Monster Categorization In Draw Steel

 One of the elements that MCDM brought back from 4th Edition in its 5E monster book, Flee, Mortals! was the idea of monster group roles. Each monster had a CR, sure, but you'd also get ones with a role like "Ambusher" or "Brute" or "Controller." Mixing up monsters of different roles makes for more dynamic fights.

Draw Steel continues this idea, where every monster has a role as well. But it also does something I find really interesting: it also has a kind of organizational rank.

Let's clarify:

Monsters have an EV, which is the "encounter value" and is how much of an encounter budget you spend to add it to a balanced encounter, which is sort of an equivalent to its XP value in 5E (Experience in Draw Steel is a far lower number based on your Victories, and so wouldn't work as a value to attach to individual monsters). Additionally, the monsters have levels - like PCs, they go from level 1 to 10.

However, on top of that, there's an organizational rank. The ranks go Minion, Horde, Platoon, Elite, and then two combination group-role/ranks of Leader and Solo.

At the same level, a balanced "standard difficulty" encounter can have 8 minions, 2 horde monsters, 1 Platoon monster, or half an Elite monster per player.

Let's say your party is level 4, and you have 6 players. Well, starting off an adventure, you could have a fight with sixteen minions and eight horde monsters, or perhaps just twelve horde monsters, or an elite with sixteen minions and four horde monsters.

Naturally, there are some adjustments you might need to make - maybe the type of monster you want to use doesn't come at the same level as your party. You could adjust its stats to make it the correct level, or you could throw more or less of them at the party and use their EV values to get it right.

I find this system really appealing, because as someone running a high-level D&D game, the distinction between a Level 5 Horde monster and a level 2 Elite monster would actually be really nice to have. Sometimes having low-level monsters in large groups to attack a high-level character works out in terms of XP calculations, but when you're using monsters that have a +4 to hit against a Barbarian with a 25 AC, it honestly becomes a bit of a slog, as they're almost never actually doing any damage.

Ironically, because of Draw Steel's "everything hits" rules system, I actually think using a ton of lower-level monsters against a high-level party would work better than it does in 5E, though of course Minions are designed to let you flood the party with tons of easily-killed, weak enemies.

Still, I think it would be cool to create a distinction between "high level henchman" monsters and "low level headliner" monsters.

One way I might distinguish the design is that a high-level henchman would have a higher attack bonus, but do less damage. This could be done by giving them just one attack - if you're intending to have a lot of these monsters, you'll have plenty of attack rolls to make, so the action economy is still in their favor. But with a low-level headlining monster, giving them a lower hit bonus (because the target probably has a lower AC) but higher damage (perhaps simply by giving them more attacks) would probably feel better for the role they're meant to play. Similarly, high-level henchmen (I'm avoiding the term minion here just to not confuse it with the Draw Steel term) might have a higher AC and saving throw bonuses, but lower HP so that when an attack or two lands, they aren't sticking around all that long.

Hopefully some time soon, I'm going to try to rope my friends into trying out Draw Steel. I'm really eager to see how the combat flows, as it looks really cool in theory.