Draw Steel vs Pendragon
Compare Draw Steel and Pendragon side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Draw Steel | Pendragon | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy, Historical |
| Play Style | Tactical, Heroic, Combat-Heavy, Cinematic, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Grid-Based, Attacks Always Hit, Lore-Heavy | Character-Driven, Domain Management, Lore-Heavy, Deadly, Simulation, Crunchy, Social Intrigue |
| Core Mechanic | Power Roll — roll 2d10 + characteristic and check which tier the result falls into: Tier 1 (11 or less), Tier 2 (12–16), or Tier 3 (17+). Every ability describes three outcomes by tier, so rolls always produce an effect — there are no whiffed turns. Edges and banes (+2/−2, or tier shift at double) modify rolls situationally. Each class builds a unique heroic resource during combat, unlocking increasingly powerful abilities as momentum builds. Victories earned from combat and noncombat challenges accumulate across encounters and convert to XP during respites. | Roll d20 against the relevant skill or attribute: a result equal to or under its value succeeds, a roll exactly equal to the value is a critical success, and a natural 20 is a fumble. Opposed actions have both sides roll under their value, with the higher success winning and a beaten-but-successful roll scoring a partial success. Personality traits and passions use the same numeric scale and are rolled the same way when a knight's character is put to the test. |
| Dice | 2d10 | d20 |
| Complexity | High | High |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | High | Very High |
| License | Draw Steel Creator License | Proprietary |
| Cost | $$$ | $$ |
| Publisher | MCDM Productions | Arthaus |
| Year | 2025 | 2005 |
| Best For | Groups who want deeply tactical, cinematic combat where every ability matters and no turn is wasted. Ideal for players who love build variety and dramatic, heroic battles. | Long-running Arthurian campaigns where a knight's aging, death, and dynastic succession are part of the genre, and where playing out a character's traits, loyalties, and passions matters as much as winning fights. |
| Highlights | Every turn offers multiple meaningful choices with no wasted turns thanks to tiered outcomes, nine classes each with a unique heroic resource and distinct tactical identity, forced movement and positioning are central to combat tactics, full negotiation subsystem with NPC interest and patience tracking for structured social encounters | Thirteen opposed pairs of personality traits and a set of named passions are rated numerically and rolled like skills, and a passion roll can leave a knight inspired to heroics, disheartened, or maddened beyond the player's control — the heightened behavior that drives Arthurian drama. Every chivalric act — combat, generosity, romance, piety, holding a title — feeds a single lifelong Glory total that sets social rank and rewards embodying knightly ideals over simply winning fights. A yearly Winter Phase resolves aging, estate income, and family events between sessions and passes the line to an heir on death, so a campaign can span generations from Uther's court to the fall of the Round Table. |
| Considerations | Heroes start with many abilities and options even at level 1, creating a steeper initial learning curve. Significant tracking overhead during combat with heroic resources, victories, conditions, edges, and banes. Explicitly designed for heroic tactical fantasy — the rules do not support dungeon crawling, hex exploration, or survival gameplay | Core rules restrict player characters to knights, with no mechanics for playing magicians, priests, or commoners, which narrows the cast to the warrior aristocracy. The Winter Phase's multi-step annual procedure adds meaningful between-session bookkeeping to every campaign year. High-damage attacks such as a couched lance or great sword can end a fight in a single exchange, making disadvantaged or improvised fights disproportionately dangerous. |