Draw Steel doesn't use practically any of the familiar terminology one might know from D&D. Hit Points are Stamina. Intelligence is Reason. Tiers are Echelons. Among these unfamiliarities are the names of classes. While you could consider each of Draw Steel's nine classes a rough equivalent to one found in 5E D&D (though in the case of the Talent, the equivalent is either WotC's UA-tested Psionic class, or it's MCDM's own 5E Talent,) not one of them shares the name with a D&D class. Spellcasters channeling divine power are Conduits rather than Clerics. Warriors who channel a primordial might are Furies instead of Barbarians.
But while I think you could create a pretty satisfying "conversion chart" if you wanted to play your D&D character in Draw Steel, there's a nuance here that I think is worth noting:
D&D classes, and most fantasy RPG classes, have an aesthetic that they achieve both through abilities and the kind of gear they wear. Classically, a Paladin is a knight in shining armor - specifically, they wear heavy armor and tend to have some bulky weapon that they're either wielding with two hands, or using along with a shield.
But Draw Steel does something really interesting: roughly half of the classes (the Censor, Fury, Shadow, Tactician, and Troubadour) get something called a Kit. These are, on the surface, a kind of set of equipment, but what they really are is "what vibe are you going for?" Kits do have a significant mechanical impact, but they're designed in such a way that you are not by any means forced to go the traditional route regarding what your character will look like when fighting monsters.
And Kits are designed to be usable by every (with some small exceptions) class that uses kits.
Naturally, if you're thinking of the Shadow as Draw Steel's equivalent of the Rogue, you'd assume that the best option is something like Cloak and Dagger, or perhaps Sniper. These would probably work out just fine for a Shadow, and I don't feel like I have the play experience to even begin to determine whether they're more optimal choices.
Kits do a few things: the kind of armor they come with is reflected by increasing your maximum Stamina (though sometimes it's not armor, but just hardiness associated with the kit). They'll also tend to come with some kind of damage bonus, and it's here where we really wanted to be thinking about how we create our character.
Each also comes with a Signature Ability, which will be one of the things you can do for free when you're conserving your Heroic Resources (or still earning enough to use any Heroic Abilities). Nearly all of these abilities allow you to choose Might or Agility with which to make your power roll. And that's notable, because every single class that gets kits will have either Might or Agility as one of their highest stats. There are a handful that require you to choose between one of those two and the three "mental" characteristic scores, but given the way that stat progression is always good, you should be fine taking these as well (I'd thought perhaps that Furies might not be able to optimally use these, as they don't get automatic scaling with Reason, Intuition, or Presence, but given that each also allows either Might or Agility, the two stats Furies also always get the best progression with, they should work for them as well).
So: let's talk about this idea that I've had: The Shadow, while being the game's analogue for the Rogue, can use any of these kits, and I'd like to see how effective I can be if I take a really off-label kit: not Sniper, not Cloak and Dagger, not even Spellsword. I want to take The Mountain.
The Mountain is, actually not entirely unlike the character of the same name from A Song of Ice and Fire, a heavily-armored warrior who fights with a heavy weapon. Examples given are Greatswords, greataxes, mauls, and morningstars (this latter one I generally view as a one-handed weapon, but that might be D&D's influence on me).
The other bonuses that we get with the Mountain kit are the following:
We get +9 to our Stamina per echelon (not level - so we get 9 at level 1, then another 9 at level 4, another 9 at level 7, and finally another 9 at 10, meaning a total of 36 by the time we hit the cap).
We also gain a +2 bonus to our Stability. Stability is a stat that is essentially your defense against forced movement. If something tries to Push, Pull, or Slide you, you get to subtract your stability from the distance they do that, and of course if that reduces it to zero, they don't get to move you at all.
We then get a melee damage bonus of +0/+0/+4, which means that we get a big bonus when we get a tier 3 result on strikes that have the melee keyword, but no bonus on lesser rolls.
This, I think, will be the big limiting factor: Shadows have a pretty hefty mix of ranged and melee abilities. If we go with the Mountain kit, we'll really want to focus on melee because that's where we're getting our bonus damage. Now, the good news is that Shadows are going to be able to hide pretty easily. As per the rules on Hiding (Heroes p. 258) if you're hidden from a creature, you gain an edge on ability rolls against them until the end of your turn, even if you break out of hiding before you make that roll (such as, for example, emerging from cover to strike at them). Edges (and especially Double Edges) are going to be massive for this kit, and a Shadow has a pretty reliable way to get one.
Before we get into other build choices, let's finish up with this kit:
The Mountain signature ability is Pain for Pain, which is a melee attack that does 3+A/M (agility or might, naturally we're choosing agility, and so I'll just show that option) or 5+A or 13+A (the tier 3 result incorporates the kit's damage bonus, so we don't add 4 on top of this). At level 1, that'll mean 5, 7, or 15 damage.
The ability has a special effect, which is that if the target dealt damage to you since the end of your last turn, this deals additional damage equal to your Agility (again, or Might if you were some other class).
And here's where my theoretical understanding could use a bit of real-world play experience: I don't know how often Shadows can expect to take damage. Naturally, in Draw Steel, every attack hits, so a certain amount of damage is unavoidable. But while a Null, Censor, or Fury is always wading into the thick of it, I don't know if a Shadow's general game plan is going to be more about not being in a position to be attacked in the first place. Certainly, if we're committing to this kit, we'll get some benefit from taking a bit of damage, though of course that comes with the drawback of... taking damage.
The stability bonus for a Mountain kit is also potentially going to push us into a role we might not necessarily want to take: a Mountain is hard to move, so it seems suited to being a kind of immovable object on the battlefield. However, this might still benefit us in the sense that monsters that try to drag us where we don't want to go will have a harder time doing so.
So: let's talk subclass and general build.
For subclass, we're picking this based on vibes. Shadows have three subclasses, the Colleges of Black Ash, Caustic Alchemy, and Harlequin Mask. The first is all about magically teleporting around and using abyssal magic (conveniently, Draw Steel's demons come from the Abyssal Wastes, so D&D veterans will have an easy time associated abyss and demons,) the second is about poison and smoke bombs and such, and the last is a trickster that uses illusions and guile.
The vibe I want to go for is a kind of gothic phantom: a nightmarish implacable dread knight hunting the monsters down. And so, Black Ash is the one I'm inclined to pick here.
This is going to make you very mobile: you can teleport 5 squares as a maneuver (or more if you spend Insight for each additional square) and you can also teleport as a triggered action when you take damage, halving the damage as you do so, with the same Insight-for-increased distance deal.
I think the assumed use for both of these is to get away from foes and slip into cover (the maneuver lets you attempt to hide even if observed). But consider this: you will be so, so freaking good at chasing down enemies trying to stay at range. Indeed, if there's one thing that melee-focused characters can always use, it's mobility.
Vanishing from sight only to appear behind a foe, potentially without their noticing, before you hack them down with your greatsword, is a real vibe.
So: we're using our extreme mobility to position ourselves easily in melee. Naturally, this is going to encourage us to take mostly melee abilities. We can always make ranged free strikes if we can't get into melee with a foe (though this is going to be somewhat underwhelming damage). I believe that even if we use an ability that can act as both a melee and ranged strike, we only get the +4 bonus if we are using it in melee, but it might be good to pick such abilities just to give ourselves some flexibility.
I Work Better Alone, a melee/ranged strike that deals 3+A/6+A/9+A damage and gives us a Surge before we make the power roll if none of our allies are adjacent to the target certainly fits in with our style. We're going to be hunting the foes on the edge of the fight. Alternatively, we could go the opposite route and take Teamwork Has Its Place, which does the same base damage but gives us 1 surge if there is an ally adjacent to the target (this one also works on objects).
Here, I might say you should really consider your party's composition. If you have a lot of melee allies, THIP might be the better option, but if you've got mostly ranged friends, IWBA will be more reliable.
You Were Watching the Wrong One does nearly as much damage (3+A/5+A/8+A) and gives you a surge if there's an ally within 5 squares (a pretty decent range,) and then further gives an ally a surge if you're flanking with them (and flanking will be a little easier for us to manage given our mobility). This is an obligatory melee ability, though, so it's a commitment. That said, flanking will be very good for us, especially if we can pair it with hiding to get a double edge and let us get that juicy +4 bonus on any roll above an 11.
I honestly think any of the Shadow's four abilities could be good, but I'm inclined to take I Work Better Alone for the theme of what we're doing, and if we can't get the bonus effect on it, we can always go with Pain for Pain if we get its bonus effect. IWBA will also work at range, if we need to do so - I'd flavor this as perhaps throwing a barbed knife or even chipping some piece of the terrain off and pelting the foe with it.
Now, let's pick Heroic Abilities.
Once again, I think we might steer clear of any abilities that can't be melee strikes, though hybrid options are of course more flexible.
Now, is our job to focus primarily on damage output? Or do we want a bit of battlefield control? Once again, party composition is something to consider, but I think if we're trying to feel like a monster out of a nightmare... damn, I guess both options make sense.
The options that speak to me are Disorienting Strike and Eviscerate.
The former is pure melee, but it lets us deal damage (slightly more than our signature abilities) but also lets us slide the target 2/3/5 squares, and we can then shift into any square the target leaves when we slide them (once again, giving us insane mobility). Sliding is very good - it's the most versatile type of forced movement and can set our allies up nicely. Also, if we slide them right into a wall, they could take additional damage
Eviscerate can be either ranged or melee, and actually does the same damage as Disorienting Strike, but instead of sliding, we can impose the Bleeding status if their Agility is below our potency (remember that we can spend the surges we get with IWBA on making those potencies higher). The Bleeding is Save Ends (meaning each turn there's just a 50% chance that the status ends) and can mean more damage if they want to actually do anything on their turn.
I'm kind of obsessed with forced movement, and I do like the idea of this implacable shadow dragging a foe back into the danger they've been trying to escape, but I also think that the horror-movie vibes of inflicting bleeding could be hard to pass up. 1d6+the creature's level is not a small amount of damage to inflict possibly multiple times per round.
For our 5-Insight ability, in terms of pure damage, Coup de Grace is pretty appealing: it's pure damage, but that damage is 2d6+7+A/2d6+11+A/2d6+16+A, for both ranged and melee. So, if we assume we're doing this in melee, our averages at level 1 are 16, 20, or 29 damage. To put that in context, most Platoon-level monsters (the ones that a Director can throw at a 1:1 ratio with players of the same level) at level 1 have 30 Stamina. Most of what you face are Horde or Minion monsters, and so this is going to nearly always kill a level 1 monster that isn't something like a Brute or Defender.
Shadowstrike is another option that just lets us make two strike signature abilities in a row. I Work Better Alone, if we assume we're using this with the right conditions (and surely we are if we're spending our 5 Insight on this heroic ability) will deal 5/8/15 damage in melee, so two of them would mean around 10/16/30, along with two surges, which we could pour into damage to add (at this level) 2 to each strike, so potentially around 14/20/34.
It's honestly comparable. Shadowstrike will be better if we can consistently get Edges on our rolls, and I think you could also make the argument that it's more flexible, as we might find that Pain for Pain is more optimal. So, Shadowstrike might be the one to go for (there are two others but one is ranged-only and the other is built for multi-target, and I think we're orienting around single-target burning).
So, this gets us through level 1. I don't think I'm going to go through further levels, just because I don't know that I have the energy or the level of Insight (haha, get it? The Shadow Heroic Resource) into actually playing the game to know if these are good choices.
But I do think what it shows is that you can build a functional character that goes a really different route from the conventional. I think we could really terrify some enemies with this build, and I just love how much kits let you go off the beaten path with these classes.
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