Draw Steel General Thread [+]

[Zetesofos]

For those curious, you can can check out a online wiki of the rules for those who want to check out before buying here:

Steel Compendium: Draw Steel Rules

(Its still a work in progress as I understand, but the hero's book appears to be available on there for those interested)

 

[gnarlygninja]

Forge Steel

andyaiken.github.io

I don't know how up to date this is, but it was a very valuable tool for during the playtest era

 

[Staffan]

So, for those who have played the game: how does it scale with player count, particularly downward? D&D is kind of infamous for scaling poorly at lower counts because of niche protection and not having enough people to cover the niches, but how does Draw Steel work with 2-3 players plus Director? Are there any particular classes to avoid – my intuition tells me that the troubadour and maybe the conduit works best with more players (support classes generally do get better with more things to support), but is that intuition correct?

 

[Aldarc]

I like the class archetypes of Draw Steel and how it makes steps away from just recreating D&D ones mostly verbatim.

It still has the Censor (Paladin) and Conduit (Cleric), which IMHO arguably could have just been combined. But I appreciate that it does away with the OMNI-Wizard of D&D in favor of more specialized spellcasting classes: e.g., Elementalist, Talent, and Summoner (future supplement). Also much like with Daggerheart, I love the idea of rogues in a world of magic supplementing their arts by using shadow magic.

 

[overgeeked]

Not sure when the 3PP license dropped, but it looks great.

Draw Steel Creator License — MCDM Productions

www.mcdmproductions.com

 

[gnarlygninja]

So, for those who have played the game: how does it scale with player count, particularly downward? D&D is kind of infamous for scaling poorly at lower counts because of niche protection and not having enough people to cover the niches, but how does Draw Steel work with 2-3 players plus Director? Are there any particular classes to avoid – my intuition tells me that the troubadour and maybe the conduit works best with more players (support classes generally do get better with more things to support), but is that intuition correct?

I didn't ever scale down, or even build my own encounters, so I can't speak for that part but the Conduit is always useful. Respites are not as easy to come by as long rests, so sources of temporary stamina are hugely beneficial so the 5-15 temp that Faith Is Our Armor gives was a big help to my second playtest group's survivability.

Retainers are also an easy way to make up for fewer players.

 

[Zetesofos]

So, for those who have played the game: how does it scale with player count, particularly downward? D&D is kind of infamous for scaling poorly at lower counts because of niche protection and not having enough people to cover the niches, but how does Draw Steel work with 2-3 players plus Director? Are there any particular classes to avoid – my intuition tells me that the troubadour and maybe the conduit works best with more players (support classes generally do get better with more things to support), but is that intuition correct?

Most playtesters have found that 4-5 is the sweet spot. 3 players can work - though it could end up a little swingy (so Directors may want to go easy on the players for a bit to be safe).

6 or more players I think is doable, but importantly - Draw Steel isn't any FASTER at combat, it aims to make combat more fun. There is an upper limit to that, so if you have 6, 7, or 8 players - it is going to take awhile, and could be a lot of overhead.

BUT - the EV system for building encounters is very robust, so it should be easier to build encounters for directors for any party size with a lot more accuracy than the 'art of wielding the challenge rating'.

 

[overgeeked]

Does anyone have any insights on negotiations, montages, or downtime projects? They seem to be slight variations on clocks, timers, and countdowns. Are they well done? Is there anything new or novel in these subsystems to look out for?

 

[Staffan]

Does anyone have any insights on negotiations, montages, or downtime projects? They seem to be slight variations on clocks, timers, and countdowns. Are they well done? Is there anything new or novel in these subsystems to look out for?

One thing I in theory like about negotiations is that they've formalized motivations/pitfalls into 12 rough categories: benevolence, discovery, freedom, greed, higher authority, justice, legacy, peace, power, protection, revelry, and vengeance. These can be expressed in different ways – among the examples is a knight with Freedom as a pitfall, because he sees the world as a web of duties, and also a local ruler who also has Freedom as a pitfall because everyone needs to obey the law and pay their taxes. Mechanically they still work the same: if you try to use freedom as an argument during a negotiation, that round automatically fails and they lose 1 point of both Interest and Patience. This makes it easier to adjudicate whether an argument is particularly suitable, neutral, or bad. And of course you can take actions during or before a negotiation to try to discern a target's motivations and pitfalls.

 

[Staffan]

One thing I in theory like about negotiations is that they've formalized motivations/pitfalls into 12 rough categories: benevolence, discovery, freedom, greed, higher authority, justice, legacy, peace, power, protection, revelry, and vengeance. These can be expressed in different ways – among the examples is a knight with Freedom as a pitfall, because he sees the world as a web of duties, and also a local ruler who also has Freedom as a pitfall because everyone needs to obey the law and pay their taxes. Mechanically they still work the same: if you try to use freedom as an argument during a negotiation, that round automatically fails and they lose 1 point of both Interest and Patience. This makes it easier to adjudicate whether an argument is particularly suitable, neutral, or bad. And of course you can take actions during or before a negotiation to try to discern a target's motivations and pitfalls.

Here's an example from the demo adventure Road to Brockhurst:

Spoiler

Interest 1 means that Gogellwyc starts out fairly unlikely to help. If they can get him to 2, he will point out an alternate route, and at 3 or higher he'll allow them through his territory (at a cost at 3). Patience 5 means the PCs have a fair amount of opportunities to argue their case – this is almost certainly an artifact of this being a demo adventure, as a neutral character would normally start at Interest 2 and Patience 3. Impression 3 puts Gogellwyc on the same level as a "cult leader, locally known mage, noble lord" – if a PC can match that, they will get an edge on persuasion rolls (none of the pregens do).