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Building the Beastheart
🕑 Added 2025-05-02 18:00:07 +0000 UTCHi! I’m Paul Hughes, the lead writer behind MCDM’s new playtest beastheart class. Besides working on Draw Steel, Flee Mortals, and other projects, I’ve written a couple of bestiaries including EN Publishing’s Monstrous Menagerie and Monstrous Menagerie II, the upcoming Adventure Time RPG monsters, and Roll for Combat’s 5e Battlezoo Bestiaries. Besides my major in monster studies, recently I’ve picked up a minor in monstrous companions; besides working on MCDM’s beastheart, I’m the lead writer on EN Publishing’s upcoming Pets and Sidekicks book. I guess I just have a soft spot for good bois, chill guys, and all creatures 11/10.
The beastheart is a bit different from most Draw Steel classes is that its direct inspiration, MCDM’s 5e beastheart class, is already built somewhat like a Draw Steel class, with a heroic resource (Ferocity) and a Signature Ability-like stable of “primal exploits”: special moves whose names you can imagine shouting in combat (“Aid Us, Friend!” “Bring them down!”). It’s a cool class, and it shines in any 5e game!
Our first question was this: how close were we going to stick to the 5e class? Will a class that shines in a 5e game still shine in Draw Steel, or will it lose some of its luster when compared to the epic heroics of other Draw Steel characters?
There was really no question: we’re building Draw Steel here. We were going to have to up the ante. For testing, we wanted to untether the beastheart from its old design and see how much more “beasthearty” we could make it. Often that would take us to new design space—but we wanted to make sure the core of the class, the central fantasy, remained the same.
Heart of the Beastheart
The central fantasy of the beastheart is NOT that you have a beast pet. You’re not a beastmaster, like the one from the old 80s movie who could command legions of hawks and ferrets and whatnot; you’re not anybody’s master. You have a beast companion. You travel with an untamed wild animal. That comes with risks: sure, your companion may be bound to you by a mystical bond of friendship and loyalty, but in the frenzy and confusion of battle they’re always a moment away from going into a rampage, incapable of distinguishing friend from foe.
Rampage
Your companion is not a domesticated animal. While your companion’s ferocity sharpens its killer instinct, it can also cause your companion to become difficult to control.
After gaining ferocity at the start of your turn, if your companion’s ferocity is equal to at least 7 + your level, your companion runs the risk of entering a rampage. Make an Intuition reactive test, which you can choose to fail. You automatically fail if you’re unable to take actions. You have a bane on this test if your companion’s ferocity is at least 10 + your level. If you succeed on the test, you act normally on your turn. If you fail, your companion enters a rampage.
While in a rampage, on your turn your companion must use their move action to move straight toward the nearest creature apart from you, avoiding damaging terrain, and use your action to make a melee free strike against that creature. Your companion’s melee free strikes deal extra damage equal to your companion’s ferocity plus your level. If your companion is equally distant from multiple creatures, roll a d6. On a result of 1-3 the Director chooses your target (excluding you), and on a result of 4-6 you choose your target. If your companion can’t sense any potential targets, they don’t move or take actions.
While in a rampage, your companion no longer gains ferocity. At the end of your turn, your companion’s rampage ends and your companion loses half of their ferocity.
I think the key, unique attribute of this class is that, when you play a beastheart, you’re playing two characters, not one character with an NPC retainer. (If you want a retainer, MCDM has mechanics for that, and if you want to summon minions, MCDM will soon have a class for that!) The rampage mechanic helps remind us that the companion is an independent character. A person and a wild animal see the world differently. Sometimes the beastheart has some strategic goal in mind, and the companion has a conflicting goal, which is to bite people.
As obvious as this all may seem, I didn’t come to this realization right away. In my first design, I tried making ferocity a heroic resource of the beastheart, not of the companion. When ferocity got too high, instead of the beast rampaging, the beastheart and the companion both rampaged (through the beastheart’s mystical connection with their companion, the beastheart’s mind was swamped by the companion’s wild instincts). This worked pretty well, but it didn’t really draw a strong distinction between the two characters: they were both in pocket, then they both flipped out simultaneously. With the beastheart entering a rampage along with their companion, it felt a bit more like having a fury with a pet than like having an alliance with an untamable beast.
Having tested that, we returned to the original design, which embodies a kind of tension between your characters: the companion earns ferocity (and earning too much can be risky) and the beastheart spends ferocity by using heroic abilities (and you don’t want to overspend if you want to pull off your biggest moves). Mechanically, the characters are pulling in different directions in a way we can play around with.
It Takes Two
With one player playing two characters, we have to decide: exactly how much are they separate characters? While they share their heroic resource, what about their other resources? Do they have their own stamina, recoveries, action economy?
The stamina question is a big one. If the beastheart and the beast have their own stamina, what happens when one’s pool is depleted? When one of the pair is dead, or maybe so low on stamina that they’re hanging back, will you spend long portions of the game playing only one half of the partnership? We want to avoid that. Not only are you not getting the full beastheart experience, it might just not work at all. Playing one side of a beastheart is kind of like driving a car with half its bits missing. If the beast is gone, you lose your motor; if the beastheart is gone, you lose your brakes and steering.
To get around this problem, we considered giving the beastheart and their companion a shared Stamina pool. That avoids the situation where one of them is the last one standing. It has a big drawback though: the same sword swing that fells your beastheart also kills your beast halfway across the battlefield. Fiction-wise that doesn’t feel good.
After a few tests, we ended up at a place I’m pretty happy with: the beast and the beastheart have their own Stamina, but they share their Recoveries (and they get a few more Recoveries than most characters do, since they’re two juicy targets for enemies to whale on). Whenever either the beastheart or the beast would be able to spend a Recovery, their player decides which of them benefits from it. That way, a player can juggle their characters’ Stamina to keep both members of the partnership alive.
That said, adventure is dangerous, and you’re not guaranteed the good ending. When things go south and a beastheart is killed, I kind of like the idea of their companion going out in a rampage-fueled blaze of glory.
So much for the not-enough-characters problem. What about the too-many-characters problem? With two characters, is the beastheart player going to outshine the others? Will they clutter the map? Will they get to do twice as much stuff, and will it take twice as long? A combat turn in Draw Steel usually gives you 1+ power rolls; will the beastheart get 2+?
We decided to share a character’s action economy between the beast and the beastheart. They both act on the same turn. Both get their own moves, but the hero has only one action and one maneuver; if the beastheart takes an action, the beast takes the maneuver, and vice versa. And to double down on the “attacking alongside your companion” fantasy of the class, we’ve added special beastheart maneuvers that let you (or your companion) make attacks, so you and your furry friend can leap forward and tear out throats together in beautiful synchronicity! The key thing is that these new maneuvers are quick to resolve, with no power roll and static damage numbers. Even though the beastheart player has twice as many tactical decisions to make about positioning—and, depending on positioning, twice as many attack vectors—we’re keeping the beastheart’s turn to about the same length as another character’s turn.
That’s the theory anyway, but it remains just a theory until it has survived testing. And testing the beastheart has been a blast. (It’s always fun when your job involves playing Draw Steel with the MCDM crew.) In one game, we stress-tested map clutter by running a beastheart with a size 2 bear, and, in another, we tested game pace by loading up the party with two beasthearts: a defense-focused beastheart with a wolf, and a hit-and-run beastheart with a panther. In a co-op game like Draw Steel, it’s not enough to ensure that the beastheart is fun for its player; you’ve got to make sure that their fun is not subtracting from anyone else’s fun.
Choose Your Companion
At the end of the last section I touched on some of the different companions we’ve been testing (a bear, a wolf, and a panther), so now is a good time to talk about the variety of critters you can team up with while playing a beastheart.
When you’re building a class with a companion beast, whether it be in a pen and paper RPG or a MMO, there are a few tried-and-true approaches:
You have generalized beast statistics, and then you can apply whatever skin you want on top of it. With a few minor changes to movement modes and such, your beast can be a wolf, a unicorn, a flying monkey—whatever you want it to be! The disadvantage: All your possible companions feel tactically similar.
You have a companion template that you can apply to existing monsters from the bestiary. If you could meet a critter in the wild, you could potentially have it as a companion. The disadvantage: Monsters are designed as combatants foremost: some features may work great as part of an enemy’s toolkit for a single battle, but not not work well for an ally over dozens or hundreds of encounters.
You build a small set of maybe 3 to 5 bespoke companions, each with their own specific quirks and abilities: a bear can squeeze you to death or swat you around, while a panther slinks around and pounces on you from hiding. Since you have a limited list of creatures, you can polish each one’s gameplay, with each offering a different tactical experience. Disadvantage: The only real disadvantage of this approach is that you only have a few options to choose from.
As usual, MCDM (company motto: Have Cake And Eat It Too) has chosen Secret Option D. In this case, we took several option Cs and crashed them together. Right now, our approach is to give the beastheart two separate choices to make.
Wild Nature: The beastheart has three or four possible subclasses, called Wild Natures, which express the way that the beastheart and their beast work together. For instance, the Guardian beastheart gains a maneuver and triggered action that helps the beastheart defend their allies, while the Prowler beastheart and their companion have an easier time staying out of sight and striking from ambush. Each wild nature encourages a beastheart to do fundamentally different things on their turn.
Companion: On top of the choice of wild nature, the beastheart has a choice of companion: this is where you choose whether you travel with a wolf, panther, etc. Each companion species starts out with its own maneuvers, triggered actions, or other unique abilities that set them apart from each other, and they can gain more as the beastheart levels up. You can combine that with your wild nature to come up with a unique tactical style. For instance, a panther is naturally sneaky and can synergize well as a companion for a Prowler beastheart, but there are interesting tactical possibilities to be found in running a Guardian beastheart whose panther can go off on their own to leap down on the enemy commander and then tank the consequences.
How many companions we’ll end up with is an open question. We’re still at the beginning of the process of building out the class. For the first test builds, I tried out four companions (the bear, wolf, panther, and hawk); as we get those sorted away, I’m hard at work on other companions. I have no idea exactly how many we’ll end up with, but we’ll see how far we get! Right now we have some more fanciful and less cuddly companions on deck: a basilisk and a gelatinous cube. After that, I’d love to keep going and make a bunch more: you can never have too many friends, even if some of those friends occasionally go on a rampage and try to kill everyone in sight!
This seems like a good time to turn things over to you. What are the must-have beast companions that you think we absolutely need to include?
—Paul
Comments
Sir Darles Chickens
I'd love to see one of those 4-armed apes, a stunningly stupid giant-kin like an ettin or troll or something, and upper and lower plane-touched creature like a hellwasp or a coatl, something that can burrow, and something insectoid for the new dragonfly ancestry(like an ankheg or remorhaz). I'd also like to see some synergy with the Handle Animals perk where you can do that same thing with monsters. I REALLY want to be confronted with an encounter, say "I'll handle this", and go out there and make the most crazy savage thing into a buddy. I want to do the Riddick and the fire dogs thing so bad.
Jimmy Hill
Any idea when we'll see the playtest version?
Felipe Miyake
FROG
Bryce Anderson
One of my players really enjoyed the earth elemental and he would literally die (not) if it wasn't one of the companions
haggis42
I think it'd be cool for some mechanic in which the Beasheart and their companion share the same space. Either as one riding the other, or in case of the gelatinous cube one inside the other... Like would they be somewhat stronger with their powers combined in one space? Would damage be split evenly or can the player divide how they want? Would there be RP (dis)advantages from such. (like how mounted people tend to command some awe, simply due to their higher elevation. And/or a companion which visually seems to be under control causes less panic than if it were out and about on its own)
Talroc
I’d love to see an MCDM equivalent of a Bulette for a dwarf beastheart!
Tom Flynn
Gotta be a Spider with a ranged Web attack.
Dillon
I see wyvern in here a bunch, but I’d love to see the ikran from James Cameron’s avatar
The Wizard Gravy
I think you absolutely need a dragon, or at least be able to make one from the hawk
Zoopshab
I absolutely adore this art. There's a lot of typical art from MCDM that really isn't my flavor... I don't know what the name of the style is but like... back in original WoW when each class got their first raid armor. That turned up to 11. That kind of style that's not exactly anime... but where the clothes & weapons are so elaborate they're completely divorced from functionality. Too "high-fantasy", too "busy" and too much "stuff" going on with the detail. Like a sugar-cake made entirely of sugar and icing with a second layer of differently flavored fantasy-icing. But this. This is nice! It's gritty. It's simple. There themes are obvious. Zero jewelry with 20 pointless embellishments just to fill up space. They could have even done without the owl-watermark in the background. Like the original Volkswagon Beetle magazine ad that boldly made use of empty-space.
Wilzard
My must have companions: -dragon and/or wyvern -giant spider -giant frog
minyoo
As a WoW Beastmaster Hunter player for two decades, I felt so familiar reading this article because your design options and strategies remind me so much of how BM Hunter changed over the years. Down to your current design of giving your companions X and Y splats! :) I am so very excited that you are really dedicated to this Hero. I trust you to the fullest on the design front. One thing that I request now is to give us a lot of crazy, epic, exotic options for our companions! Dinosaurs, Fairy Dragons, Dinosaur-Dragons, Giant insectoids, Tralalero Tralala, bring them all on!
David Penguin
A hound of Annwn! (or rather, the MCDM equivalent!) Some variety of supernatural equine (skeletal horse, Nightmare, unicorn, pegasus, etc -- a normal horse can be tamed, but can an otherworldly spirit shaped like a horse? And even then, horses are dangerous and feisty sometimes!). I understand though that this is probably not a beastheart companion, and I'd be curious at where the line gets drawn between mount and companion (unless that line is literally how tame it is, but then could a beastheart not bond with a wild horse? Horse Girl Beastheart when?). Lovely write up! Very excite to hear more and see how it develops!
Andrew Curl
I would love to see an elemental companion as an option.
Valentino Konjik
🐍 Draconic creature which grows in size Mounts like a 🐎 🐒 🕷️ 🐼
D.R.
I think a wyvern could also work as a good (more brainless) surrogate for a dragon that's big enough to ride on. Because I know at least 2 of my players would *instantly* fall in love with a class that lets you ride a dragon (or something similar).
Overse
I personally would love something giant bird like, love the fantasy of the beast emerging from the cliff and opening wide wings behind the beastheart before diving and cracking the skull of the first frontliner closing in! 🔥
YL
I really like the rhino and elk suggestions, but for my own two cents I gotta go giant armadillo. I gave one to my players as a pet in one of my campaigns, and it was really fun not only to mount him, but to be inside when it balls up and starts rolling around while „Wrecking Ball“ is playing.
Sunbear Games
I know my players will ask for a baby dragon companion, and I can't say I would disagree. It might work really well with the Wild Nature+Companion system, since a dragon could just as easily be a frontlining bruiser as a nimble and precise predator.
Anton Nilsson
A rhino would ne cool, and maybe crocodile/alligator.
Connor Hopkins
I have a document sitting around with an early draft of Pointy Hats Aasimar/Guardian Angel ancestry homebrew for DS. The whole "bound to another" aspect just feels like A DS racial feature or complication (like Doomsight). Its other racial features are a little lackluster IMO so I have had to improvise.
Damian Spurling
A triceratops (or DS version of this like the direhorn from WoW) is my vote, but echo the need for raptors, griffons, elks, giant scorpions, giant centipedes, and/or guidelines on how to make our own companions pretty please.
Callum Grier
Will it be possible to mount your companion or have some companions designed to be mounted? I’m in between for whether that goes against the “untamed” nature of the companion or if it’s worth it because it’s cool. Like playing a Hawklord defector.
Youngy
My table loves shouting this every time they get into Warfare.
Melissa Harden
Alas a new way to play dark elf Drizzdt with his Panther and the only correct way to play cave man Spear and his T-Rex from Primal
Daniel Dias
I would love a Velociraptor/Deinonychus companion!
GoldenGram93
It'd be awesome to have some sort of giant insectoid companion. I'm imagining something ankheg adjacent
GubDM
The FROG OF WAR
Jason Mayo
The bloodborne ooze companion from Flee Mortals is great. I hope to one day run a Crawling Claw beastheart as well :)
Terrestrial_Biped
Something like a horse or elk. It's big and strong with high mobility in open spaces, but possible to tie down. It can do a charge for big damage or knockdown, but then it's more tanky than offensive until it is freed up again.
AngelPlayer
I would love a drake or something akin to Appa from the Last Airbender. My wife would ask for equines (Pegasus, unicorns, or hippocampus)
Ormus Erebus
We must have a giant snake! Then maybe some insect.
Ailyn
Dragon and Worg/Wolf are also classics!
Ailyn
I think the Giant Spider is a must have, it balances the line between being a fantasy classic and showing the weirdness of the options with the Beastheart. Also great Utility to be had in a climbing mount.
Bryan Korth
Played a 5e campaign with a beastheart mimic, would be interested to see the Draw Steel counterpart at some point
Shaun McMillan
I'm playing a Beastheart in a 5e Witchlight game with a Lightbender companion. Would love to see them make a return as Draw Steel companions!
Miranda Hawthorne
I'm currently playing a beast heart with a wyvern companion and it is a blast
Caleb Fasnacht
I've been looking forward to reading about Draw Steel's Beastheart for so long 😭. I think it's a must for the Beastheart to have flying mounts. Imagine an ex Hawklord Beastheart? 😘👌
Michael LaRowe
My inner child wants an armored tiger a la "Ronin Warriors" or whatever it's actually called in Japanese. Don't @ me.
Stefan Ursem
I need an owlbear companion!!
Michael Kingery
I kinda like the idea of your beast heart going down and their animal companion stands over them and fights off their attackers until they can be rezzed
Bryce Anderson
I imagine that the Hell Hound could be a reskinned wolf, but man the fantasy of having dog from Hell is always 👌
Gogo M
I know theres a wolf but I will be skinning it as a worg. My beastheart from 5e will ride again! Then again, if you feel so inclined to add your own worgs, that would be awesome!
Apian Sapient
Lion turtle
LilFlame2001
I'm not sure how much this may overlap with a bear swatting people around, but I'll echo the ask for an elk or some other antered/horned animal to ram in to people. Would love something like that.
Caleb Plehn
I'd love to have players with Wyverns / Drakes, Giant Spiders and Snakes, and some cuddly-but-not-real-animals monsters. Also, the rock elemental from the 5e beastheart was dope.
DJ Valint
The Griffon mount stat block in the monsters book is so cool. It would be awesome to be able to play a Griffon rider Beastheart!
G
Thrazz!
Igor Souza
Really hope we can get an dragon/wyrm companion, the dragon master fantasy is so cool
Melissa Harden
Super reminds me of the Ranger Linch from Pointy Hat and makes me think about what other classes has a Linch one to one from that series already and those like the Talent that might need an original Linch method. I would kill for Pointy Hat to get to make material for Draw Steel.
The Yaki
I'm looking forward to putting a beastheart out of action and immediately have to deal with a disgruntled Mr Bear.
Joseph Meehan
My Eberron game needs some form of Raptor type dinosaur — the 5e iteration of the class has been great with that
Douglas Grion Filho
I would love an elk, monitor lizard, and tiger companions!
Wilzard
We haven't gotten the core books yet, and already there is a serious problem with DS: there are too many badass classes and I want to play them all on top of directing
Joe Mayo
I’d love an alien psychic monsterling for a Beastheart Time Raider!
Marc Schelske
Sounds like a blast.
G
I simply cannot wait to play one
