Draw Steel complications and how a table picks them

Five players each roll d100 on the Draw Steel complications table, and the chance that two of them land on the same entry is close to 1 in 10. That small number is the first thing to know about complications: the table has 100 entries, from Advanced Studies at 1 to Wrongly Imprisoned at 100, and a party that rolls will, nine times in ten, end up with five different stories pulling five different ways. Whether that is a gift or a prep problem depends on the Director, and the rules say as much.

A complication as a hero feature

A complication is an optional feature a player can take to enrich a hero's backstory. Every one comes with a benefit and a drawback. The book frames it as the thing that makes a hero unusual beyond what ancestry and class already give: something that happened, something they carry, someone who wants them.

It sits at step 8 of the ten-step hero-making order in Draw Steel: Heroes, after ancestry, culture, career, class, kit and free strikes, and before the player settles details and makes connections with the other heroes. That placement matters. By step 8 the mechanics are mostly settled, so a complication lands on a hero who already has a shape, and step 10 then asks how that hero knows the others, with the complication already on the table.

The same chapter is clear that a hero does not need one. Complications are listed as optional, and a player checks with the Director whether the game uses them at all before choosing.

Benefit and drawback, weighed together

Some benefits and drawbacks are mechanical and others are narrative. The rules say outright that they do not all carry equal weight, but that each benefit is balanced against its own drawback. A complication with a strong upside comes with an equally heavy piece of backstory.

That is the right way to read the list. A complication is chosen as a pair, and comparing benefits across entries without their drawbacks gives a misleading picture of which ones are strong. Read a benefit that changes every fight next to its drawback before calling the entry strong.

Choosing or rolling

A player can pick any complication from the chapter or roll on the d100 table. Rolling suits a table that wants the backstory to arrive as a surprise; picking suits a player who already knows what the hero is running from.

The entries are alphabetical, so the table carries no weighting by theme or power. Grouped by name, the list covers some recognisable families:

• Curses. Six entries open with "Curse of": Caution, Immortality, Misfortune, Poverty, Punishment and Stone. Cursed Weapon sits just after them.
• People in the hero's life. Betrothed, Famous Relative, Forbidden Romance, Rival, Secret Twin and Sibling's Shield all put another character into the campaign.
• A past that follows. Amnesia, Disgraced, Exile, Outlaw, Stripped of Rank and Wrongly Imprisoned each start the hero owing something to the world.
• Something sharing the body. Elemental Inside, Host Body, Shared Spirit, Voice in Your Head and Wrathful Spirit give the hero a second presence.
• Bargains. Infernal Contract appears twice, once as written and once as Infernal Contract... But, Like, Bad.

The grouping is only a reading of the names. The point is that a table can roll and then look at which family it got, because each family puts a different load on the Director.

The Director's part

Because complications are optional, the player checks with the Director before taking one, and the Director decides how the complication plays out in the story. The drawback might become a large part of the campaign. It might also be something the hero can work to remove, or something that stays with them to the end. The rules treat both outcomes as good stories and ask the player to accept that control passing to the Director.

Details are left vague on purpose so a player can tie a complication to the rest of the backstory. With the Director's agreement, the narrative can change completely. The book's own example takes Infernal Contract and swaps the devil for an archfey or an undead general.

A party's worth of complications

The prep arithmetic is the reason to talk about complications at the table and not only between one player and the Director. For example, say a campaign runs 20 sessions and all five heroes take a complication. If the Director wants each drawback to matter in at least one session out of four, that is five threads, each needing five sessions of real attention across the campaign, on top of whatever the adventure itself asks.

Families help here. Two "people in the hero's life" complications can share a scene: a rival and a famous relative can turn up at the same event. Two "something sharing the body" complications can share an antagonist. Five complications from five different families share nothing, and the Director pays for each one separately.

A session zero is the natural place to settle this. Agree whether complications are in use, whether players pick or roll, and whether the table wants them to tie together. A party that rolls and gets one curse, one bargain and three relatives has a campaign spine already; a party that rolls five unrelated entries has five side plots to schedule.

Reflavouring without changing the rules

The rules allow the story around a complication to move while the benefit and drawback stay as written. That is the safe edit: a player who likes a mechanical pair but not its fiction can keep the pair and rewrite where it came from, with the Director's agreement.

Changing the benefit or drawback itself is a different decision, and one the Director owns, since the balance the book describes lives in the pairing. A softened drawback with an untouched benefit is a stronger hero, and the other four players at the table will notice.

On a table of five rolling d100, about one party in ten sees a repeat, and the other nine start the campaign with five separate complications for the Director to carry.