Hey, so you want to play in a game of Draw Steel but you have no idea how to get started making a character? No worries I’ll help you figure it out! And just to let you in on a little secret… this is my first time making a character too so we’ll do this together. 

There are ten parts to making a character in Draw Steel: Think, Ancestry, Culture, Career, Class, Kit, Free Strikes, Complication, Determine Additional Details, and Make Connections. We’re going to go through them one by one, except for Additional Details and Make Connections, specifically because those last two aren’t mechanical based. They are your determining of backstory, appearance, personality, and party relationships.

Before We Begin

I know I just told you there are ten parts to making a character, and that’s true, but I wanted to start this off first by talking about characteristics and characteristic scores. Draw Steel has five characteristics: Might (MGT), which represents strength and brawn. Agility (AGL) represents coordination and nimbleness. Reason (REA), which represents a logical mind and education. Intuition (INU) represents instinct and experience. Finally, Presence (PRS) represents force of personality.

Characteristic scores range from -5 to +5. The higher the score, the better you are at the particular characteristic. If you had a -5 in Might, you would be EXTREMELY weak, whereas if you had a +5 in Presence, you would have a force of personality that few could resist. 

1. Think

Before you start figuring out any of the hard crunchy mechanical parts to your character, you need to figure out who that character is by answering the following questions:

• Do you fight with weapons, magic, psionics, or some combination of these abilities?
• 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? 

2. Ancestry

Ancestry is pretty straightforward. It’s what your character is racially, pretty much. All Draw Steel Ancestries are humanoids, even if some of them sound like they should be something else, like the devil. There are thirteen ancestries to choose from: devil, dragon knight, dwarf, hakaan, high elf, human, memonek, orc, polder, revenant, time raider, or wode elf. Each ancestry will give you unique abilities that fulfill the fantasy of the ancestry. 

If you're looking to play a character who can blend into their surroundings or merge with the shadows, a Wode Elf or Polder is perfect!

3. Culture

A hero’s culture describes the beliefs, customs, values, and way of life held by the community in which they were raised. While culture can be tied to a place, in Draw Steel it refers to the people. You could have grown up in the City of Capital, but perhaps those you were raised around practiced a culture not typically found in the city.

Depending on how your Director wants to handle culture, you might be choosing from pre-made cultures created by the Director or creating your own. Regardless of which you do, there are four core aspects to culture: language, environment, organization, and upbringing. 

Your culture's language will determine how your people communicate with each other.  There are over 30 languages to choose from, so make sure to check in with your Director in case there are any they aren’t allowing. You’ll also automatically learn Caelian.

Your culture’s environment aspect describes where the people of that culture spend most of their time. Each environment (nomadic, rural, secluded, urban, and wilderness) allows you to pick a skill from specific skill groups. There are five skill groups (crafting, exploration, interpersonal, intrigue, and lore), which encompass 54 different skills. 

Your culture’s organization aspect determines the functioning and leadership of your community. There are three types of organizations: anarchic, bureaucratic, and communal. Choosing one of these organizations grants you another skill from a specific skill group.

Your culture’s upbringing is a more specific and personal part of your hero’s story and describes how you were individually raised. There are six upbringings: academic, creative, illegal, labor, martial, and noble. Each upbringing grants you one skill, but some of them grant you a specific set of skills to choose from or allow you to choose any from a specific skill group. 

4. Career

Your career describes what you did before you became a hero. There are eight careers: artisan, criminal, gladiator, laborer, mage’s apprentice, performer, sage, and soldier. Each career has questions for you to answer to help flesh out how its unique to your character. They also will each give you two or three additional skills and a common title. Some of the careers give you an additional language, project points that you can put towards research and crafting projects, and can increase your Renown score. As you complete heroic deeds, you garner fame and infamy, which then increases your Renown score, allowing you to influence others. 

5. Class

Your class is going to have the BIGGEST impact on how your hero interacts with the rules. There are five classes: conduit, elementalist, fury, shadow, and tactician.

• The Conduit is a holy warrior able to channel the power of the gods.
• The Elementalist allows you to manipulate the seven primal elements of the timescape: air, earth, fire, green, rot, void, and water.
• The Fury unleashes their rage in battle to empower their strikes.
• The Shadow is a master of subtly utilizing alchemy, illusion, or shadow magics to eliminate foes.
• Finally, the Tactician is a master strategist, defender and leader. They can heal their allies, improve their damage, move, and attacks. 

Each of the classes will give you starting characteristics (which include the two main abilities from Might, Agility, Reason, Intuition, and Presence, and arrays to use for the rest of your scores), starting stamina, recoveries, and additional skills. They also give a signature ability, which you can use at any time, a heroic ability that costs some type of resource. They grant other features besides those listed, but they are each unique to the class. 

6. Kit

Kits help you fulfill the archetype you are planning for your hero. From the knight in shining armor to the hermit mage, a kit can allow you to tailor your class. There are two types of kits, martial (15)  and caster (9), and while any class can take any kit, some kits are better suited for specific classes. Martial kits are collections of weapons, armor, and combat training (abilities), while Caster kits include equipment but are primarily different methods of using magic. 

Each kit will give you various bonuses. Some of these will apply to Stamina, speed, stability, and various abilities, whether its martial or caster based. They also give signature abilities. 

7. Free Strikes

Free Strikes are SUPER simple. So, each hero can make a free strike under specific circumstances, which is essentially an extra attack that doesn’t use your action! You can, of course, use your action for a free strike, but for the most part, you’ll have abilities that use your action that are better. 

A melee weapon free strike is either an unarmed strike (so a punch or kick) or an improvised weapon (a chair, the hilt/handle of your weapon). Ranged weapon free strikes are made with improvised weapons (throwing some sort of object, etc). They each do a set amount of damage based on what you roll.

8. Complication

While Complications are optional (unless your Director states otherwise) it’s still important to take a look at them because they can give boons and banes to your character. Complications can help enrich your character’s background. There are 10 different complications: Cult Victim, Devil Deal, Elemental Absorption, Fire and Chaos, Primordial Sickness, Punishment Curse, Shipwrecked, Vivid Dreams, Ward, and War of the Guilds. 

And that’s it! With this walk-through through you are ready to find a game of Draw Steel over on Start Playing Games. 

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V.J. Harris (they/he/something funny) is a professional TTRPG designer and full-time game master. Play with V.J. here.