A Shadow is Not a Rogue: How Kits in Draw Steel Make Classes More Flexible

 If you were to map each of Draw Steel's current existing 9 classes to a D&D 5E class, you could pretty reasonably do so thusly: Censors are Paladins, Conduits are Clerics, Elementalists are Wizards/Sorcerers (and perhaps a bit of Druid), Furies are Barbarians, Nulls are Monks, Shadows are Rogues, Tacticians are Fighters, Talents are... well, not anything just yet, though the Psion class from a recent UA is a clear analogue, and the Troubadour is the Bard.

And yet...

Classes in most RPGs combine a style of play with a general iconic look - Rogues are most classically depicted in black leather armor and cloaks and hoods, while Paladins are arrayed in bright armor, while Barbarians tend to wear not a whole lot. And these semi-cosmetic descriptions are usually reflected mechanically. My Mage in World of Warcraft can't wear a bunch of plate armor, and my Rogue in D&D isn't going to fight effectively with a Greatsword.

But it turns out that in Draw Steel, these cosmetic choices aren't as intrinsically linked to a class as you might think.

First off, I should note that this really applies more to classes that use Kits, which excludes some of the more pure spellcasting classes like the Conduit, Elementalist, and Talent, as well as the unarmed/unarmored Null.

But the Censor, Fury, Shadow, Tactician, and Troubadour all get to pick a Kit, and that can seriously change the whole vibe of your character, even if your mechanical abilities remain largely the same (apart from what the Kit does for you).

Take a Shadow - classically a Rogue-like class that likes to strike fast and then get the hell away from foes, using either dark magic, alchemical tools, or guile and trickery to aid them, the classic "look" for a Shadow would probably be something like Cloak and Dagger, a kit that gives you light armor and one or two light weapons to wield, which could be daggers or shortswords or what have you.

There are for sure some features here that fit into the Shadow's playbook - you get much better distance on your ranged attacks, higher speed, a bonus to your disengage speed (so you can choose to shift two instead of one square when you do so).

However, there is literally nothing stopping you from going a different direction:

Let's say what you really want to be is some kind of terrifying dark knight. You want to wear blackened plate armor (perhaps bearing the soot stains of your Black Ash magic, if you take that subclass) and appears as a kind of ghostly dreadnought on the battlefield.

Well, the Mountain kit might be good for you. This has you wear heavy armor and a heavy weapon, like a maul or a greataxe. You get significantly more Stamina, as well as higher stability (allowing you to reduce forced movement imposed by foes) and higher damage on tier 3 damage rolls with melee strikes.

Now, is this optimal? Perhaps not, though I haven't had enough experience with the game (none personally) to know whether it could work. The Mountain is built for melee in a way that might strain against some of the Shadow's abilities. But if you focus on getting a lot of melee strikes it could work.

What I think this really gets you to consider is how your class might look and feel different depending on the kit you choose. A Fury could take the Mountain kit to be a raging whirlwind of steel on the battlefield, but they could also take the Pugilist kit to be somewhat like Maxwell Gotch in Dimension 20's Cloudward Ho, a "Gentleman Fister" who is, they say, a bit of a Rowdy (the most recent episode of it as of this writing has Maxwell dispatch a pair of foes in a particularly brutal fashion that gets called out by the DM and other players as being really out-of-tone for a light pulpy steampunk adventure). And if you want the classic Conan look with a loincloth and giant sword, the Panther kit is your Barbarian classic.

But again, you could also be a Troubadour in a loincloth with a giant axe, and it works out.

Draw Steel does have three official campaign settings - two on the world of Orden, with Vasloria as the real standard fantasy world of small towns and feudal lords, as well as the city of Capital, a massive megalopolis filled with court intrigue and such. The Timescape, though, is kind of its science-fantasy/plane-hopping setting (where a few of its playable ancestries come from).

What I'd be really curious to see if to what extent Kits could easily be deployed to expand this game out into other subgenres - while none of the existing kits come with, say, firearms or laser swords, I don't think it would be all that difficult to implement them (indeed, one of the War Dog enemies, basically Frankenstein super soldiers, has what looks like an utterly massive sci-fi sniper rifle in the art). Because the classes focus more on what how the character is doing what they're doing rather than what equipment they're using to do so, a lot of the genre lockdown you can sometimes feel in a system like D&D kind of starts to dissipate.

Readers of this blog will know that I have a particular affection for a kind of New Weird modern blend of sci-fi and fantasy. If you wanted to make a campaign in such a setting, I think you really don't need to do just about anything to the classes themselves - you might limit or expand the Kits available to give some that fit in better with that subgenre, but I think the game mechanics aren't going to fight you that hard.

I'm hoping that the game's a big enough success that they put out some supplements - I know they're already talking about the Summoner and Beast Heart classes - and I think it'd be really cool to expand upon the potential subgenres the game can accomodate through Kits, monsters, and other options.

Building a Talent in Draw Steel

 Back during one of the game's playtests, I did character builds for what were then the available classes, the Conduit, Elementalist, Fury, Shadow, and Tactician. Now that the game's official core rulebooks are out, we've got a few additional classes to play with.

Having seen MCDM's own actual-play of the Delian Tomb (the game's starter adventure,) I'm struck by how powerful forced movement can be in this game, and so I thought it would be fun to build a character that really focuses on shoving monsters around (into walls, into other monsters, etc.) While we could play something like a Fury, who is physically tossing monsters around the battlefield, I figured we'd go a little more Stephen King here and have the game's psionic class, the Talent. Because I love the trope, as seen in King works like Firestarter, or in King-inspired ones like Stranger Things, we're going to play someone who was experimented upon by some shady government program (perhaps the laboratories of Ajax the Invincible, Draw Steel's evil human conqueror, who is the most powerful monster in the Monsters book) only to break free and use their powers to help others escape such a cruel fate.

Let's go over some basics before we begin:

Most abilities use a Power Roll, which has you roll 2d10 and then add a relevant Characteristic. As a Talent, our abilities tend to use Reason or Presence, which is fine because these automatically go up as we level up, and will always be among our best stats, starting off at 2, and capping out at 5 when we hit level 10.

Each Power Roll has three tiers of result, 11 and lower is a tier 1, 12-16 is tier 2, and 17+ is tier 3. The higher the tier, the better result for us.

Another important thing for what this character will be built to do is how forced movement works:

Various abilities will Push, Pull, Vertical Push, Vertical Pull, or Slide.

If an ability does, say, Push 3, we get to move that creature away from us 3 squares. The movement has to be in a straight line, but we can sort of angle it. For example, if we've got a monster adjacent to the left of us and we push them 3, we can either push them 3 spaces to the left of where they currently are, or we can push them diagonally up and to the left of where they are (even if the line from us isn't perfectly straight, as long as the monster is going away from us for this full move, it's kosher).

Pull, of course, is similar, but forces a monster closer to us.

Vertical Pull and Vertical Push allow you to move a creature off the ground with the ability. For example, if we have Vertical Push 3, we might send them diagonally (or directly) up away from us, which means they'd also take some damage from falling, unless they land on some higher surface.

Slide is the most versatile forced movement - you can move them in any direction, and even change direction mid-forced-movement.

Now: let's talk about the benefits of forced movement:

Not only is this useful for tactical positioning - such as setting up an ally with a Burst ability or an AoE attack - but you can also damage creatures by tossing them into things. If you force move a creature into an object, the creature takes one point of damage for every square left of movement that it couldn't move because it was stopped. Say I Push 3 a Skeleton into a heavy closed sarcophagus that is two squares behind them. One square of that forced movement is used up by pushing it into the empty square behind them, but then because the Skeleton can't move into the space of the object, the remaining two squares of forced movement are dealt to the Skeleton as damage. That extra 2 is on top of whatever damage my ability that moved them in the first place might have done.

Creatures getting force-moved into one another will each take the damage. (Also, at Director's discretion, certain objects made of certain materials might have a set amount of stamina per square of size, so you can potentially, say, shove a monster through a glass or wooden - or even stone or metal - structure to destroy it.)

With all that preamble out of the way, let's get started:

For our Ancestry, we're going to go Hakaan, the half-giants. We're pretty big (1L, or one size larger than most ancestries, but we still just occupy one square on the board). We then have three ancestry points to spend on traits.

First, we'll take Forceful, which increases all our Forced Movement by 1 (naturally important for this build).

While Doomsight would be kind of cool and flavorful, we're not going to build this one with a future death in mind, so instead, we'll take Stand Tough, which lets us treat our Might as one higher to resist potencies, and also gives us an edge of Might tests to resist environmental effects and creature traits and abilities. Finally, with our last point, we can take (and in fact can only take) All is a Feather, which gives us an edge of tests to lift and haul heavy objects (which I think in theory should work with telekinetic abilities).

For our Background, this is mainly flavor, but I think a Secluded environment, with Bureaucratic organization, and maybe an Academic culture. Our career was probably closest to a Mage's Apprentice, which gives us a Supernatural Perk. Now, given that we'll be getting Minor Telekinesis, we might not have as much of a use for Invisible Force, which is kind of an extra-minor Telekinesis that isn't used for damaging things. Depending on the interpretation of our subclass ability, and whether it's too forceful to be used to delicately manipulate objects, we might take this anyway.

Invisible Force is a maneuver that lets us move a 1T object (which is something around the size of a rabbit or a coffee mug) a number of squares equal to our relevant mental characteristic (both or Reason and Presence are 2 to start off, so 2 squares). I actually don't know if this can be considered forced movement to damage things, but it's a good bit of out-of-combat utility.

Finally, let's get into our class features:

As a Talent, we have 2s in Reason and Presence. We have a few options for how we want the other three characteristics to look. Given the strange manner in which our Talent was brought up, I'm going to say that they're rather poorly attuned to others' normal behavior and just being aware of an environment that isn't the strange laboratory in which they were experimented upon, and thus, their Intuition will take a -1 hit. That leaves Might and Agility - we can take either a 2 in one and a -1 in the other or we can take a 1 in each. I'm going to say that there probably was some physical conditioning that we were put through, so we'll be decent at both: thus we have M1, A1, R2, I-1, and P2.

We start off with 18 Stamina (meaning our Recoveries are for 6) and our Potencies are currently Weak:0, Normal:1, and Strong:2 (which I suspect is true for just about everyone at level 1).

We have the Psionics and Read Person skills, and we can pick two skills from Interpersonal or Lore skills. If we were being conditioned to be some kind of super soldier, perhaps we have knowledge of Strategy and then Interrogate.

Now, the meaty stuff:

As a Talent, we get a few things for free:

First, our heroic resource is Clarity. We get the typical 1d3 at the start of our turns, and an amount equal to our victories at the start of the combat. We then get an extra one each round each time a creature is force-moved the first time that round. Given that we're going to be doing a lot of force-moving, we can probably expect to get that every round (this also works when our friends knock creatures around. Indeed, with a Might of 1, we're actually going to be able to use the Knockback maneuver nearly as reliably as a Fury, so we could even do that on our turn to give us the extra Clarity for a Heroic ability).

Talents have a special rule which allows them to spend Clarity they don't have - you can go to negative Clarity, with a negative value equal to 1 + our Reason score, so we can actually go to -3. At the start of each of our turns, we take 1 damage for each negative point of Clairty, but this can potentially be a way to start off the fight with a powerful ability that might actually wind up saving us from greater damage that a monster might have dealt to us. While we're in Clarity debt, though, we're Strained, which affects a lot of our abilities in interesting ways.

Mind Spike is essentially a specialized Ranged Free Strike that does psychic damage at a range of 10. It normally does 2, 4, or 6 psychic damage plus our Reason (so 4, 6, or 8) and does an additional 2 if we're strained, but also does that 2 to us as well.

We're also going to pick a Psionic Augmentation, which is something we can swap on a Respite. None of these really play into our primary "move thing with our mind" theme, so I'd be tempted to take either Density Augmentation (which just raises our Stamina by 6, and does so again at 4th, 7th, and 10th levels) and increases our Stability by 1 (which reduces the amount by which others can move us) or we might take Distance Augmentation to extend the range of our ranged psionic abilities by 2. The latter seems quite useful if we do wind up with a lot of ranged abilities.

Next, we have our Talent Ward. Here, the obvious one is Repulsive Ward - when a creature adjacent to use deals damage to us, we can use a free triggered action to push them a number of squares equal to our Reason. This is both on-theme and also very cool.

Finally, another free thing we get is Telepathic Speech, where we can communicate with any creature that shares a language within the range of our Mind Spike (which we may have extended with our Augmentation). We also get the Mindspeech language.

Finally, we start to look at some Talent Tradition features - we're obviously going with Telekinesis as our tradition (aka our subclass,) and so we get two: Minor Telekinesis, and Repel.

Minor Telekinesis is a maneuver with a range of 10 and can target ourselves or a single size 1 creature or object. We can slide the target a number of squares equal to our Reason score. We can also spend 2+ Clairty to slide creatures or objects of larger sizes, increasing the size by 1 for each 2 Clarity spent. Finally, if we spend 3 Clarity, we can vertically slide them as well (hey, you want to deal with that flying monster by throwing another monster into it? Or drag it down to the ground? Or throw that enemy up in the air so they take fall damage?)

Repel is a Triggered action (notably, because our Repulsive Ward is a free triggered action, we can use both on the same round) we can use on ourselves or an ally within 10 squares. If the target takes damage or is force-moved, we can either cause the creature to take half damage (if it's damaged) or reduce the forced movement by a number of squares equal to our Reason score. If they're both damaged and force-moved, we choose one or the other. If we reduce forced movement to 0, the target can then push the source of the forced movement a number of squares equal to our Reason score.

    Naturally, the ideal scenario would be an enemy tries to shove our ally off a narrow bridge, and we stop them from doing so and then send that force right back at them.

Now, on to our Signature Abilities, of which we can pick two:

First, let's take the obvious one: Kinetic Grip.

Kinetic Grip slides a creature or object within a range of 10 a number of squares equal to 2, 4, or 6 plus our Reason score. If we get the tier 3 result, they're also knocked prone. If strained, we can only vertically push them instead of sliding them, but hey - we can do some fall damage with that. Notably, this doesn't do any damage on its own, but if we slide a monster that's next to an ally already, we could potentially do 8 damage to both of them by knocking their heads together.

Next, we're going to go a little outside our standard wheelhouse. While we could take Kinetic Pulse, which has the potential to push enemies back in a burst, I think we could use some ranged damage options.

Incinerate (naturally a pyrokinesis ability) lets us deal fire damage in 3 cube area within 10 squares (3 cube being a 3x3 square on the map, and only one of the constituent squares need be within our range,) doing 2, 4, or 6 fire damage to enemies (note that this avoids friendly fire, which is a thing in Draw Steel most of the time). Furthermore, the area of fire remains until the start of our next turn, dealing 2 damage to any creature that enters it the first time on a round or starts their turn there. Thus, this actually pairs well with Minor Telekinesis, as we could try to catch as many monsters as we can within it and then use our maneuver to slide another nearby creature into the flames. If we're Strained, the cube is 2 sizes bigger (a 5 cube) but only lasts until the end of our turn (still, we can do that Minor Telekinesis trick).

Now, we pick our Heroic Abilities. We get one 3-Clarity ability and one 5-Clarity ability at level 1.

For the first, we'll pick Choke:

This lets us, within a range of 10, deal 3, 5, or 8 damage in addition to our Reason (so 2 right now) to the target, and uses a Potency - depending our our tier result, it's a Might of less than 0, 1, or 2. On tier 1 and 2 results, they'e slowed (their speed reduced to 2) until they save out of it on the end of their turn (essentially a coin flip). If it's a tier 3, they're instead restrained (save ends,) (this reduces their movement to 0 and a few other things). It also, regardless of outcome, lets us vertical pull the target up to 2 squares, and if we restrain them, this ignores stability - which is great because Stability is our bane (though of course it'll only work on a tier 3 against a creature without a lot of might).

Four our 5-Clarity ability, while Inertia Soak is very on-brand, I'm really tempted to be a bit more of a team-player and take Flashback.

Flashback is a maneuver that we can use on ourselves or an ally within 10 squares. The target can use an ability with a base Heroic Resource cost of 7 or lower that they've previously used this round without spending any resources (though if the ability can be augmented by spending more, they can do so, paying as usual). If we're strained, we take 1d6 damage and are slowed (save ends).

    Naturally, we could use this on ourselves, though I don't think it's likely to be worth it to spend 5 Clarity to do another Choke. Where this will be far more impactful is when one of our fellow players does some huge, nasty ability and we get them to do it again (and once we get 7-cost abilities, we'll be able to do this at a discount). Thanks to the fact that we can choose the order in which we go, we might thus wait to let other players go before us in order to use this.

And that's it for level 1. It's a lot of things to figure out, though what I find fascinating about this game is that, as complex as building your character can be, ultimately in combat we've only got something like five or six options to choose from. The ability to go Strained as a talent does let us light things up much faster in the first combat. Thanks to our Hakaan Forceful feature, all our our many forced-movement abilities are going to be that much more potent, both for positioning and damaging with that movement.

Admittedly, at higher levels, it remains to be seen how powerful those single-digit points of damage from forced movement are going to be, but I also think that the scaling up of damage and stamina is not as pronounced in this as it is in a game like D&D. We're, of course, going to be getting more powerful abilities as well, but at least in those early levels, Horde-style enemies (the kind that tend to show up two to a party member in an encounter) have around 10-20 Stamina (also depending on what kind of monster they are).

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.

Malice: Draw Steel's Villainous Resource

 One of Draw Steel's major selling points is the way that the intensity and stakes of combat go up the further the heroes push into danger. While its obvious antecedent, D&D, is built on the gradual draining of resources, meaning that the most exciting round of combat is typically the first, Draw Steel naturally forces characters to hold back their most powerful abilities until combat has been going for a while, as they'll need to build up their resources to pay for their most expensive moves. The way that Victories grant the characters a head start on their resource generation then lets the later battles of an adventure is thus meant to make the confrontation with the adventure's main villain feel bigger and more explosive than the battles that preceded it.

However, this principle is not limited to players. The Director (Draw Steel's name for the Game Master) gets their own resource: Malice.

Malice is earned by the Director, and is shared by all the monsters they control, so thank god you don't have to keep track of different amounts of Malice for each of your individual bad guys.

Many, if not most, of the monsters in the Monsters book have a few abilities that can spend Malice. Like for PCs, these might be main actions, maneuvers, triggered actions, you name it.

But beyond that, entire categories of monster will have a shared set of Malice abilities, each of which can be used at the start of a monster's turn.

Now, I'm someone who loves using undead monsters - I love a good army of skeletons, zombies, and the like (probably goes back to my love for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion of World of Warcraft, along with my general love for Halloween, which dates back to early childhood).

The entire category of Undead monsters has universal Malice features. These are broken up by Echelon, which is Draw Steel's term for Tiers of Play (because, if there's one truly distinctive aspect of this game, it's the resolute refusal to use the conventional terms for freaking anything).

Thus, Undead creatures of the 1st Echelon (levels 1, 2, and 3) have four Malice abilities they can trigger at the start of their turn. 

Ravenous Horde (2 Malice) summons two rotting zombies (which are minions, essentially 8 of them are a worthy match for one hero) next to each hero who isn't already adjacent to an undead monster.

Paranormal Fling (3 Malice) shoots up to three unattended objects on the map at nearby heroes, which invokes rules about objects hitting people (rules I must confess I haven't yet read).

The Grasping, the Hungry (5 Malice) has undead arms burst out of nearby surfaces, forcing an Agility test to anyone ending their turn adjacent to the arms that will damage and can restrain them.

Dread March (7+ Malice) gives up to four undead monsters in the encounter the ability to move up to their speed and make a free strike, and you can spend extra Malice to move more monsters, none of whom die even if they take damage until they finish this move and attack.

Now, you look at that 7+ Malice, and you might think that's going to be a lot. After all, a PC can generate at most (well, except the Troubadour) like 5 of their resource in a round. The good news (for Directors) is that Malice flows much faster than Heroic Resources.

At the start of combat, just as PCs gain a number of their heroic resources equal to their Victories, you gain Malice equal to the average number of Victories per hero (they might have separate numbers if someone died, or a player missed the previous session, or something like that). Then, at the start of each combat round, you gain Malice equal to the number of living heroes in the combat (if a hero dies, you start generating less) and then additional Malice for the number of the round.

For example, let's say the party of 5 heroes has two Victories. You start off with two Malice, and then immediately get another 5 for the heroes, and then one for the combat round, for a total of 8 Malice to use right off the bat.

All this being said, because this resource is shared between all of your monsters, you'll need a lot of it. I'd say you probably want to spend it fairly liberally as well. Even if the fight you have doesn't have any monsters that have Malice abilities, you can spend it on Basic Malice features, like the undead ones listed above (and as a reminder, those are just the 1st Echelon ones - if you're fighting Vampires or other 3rd Echelon undead, you get new Malice options).

As an example, let's say our party of 5 heroes with its two Victories is fighting 16 Shades, 4 Skeletons, and 4 Soulwights (yes, that's a lot of monsters, but it's considered balanced as a Standard encounter. Skeletons and Soulwights are "Horde" enemies, and thus there can be two per player of the same level in a standard encounter. Shades are Minions, and thus come eight to a Hero. And with two Victories under their belt, we can throw one extra "Hero's Worth" of monsters at them.)

Of these monsters, Skeletons have a 2-Malice ability called Bone Spur, and Soulwights have a 3 Malice ability called Stolen Vitality. Thus, on round 1, with 8 Malice to spend, we could do any combination of these abilities, either spread out with the monsters' specific abilities or using a big and expensive one like Dread March or The Grasping, The Hungry with just a little left over for individual monster abilities.

The next round, of course, we're going to get 7 more Malice (none from the party's victories, but it's now round 2 so we're generating a little more each round).

There is, thus, a little pressure beyond all the damage one will take each round to finish the fight as quickly as possible - the Director gains Malice at a faster rate the longer the battle goes on.

In terms of tracking Malice, the amount that a Director generates should be apparent to the players, though in theory you could be secretive about how much you spend. That being said, I think it might be fun to track it publicly: let the players know how much you have to work with, and perhaps get them a little nervous if you see you have a whole lot that's stockpiled.

Borrowing something from a game I've seen using another system, when Matt Mercer ran the Daggerheart mini-series Age of Umbra, he had a sort of abacus-like set of beads along a metal bar, which might be a fun way to visualize how much Malice you've got stored up.

Draw Steel: How Classes Work and What They Are

 Draw Steel (currently) has nine classes in the core "Heroes" rulebook.

Like in most RPGs, your class will determine a whole lot about how your character works and what kind of cool things they can do.

Each class has three subclasses, which you'll choose upon character creation at level 1, with each subclass providing certain features as you level up.

Each class also has its unique Heroic Resource. These all scale at similar rates, but in different ways. Every class gains a number of their resource equal to their Victories at the start of combat, and typically gets either 1d3 or 2 of it at the start of each turn, and then some class-specific way to generate more in the midst of combat.

Every class is deeply customizable: almost all of your combat abilities are ones that you'll choose as you build your character. Every class starts with two Signature abilities (which don't cost any resources) that they choose from a list of six or so. Then, they'll also pick Heroic abilities, which they can spend their Heroic Resource on. At level 1, you get abilities that cost 3 of your resource and one that costs 5, and as you get to higher levels, you'll get abilities that cost 7, 9, and then 11.

Classes also get various other features, either granted by the subclass you chose or just available to every character of that class.

So, what are the classes? Notably, each class is a variation on a common fantasy class, but sometimes with a distinctive twist.

Censor:

The Censor is Draw Steel's equivalent of the Paladin, a righteous divine warrior on a mission. Censors draw upon Wrath as their resource. All Censors have the ability to pick a target for Judgment, and can generate more Wrath when their judged target attacks them, or when they attack their judged target.

Conduit:

The Conduit is the Draw Steel take on a Priest or Cleric, channeling the power of the gods to smite foes and aid allies. Their resource is Piety, and they can pray to their god at the start of their turn to potentially get some extra Piety, at some risk. Clerics also have a special approach to subclasses, combining two Domains that their god represents to sort of build their own subclass.

Elementalist:

The Elementalist is your classic Wizard/Mage/Sorcerer class, channeling the power of the elements to blast foes and understand the underlying nature of the cosmos. Essence is your heroic resource, and you can get extra Essence simply when you or a nearby creature takes damage that isn't untyped (which I believe includes "physical damage") or holy, once a round. Notably, the "Green" elemental subclass includes some Druid-like features, including the ability to transform into various animal forms.

Fury:

The Fury is your Barbarian/Berserker class, attacking with brutal attacks and acting like a wrecking ball on the battlefield. Your resource is Ferocity, and you gain extra Ferocity when you take damage, as well as when you first become Winded (at 50% stamina) or Dying (at 0 or less Stamina). Like the Elementalist, one subclass here, the Stormwight, gives you some vaguely Druid-like options, allowing you to transform into beastly forms.

Null:

The Null is, kinda, the Monk/Martial Artist class, but with a particular emphasis on using psionics to shut down supernatural foes nearby. Nulls have an aura called a Null Field that can affect nearby creatures that reduces foes Potencies (their abilities' power to impose conditions) and can have other effects. Their resource is Discipline, and they can get more once a round when a foe in their Null Field takes its main action, and also when the Director uses a Malice ability (Malice being the kind of "Villainous Resource."

Shadow:

The Shadow is your Rogue/Assassin/Thief class, with lots of ways to move around the battlefield and evade enemies. Shadows' resource is Insight, and they can gain extra Insight when they use a Surge on an ability that deals damage (Surges are damage bonuses you can stock up in combat, and Shadows have a fair number of abilities that grant them). Additionally, your abilities can cost less Insight if you have an Edge or Double Edge on them (such as by being hidden from your target).

Tactician:

The Tactician is, kinda, the Warrior/Fighter class, but with a strong emphasis on leadership and empowering your allies. Tacticians can Mark a foe, giving allies an Edge of Power Rolls to attack them, along with other benefits. Your resource is Focus, and you can gain additional Focus when allies attack your Marked target, or when an ally nearby uses a Heroic ability.

Talent:

The Talent (which does have a 5E version) is your Psionic class, using mental abilities to damage foes and manipulate the battlefield. Your resource is Clarity, and you can gain extra when a creature is force-moved. The real hook, though, is that you can spend your Clarity into the negative, which gives you a special condition called Strained, and you take damage based on how far into the negative your Clarity is on each turn. Many of your abilities will have additional effects if you're Strained, usually with some sort of mixed benefit/cost.

Troubadour:

The Troubadour is Draw Steel's Bard Class, using wit, banter, and performance to thwart foes and aid allies. Your resource is Drama, and can generate additional Drama when certain events take place, such as a creature you can see rolling a critical hit. Drama continues to generate even if you're dead, and if you reach 30 Drama before the encounter ends, you can come back to life (notably, a hero dying, including yourself, grants 10 Drama).

Critical Role Announces Campaign 4, With Some Big Changes

 After ten years of Critical Role and three epic campaigns taking place in the expansive world of Exandria, we've been left for the past few months wondering what comes next for the massive actual play franchise.

Well, at the recent live show, we got our answer: Campaign Four is coming on October 2nd of 2025. While I won't go into specific spoilers, Critical Role's third campaign felt very much like a culmination of what had come before, with the adventurers of the first and second campaigns joining in the epic fight against the big bad. The very nature of Exandria is changed by the end of it, and while there's tons of potential for future stories in that post-campaign-3 world, it also felt like a good opportunity to close out the story of Exandria, at least for now.

Ten years is a long time for a creative, performance project, and so I was among many who speculated that we might see a real shake-up for Critical Role's fourth campaign. The announcement has confirmed that speculation:

Campaign four will be set in a new world. On top of that, it's also going to have a new game master, though anyone who pays any attention to the world of Actual Play will already know his name: yes, it's Brennan Lee Mulligan, the primary DM of Dimension 20, and basically tied as "most beloved actual play DM" with Critical Role's Matt Mercer. Mulligan has already done several projects with Critical Role, including DMing the Calamity triad of mini-campaigns, EXUs Calamity, Downfall, and Divergence, the middle of which actually formed a crucial interlude within Campaign 3.

We also know that the players are going to be a mix of returning faces and new players. The only confirmed player, though, is Matt Mercer himself. Mercer has appeared as a player with Mulligan as the DM in both Divergence and Dimension 20's Escape from the Blood Keep.

Now, we have some unanswered questions:

Who else is playing? I would assume some of the main Critical Role cast will be joining along with Mercer, but as of now, we don't know who. The Venn diagram of players who often play with Mulligan and who have appeared on Critical Role is fairly broad (of Dimension 20's core "Intrepid Heroes" cast, three have appeared in various Critical Role shows).

Next, what system are they using? Critical Role's publishing arm, Darrington Press, just released their Daggerheart system, and then swept up longtime D&D designer legends Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, so I would not be shocked to see them using their own in-house system rather than D&D. That said, I also could imagine they'd keep up good relations with the folks at WotC by continuing to use D&D, and perhaps avoid alienating audiences who are more familiar with that system.

Anyway, I kept up with Critical Role's second and third campaigns from their very start, and so I'm very eager to see what comes next for them.

Draw Steel and the Delian Tomb

 Draw Steel is officially out!

Between the 2024 revamp to 5E, Daggerheart, and now this, there's a lot of new fantasy TTRPG rules for me to internalize. Having now played D&D for almost ten years, there's a certain inertia that a popular RPG system creates - you spend so much time learning the system that people (even me!) are resistant to figuring out and trying out a new one. Even D&D 5.5, which is a fairly modest update to the existing system that is compatible with older content, is something I've had trouble coaxing some of my friends to try.

Both Daggerheart and Draw Steel are quite different from 5E - neither even uses a d20 as its central die!

And so, while I've seen several D&D Starter Sets come around and never been particularly curious to try them simply because I already know how to play and run 5E (though some have good adventures, like Lost Mines of Phandelver,) I'm really struck by how the folks at MCDM have built their starting adventure.

The Delian Tomb is a simple dungeon. Goblins led by the villainous Queen Bargnot have broken into it in an effort to recover a magical artifact that they believe will turn them into super-soldiers, and have kidnapped the local blacksmith's daughter to use her as a sacrifice in a ritual meant to open one of the magical barriers in the tomb. This draws the attention of the heroes, who go to rescue the young woman and put a stop to this plot.

What's remarkable is how the adventure is structured to tutorialize the game's systems.

Each Pregen character (which are given classes, subclasses, ancestries, etc., but are not given names so that players can pick their own vibe and personalities) has a character sheet that is broken up into phases.

The first combat, against a group of a single kind of goblin outside the tomb's entrance, gives the players only the very most basic abilities: just their Signature Abilities, which don't require any resources to use. Here, the combat simply shows the players the fundamentals of combat: the Power Roll, the way that movement and maneuvers can work, and the basic passive elements of each class (while they don't spend resources, they do generate it because some classes, like Nulls and Furies, get passive bonuses as their resources get higher.)

Once into the tomb, they get a bigger fight, and more of their character sheet unlocks: Heroic Abilities now become available (these being the ones that spend resources,) but also, the Director now gets some greater complexity as well: they now have two groups of minions, which are built so that you can use a huge number of them. Also, they now start generating Malice, the Director's "Villainous Resource," which monsters can spend on more powerful abilities. Also, the idea of Potency is introduced (the mechanic where your abilities might impose a condition on creatures whose characteristic the potency targets is lower than the potency).

There's then a non-combat moment that reinforces the idea of checks, with a trap to disarm.

Then, combat three unlocks 5-resource heroic abilities (which at level 1 are essentially your "ultimates") while also introducing a fight where there's a kind of "alternate win condition," involving a large sigil on the floor that can be destroyed to immediately de-animate the undead monsters attacking the party.

The final combat of part 1 is more of a summation, adding very little other than the potential to surprise the foes.

The adventure continues, but these four encounters are expected to be your first session (depending on how quickly your players grasp the ideas and the pace at which they like to play).

Notably, the adventure also gives a lot of guidance for the Director, suggesting tactics the monsters might use (like which abilities to spend Malice on, and how Vorgosh, the bugbear who serves as the adventure's first mini-boss, might use her abilities to drag foes onto the harmful barrier over the stairs down into the tomb).

This kind of gradual build-up of a character's abilities feels like a good, tried-and-true method of tutorializing a game's mechanics - it's something we see all the time in video games (thinking back to Expedition 33, you don't get Gradient Attacks until you get Monoco, which is a pretty serious chunk into the game).

If there's one thing that makes TTRPGs daunting, it's that there tend to be a ton of mechanics to internalize. In a video game, most of them would be automated, but here you need to be aware of every last detail.

I'd initially wanted to try out Draw Steel with my own original adventure, but honestly? This feels like a really solid choice for how to familiarize your players with the game while also getting a sense of how to run it. There's a pre-gen character for every class in the Heroes book (sadly, the Summoner didn't make the cut, but will probably come out in some later supplement,) so players who are excited about one concept or the other should have an opportunity to try it out.