Step-by-Step Hero Making

Use the following step-by-step guide to create a hero. These steps are presented in what we believe is the best way to approach making your first hero for Draw Steel. That said, the order of the steps is still a suggestion, not a hard and fast rule.

Many players like to build a hero from the backstory up, making ancestry and culture ideal first choices. However, some players like to start more in the present, choosing a career and a class—the choices with the most potential impact on what your character can do in the game—and then going back and figuring out where their hero came from. There's no wrong way to do it! (The sections below tell you where to look to learn about ancestries, classes, and other options.)

You'll want a character sheet to fill out while you make your hero.

Each option you can choose for your hero at 1st level includes a parenthetical selection labeled "Quick Build." This is for players who want to build a character faster without reading through all the available options, by choosing the most straightforward and archetypal option for a hero. Most quick build options don't select languages for you, because your Director knows better than us which languages will be most useful in your campaign. In addition to being called out in the text, quick build ability options within classes are indicated by a gold icon.

If this is your first time making a hero, don't stress! The first time you build a character for Draw Steel, it might take an hour or so. Don't rush the process. Set aside some time, enjoy digging into all the options, and if you can, make your character alongside friends who are playing in the same game. The process gets a lot faster after you've done it once.

Character Sheets

You can download and print out character sheets and other free resources for Draw Steel at https://mcdm.gg/DS-Resources.

1. Think

The first thing you should do is think about the kind of hero you want to make. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you fight with weapons, magic, psionics, or some combination of these capabilities?
• Outside of combat, what do you want your hero to do well?
• What did you do before becoming a hero?
• Why did you choose to become a hero?
• What is your personality like?
• What people, places, and objects are important to you?
• How will your hero complement the strengths and weaknesses of the other heroes in your party?

Ambition is Good!

Heroes aren't just along for the ride in the Director's story. They're active participants in that story, making decisions that change their communities, their worlds, or even the entirety of the timescape! It's good for your hero to have desires—to want to found an organization, seek justice for someone who was wronged, or craft a magic sword that will help you defeat your foes. It's only when that personal ambition becomes more important than the group's story that it creates a potential problem. But if you share your character's ambitions with your Director, they can weave those desires in with the narrative. Character creation is a great time to do this.

As the story evolves, your hero's ambitions could change. That's not a bad thing—dynamic characters are awesome! But if your hero ends up pursuing different goals over time, make sure you have a conversation with your Director about it, so they can plan accordingly.

2. Ancestry

Choose your hero's humanoid ancestry from among the range of ancestries available in the game—devil, dragon knight, dwarf, wode elf, high elf, hakaan, human, memonek, orc, polder, revenant, or time raider. Future supplements will introduce additional ancestries you can choose from. See Chapter 3: Ancestries for more information.

3. Culture

Choose or create your hero's culture. Although ancestry gives your hero any number of physiological benefits, your culture describes the community that raised you and gives you languages and skills. See Culture in Chapter 4: Background for more information.

Choosing Skills

This game has lots of skills (as detailed in Skills in Chapter 9: Tests), and lots of opportunities during character creation to gain them. We recommend recording a list of all the skills you might choose from the different steps of the character creation process, then making your choices at the end of that process rather than flipping back and forth through the book.

If you gain the same specific skill from two different sources (for instance, from a career and a class), you can pick a different skill from any skill group.

4. Career

Choose your hero's career, which describes what you did for a living before you became a hero. A career provides you with skills, an inciting incident that precipitated your adventuring career, and a perk that lets you customize your hero. It might also grant you languages, Renown, wealth, or the potential to undertake crafting and research. See Careers in Chapter 4: Background for more information.

I Speak Their Language

Choosing languages at the start of a campaign can be hard because you might not know which languages are going to be most prevalent or useful. You can choose to leave some of the languages you know open until you discover what might be a good choice for the campaign you're playing in. Once you decide to take a language, you can reveal your choice in a dramatic fashion, perhaps during a negotiation where knowing a specific language would help, or when you find a tome that no other hero in your party can read.

5. Class

Choose your hero's class. This choice has the biggest impact on how your hero interacts with the rules of the game, particularly the rules for combat. Your class provides your starting characteristic scores that determine your character's physical and mental acumen, as well as the Stamina and Recoveries that determine your physical hardiness. A class also provides your character with skills, several abilities—the unique features that define what your hero can do—and other features and benefits. You can be a censor, conduit, elementalist, fury, null, shadow, tactician, talent, or troubadour. See Chapter 5: Classes for more information on each class, as well as the different types of abilities—signature abilities, heroic abilities, and more—that heroes of a specific class have access to.

6. Kit

Your class might grant your hero a kit that helps define your approach to martial combat. The kit you choose provides you with equipment and a fighting style that grants a signature ability, as well as bonuses to one or more of your game statistics. See Chapter 6: Kits for more information.

7. Add Free Strikes

A free strike is a combat ability you can use when it's not your turn, representing the simplest and most basic weapon attack you can make. An enemy is foolish enough to walk away from you in melee? Free strike! Every hero has a melee weapon free strike and a ranged weapon free strike. They're all the same—until modified by your kit or class—and it's up to you to decide what exactly your free strikes are. A thrown dagger? A punch? The design is intended to let you use your imagination.

You can also make free strikes on your turn to represent using weapons your hero isn't otherwise themed to use. A wode elf master archer can stab a too-close enemy with a dagger as a free strike, and a greataxe-wielding orc fury can use a free strike to hurl a handaxe at a flying enemy staying annoyingly out of melee range.

See Free Strikes in Chapter 10: Combat for more information on using free strikes, and see Abilities in Chapter 5: Classes for information on the ability format and how to read it.

Melee Weapon Free Strike

Power Roll + Might or Agility:

• ≤11: 2 + M or A damage
• 12-16: 5 + M or A damage
• 17+: 7 + M or A damage

Ranged Weapon Free Strike

Power Roll + Might or Agility:

• ≤11: 2 + M or A damage
• 12-16: 4 + M or A damage
• 17+: 6 + M or A damage

8. Complication

Complications represent those dramatic moments in a character's backstory that give them pathos, a dramatic reason to be an outsider, doubts about the meaning of life, an urge to avoid intimacy, or an unstoppable vendetta against an enemy from the past. Each complica tion grants a benefit and a drawback that make a character more three dimensional, but complications aren't necessary for making a great hero. Check with your Director as to whether your game is using them, and see Chapter 8: Complications for more information.

9. Determine Details

Once you've created your hero, it's time to determine the additional details of their backstory, appearance, and personality. How do the events of their culture, career and inciting incident, and class tie together into a cohesive narrative? What's their name? What do they look like? Do they have any cool scars? Any sweet tattoos? Do they still sleep with their teddy bear? These kinds of details can help define a well-rounded hero.

10. Make Connections

Ask the Director if all the heroes start the campaign knowing each other. If they do, talk to the other players and build some connections between your characters. If you like, you can use the following prompts to make those connections, or to come up with prompts of your own:

• When you were fighting a monster, one of the party members saved your life. What were you battling and who saved you?
• In your group, who looks after everyone's health and well-being, and makes sure that all the characters get along? If it's not you, how do you view this other hero?
• Who is the grumpiest member of your party? If it isn't you, how do you react to that hero's sour nature? If it is you, how do you react to other characters teasing you or trying to cheer you up?
• What's one thing your fellow heroes know about you that other people do not?
• What's your favorite way to bond with your fellow heroes?
• You've known one of the other heroes in your party longer than the rest. Who is it, and how did you meet?
• Another hero creates food, music, clothing, trinkets, or something else that you enjoy. Who is that hero, and what do they make?
• Another hero is teaching you a new skill. Who is it, and what are they teaching you?

Answer these questions with the other players present, and be sure to get a player's approval if your answer makes use of their character.