Draw Steel Class Deep Dive: The Elementalist

 While Draw Steel works pretty hard to break the mold on character classes, most of them fit a fair approximation of D&D classes, like the Fury for the Barbarian or the Shadow for the Rogue. The Elementalist is interesting, because in many ways, it fits the classic Wizard archetype, if you want to cast magic spells, dropping fireballs and the like. Of course, 5E also has the Sorcerer, which fills a similar role. Likewise, D&D's Druid can be something of an "elemental spellcaster." While they have talked about the possibility of some kind of "wizard" class in the future, an Elementalist, of the exiting 9 classes, truly is the closest of the "classic magic user."

We've looked at the Shadow and the Null, but this is the first true "spellcaster" class we're examining. That said, Draw Steel doesn't make as stark a distinction between magic spells and physical abilities. You will be, in most cases, fighting from afar with this class.

Elementalists, being the game's classic mage, use Reason as their primary characteristic, which will always be the highest it can be as you level up.

Elementalists are built around the fundamental elements of Draw Steel's cosmos, but while the four classical elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, are part of this class (though we'll see that only two of those are given a real focus in the core rules) this cosmos actually has seven, adding Void, Green, and Rot.

While the class has more subclasses than most, having four subclasses themed around an element each, we can likely expect to see the missing elements granted their own subclasses in some future product. Note that Elementalist abilities tend to have keywords for an associated element, which some subclass features will interact with.

Heroic Resource: Essence

At the start of each combat, you gain Essence equal to your victories (standard for all heroic resources) and you also gain 2 Essence at the start of each of your turns (subtly indicating this is a more "order"-aligned class). Additionally, the first time in each combat round that you or a creature within 10 squares takes damage that is neither untyped (like the damage dealt by mundane weapons) or holy, you gain 1 Essence. It's likely that you'll be doing damage that triggers this every turn, and there's a lot of this that flies around.

Subclasses:

There are four subclasses (so far) that you can pick from.

Earth focuses on earth elemental powers, which tend to be forceful, protective, and stable (you can increase your stability as you cast earth spells).

Fire focuses on destruction and change, and increases your damage when you cast fire spells.

Green is the magic of life and nature, rejuvenating and protecting, allowing you to grant temporary Stamina when you cast your Green spells. This also allows you to change shape into various animal forms.

Void is the magic of mystery and the distance, and your ranged Void spells gain additional range.

Core Features:

Hurl Element can be used in place of your Ranged Free Strikes, dealing your choice of acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison, or sonic damage and using your Reason as the associated characteristic. It also deals greater damage as your Reason goes up.

Persistent Magic is probably the most unique feature for the Elementalist. Some abilities have an effect called Persistent X. When you cast a persistent spell, you can choose to maintain it. If you do so, you reduce the Essence you gain at the start of your turn equal to the persistent value. You can maintain a persistent effect until the end of an encounter, but if you take damage equal to 5 times your Reason score in one turn, you stop maintaining any persistent effects.

    As an example, Behold the Mystery is a heroic ability you can get at 1st level that costs 3 Essence. It deals psychic damage to each enemy in a 3-cube within 10 squares. If you maintain it, you can use the ability again as a maneuver at the start of your turn without spending any more Essence (in other words, it's more efficient to just maintain this than to cast it multiple turns in a row, as you're effectively just spending 1 Essence rather than 3.)

Practical Magic is a maneuver that lets you do one of a few effects: you can use the Knockback Maneuver, but the distance becomes the range of your Hurl Element feature (at base, 10) and you can use Reason instead of Might. Or, you can choose a creature within range of Hurl Element and deal damage equal to your Reason score in your choice of acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison or sonic (remember how you gain an extra Essence when a creature takes non-untyped, non-holy damage?) Finally, you can teleport a number of squares equal to your Reason score, and you can spend essence to teleport 1 additional square per Essence spent.

Next, you get Enchantment, choosing one from a list, which can be changed as a respite activity.

Enchantment of Battle lets you wear light armor and a light weapon, giving you a +3 bonus to Stamina and another +3 at each Echelon of play. You also gain a +1 damage bonus with weapon abilities, including free Strikes. If you somehow have a kit, you can't take this enchantment.

Enchantment of Celerity increases your speed by 1 square, as well as the distance you can shift when you disengage.

Enchantment of Destruction increases your rolled damage from any magic ability by 1 (rolled damage is just any time you make a power roll to see how much damage an ability uses, which is most abilities).

Enchantment of Distance increases the range of your magic abilities by 2 squares.

Enchantment of Permanence gives you a +6 bonus to Stamina, with an additional 6 at each echelon of play. You also get a +1 bonus to stability (reducing forced movement used against you).

Finally, other than your class abilities, you get an Elementalist Ward. Like the Enchantment, you get one from a list and can swap it as a respite activity.

Ward of Delightful Consequences gives you 1 Surge when you take damage.

Ward of Excellent Protection gives you immunity to acid, cold, corruption, fire lightning, poison, or sonic damage equal to your Reason score.

Ward of Nature's Affection let you, when a creature within a number of squares equal to your Reason score deals damage to you, use a free triggered action to slide that creature a number of squares equal to your reason score.

Ward of Surprising Reactivity lets you, when a creature that's adjacent to you deals damage to you, use a free triggered action to push that creature a number of squares equal to twice your Reason score (note that's twice the movement as Nature's Affection, but only as a push, and only if the creature's right up next to you).

Levels 2 and 3 both have subclass-specific features.

At level 4, you get more Essence from creatures taking non-untyped and non-holy damage, up from 1 to 2.

Mantle of Essence gives you an aura when you have 3 or more Essence, with a radius equal to your Reason score. The effects of the aura are determined by your subclass, and you can activate and deactivate the aura at will (no action required).

At level 6, you get Wyrding.

Wyrding lets you spend 10 uninterrupted minutes to create a freeform magic spell, which can take numerous forms: you can create a mundane object (with a size equal to your reason score, so at the level you get this, already size 3). You can construct a shelter suitable for twenty creatures that lasts 24 hours that can't be detected by enemies. You can restore all stamina to a mundane object with size equal to your reason score or lower. You can fill an cube area with a size up to your reason score that's within 5 squares of you with difficult terrain or natural phenomean like water, fire, plant life, etc., you clear an area of those things. You can preserve a corpse or up to 5 pounds of food for a week, or cause the corpse or food to rot instantly. Or, you can create a seal on a surface that can't be seen or felt by anyone but you. If a creature comes to an adjacent space to the surface, you can see through the seal as long as the creature's adjacent. You can also limit which creatures activate the seal, such as picking a keyword like undead or a specific individual's name. You can only have one seal up at a time.

At level 7, you get Mantle of Quintessence, which will increase the patience of creatures in your Mantle of Essence aura by 1, maximum of 5, (giving you more time in a Negotiation to make your arguments,) and you and any ally gain an edge on tests that use the Handle Animals skill. If you have 5 or more victories, the bonus to patience increases to 2 and you now grant a double edge of Handle Animals tests.

You also get Surging Essence, giving you 3 Essence at the start of each turn, up from 2.

At level 9, you get Grand Wyrding, allowing you to use Wydring as a main action (rather than taking 10 minutes). Also, if you have 5 or more victories, you gain damage immunity all to your choice of acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison, or sonic damage (damage immunity all means full immunity - you don't take any whatsoever).

At level 10, you get an epic resource called Breath. When you take a respite, you gain Breath equal to the XP you earn. You can spend Breath to gain Essence (no action required,) gaining 3 Essence for every 1 Breath. Breath persists until you convert it into Essence.

Essential Being now grants you 4, rather than 3 Essence at the start of each turn.

You also gain One, which makes you the embodiment of your chosen element. Elemental motes float around you when you cast magic, and your appearance changes to reflect your chosen element. Each subclass grants a different feature.

    For example, Master of Void lets you teleport whenever you move, and you no longer require project sources for research projects, and you automatically complete any research project on the first project roll. Master of Fire increases your damage with all spells and also lets you melt non-artifact supernatural objects, and when you melt a treasure, you gain Breath equal to its echelon.

Building an Elementalist in Draw Steel

 In my previous post about character building, I used an existing World of Warcraft character, my Undead Rogue, Darsino. Thanks to the existence of both the Revenant ancestry and the mystical aspect of the game's Rogue analogue, the Shadow, Darsino's shadowy teleportation (being Subtlety in WoW) translated surprisingly well into this system.

It seems like it will be a bit harder to directly translate other characters with the rules we have so far, so I'm going to try starting from scratch in this case.

Elementalists are the closest to your Wizard/Sorcerer analogue, with an encouragement to focus on particular damage types. To step back toward WoW, I also feel like they could fit pretty well as the equivalent of Shamans, though probably more toward the ranged-caster Elemental Shaman rather than the melee-with-magic Enhancement.

We're looking at a Reason-focused class, but just as I'd encourage D&D players to be creative about how knowledge is kept and passed down (a "library" could take many forms) I also don't think we need to necessarily go for the classic cloistered bookworm.

In fact, I think we're going to err instead on the side of someone a little closer to that WoW Shaman archetype - someone in tune with the elements on a spiritual level, probably preferring to live far from civilization. We're also probably not going to go with the Green subclass, which errs more toward the Druidic, life-based elementalism. Here, we're instead going to go for the primal, primordial elements.

Air might be the ideal element to focus on, as I imagine it will have the power of storms and lightning (when I watched Avatar the Last Airbender a few years ago, it always struck me as wrong that the Firebenders got to use lightning, as this feels like it's a key tool for air-based elemental powers. But I guess it helped make the Firebenders seem more threatening). But unfortunately, we don't yet have rules for that subclass. So, instead, we're going to go to the ultimate base element that all other things rest upon - Earth.

In my mind, our Elementalist is a nomad or hermit - possibly connected to a community as a kind of remote source of wisdom. Earth, of course, is everywhere, but when I think of places that really emphasize earth as an element, I think mostly of deserts - the kind of desert in the American Southwest that has massive stone buttes and mesas revealed by ancient long-dried bodies of water. That hot, dry, brown or orange stone would be the basis of their powers.

    Ancestry

While there are some features for the Hakaan that are intriguing for a seer or wise-man, we don't really have the lore to fully understand their nature. Thus, I'm drawn to either Humans or Orcs. Human because humans in Draw Steel actually have a distinct ability to sense supernatural things around them. Orcs, because... well, deserts and living rough in the wilderness and honestly just that Warcraft shaman feel.

Let's go Human.

As a human, we get Detect the Supernatural, allowing us to sense the location of a supernatural object, an Undead or Construct or extraplanar creature within 5 squares of us. We also get Resist the Supernatural, which gives us 2 immunity to Magic and Psionic, going up by 1 each level (I assume this covers all abilities with those tags). Finally, we get two extra Recoveries, on top of the 10 we get from our class.

    Culture

We've already sketched out what our Culture is, in vague terms - we're that odd but respected guy who lives on the outskirts of our community while also serving an important role. It's probably not really a spiritual leadership position, but maybe we've got some revered position like "Earthcaller," called upon to defend the community and perhaps read the elements and signs from nature to advise the community on mundane things like when to harvest crops or what weather to prepare for.

For Environment, we'll probably say Wilderness, as we live by what the desert provides us, and the pride of our culture is the ability to survive and thrive in this harsh environment. We'll be able to pick up a skill from either the Crafting or Exploration list.

For Organization, Communal seems the best option - this is someone who lives amongst a people who must share their burdens and their resources to survive. We'll thus get a Crafting or Interpersonal skill.

For Upbringing, the option isn't terribly obvious - as a community protector, we could go with the Martial upbringing, but I think even if it leans a little cliche for our Wizard-like class, Academic probably works better, as a source of knowledge for the community. This gets us a Lore skill.

    Career

And here, we've got to go with Sage. I suppose we could build a backstory that really emphasized the role of a mentor - something like a singular position passed down in this community, which could fit the Mage's Apprentice. But I think we're going to skew for an older character who is already this community's Sage.

This gives us two Lore skills (getting us up to three, and surely more with our class) and an additional language (a step I'm skipping for these for now until I know more about Draw Steel's assumed setting and cultures). We get 100 Project Points (which I believe can be used for crafting - essentially I believe this is a head start on such efforts) and a Title: Expert Sage, which allows us to roll twice on any test as part of a research or crafting project with a skill we have from the lore skill group (nice that we're getting a lot of lore skills).

    Class

So, we're an Elementalist. At our baseline, we get a Reason and Intuition both of 2, and then we can choose how to distribute our other attributes. I think, given our earthen emphasis, we could stand to take a penalty to our Agility (in a system without an armor class, Agility is less crucial than D&D's Dexterity). Thus, I think we'll take a 1 in Strength and Presence, giving us:

Strength 1, Agility -1, Reason 2, Intuition 2, Presence 1

We start off with 15 Stamina, and we have 12 Recoveries (two of which come from being human) which each heal us for 5 stamina.

We will gain the Magic skill, and can choose any three skills from the Crafting or Lore lists. As before, let's pick our skills now:

Magic (we get this automatically,) Nature and Monsters (which we'll gain from the Sage career,) and then I think we'll leave behind lore skills. Correction: we get one more from Academic. Let's pick up Culture, as we're probably a keeper of traditions and such. Next, we'll pick up Mechanics as our Crafting skill (from our Communal organization - maybe we help maintain windmills or water pumps for our community). We'll take Endurance as an Exploration skill (from our Wilderness background) because that seems very important in a resource-sparse environment.

Now, back to class features.

Our Heroic Resource is Essence. We get 2 Essence at the start of each of our turns, but outside of combat, we sort of "idle" at an amount of Essence equal to our Victories, and it only takes one minute for essence expended out of combat to reset to this value. If we want to maintain a persistent effect (a feature we'll touch on) outside of combat, we can simply lower that "idle" level for each essence being spent on persistent effects.

We gain Hurl Element as a ranged free attack, which has a range of 5 squares and can deal a modest (2, 6, or 9) amount of damage, the type of whih we choose when we use it, able to deal acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison, or sonic damage.

Next, we gain Persistent Magic, which allows certain abilities to continue to be in effect until combat ends (and as mentioned above, we can maintain them outside of combat if we have victories to pay their Persistent Value).

If we take damage, we need to make a Reason Power Roll to maintain the effects - on a tier 1, we lose any we have up. On tier 2, if we only have one ability active, it simply remains active. If we have multiple abilities, we lose one of them. On a tier 3, we retain all of our persistent effects.

We then get Practical Magic, a Maneuver that can allow us to do a few things: we can use the Knockback Manuever using Reason instead of Might, within a distance of our Hurl Element feature. Alternatively, we can choose a creature within our Hurl Magic range and deal damage to them equal to our Reason score (again, this is a Manuever, so we can potentially get some extra damage in on top of our Hurl Element or other abilities). The damage can be the same types as Hurl Element. Finally, the third use of this is that we can teleport a number of squares equal to our Reason score.

Next, we get our Earth subclass feature, which is Manipulate Earth.

For 2 Essence and an action, we can, within our melee reach, create one of three effects:

We can touch a square of mundane dirt, stone, or metal and create a 5 wall (in other words, I believe, a wall that is made of five contiguous squares, one of which needs to be the targeted space). Alternatively, we can touch a structure of mundane dirt, metal, or stone that takes up at least 2 squares, and we can open a 1-square opening in that structure. Finally, we can touch a doorway or other opening in a structure of those materials, the opening being no larger than 1 square, and we can seal it up with the same material.

We can also use this ability without spending Essence if we spend a full uninterrupted minute using the ability while we're within reach. (So, basically it's free outside of combat, and won't require 2 victories).

We also get an Earth-subclass Triggered Action. This is Earthen Force, which we can use on ourselves or an ally within 5 squares. When the target makes a melee attack, we can add damage to that attack equal to 3 times our Reason score (so, 6 at this level). If we spend 1 Essence, we can add extra damage equal to 4 times our Reason score instead and also push the target a number of squares equal to our Reason score.

Essentially, this triggered action is going to let us super-power an ally's melee attack. While we'll see if we wind up taking anything melee-focused, we probably want to use this on our melee friends instead.

Now, we pick our Signature Ability.

Among our options, the only Earth-based one is Debris, which is pretty cool. Within 5 squares, we can hit a 3 cube (in other words, a 3x3 square on the map) and all enemies (it won't hit allies) each take some minor damage (just 2, 3, or 4) and the area becomes difficult terrain for our enemies. Naturally, this won't be all that great against a single target, but it might really help us control our enemies movement and do a good job against swarming foes. I really picture this as rock shards shooting up out of the ground, and then becoming a bunch of heavy stones to trudge through.

We'll also get a 3-Essence ability and a 5-Essence ability (the class chart actually says we get a 1-Essence ability, but I don't see any). While I'm really tempted to keep sticking with the Earth abilities, let's be a little more experimental here. Stare into the Abyss is a persistent AoE damage option, while Burn! is a persistent single-target option. I think given that our Signature is already an AoE, we'll get something we can focus-fire with, so we'll pick up Burn! This has a range of 5, and does 6/8/13 damage. It has a Persistent Value of 1, so we can easily maintain this while still building our Essence on each turn - as long as the target is still in range while this persists, we can roll for damage at the start of each of our turns.

Now, for our 5-Essence ability, we've gotta go back to our Earth theme because Open the Earth is pretty freaking awesome. Within 5 squares, we open up four holes with 2-square openings that are 6 squares deep on any mundane surface. (We can also place them next to each other to make one big 4-square hole). For each creature standing above a hole that is small enough to fall into it. Tier 1, the target can shift up to 1 square from the edge of the hole to the nearest unoccupied space of their choice (I wonder if boxing them in can prevent them from getting out of the way?) At tier 2, they fall into the hole (I don't recall the rules for falling damage). Tier 3, they fall into the hole and cannot reduce the height of the fall. We can maintain this as a persistent effect, opening up a new hole at the start of each turn (PV 1). As far as I can tell, the holes simply remain there after you cast this spell, regardless of whether you keep it persisting.

    Kit

I think the Kit that makes the most sense here is probably Nature Calling, as it really gives a sense of being this Earthspeaker role. We get a Stability bonus of 1 (so we get knocked back less by monsters) and our Magic Distance bonus is +7 (meaning most of our abilities go up to 12 squares).

Our Kit signature ability is Lightning Spark, which has a range of 12 (again, I assume this incorporates the bonus distance) and lets us shoot a spark of lighting at a foe or object, making a Power+Reason roll. Tier 1 we do a modest 2 lightning damage. Tier 2, we deal 6 damage and also put a bane on the target's next power roll. Tier 3, the target takes 9 damage and gets a double bane on their next power roll.

Our Kit Ward - a passive feature that we get as long as we're alive and wearing the kit - is Spirit Ward. This gives us an Edge on resistance rolls. Additionally, when an enemy damages us with a melee ability, we deal psychic damage to them equal to our highest characteristic (likely Reason, and thus 2). The flavor here is that we're surrounding by protective animal spirits, which feels like it really ties into the shaman vibes we've got here.

    Breaking it Down:

I think our Elementalist is going to be very good at crowd-control, even if they're not really as focused on damage output. Between Manipulate Earth and Open the Earth, we can really build and demolish parts of the battlefield to keep our enemies separated from one another and divide and conquer.

Building these characters, I wonder very much how leveling up is going to feel. I know we'll start seeing features that spend more of our Heroic Resources, but I'm curious to see how many non-choice features we get at each level. Presumably there is going to be some way to generate resources faster, because if we're at the start of an adventure at level 5 and we're facing monsters with, say, 5 times as much Stamina, it'll take a long time for us to build up the requisite resources to take them down, unless resources start to build faster at higher levels, or even our cheap abilities start to deal more damage.

Once again, I think the complexity here is more in the building than in the playing - the real difference from D&D is that there's really no distinction in complexity between martial and caster classes. Casters will thus probably feel far more constrained while martial characters will feel liberated in their options.