A caveat that I hope to one day no longer need to add here: I still have yet to play/run Draw Steel in any capacity. It's all just existing in my head at the moment, needing a lull in one of my D&D groups and some buy-in from players to try it out (my transition to 2024 5E is more evolutionary than revolutionary, with two of my regular campaigns having PCs using different versions).
In theory, Draw Steel is meant to support play at max level more than D&D does - while my own Ravnica-set campaign is getting close to level 20, it's true that it becomes a little more difficult to balance things, and even with the updated rules and encounter-building guidance, it's still pretty tough to genuinely scare a party. (I did have a last-minute "go easy on them" moment, allowing them to take levels of exhaustion to quaff some experimental serums that restored HP, spell slots, and such the "Geist Engine Lich" - a reskinned and slightly altered Arch-Hag - boss had in his laboratory).
But I will say that, even if I think the Monsters book leans a little more on low-level monsters, there's still a fair amount of stuff to use at higher levels.
But what excites me is the pretty clear "final campaign boss" monsters they provide.
Generally speaking, these are 10th level Solo monsters, and while there aren't a huge number of these, the fact that they're designed to challenge a max-level party is cool.
Some - actually most, I think - are given specific character lore based in the setting of Orden, Draw Steel's central, Earth-like "manifold" (plane but also kind of planet). This is all well and good, but especially after my long-running Ravnica game, I'm for sure going to be running something in my own homebrew setting - whether that be my D&D setting, Sarkon, or a somewhat sketched-out Draw Steel setting called Andiya.
(Elevator pitch for Andiya: A world in which enormous rock spires rise up out of an unending violent storm. Civilization exists atop these spires, and airships are required to travel between them. The airships are controlled by an ostensibly politically neutral guild that holds a total monopoly on them. No one is sure what surface is hidden by the Storm Below, but the Sainted Diver, the only anonymous saint, is said to both take those who fall into his protection but also send Storm-Beasts to the World Above to strike terror into mortal hearts.)
Anyway, one of the design goals of Draw Steel was to ensure that the game worked smoothly at max level, and that there was enough content for max-level players to feel like they had something to do. Reducing the level cap to 10 naturally makes that a bit easier to achieve.
But let's talk about the level 10 Solo and Leader monsters.
Ajax the Invincible:
Ajax is the flagship bad guy for Draw Steel, and is kind of interesting in that he's actually just a human. Ajax is the ultimate conqueror, and is said explicitly to be a Tactician, one of Draw Steel's classes, though his mechanics refer to how a Tactician works without actually making the Director play as if he were a PC.
Ajax actually has a higher EV than other level 10 solo monsters, so he's truly meant to be the "Tarrasque" of this game (while it appeared in Flee, Mortals!, Goxomoc, a more direct analogue to the Tarrasque, is likely coming in a later supplement).
As far as villains go, Ajax is a brilliant conqueror - some lore about him describes as he's played a long-term strategic game to bring elves and dwarves to heel and force them into behavior that will create enmity with humans, so that he can come in years later and offer to "save" the people his actions put in danger.
Thus, I think you can have a really deep, intrigue-laced campaign with Ajax as your big bad. Having a lot of well-meaning people fooled by his strategy could create a lot of minor antagonists who aren't truly evil or villainous.
The stat block itself is very complex, with lots of options for how to run him. One thing that's pretty exciting is that he gets a lot of abilities that call out specific class abilities: if a Shadow uses Hesitation is Weakness, he can respond with "Who's Hesitating?"
Ajax also has pretty clear monsters to use as henchmen: not only will he have armies of humans, but he's also got the infamous War Dogs, who are basically soulless but not undead Frankenstein'd-together super-soldiers. These exist at many different levels, so you should always have some War Dogs to throw at your party (I think I'd use them only as elite troops in harder encounters, to avoid giving them the Star Wars Stormtrooper effect, where the "elite terror-troops" of the evil empire wind up being your Goombas).
Notably, you can adjust Ajax to make him a leader instead - which makes sense given that his whole thing is that he's a master general. This does make him individually less of a threat, but you can increase the complexity of the encounter.
Aurumvas:
I'll confess here: I don't really love the visual design of Aurumvas. While most demons have practically unrecognizable anatomies, Aurumvas has a very clearly snake-like head, which... compared with the level 6 Lumbering Egress, which is a towering rectangular slab of mismatched demonic flesh that serves as a living portal, it's just a bit... too recognizable.
Still, Aurumvas is a Leader, meaning that while he can be a big boss, he's going to have lots of hench-demons fighting alongside him. His "leader" abilities outside of villain actions are really just things that feed the Director malice when nearby demons die, so I think a fight against him would likely involve a lot of Minions and Horde demons.
There's not quite as complex a story to Aurumvas - he's basically just a particularly notable demon lord, so I think that the best use of him would probably be to be the power behind some more complex recurring villain.
Meteor Dragon:
While ostensibly there are multiple meteor dragons out there, the lore on Dragons in Draw Steel is that they are created by moments of grief and calamity. Thus, I think a dragon is probably better treated as a natural disaster in flesh than some scheming villain behind the scenes.
A meteor dragon is the most calamitous of all the dragon types, and has a villain action that can permanently annihilate a target (though they have to roll poorly multiple times).
Again, I think there's something deeply impersonal about this kind of monster. This is a kind of apocalyptic beast that a mad cult might unleash, or it might be a catalyst to unbalance some power that leads to conflict the party needs to stop before dealing with the instigator.
Count Rhodar von Glauer:
Oddly enough, the actual lore on Count Rhodar is that he's dead. However, this vampiric count, despite the fact that he would exsanguinate one of his subjects once a month, is beloved in his homeland, and has taken on an almost Arthurian role as the leader who will return in Glauer's darkest hour to save them.
There are some direct nods here to D&D's most famous vampire, with an old woman exclaiming "he is the land" when his executioners staked him.
However, the premise here really invites the Director to come up with a plot that justifies his return: Cultists, but even just Glauer patriots, might seek some necromantic ritual to bring the Count back. As described, apart from the whole vampire thing, he was a just and honorable ruler, but might his return turn his mind to vengeance?
I will say, of all the characters presented here, I think Rhodar feels like a character one could have a high-stakes Negotiation with. Especially given that his lore suggests that he might be the savior that will protect Glauer from Ajax's conquest - he could be a valuable ally to the party if they can get him on their side.
Of course, as a monster to fight, he's got some cool moves.
Furthermore, I love a gothic monster, and there's a pretty extensive collection of undead monsters to populate your campaign with (though I'd also caution that even if you want undead monsters to be the major threat of a campaign, toss in some other kinds to keep them from getting stale). Again, while Rhodar is beloved, he did also kill one of his subjects once a month in those "good days" before he was slain.
There are a few vampire stat blocks - there's a 7th level leader, horde, and minion version and level 4 horde version. In theory these aren't quite in the right level range, but I also suspect that as long as you don't go to that far a level difference, they'll still be a threat as long as you use EV to build encounters (and thus load up a bit more on them than you would if the party were level 7).
Classically, of course, vampires are great at putting on a veneer of respectability, so you could even have Rhodar appear friendly to the party at first, and do a good job of convincing them that he can be trusted only for him to turn on them when it becomes necessary.
Lich:
Ah yeah, the classic big bad. As you'd expect, the Lich has a lot of powerful magic abilities they can use at range. While I'd normally recommend that GMs keep a Lich's soul-jar far away from them in their boss encounter so that you can use the monster again, Draw Steel's Lich has a reason you might want to let the Soulstone exist on the battlefield - because if the Lich goes down, a nearby player might find themselves to touch the stone, which will revive the Lich, potentially with full Stamina.
In a way, I feel it's almost redundant to imagine how to build a campaign around a Lich villain - it's such a classic of D&D that you can do any number of things: they might be a manipulator behind the scenes, or perhaps an undead conqueror, or an ancient evil unsealed and unleashed - so on and so forth.
There's a lot of undead monsters to use, so you can certainly have them showing up throughout the campaign. I also think War Dogs could work quite well as a Lich's minions as well (of which there are also quite a lot).
Strategos Alkesits:
The level 10 Leader War Dog, lore-wise at least, she's clearly a lieutenant of Ajax's, and would probably work more as a preliminary "penultimate boss" in a campaign centered around him. As a Leader, rather than a Solo monster, she's going to be easier to take down if the party can focus her.
And that's all the level 10 Leader and Solo monsters (unless I missed one). I'd really try to ensure that the campaign sufficiently foreshadows them. Given the complexity the game has at level 1, I don't think I'd be in such a rush to skip levels in a Draw Steel campaign, but because each level takes a flat 15 Victories, it doesn't seem that implausible that you could genuinely hit max level in a long-but-reasonable campaign.
I will say that most of these solo monsters have a lower EV than Ajax, even though they're of the same rank and level, so I'd be sure to give the party some meat to chew on at level 10 before they get to that final boss fight. Level 10 is a whole Echelon of Play, and there are a reasonable number of non-boss 10th level monsters for the party to encounter.
All of the level 10 Solo monsters other than Ajax have 144 EV, while he has 156. A standard encounter at level 10 has an EV budget of 24 per player, so if you have 6 10th level players, you can in theory toss them at most of these bosses right after a respite. Of course, these could become Hard encounters for smaller parties.
Remember also that you can build encounters with win conditions that aren't just "kill the monsters," which can modulate the difficulty, either making an encounter effectively easier or harder depending on the goal.
Anyway, there are lots of lower-level monsters to get through before you take on these legends, and plenty of solo monsters. And a campaign need not be just one big through-line story (though the campaigns I tend to play have a recurring threat with many branches that take us up against more minor foes).
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