. Players can also launch their hero sheet with the click of a button to do things like change Kit, or dismiss the window (get back to it with Game -> Respite) to cast Respite abilities. While the Respite is in progress, the Director can choose to extend it, adding days, downtime activities, or both. When the Director is ready to end the Respite, they can choose whether to revoke all remaining Downtime Activities (zero out available "rolls" for everyone) and whether to write a Journal entry summarizing the Respite. Journal entries write into Shared Documents / Respites. Respite Activities provide a registration API so community developers can create mods that p...
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• Announcements·29 Aug 2026Official

  UI, Tokens, and Crows!

  Version 0.0.821 of the Draw Steel Codex is now available!User Interface ImprovementsNew UI is now the default option for everyone!Ability to create and share your own buttons and toolkits within the interface. See this video for details: In Windows, the Codex now has its own custom titlebar instead of using the Windows titlebar.New easy Codex -> Fullscreen option to switch between fullscreen and windowed mode. Fullscreen switch is much fasterNew this weekAdd mp4 and webm files to Map Alternative UploadMake it so the Hide maneuver detects if you have concealment or cover and suggests you can't hide if you don't.Map Markup: You can set the default player visibility for zone types by editing the zone type. Set the default player visibility for the default zone types included with the game to invisible. This will be forward only; it will not affect zones already on your maps.Added support for the 'No selection' option for the Troubadour Level 4 feature Melodrama to increase the resource gain of chosen events correctly.Bug FixesPerformance improvements to Beastheart Companion selectionCorrect Typo in Conduit's Bastion WardPerformance improvements to placing down Wallmaster walls.Correct Wrathful Spirit incorrectly attributing the Taunted conditionCorrect Boren kit Aspect Grab trigger not firingCorrect Gnoll Cackler's Moment of Brutality incorrectly processing PotencyEnabled There Is No Space Between to teleport between floors.Correct Elementalist's Disciple of the Green using Reason for Melee Free StrikesCasting Origin check closest Caster location when confirming out of rangeCorrect Bugbear Throw abilities not ignoring allies stabilityFix to several Fossil Cryptic abilitiesSeveral fixes to ‘Instant Solo’ button to now give the correct stamina and EV based on modified levelChange Summoner minions to be auto dismissed at end of combatCorrect bug with Summoner minions remaining attached to player party after combatResolved an issue where Wellspring of Grace would spend a R...
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• Announcements·19 Aug 2026Official

  Popout UI, DTOs, and CROWS: Fortune or Death!

  Draw Steel Codex 0.0.813 is now available Popout all the things!Dual monitor users rejoice! From character sheets to journal documents to the chat panel, most major dialogs in the app can now be popped out into their own windows. You may have popped PDF documents out before, and if you weren't entirely happy with the performance, we weren't either -- we have completely re-engineered our pop out system and made it MUCH more efficient and performant and applied it everywhere we felt it makes sense. Lava, Quicksand, and moreSome aspects of it snuck out in previous updates, but now we are ready to start talking about our environmental zones system. Using the map markup panel you can set areas of your map to offer concealment, to be difficult terrain or water, or to be DTO's like Lava or Quicksand. Stawl ImporterYou can now download encounters from the third-party app Stawl ( https://stawl.app/) and import them into the Codex!Usability ImprovementsTactician's mark now has all its benefits collated into one trigger. Only one mark benefit can be used per attack now.New: Trigger condition reasons. Starting off with the tactician's reworked Mark, if a target of the mark benefit cannot benefit from one of the triggers (e.g. they are out of recoveries, or have speed 0), the codex greys the option out for you and provides a reason why. This should help tacticians make an informed choice on which benefit they wish to provide someone.Monster UpdatesThorn dragon and its malice options are now all goldUser InterfaceWe have received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the new experimental user interface. We are iterating on this hard. We have just a few iterative improvements and bug fixes to it this week, but we are working hard behind the scenes to make some new big improvements. We are intending to make the new UI system the main UI system for everyone soon and then retire the dock-based system altogether. We do appreciate the positive feedback on the new user interface, but make...
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• Patch Notes·13 Aug 2026Official

  Version 0.0.807 of the Draw Steel Codex is now available

  Some quality of life fixes: Add a Party Member Controls setting which allows the Director to control whether players can see/edit each other's character stats. If turned on, players will get a button on their comrades' tokens allowing them to open their character panel just like they can for their own.Add a new "Roofs" vision mode that only hides areas covered by roofs. Other areas of the map are simply visible.Made it so in the "Dim" vision mode, roofs are still seen.Made it so alerts clear properly and don't show up improperly in the new UI.Added "Teleporter" prop type to the map markup panel.Added "Lava" to the map markup panel.Fix to a bug causing journal documents to become scrambled / lose their data.Some iteration on the way the new experimental UI works.Added controls to the title bar to allow you to control the Map Overlay choosing to see the rules for different features on the map.
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