Draw Steel Class Deep Dive: The Fury

 I'll be honest, while these posts are kind of fun to do (and a way for me to better familiarize myself with these classes,) the real core of Draw Steel's class design is in the various abilities you choose. But while the game doesn't have multiclassing, which one might imagine would really limit the kind of "builds" you can make, choosing your abilities plays a huge role in what kind of character you will actually be able to play. Two Shadows might share zero abilities, and so what you do in your turn-to-turn combat would look very different.

So, I'll concede that these deep dives might not be enough to give you the full picture for these classes. But it would also mean incredibly long posts to list every ability, and at a certain point it starts to feel like I'm just publishing their rulebook on my blog. The intent here, beyond just amusing myself (I genuinely don't know if anyone actually reads this - the last time I had a comment was back in like 2012 when someone vehemently disagreed with me over my discomfort with Protection Paladins in World of Warcraft using Haste, which at that point was considered a DPS stat, back when tanks had their own stats to chase).

Still, I think these universal class features (I think they officially distinguish between traits and features depending on whether they're useful for combat or non-combat stuff, but I won't) give you the general gist of the class, and might encourage readers to take a look at this game if these seem like interesting ideas.

With that preamble out of the way: The Fury. 5E veterans will surely equate the Fury with D&D's Barbarian, and interestingly enough, I actually think that the 2024 revisions for D&D actually make the Barbarian closer to what the Fury represents than they did before, being tied into primordial spiritual forces. In the case of the Fury, they are tied to Primordial Chaos.

In a lot of ways, I think the Null and the Fury represent equal and opposite forces. The Null is focused on counteracting magic and fighting with discipline and unity of mind and body, while the Fury is all about unleashing, unshackling.

Furies maximize both Might and Agility, starting with 2s in each, while they can array the other three characteristics as they see fit.

Subclasses:

Furies have, like most classes in the Heroes book, three subclasses. Two of these, I'd argue, are fairly straightforward, while the third, the Stormwight, is quite unusual.

Berserkers are, I think, the classic raging warrior, described as a living version of the forces that shape the world.

Reavers are no less ferocious, but lean into instinct and cunning, wielding your force in more underhanded and subversive ways.

Stormwights are unique: you don't pick a standard kit, but instead choose from a selection of Stormwight kits, which each tie you to a different elemental force and a different animal form. Stormwights can transform into a kind of were-creature based on their special kits - Bears, Ravens, Rats, or Wolves, and will typically fight while transformed either into humanoid-shaped hybrid form or a full transformation into these animal forms. As a note, Stormwights have special immunities to werewolves' infectiousness, because their source of power is very similar to that of the Draw Steel werewolf. (I think it would not be a stretch at all to play a Vuken Stormwight as a werewolf who has learned to control their lycanthropy).

As a note, much as Nulls will gain various passive effects as their Discipline grows in combat, each Fury subclass also has a similar table of effects gained as your Ferocity goes up.

Heroic Resource: Ferocity

As with all classes, when combat begins you gain Ferocity equal to your victories, and at the start of your turn you gain 1d3 Ferocity (surprising no one, this is a chaos-aligned class). Additionally, the first time you take damage each round you gain one Ferocity, and you also gain 1d3 Ferocity the first time in an encounter that you become winded or are dying (I assume this triggers on both, but each only once per combat). Naturally, Furies are expected to be on the front lines of a fight, and thus you're rewarded for pushing yourself.

Class Features:

At level 1, you get a few features from your subclasses (I've tended to skip these in previous deep dives, but I think I'll at least mention them broadly like this) that include some passives, the Growing Ferocity feature mentioned above, and a special triggered action.

Also at 1, you get Mighty Leaps, which ensures you can never get lower than a tier 2 outcome on any Might test made to jump. (You can always make a long jump a number of squares equal to your Might or Agility, your choice, minimum 1, and a high jump is 1 square, but to jump farther, you make a might or agility test. On a tier 2, you'll get one square higher and farther than that, and on a tier 3, two squares. So this means that at level 1, with a Might of 2, you're always jumping at least 3 squares as a long jump).

At level 2, other than the customary perk, you get some subclass features, including a passive bonus and a choice between two abilities from each subclass.

At level 3, you get some more passive subclass features and one 7-Ferocity ability of your choice.

At level 4, your Might and Agility both increase to 3. You also now gain 2 ferocity when you take damage the first time each round, and other various universal things.

Also at 4, you gain Primordial Attunement, gaining the ability to sense whether nearby creatures have immunity or weaknesses to acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison, or sonic damage, as well as any source of such damage types, like a fire, or perhaps a sparking electrical coil.

And also at 4, you get Primordial Strike. When you make a strike (a keyword that is included in most non-area-effect damaging abilities) you can spend 1 Ferocity to gain 1 Surge that must be used with that strike. The extra damage of the surge can be your choice of acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison, or sonic damage.

At level 5, you gain another passive feature based on your subclass, as well as a 9-Ferocity ability of your choice.

At level 6, you get a couple features.

Marauder of the Primordial Chaos allows you to sense elemental creatures or magic sources of elemental power (the examples given are a lava pool or a lake overlapping with Quintessence, the elemental plane) within 1 mile. You also gain the ability to speak with elemental creatures, and treat your Renown as 1 higher when negotiating with them. You also automatically frighten elementals with below-average Presence (based on your potencies) when they become aware of you in combat, save ends.

Primordial Portal, also at 6, allows you to touch a magic source of elemental power and create a portal to the plane of Quintessence as a main action, and teleport yourself and willing creatures within 10 squares of you onto a safe island in the plane. You can maintain a number of portals equal to your Might score.

    So, just to be clear, the "Barbarian" here has a planar transportation ability, which is freaking awesome. It's to one specific plane, but Directors should hopefully build adventures that give the party a reason to go there (even if not central to the campaign's plot, it's probably a good place to go for downtime project sources).

You also gain a perk and one choice of 9-Ferocity abilities from two offered by your subclass.

At level 7, all your characteristics go up by 1 (your Might and Agility should now each be 4).

You also get Elemental Form, which causes elemental motes attuned to your mood to float around you, and your skin change sin appearance to reflect an element of your choice. Beserkers and Reavers gain immunity to acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison, and sonic damage equal to their Might, while Stormwights have immunity to the damage associated with their stormwight kit equal to twice your Might.

You also now get 1d3+1 Ferocity at the start of each of your turns, up from 1d3. Also, your subclass' Growing Ferocity feature's next effect unlocks.

And you get an additional skill.

At 8th level, you get another Perk, and then you get a new feature from your subclass.

Additionally, you pick an 11-Ferocity ability to learn.

At level 9, you get Harbinger of the Primordial Chaos, which allows you to create a temporary source of elemental power as a respite activity. The source remains for 24 hours, and can be used with Primordial Portal to open the way to Quintessence.

Additionally, you get to pick an 11-Ferocity ability from choices determined by your subclass.

Finally, at level 10, your Might and Agility increase to 5, you get the last of your subclass Growing Ferocity features, you gain an additional perk, an additional skill, and you now gain 3, instead of 2 Ferocity when you take damage the first time each round.

Your also gain Chaos Incarnate, which doubles the immunities granted by Elemental Form for Reavers and Berserkers, and increases the immunity for Stormwights based on their kits from twice to now three times your Might score.

Additionally, when any elemental or other creature that deals acid, cold, corruption, fire, lightning, poison, or sonic damage becomes aware of you in combat, they become frightened of you if they have a Presence less than your Strong potency. Also, when you use Primordial Strike, you can now spend up to 3 Ferocity, gaining a surge for each ferocity spent to be used on that strike.

Finally, you get your Epic Resource, Primordial Power. When you gain XP, you also gain Primordial Power, which can then be spent as if it were Ferocity, except that you don't lose Primordial Power until you spend it. You can also spend Primordial Power as a free maneuver to end an effect on you for each point spent. You can also spend 3 Primordial Power to create a portal to Quintessence without needing a source of elemental power.

    As a note, the design of all of these classes is that with just one exception, every class is meant to become some kind of supernatural force on the battlefield by the time they hit max level. Furies, of course, become this embodiment of elemental rage. I find it interesting that Furies and Elementalists have a similar relationship that Nulls and Talents have, with the former representing magic of the elements and the latter representing psionics. We haven't touched on Conduits and Censors, but I think that there's a similar relationship there, as the pure caster and martial characters (respectively) representing divine magic.

Building a Fury in Draw Steel

 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.)