Character Creation | How to Draw Steel #3

This video was originally published on YouTube. For links and references, please see that platform as this page only contains the transcript.

Intro

Hello, everyone!

In the previous videos of this series we’ve talked about what Draw Steel is, the Power Roll, tests, combat abilities, and potencies. Now it’s finally time to create our first character!

We’re gonna go through the 10 steps outlined in chapter two of the Heroes Book and, to illustrate the whole process, we’re gonna make a guy-with-a-sword together. Let’s see just how cool this character concept can get in Draw Steel…

Step 1: Think

Yes, the first step is literally called ’think’. The book prompts us with a few questions, and, if you’re already familiar with the system, you can already start getting some ideas.

For the purposes of this video, let’s keep it pretty broad: guy-with-a-sword and this artwork by MCDM’s own Grace Cheung. These are going to be our north star.

Step 2: Ancestry

Step two is choosing our ancestry. Draw Steel gives us some pretty incredible options, from classics like Dwarf and High Elf, to the more innovative like Memonek and Time Raider. Our guy is just a human, but he’s already pretty interesting!

Every ancestry in Draw Steel gets one or more signature traits and ours is called Detect the Supernatural. With it, we can pinpoint nearby supernatural objects and creatures even if we can’t see them.

Ancestries also get some purchaseable traits, so not every human is going to be the same as ours. To save time, let’s just go with the default options: Perseverance and Staying Power.

The former gives us an edge in tests made with Endurance, and causes the slowed condition to reduce our speed to 3 squares per turn instead of the usual 2. Staying Power just gives us two additional Recoveries.

What is a Recovery, you ask? Great question.

A hero’s capacity to keep fighting is measured by their Stamina, and, to recover Stamina, you have a special resource called Recoveries. When spent, a Recovery allows you to heal Stamina equal to one-third of your max.

Your number of Recoveries is determined by your class, so our guy-with-a-sword can heal more times than the average member of that class.

Step 3: Culture

On step three we get to choose our culture, which actually bundles four choices: language, environment, organization, and upbringing. These choices are going to summarize the “community that raised you.”

Language is easy: to start, you know Caelian (Draw Steel’s common) and one additional language. The default for humans is Vaslorian.

For the other three choices, we can stick to one of the suggested build. Since our guy looks like a knight, maybe, we’ll choose the knightly order archetypal culture.

For environment we get secluded, which gives us the Read Person skill by default. For organization we get bureaucratic, with the Persuade skill. And for upbringing we get Martial, with the Intimidate skill.

Step 4: Career

Next up is our hero’s career. This describes what they did before becoming a monster-slaying adventurer, and it provides us with more skills, a perk, and possibly languages, renown, or wealth.

We have loads of options here, from Agent to Watch Officer. Since our dude comes from a knightly order, how about we give him the soldier career?

This one asks us a few relevant questions like ‘what rank did they achieve?’, and gives us the following benefits: two skills (Alertness, and Endurance by default), two languages, an additional renown, and a perk (Teamwork by default).

Before you raise your hand, renown starts at zero for most heroes and it helps in negotiations. Perks are options that might help outside of combat; the Teamwork perk, for instance, gives you a benefit on montages. Both negotiations and montages will be the subject of another video.

The last thing we get from our career is an inciting incident! This is what happened to make your hero leave their career behind to become an adventurer. For our friend, I’m picking sole survivor:

“You were the last surviving member of your unit after an arduous battle or monstrous assault, surviving only through luck. You turned away from the life of a soldier then, seeking to become a hero who could stand against such threats.”

Step 5: Class

Now it’s time for the main course: our class! Draw Steel comes with nine classes, which resemble the classes from other heroic fantasy games, but with their own unique spins.

Matt Colville just did an hour-long class guide in his channel, so I’ll just summarize our options…

Censor is your typical holy warrior, specialized in one-on-one combat. Conduit is a priest that can both heal and destroy. Elementalist is a caster that can control the Timescape’s seven elements.

Fury is a rage machine tied to the Primordial Chaos. Null is an unarmed psionic fighter capable of suppressing magic. Shadow is an assassin that strikes with deadly speed.

Tactician is weapon master that excels in strategy. Talent is a psion that can manifest spells with their mind. And troubadour is a storyteller that can inspire allies and demoralize opponents.

I think it’s pretty clear that our guy-with-a-sword should be a tactician, so let’s see what we get at level 1!

For characteristics we start with a Might of 2 and a Reason of 2. For the other three, we pick one of the default arrays; I’m going to set our Agility to 1, our Intuition to 1, and our Presence to -1 (just because he looks very bored).

Our potencies are based on Reason, our starting Stamina is 21, and we get 10 Recoveries… Plus two from our ancestry, remember? We can also pick three skills, which are Lead, Monsters, and Strategy by default.

Every class is going to look pretty similar up until this point, when we start making some more interesting choices…

The first of those is our subclass. Draw Steel heroes already start level 1 with a subclass, and it determines some pretty important things about their fighting style.

The standard tactician subclass is the Vanguard, a warrior that leads from the front. But before we see what we get from our subclass, let’s take a detour into our heroic resource.

One of the core elements of Draw Steel are heroic resources. Each class has their own resource that they gain during combat and can spend to fuel their most powerful abilities. It all goes away at the end of combat, so use it or loose it!

The tactician’s heroic resource is called focus. We gain two focus at the start of our turn, one focus per round when we or any ally damages a marked creature (more on that in a second), and one focus per round when any ally within 10 squares uses a heroic ability.

As a general rule, every hero also start combat with an amount of heroic resources equal to their victories, which is just the number of challenges they have overcome since their last respite.

If you connect the dots, this means that you start closer to your most powerful abilities the more you fight! You still have to rest because your Recoveries are not infinite, but this isn’t a game of attrition like D&D; heroes keep pushing.

Back to our guy-with-a-sword, it’s time to get our first doctrine feature: Commanding Presence, which gives us a bonus to negotiations.

Next is our doctrine triggered action: Parry, which lets us halve some damage aimed at us or a nearby ally. We can even spend focus to get an additional effect!

After Parry, the feature we get is called Field Arsenal. It basically lets us take two kits, but, since kits are the next step in the character building process, we’ll talk more about it then.

So, skipping Field Arsenal, we have Mark, possibly the most important tactician ability. In short, Mark draws our allies’ attention to a specific foe, granting an edge on Power Rolls made against them.

By the way, this foe is the “marked creature” mentioned on our focus entry! See how it all clicks together nicely?

Anyway, after Mark we get Strike Now, a cool action that lets an ally of ours attack instead of us; very useful to strategically take down a monster that is too far away.

Finally, the last two things that every class grants you hero are their heroic abilities: very powerful abilities that cost heroic resources! Usually you pick each one from a set of four, so it’s not too overwhelming.

The default 3-focus ability for us is Inspiring Strike, which deals damage to a monster and inspires an ally to spend a Recovery. Our default 5-focus ability, called Hammer and Anvil, allows us and an ally to strike simultaneously!

And that’s it for our class! Each class is different, but the choice process is pretty similar… You start with the basics, a subclass, and your heroic resource, then there are a few abilities for you to pick.

The only exception is your kit.

Step 6: Kit

In step number six we’ll choose our kit, that is, a bundle of equipment that defines the way we fight. This is the only step that doesn’t apply to every hero, because casters pick protective wards or prayers from inside their classes.

Kits grant a few static bonuses and one thematic ability. You also get some general information about the type of equipment you carry, like “light weapon” and “heavy armor.” The appearance of these is totally up to you.

Our guy-with-a-sword, for sure, is wearing the Shining Armor kit: heavy armor, a shield, and a medium weapon. Our kit ability is Protective Attack, which taunts the target for a short while.

Because we are tacticians, we also get a second kit. The flavor here is that we’re so good with weapons that we can benefit from two different fighting styles at the same time.

My guess is that our guy would have a ranged weapon as a backup. There are many options to choose from, like Rapid-Fire, Arcane Archer, or Sniper.

I’m going with Sniper because… It’s cool! Again, we get a bunch of bonuses and a kit ability: Patient Shot.

At this point, we would take all of our abilities that have the Weapon keyword and apply the appropriate bonuses, like damage and distance. Kits also give bonuses to our character, like stamina, speed, etc. Once everything is applied, we can move on.

Step 7: Free Strikes

Adding free strikes is a weird step, mostly because these are extra attacks that you get after you pick your class!

There is a melee free strike and a ranged free strike, and they are the same for every single character, except that kit bonuses apply here too.

These free strikes are super simple as they represent a quick attack that you can do when an opportunity opens up. Actually, this is what we’ll be using for opportunity attacks!

Step 8: Complication

Now for the incing on the cake: complication. This is an optional step that give you some interesting quest hooks that can come up during the campaign; additionally, you gain mechanical benefits and drawbacks that can completely change the look and feel of your character.

There are literally 100 options to choose from, but my favorite one is perfect given the art: Sibling’s Shield!

“You were tasked with delivering a ceremonial shield to your older sibling, a celebrated warrior, for their years of service. When you arrived at their homestead, you found them dead on their doorstep with their own sword lodged in their back. To find out who did this to them—and why—you decided to step into their shoes. It will take a while to match up to your sibling’s legacy, though.”

My mind is already fizzing with connections between our character’s career and complication. Maybe we were in the same knightly order! Maybe I was my sibling’s squire! Loads of options here.

The benefit of this complication is simple: I can’t be flanked while wearing my sibling’s shield. The drawback, on the other hand, is a little cooler: because of the haunting visions of my dead sibling, I can’t sleep well at night and run the risk of not gaining all of my recoveries back after a respite. Good thing we got a couple of extra ones from being a human!

Step 9: Details & Step 10: Make Connections

Now we’re basically done. Steps 9 and 10 are all about making your character more three-dimensional: backstory, personality, connections between the characters, all that stuff.

I won’t go through this process here because the video is already pretty long. Let’s just take a moment to admire how far we’ve come…

We set out to create a guy-with-a-sword, the most boring archetype in all of fantasy, and check out our character sheet! We’re loaded with cool abilities, we have a flavorful backstory, and we even got a cool plot point that the director can use to spice up our campaign.

And all of this came from just following the book! No extra work necessary.

Ok, now we know how abilities work and our character really wants to start using them, so next time we’ll about combat in Draw Steel. See you then!