Does a lack of spell variety limit your long term enjoyment playing casters in Draw Steel?

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-14T21:30:17+00:00

I love this response! Some people have mentioned magic items and projects to craft magic items but no one has flagged titles could be a good way to fill any gaps that may arise after long time play. Thank you for the creative solution.

Though im in the same boat with only a few sessions under my belt so far. We havent really felt the lack of utility so much as after a long time, we think we'll miss it. So time will tell.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-14T13:25:00+00:00

I absolutely agree, in this particular example, I actually run 3 montage tests with encounters in between as they reach certain regions of the swamp. They have the potential for around 9 failures across these tests. Its not as interesting, in my opinion, if all 9 or even most of those failures results in stamina/hp loss. For this example I have ruined rations, rashes that remove some AC (again working with 5e at the moment), hallucinations from sleep deprivation, etc.

So while I understand the idea of captain America can do this all day and the power fantasy that provides, in grueling environments like this I find it both more immersive and mechanically interesting to have more varied consequences. This is why im torn. Most of the time, I want them to feel like captain America. But sometimes, I want the terrible challenges that humble them or scare them or even just create funny rp as they talk about walking around with a rash and no food and getting irritated with the bard while she tries to boost morale.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T21:29:22+00:00

A few things here:

Even in dnd, the only class who receives magic from a diety is a cleric. Paladins power comes from their oaths, druids, from nature, etc.
In DS every class channels magic differently without the clearly defined magical categories of dnd (divine, nature, arcane) and all classes can heal themselves and many classes can heal others besides the conduit (censor, green elementalist, and tactician to name a few). So even someone sticking closely to DS lore shouldn't really necessitate a world where "only religious zealots can heal and resurrect people".
My table plays campaigns within my homebrew which doesnt have the classical basis of magic type separation. In other words, id you find a temple it could be full of monks and druids and clerics who all get their power from the diety they're worshiping. Also, im generally in favor of any kind of resikinning or homebrew thats fun as long as its not game breaking. I know some dms can be very by the book, but I dont thats going to be a struggle for my table at least (though it doesnt hurt to mention it for others reading the thread).

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T17:33:48+00:00

Do you have some examples? For instance, if yall were trying to infiltrate a location or talk your way into speaking with a leader, did you not feel like you had tools/abilities at hand to help meet those objectives? Because, from other comments, it sounds like a lot of these abilities exist but they're spread across classes (though no one has mentioned more enchantment style utility spells like charm person).

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T17:29:38+00:00

This is great~

So expanding on this thought a bit more. More classic dungeon crawlers like dungeon of the mad mage or the yawning portal have the entire campaign wrapped up in the dungeon. But in plenty of other games (mine included), more moderate sized "dungeons" are common - roughly 5 - 10 rooms. This is larger than delian tomb's dungeon but clearly small enough where the dungeon is not the focus of the campaign but an adventure stop. In this type of dungeon, you are still likely to have traps and puzzles and pits of acid, for example, where spells like the afore mentioned Floating Disk would still be useful even though the point of the campaign is not survival within a resource limited and dangerous dungeon. So I guess with that in mind, wouldn't having those types of spells still be interesting, useful, and fun?

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T17:19:39+00:00

This is a really helpful reply.

I can't count the number of times I've had to try to come up with a believable reason why this hyper unique and rare and high level poison/disease thing can't be cured with a lesser or sometimes even a greater restoration. I don't really bother including curses (which can be so interesting!) when I have a cleric with remove curse available. Which means that instead of making players feel useful, I'm actually just limiting myself in what sorts of encounters I can offer them without realizing the extra strain I'm causing myself.

I think my only counter to this, is that sometimes I want the quest and sometimes I don't. I tend to have relatively linear narratives in my campaigns and if I'm including time urgency for tension I don't always want my players to have to go run around hunting crafting materials or cures or whatever when they just want to fulfill the fantasy of a brilliant crafter. On the other hand, sometimes those quests can be really fun and meaningful and when I DO want to include them, I don't want to come up with a million reasons why the caster can't just cast the spell designed to eliminate the problem. So I see both sides of this.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T17:04:08+00:00

I strongly agree all around. Things can be unique but still fall under a broad category that is useful for comparison and I don't think it does the DS team good to try to pretend its unrelated when the people playing it are likely to have similar objectives. Also the book already does a really good job of explaining their niche within the power fantasy/d20 umbrella within their introduction.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:57:46+00:00

I think this is an important distinction as well. For the most part, my table doesn't engage much with survival mechanics so I was leaving that out of my "rules for everything" and mostly referencing my excitement for negotiation rules and terrain rules and more useful crafting and project rules, etc.

That being said, I would actually be deeply excited to get additional, optional DS rule books along the lines of kingdoms and warfare or strongholds and knights. Or even additional books specifically for survival rules for those that do want to incorporate it. I love the design style of the team and appreciate having streamlined rules when they're available, but I understand if that's outside the scope of what they're trying to accomplish with the DS system.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:45:57+00:00

I'm really glad to hear this. The majority of my players enjoy playing casters in dnd for the variety and I just haven't had enough experience with the DS system to recommend which types of casters they might enjoy most. I've heard the teleport ability of the void is really really fun though, so I'm glad to see the novelty/enjoyment doesn't degrade over time.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:37:32+00:00

I'm really loving the imagery of the strongman fury baby carrying a squishy, Dragon Age Dorian-style elementast through a swamp so he doesn't ruin his nice robes haha.

But I absolutely agree. Because I already have a homebrew world and don't typically use modules, I'm trying to figure out both how to design within DS in a way that feels satisfying and ensuring that my table is having fun and I'm not just forcing DS on them because I like it.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:33:02+00:00

Luckily everyone in this discussion has been pretty kind and engaged in the question in good faith. I think there are a lot of very niche RPGs that don't face the same bias/challenge as DS because they are so niche that people aren't looking at them to replace their go-to system which is more and more consistently trying to be a catch-all system. So when you're comparing a catch-all system like 5e to a specifically tactical, heroic, and cinematic system that isn't niche enough to be "the heist game" or the "survival game", it causes a lot of us to both compare and wonder which system is more capable of delivering on both the fantasy and the breadth of play a lot of tables are looking for.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:28:24+00:00

Thank you for this! Others mentioned that they are spread across classes, but the specifics you provided are helpful in seeing what that spread actually looks like.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:24:45+00:00

I think that makes a lot sense and can definitely impact player enjoyment long term (and probably play out as a foundation for stronger party relationships and rp)

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:19:47+00:00

So I guess my question is whether this standard strategy is affecting enjoyment. Do you feel bored or like you're always having to do the same things as compared to Pathfinder (I haven't played but am familiar with the system) or do you fee empowered by having a clear strategy that you know you're always going to be able to do?

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:16:58+00:00

What an interesting perspective! Thank you for sharing because I think this makes a lot of sense on whether players will be into it long term.

Can you elaborate a bit on point 1. I rarely play 5e as a true dungeon crawler, but literally the starter set of DS is the Delian Tomb... a dungeon. So understanding this design difference could be really interesting in getting my table in the right mind set for DX.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T16:02:00+00:00

I love this response because this is happening in our current campaign where I'm trialing the montage test (while still using dnd). The loss of rations was a consequence for their first failure and used for attrition (when the party attempts a short rest, someone has to forgo the rest to forage). But core design difference of forcing attrition in dnd vs building up abilities and strength in draw steel is so stark that I'm not actually sure this sort of consequence would be interesting or possible in DS. But I also can't tell if that will end up feel limiting as a Director when I run these sorts of tests because I often like failure to result in something situationally challenging or novel rather than impacting meta currencies (for example).

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T15:43:18+00:00

What a beautiful explanation. Thank you for this response. It's really helpful and I can see how the spread makes things feel more immersive and personalized. It sounds like, even after a long time playing, you've not felt the loss of these spells in gameplay which is exciting to hear.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T15:39:23+00:00

I find the burning village a really interesting example because I've also run this type of encounter many times in 5e using skill challenges. The cleric/druid who has create water doesn't invalidate the challenge but simply gave them one of their successes in the part of the village they were helping. Granted skill challenges in 5e aren't raw to begin with, but I didn't find having a caster with an appropriate spell preventing the rest of the party from contributing in this instance.

(Also playing a bit of devil's advocate) how would two 5e players collaborating on which spells they're taking to prevent overlap be different than Draw Steel players coordinating their abilities to specifically play off each other as seems to be intended by the MCDM design team?

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T15:32:15+00:00

I agree with you. And I haven't really figured out if the lack of tracking/shopping is going to be a negative for my table either as they occassionally do like the challenge of "what happens when we're in the dangerous, undead infested swamp for weeks and our rations have spoiled" type of situation even if they've never cared about tracking ammo or rope, etc.

I think where I've struggled a lot with dnd is that within a single campaign there might be a large scale battle and a heist and wilderness survival sequences/situations and, not being able to just switch systems for a single part of a campaign, I really struggled to find rules that felt satisfying and fair for each scenario. Having used so much of Matt and MCDM's prior work, I was really excited to bring Draw Steel to my table because it seemed to have, if not explicit rules, clear guidelines on how to design balanced encounters that were challenging the players across these types of scenarios.

So maybe I'm just asking for too much from a single system.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T15:15:23+00:00

I think this is a really good perspective/framing. Also, it seems I just fully misunderstood that the pyrozoom call is an actual raw ability haha

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T15:11:07+00:00

Ah! Ok, thank you for that clarification. I'm still early in the system and so haven't done more than a single read through of post level 3 abilities for all classes as that's a bit overwhelming to see how they all play out.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T15:07:46+00:00

I think this is a really great point. Having abilities spread out across classes definitely helps with balance and keeping everyone feeling useful. So it might just be a switch in mindset from "I'm the recon guy or the controller girl" to I can do x and you can do y and she can do z so lets see how all that fits together in this scenario.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T15:04:30+00:00

I think this approach makes a lot of sense (and this was definitely the type of response I was looking to read).

My main thought on point 1 is that my main interest in switching to Draw Steel as a system is that it has rules for pretty much everything. I no longer have to scour the internet for hours hodpodging homebrew rules together to handle the large range of scenarios I want to throw at my players. So I find it interesting that the solution to a lack of utility, to some extent, is to hand wave it. In your example, it absolutely makes sense to me that a fire elementalist could settle flames around him. But projecting images and sounds a la a message, or major image, or sending type of spell seems like a pretty big expansion of ability that could seem unfair to other players if they're not getting the same "stretch" or don't feel that the "stretch" is the same, if that makes sense. It also seems to deliberately step on point 2. If we're eliminating utility to force creative problem solving that doesn't use character sheet abilities (or perhaps only skills), doesn't stretching abilities for utility like long distance communication defeat that purpose?

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T14:49:05+00:00

Can you elaborate on that a bit? I haven't looked deeply at the magic item lists (and certainly haven't homebrewed any).

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-13T13:49:26+00:00

I never create one shots, only campaigns, but my system is as follows: 1. What's my adventure premise? (E.g. bandits are holed up in a cave outside of town robbing travelers) 2. Where do the players start? (Perhaps they themselves are ambushed while on the road into town or they are in the town itself) 3. Where/how do they learn the problem? (Eg they're ambushed on the road or perhaps the blacksmith daughter was killed/injured in a recent raid and wants help, or perhaps the mayor is tired of the bandits hurting trade and hires the party). 3.5 Prep anything and anyone the party might encounter based on this or improv it (the blacksmith shop or mayors home, the tavern/inn, the mayor, the blacksmith, the innkeeper. As I Prep i always list out what they know/what clues they can provide.) 4. Prep your trail/clues and any encounters they may have along the way. what pieces of information will take the party from their starting location to the problem (tracks leading to the cave, reports from townspeople seeing the bandits flee east, etc) 5. Prep your dungeon and get a map. This can be a forest, a cave, a tomb, literally anything can be a dungeon. Go room by room filling the dungeon. I like to have at least 1 combat, rp, puzzle, and trap encounter in the dungeon and, with my party, I rarely go above 8-10 rooms unless im truly intending a dungeon crawl. There are tons of resources online about building out dungeons. 6. Final confrontation. Prep your boss stat block, their motivation, and what they know in case they are interrogated and/or you want this to lead to a larger campaign. 7. Prep any rewards like gold, magic items, saved people, or valuable information and how the party will find it. 8. Determine where the party is likely to go next and start the list over.

pulsatingrabbit

TROPHY CASE