Draw Steel Patreon Packet 3 is now available!

Update: The surveys for this packet are now available.

Let's take it up a level ... or two!

The next Patreon packet for Draw Steel is attached to this post, so let's talk about what's new and what's changed.

New: Classes up to Level 3

The biggest news is that you've got the five classes you got last time (conduit, elementalist, fury, shadow, and tactician) plus the censor, null, talent, and troubadour. Together, this is all nine classes that will be in the core rules up to 3rd level! We're eager to see what you all think about leveling up and the new classes.

New: Perks

Perks are non-combat features, like Camouflage Hunter, which allows a hero to hide in the wilderness without cover or concealment, or Pardon My Friend, which lets you step in and make a Presence test to to cover for friend who just failed a Presence test of their own. Perks fall into six categories: crafting, exploration, interpersonal, intrigue, lore, and supernatural. The supernatural perks let you do fun magic or psionic tricks, like summon a familiar or send a telepathic message to a nearby creature.

New: Treasures and Titles

Now that we've got multiple levels of play, you Directors out there need a few rewards to throw to your players for hard-won heroics. This packet includes treasures (magic and psionic items) as well as titles, powerful features that give your heroes new capabilities in and out of combat. A hero doesn't just get to choose any old title they want. Titles have to be earned through adventuring, and each has its own special prerequisites. You can't get the Mage Hunter title without defeating some enemy mages, and you can't get the Ship Captain title without acquiring an airship.

New: Downtime Rules

For the first time, you'll get to see our downtime rules in all their glory! This includes rules for crafting the treasures we're going to reveal to you, plus original armor, implements, and weapons. Oh yeah, and airships! Plus there are rules for research projects and other downtime activities, like visiting your loved ones or going fishing!

New: Monsters

We have a whole new batch of baddies in this packet for you. We've got some solo critters, like the ankheg, bredbeddle, and chimera. We've also got dwarves, elves (both high and wode flavor), gnolls, kobolds, minotaurs, undead, and a bunch more. Also, check out the new rules for generating more Malice (formerly Villain Power).

Changed: Build-An-Ancestry

After the last playtest, we saw that folks far and away LOVED the devil ancestry's modular nature, and we decided to roll that out to all the ancestries. Every ancestry has one or more signature traits which every hero of the ancestry gets and then has purchasable traits which can be mixed and matched.

Changed: Names

We've renamed a lot of the class features and abilities to give each class a more unified theme. We've included the old names and their new counterparts in name change document.

Changed: Kits

If you've been following the updates here on Patreon, you know that we replaced caster kits with more class options for caster classes. All of the changes shown off in that update are in this packet.

Changed: Surges and Shields

In a previous post, Matt discussed one of the biggest changes we have in this packet: surges and shields. You'll see the changes Matt discussed in that update in this very packet!

Changed: Challenge

After the first playtest in December, most of you thought the game wasn't very challenging for the heroes. After the latest playtest, most of you reported the game was more challenging, but still not at the level where you expected it to be, particularly as heroes accumulated more and more victories.

Since the corest of rules are now in a place, we're now looking at balancing the abilities, particularly when it comes to the amount of damage each can deal. In previous versions of the game, the heroes were dealing too much damage and had a lot or Recoveries. So we toned down damage, particularly at tier 2 and 3 of abilities, and we also reduced the overall number of Recoveries many heroes have. Tamping down damage means that we don't have to sacrifice all the cool effects that heroes have while still keeping the game challenging. Heroes feel even more heroic if their deeds are earned!

Change: Locking It Down

One other big piece of feedback we've gotten from players who like building melee-focused heroes is that they had a hard time locking down their foes and protecting their counterparts. Similarly, Directors had a hard time protecting their squishy artillery, hexers, and controllers with brutes and defenders! So we made it a little harder to shift. Instead of being able to shift half your speed with a move action, you now can take the Disengage move action to shift 1 square (with some character options allowing to shift 2 squares). You also can't shift into difficult terrain.

More in the Changelog

There are a whole lot more tweaks and updates noted in the changelog of this version!

All the Rough Marks

Full disclosure, what you're getting hasn't been looked at by an editor yet. You're truly seeing the sausage in a pretty raw form at the moment. The layout is temporary, there will be typos, and there isn't a character sheet for this version. We've neem working up until the last minute just to get you all the rules. Now the polishing begins! We thought you'd want to see it in this rough state though. If you'd rather wait for the next packet, we totally get it!

Surveys Coming Next Week

We've got two separate surveys coming at you next week. One for the hero manuscript and one for the monsters document. Once those arrive, you'll have until Tuesday 11/12 at 8AM Eastern US time. This packet has a quick turn around time so that we can get you another one or two before the end of the year!

What About the License?

There is no updated license for this version of Draw Steel, because it is not publicly available. We plan on updating the license for Draw Steel when a new Backer packet is available, likely sometime in December of this year.

Come Talk About The Game

If you want to engage with other community members about Draw Steel, come and join us on Discord or on the new Draw Steel subreddit.

Being a patron means you get access to the patrons-only channel in the discord, that’s where all the talk will happen so be sure to link your Patreon account to your discord account!

Thanks, folks! I am really looking forward to seeing you think of this packet.

—James