Draw Steel Character Creation
Draw your steel.
Tactical fantasy with a 2d10 Power Roll and three tiers of effect on every action. Pick an ancestry, a culture, a career, a class, and a kit — then go be a hero.
Quick reference
Step 1: Choose an Ancestry
Ancestry determines innate traits, signature abilities, and starting features. Draw Steel rosters human and non-human heritages with strong silhouettes.
Step 2: Choose a Culture
Culture is built in three parts. Combine one from each to describe your heritage and earn languages plus a culture-granted skill.
Step 3: Choose a Career
Your Career represents life before becoming a hero. It grants a skill and gives you a starting hook — connections, contacts, debts, or rivals.
Step 4: Choose a Class
Class defines your heroic abilities, your primary characteristic, your stamina tier, and the heroic resource that fuels your signature moves.
Psionic support / controller
Stamina: Medium
Divine healer / support
Stamina: Medium
Elemental damage / controller
Stamina: Low
Melee damage dealer
Stamina: High
Anti-magic controller
Stamina: Medium
Stealth striker
Stamina: Low-Medium
Martial leader / support
Stamina: High
Psionic striker
Stamina: Medium
Inspirational support / utility
Stamina: Medium
Step 5: Choose a Kit
Your Kit is your combat loadout — weapons, armor, fighting style. Each kit modifies Stamina, Speed, Stability, melee damage, ranged damage, and weapon distance.
Physical weapons and armor. Available to every class.
Supernatural focus. Boosts ability damage and range.
Blends martial and magical approaches.
Step 6: Set characteristics
Five characteristics, each ranging from -2 to +5. They're added to power rolls when you take actions or use abilities.
Physical power, endurance, and the ability to overpower others.
Speed, reflexes, hand-eye coordination, nimbleness.
Logic, memory, deduction, technical knowledge.
Awareness, instinct, empathy, connection to the supernatural.
Force of personality, leadership, charm, social influence.
Each class has a primary characteristic — Fury wants high Might, Shadow wants high Agility, Talent wants high Presence. Draw Steel rewards committing: don't leave your primary at +2 if you can take +4.
The Power Roll
Every action that's not a free move uses the same dice: 2d10 + characteristic (+ modifiers). Compare to tier thresholds — most abilities have three tiers of effect.
Minimum effect — you still do something, but it's the weakest version.
Solid result. The most common outcome.
Maximum effect. Critical hits land here.
Multiple edges don't stack — you get +2 maximum. Multiple banes give -2 max. Edges and banes cancel each other one-for-one when both apply. Natural 19 or 20 on the 2d10 (before modifiers) is a critical hit and counts as tier 3.
Derived stats
Each class has a unique resource it earns and spends during combat — Fury's Rage, Tactician's Focus, Shadow's Insight, Elementalist's Essence, Talent's Focus. Read your class's resource rules carefully; they're the engine of your signature moves.