The Fury is essentially Draw Steel's analogue to the Barbarian - a warrior fueled by rage (yes, Rage is their heroic resource, so WoW Warrior players will feel very much at home) who is there to smash things on the front lines. More than any other class, this is a melee-focused character.
Now, I've been toying with a Barbarian concept for D&D for a while now. It's actually partially inspired by Alan Wake II, and specifically a moment in which that game's central villain (sort of) is revealed at the game's... we'll say Plot Point 2, rather than Climax (which is for sure the Dark Ocean Summoning sequence). While our character is going to be a good guy, the image in my head is that when, at least in D&D terms, he goes into a Rage, a dark persona takes over - a being of shadow that essentially makes it look as if someone has scribbled black crayon or pen over the image of him, with only a rough-drawn white mouth and eyes scrawled over his image. (I imagine in the "film" of the campaign, this would be a deliberately incongruous, "non-diagetic" effect, like someone had manually defaced the film reel itself.)
Outside of one subclass, Furies don't really have a "rage mode," though they gain certain benefits as their rage rises.
As I see it, our character is a simple and largely innocent person who has been swept into some kind of plane of shadow (I don't know if Draw Steel will have something equivalent to the Shadowfell, but we could say instead that he's been in the Abyssal Wastes, which are pretty close to D&D's Abyss). Being trapped in that nightmare realm, it was all he could do to try to just barely cling to his mind, and whether this dark persona, "The Smiling Man" emerged as a defense mechanism or is, in fact, some kind of monstrous (perhaps fiendish) passenger that possesses him when things get violent, we're basically looking at someone who is going to fight in a raw and brutal manner.
Ancestry
I often feel like an Orc Fury is too cliche. Given that we're going for someone who would not obviously be a Fury, I think we'll go fully in the opposite direction: the beauty and grace of a High Elf.
As a high elf, we'll get two features. The first is High Elf Glamor. We get an edge of Presence tests that use Flirt or Persuade skills. (Not sure if this then requires us to have these skills, but I'd assume any check where it would apply, we'll get it.)
We also get Otherworldly Grace, giving us an edge of resistance rolls and any tests that use skills we have from the lore skill group.
Culture
I feel like I so often default to Urban, as that's kind of my baseline for "normal." But perhaps we'll grab Secluded - perhaps our Fury was initially a novice monk or perhaps a worked on the grounds of some prominent wizard's tower out in the mountains (this could also explain his strength). Indeed, perhaps it was this wizard's experiments that got them trapped in the Abyssal Wastes. So, Secluded will give us a skill from either the interpersonal or lore skills.
Living in an unconventional settlement, I think there's arguments for any of the three Organizations. But if we're in some arcane research institute, we'll go with Bureaucratic, which gives us an Intrigue or Lore skill.
Ok, now we're going to take a big swing (and tie it, perhaps, a little closer to our Alan Wake inspirations) and grab the Creative upbringing. Let's say that the mage we were working for wasn't employing us for labor, but was instead studying the effects of works of art as a means of planar travel (man, we're just making this mage into Emil Hartman, aren't we?) Growing up, we showed a talent for storytelling, and were something of a bard or skald, chronicling legends and myths, or inventing fiction. This gives us the Music or Perform skill, or a skill from the crafting group.
Career
Yeah, weirdly we're going with Performer (I did also long ago have the idea of a D&D Entertainer Barbarian who would be like a circus performer known as "The Strongest Dwarf in the World," but this goes a very different direction).
This will give us either the Music or Performance skill, plus two skills from the interpersonal skill group.
We also gain 2 renown, which is used in Negotiations.
Finally, we get a Title: Dazzler, which gives us an edge on tests made to influence a creature that has seen us perform a song, dance, or theatrical performance (I'd lobby the Director to allow readings of his prose) for one hour.
Class
We're a Fury. This starts us off with a hefty 21 Stamina (which I think is the highest of any class) and 15 recoveries (each healing for 7).
Stat-wise, we start with 2s in Might and Agility. I think it makes the most sense for us to take a 1 in both Presence and Reason, but a -1 in Intuition - the low Intuition emphasizes our "lost and confused" vibes that we're probably exhibiting most of the time, but we want a decent Presence for our performances and we're probably pretty knowledgeable having worked as part of this experimental program.
Skill-wise, we get Nature, plus any two skills from exploration or intrigue. So let's pick our skills now:
Intimidate (from Secluded Environment,) Rumors (from Bureaucratic,) then I think we're going to probably grab Music from Creative upbringing, and then Performance, Lie, and Flirt from our Performer career. Finally, our class is granting us Nature, plus... hey, let's lean into being the strong guy and grab Lift and Climb.
Phew.
Now, we need to pick a subclass. I think the Reaver might fit us best.
Our Heroic Resource is Rage. When combat begins, we get an amount of Rage equal to our victories, , and at the start of each round, we gain 1d3 Rage. Rage disappears outside of combat.
Furies have a feature called Growing Rage, which gives us various benefits based on the amount of Rage we start each of our turns with, which will be based on our subclass (we'll cover that in a moment).
We also get Mighty Leaps, which allow us to succeed on any Might test to jump. Fun! We can still roll if we want to get a reward result.
As a Reaver, we get Primordial Cunning. If we would push a target with forced movement, we can slide them instead (meaning we can move them in any horizontal direction instead of just away from us). Our Primordial Cunning grows as we gain more rage (the Growing Rage feature).
At 2 Rage, we gain an edge on Agility tests and resistance rolls (meaning, I think, as a high elf, we'll get a double edge on resistance rolls, which is awesome) and, once per turn, when we slide a target or move adjacent to a target during a shift (a movement that doesn't provoke opp attacks) we can deal weapon damage to the target equal to our agility score.
At 4 Rage, once per turn when we slide a target or move adjacent to a target during a shift, we can deal weapon damage equal to twice our ability score.
At 6 Rage, we have a double edge on Agility tests and resistance rolls (the latter admittedly being less exciting to us... though can we still get a double edge this way if we have a bane?)
Being a Reaver, we get Uncanny Dodge as a Triggered Action. If we're targeted by a damaging area of effect, we can use this to shift 2 squares (remember that this might let us do some damage from the previous feature,) and if we get outside of the effect's area, we ignore it. Otherwise, we take half damage. We can spend 1 Rage to share this effect with an adjacent ally - a pretty powerful defensive and protective ability.
Now, we pick a signature ability.
Here, because we get some benefits from pushing foes, Brutal Slam seems like a really good choice. This does 3, 8, or 12 damage and pushes 1, 2, or 4 squares to a single target in reach. And being a Reaver, we instead slide them that distance and do that extra damage if we've got some rage stored up. Really can't argue with that. (Admittedly, Impaling Strike also feels like an on-brand choice, but we'll take the synergy).
We then pick a 3-Rage ability, and I'm sorry but Your Entrails Are Your Extrails! is so silly and over-the-top that we've got to take it. This hits one target for 6, 9, or 14 damage, and on tiers 2 and 3 causes bleeding on the target until a nonminion creature adjacent to them uses and action to staunch the wound. While bleeding the target takes 4 extra damage at the start of each of our turns.
Finally, we grab our 5-Rage ability. Primordial Shockwave is very tempting, given that it pushes many enemies. Alternatively, though, Dying Blow is a wonderfully edgy option. I think given the extra damage we can add to Primordial Shockwave, though, makes it the winner here - this hits all enemies in a 5x1 line within 1 square of us (so basically coming out of us) for 4, 5, or 8 damage and pushes them 2, 4, or 6 squares, pushing each target one at a time, starting with the closest to us. Again, our ability to slide instead of pushing makes it very easy for us to use this to really rearrange the battlefield and also add potentially 2 or 4 more damage to this depending on how much Rage we start with. In our best-case scenario, that lets us do 60 damage with this attack.
Kit
Here, I think I want to go Pugilist - I don't see this as a guy who has some axe he's taken back from the Abyssal Wastes, only deep trauma and this dark presence. So, this will give us +6 Stamina (taking us to 27, so our recoveries heal us for 9) and +2 to speed (I think the default is 5?) Then, our Stability increases by 1, and we get +1 bonuses to all three tiers of melee weapon damage (which appears to apply to every one of our abilities).
Our Kit Signature ability is Let's Dance, which is a melee attack that deals 4, 9, or 13 damage, and on tiers 2 and 3, we can slide the target 1 or 2 squares, respectively. We can also shift into any square our target leaves after we slide them. (And again, this should work well with our Growing Rage Reaver feature).
Now, as a caveat, I think you could make the argument that this character might fit better as a Stormwight rather than a Reaver - the Stormwight has a transformation element right there in the core of the subclass with their Stormwight Kits. These are more nature-and-animal-themed than what I'm going for, but could potentially be reskinned. It would also probably cause me to make a lot of different choices for abilities. I'd be totally down for building a werewolf-like Vuken Stormwight character, but I think we're ok sticking with Reaver for this build.
Having now done a build for each of these classes, I'm encouraged by the fact that I think I could have a lot of fun playing at level l. One of D&D's issues is that the numbers have to be so low at level 1 in order to give characters room to grow. Having only two spell slots at level 1, or three at level 2, really means you don't feel like much of a spellcaster until you get to level 3.
The price, of course, is complexity. All of these classes have about equal complexity (the Conduit might be a little higher just because they have essentially two subclasses). And it's a little closer to a somewhat higher-level character in D&D - which is good news for those who feel a little hamstrung playing D&D at low levels, but I wonder if it's not very friendly to newbies to the genre.
In terms of pure cool factor, I'm really happiest with the Shadow - I'd definitely want to play the build I came up with in the first of these posts.
I will say that having a digital toolset - a kind of Draw Steel equivalent of D&D Beyond - would be very appealing. With heroic resources, recoveries, and stamina to track constantly (you're going to be taking damage basically every round) digitizing the bookkeeping would be very helpful (and not great for my ADHD friends who find computerized tools like these too distracting).
What I have not done, of course, is run any encounters with the monsters. It looks like the folks at MCDM have gotten feedback that running them is a little over-complex for Directors, so we'll see how that evolves. I do think that not having a strict initiative order is something that... could be cool but might also become a real hassle for those not meticulously keeping track of which round everyone's on.
Again, I think this could all be really freaking cool, but I'll need to see it in action (I know there are some actual plays, but I'm a bit spoiled by watching mostly actual plays with actors and comedians who really make watching compelling, and I haven't seen much of that so far.)
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