Draw Steel General Thread [+]

[Zetesofos]

Hm. Is anyone leaving the current edition of D&D for Draw Steel? If so, why?

I am. The main reason I feel is how much effort I had to do to build encounters for higher level characters, and how board players were whenever we DID eventually have combat. D&D has lots of character customization, and feels good to 'build' characters - but I've been playing 5e for years (and other editions before that), and so have my players - and they still feel it takes too long.

We go many sessions without combat - lots of good interpersonal moments and social encounters. But, when combat shows up - there's more a fear of dread than anything.

In Draw Steel - we still have lots of social downtime, but people are EXCITED for combat, and pay a lot more attention. Its a win-win in my book.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Hm. Is anyone leaving the current edition of D&D for Draw Steel? If so, why?

Not 5e but I’ll be running Draw Steel for the group I play Pathfinder 2e with in a few weeks. We played 5e for a few years then PF2e and I’m getting burned out on traditional d20 stuff so they were cool with me running the Delian Tomb for them.

 

[wizard71]

I am playing my first adventure for Draw Steel. My party is an elf Fury (me), elementalist, rogue and conduit. I really like kits and I feel it creates immersion and encourages imagination. I am not worried about which weapon does more damage or has a different effect. It’s a refreshing change from D&D.

 

[dbm]

After seeing Matt’s video on all the classes I moved off the fence enough to buy a bundle of books and PDFs from their web store.


I’m about a third of the way through the Heroes book and so far everything is epic. The character powers are pretty amazing from the get-go. A 1st level Draw Steel character can do much, much more than a 1st level D&D character.

 

[zakael19]

Was reflecting on the design of this as I was driving in, having digested a fair bit of player and monster abilities from the DT Quick Start yesterday along with reading through the short form rulebook, and I think this might be one of the best links of mechanics and fiction in a combat-focused/tactical TTRPG Ive seen.

• Stamina as the resource as stressed in the design gives a different and cinematic fictional frame to things and largely avoids the ‘ole “meat points” argument. It’s that sort of very movie-like back and forth with people beating on each other and getting winded which shows up on screen until that final struggle ends the fight.
• As noted, Winded is really easy to give color to: “as your blows rain in, the orc reels back and you can see his defense is faltering as his lungs heave with exhaustion.”
• Degree of success play directly into this. Since you’re always attacking the adversary’s defenses with sword and spell, you’re always chipping away at their ability to keep fighting. A weak hit means they were able to shrug away the worst of your Action, but you’re still wearing them down. Being directly assaulted by a heroic fantasy protagonist isn’t going to just have no effect. A strong hit (T3) means that you get past their defenses to a degree and get a big outcome (send them flying, get through their mental defenses and leave them dazed or prone or whatever). Of course some enemy profiles have amazing abilities that tie back – sure you can charge this massive solo, but they might quite literally do that movie thing where their massive hand grabs your face and slams you into the dirt.
• All of this also means you can kinda just let the players narrate the fiction in a nice flow – they can describe what their character does, and how the tier outcome manifests (I think especially on a weak hit, why they weren’t more effective). Despite the clear keyword style presentation, when I was looking at abilities for both players and monsters, once I saw the Name -> trigger / action -> effects, a picture was forming in my mind of how exactly that might look at the table. And on a killing / disabling blow, you’ve got that nice simple transition into “I get fully past the defenses and end it” action cam moment as desired.

Related: I was genuinely delighted reading the Troubadour to see how they build Drama. Something dramatic happens within the rules of the game, the sort of stuff that makes the players at the table react? They get bonus Drama. Hecking brill.

 

[dbm]

I’m reading the combat section now and it’s clear they are going for dynamic battles. Two whole pages covering what happens when you push, pull, or slide an enemy. Including the possibility of uppercutting them off the ground meaning they take falling damage. This is off the charts.

And they have rules for what happens when Wile-E-Coyote goes of a cliff…

 

[zakael19]

I’m reading the combat section now and it’s clear they are going for dynamic battles. Two whole pages covering what happens when you push, pull, or slide an enemy. Including the possibility of uppercutting them off the ground meaning they take falling damage. This is off the charts.

And they have rules for what happens when Wile-E-Coyote goes of a cliff…

I mean a lot of this is streamlined 4e, but it’s all trimmed down to be more evocative and, dare I say, cinematic. Like I love the mental image of a Talent getting a good mental grasp on somebody and yeeting them into somebody else and knocking them both around. That’s amazing.

 

[dbm]

I can see the conceptual lineage, drawing from 4e D&D. We played it for several years, and I don’t remember it being quite as cinematic as Draw Steel clearly is. I’m starting in my second read through now I have a better understanding of what all the character stats mean.

 

[Staffan]

I can see the conceptual lineage, drawing from 4e D&D. We played it for several years, and I don’t remember it being quite as cinematic as Draw Steel clearly is. I’m starting in my second read through now I have a better understanding of what all the character stats mean.

It seems like 4e turned up to 11, but being sort-of built from scratch and thus not beholden to D&Disms. It still has quite a few of them (like fiend-based gnolls, goblinoids coming in goblin-, hobgoblin- and bugbear-size, and things like that), but where 4e did break with some traditions it still held on to many of its roots. This feels more like a Jeet Kune Do approach ("Absorb what is useful; disregard that which is useless").

 

[SteveC]

One of the things I really like about Draw Steel was something Matt discussed in the recent video about the different classes. All of the classes have magical abilities. He said they were thinking about a weapon master character, but rolled it into the Tactician because they didn't see what a "fighter" would do at high levels. If you're wondering why some of the classes are a little less generic, that's why.

And I love this because there are games that have the "BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner" problem. Games where one character attacks a lot and hits really hard, and the other one blasts a hole in reality and hurls enemies to the Dark Dimension just don't work for me.

Now that means Draw Steel classes are more complex than in some games, so that may be a drawback.