Summoner Advice¶
The summoner is a specialized class that presents unique challenges for both players and Directors. This section provides a few tips and tools to help you get up to speed no matter who's in control of the skeleton horde.
For Players¶
You now have a piece of the Director's power in your hands! The summoner's rules assume you're familiar with the Minions section of Draw Steel: Monsters; it's useful to understand how minions are usually deployed, even if your army of minions works a little differently.
If you're familiar with and enjoy playing worker placement and real-time strategy games, you'll feel right at home with the summoner. Their playstyle revolves around high-level planning and multitasking both in and out of combat, and most of our advice here revolves around giving you easy goals to focus on while learning the ropes of the class.
Roleplaying a Summoner¶
A necromancer could have opinions on the ethics of raising the dead. A demonologist may be at odds with an exorcist over all the demons in the party. Storm casters and feybrights might either be naturalists or academics akin to many other spellcasters.
But what's at the core of playing a summoner of any circle? We have a few suggestions for you to think through while embodying your character:
Might of many: Summoners have a proclivity for solving their problems with more hands. Extroverted summoners tend to rally people into working together and thinking through problems collectively, whereas introverted summoners may delegate all their smaller tasks to keep their head clear for bigger problems.
Numbers focused: The summoner's wheelhouse is counting and dividing large quantities, and it can trickle into their personality. They might keep track of an ally's knockouts or inadvertently watch a merchant count their coins right in front of them.
Highly cunning: Commanding an army requires long-term goal planning, flexible strategizing, and playing your cards close to your chest. A good summoner who embodies all three may come across as secretive or deceptive. A great summoner knows how to play into that impression.
Avid collector: When they aren't maintaining their minions, some summoners kick back by maintaining a collection or ticking down some kind of checklist. It's not uncommon for some summoners to treat their portfolio of minions as a collection that they plan on filling out completely someday.
Tasks for Minions Outside of Combat¶
If you're looking for interesting or helpful ideas for what you can do with minions outside of fighting, consider the strengths of your portfolio. All minions can scout and send messages, but how would a demon do it differently?
Demons: Demon minions are exceptionally good at hunting for missing people, lost items, or baddies on the run. They can also be great distractions while the heroes slip into the hideout on the other side. However, demons have trouble blending into civilization and going undercover without the Shaping feature.
Elementals: Elementals are excellent scouts and guards in treacherous territory, particularly when combined with your Nature Watch feature. They can also be useful in clearing natural phenomena out of the way, burning through heavy brush, digging out a collapsed cave, or drying a path through thick, wet mud.
Fey: Pixies and sprites are hard to see and harder to catch, which makes them incredible spies and information gatherers (provided they don't lie). The fey can also deliver messages across long distances quite handily.
Undead: Not only are the undead some of the best minions for performing grunt work like carrying gear or moving debris, they're also really good at activating traps meant to kill you. Remember that the undead can go where the living and breathing cannot, including underwater, burning buildings, and gas filled caverns.
Strategy in Battle¶
Summoners excel at preventing damage in the same way that conduits excel at healing and recovery. Once you become comfortable with using and losing your minions, you'll find that most of your strength comes from your ability to defend the party on a moment's notice and being impossible to ignore.
The Summoner Flow¶
The trick to managing a lot of little moving parts is to bucket them into bigger groups. That's the basis for minion squads in Draw Steel and how the summoner class was made possible in the first place!
You can bucket your turn into four bigger steps until you get the hang of the summoner's intricacies:
- Collect resources: At the start of your turn, collect your essence and choose where your signature minions will appear.
- Summon minions: Identify what problem you're trying to solve and summon the right minions best suited for the job. If your hero can solve the problem themself, save your main action instead.
- Position units: Move all the minions in each squad at once, one squad at a time. Have them surround an enemy, block off a corridor, or line themselves up so you can use Minion Bridge to cross the field.
- Execute plan: Make each of your squads take their main action. If you saved your main action, it's time for you to act as well.
Most of the rules for the summoner were created to support this structure and typically stay out of your way until you need to reference them. And if you're struck with a cool idea for your turn, don't be afraid to break from the flow and try it out—it'll probably work!
Keep the Enemy's Attention¶
When you're not sure what you should be doing next, you can always fall back on obstructing the enemy. Some of the easiest and most effective things you can do with your army are to move a minion into position next to an ally or order a squad of minions to block a doorway. Beyond that, you have access to triggered actions to instantly summon minions in front of creatures, redirect damage, taunt enemies, pull them out of position, and plenty more.
The longer your minions can hold off the enemy, the easier it is for you and your allies to use your heroic abilities and hit the enemy while they're being overrun.
Talk To Your Allies!¶
The summoner can take up a lot of space on the battlefield and needs to communicate with their allies to keep their paths clear. When you join the party as a summoner, the heroes get to take on riskier or more complex stratagems, but only if you talk to one another about what you're trying to do.
If the fury charges into battle and gets in over their head, send in your minions to cover their escape. If the shadow sneaks into position behind the enemy and needs a guarantee the enemy won't move, use your minions to hold them down. You might be the conduit's last hope of soaking up just enough damage that they survive and bring all your allies back from the brink.
Heroic Abilities vs More Minions¶
It's natural that a summoner always wants to summon more minions. Having more bodies on the field means having more damage going out and less damage coming in. But there will be times when an enemy can use a powerful area ability and clear out your army faster than you can build it. You might also face situations where you're stuck in the middle of the fray, or contend with a time sensitive objective where your party needs to be quick on their feet.
This is where your heroic abilities come in handy! Many of your abilities allow you to pierce through tough obstacles, reposition enemies and allies, or provide much needed support in a pinch; when having more minions won't solve your problems, usually a heroic ability will.
And remember that you already summon minions at the start of each of your turns. Use them to create an opening for yourself, just like you would support any of your allies!
Tons of Tokens¶
Playing in person might be daunting with many more tokens on the table than you might be used to. Using flat tokens for minions like coins, candy, or mancala stones can help significantly with sightlines. Dice are also a good minion option if you tend to always keep a trove of them on the table.
When playing Draw Steel digitally, give your minion tokens a distinct shape, a simpler visual style, or a muted border color. This will help you tell them apart from enemy minions AND help the other players to keep track of the game state.
A Summoner AND A Retainer?¶
In addition to playing a summoner, you might be eyeing the summoner retainer as a potential follower. The summoner requires the player to pull a lot more levers to fulfill its fantasy while still operating at the same power level as other classes. The same can be said about the summoner retainer (and to a lesser extent, the summoner rival). It's a lot of work!
While summoner turns move relatively quickly, even adding a single additional character to your turn (let alone a retainer and two more minion squads) can double the length of your turn in combat, requiring a lot more energy from you and dampening your party's experience at the table.
You can still do it if the other players are okay with it! You can even play a campaign with all summoner heroes each controlling a summoner retainer if you really want to. We want to make sure you're aware of what you're getting into (and that you have plenty of table space).
For Directors¶
When did the heroes get so many new allies? Before you only had to worry about the troubadour changing details about your adventure. Now their party gets minions, too!?
Make sure your summoner players have thoroughly read through the rules of their class before reaching the table. They don't need to memorize every tiny rule, but our advice focuses on strategies and ideas to keep in your back pocket whenever you direct a game featuring one (or more!) summoners.
Summoner Story Leads¶
You can use any of the following story leads to build interesting encounters or a whole adventure, whether there's a summoner in the party, helping the party, or antagonizing the party:
Between the Towers: Two ancient storm caster rivals have been fighting each other from their towers for decades, crashing endless waves of elementals into the wasteland between them. If the fighting isnʼt quelled, a terrible dragon could spring forth from the chaos.
My Teacher's Teacher: Another member of the hero summoner's circle brings news of their student's death, the hero's teacher. The hero summoner must prove their worth to the pedagogue, or else the old summoner will kill them, too!
Symphony Necromantics: A once long-abandoned graveyard has quickly corrupted the surrounding area and grows by the day. A cult of necromancers conducts an expanding orchestra of the undead in a sickly song, and will soon complete their musical ritual, calling forth an Avatar of Death.
The Living Portal: A young mage is haunted by demons springing forth from their forehead whenever they fall asleep. Their hometown wants the mage to leave, while ne'er-do-wells lurk in wait for their chance to capture this power for themselves.
Trapped in the Woods: The residents of a small village nestled in the forest can't leave their home without being attacked by pixies and sprites. Rumor has it their feybright plans to bring the woods back to being a full wode.
Challenging the Summoner¶
The summoner seems overwhelmingly capable at first. The longer you go without dealing with the summoner's minions, the sooner you will be overrun by their army. On the other hand, focusing solely on the summoner is exactly what they want you to do and allows the rest of the party to run wild without consequences.
Remember that the enemy knows what they're doing. The mage that keeps finding more demons is a problem, but so is the juggernaut with the massive axe and the assassin they just lost track of a second ago. They need to come at the heroes with a plan and force the do-gooders to react, no matter who's in the party.
It helps to know what options you have available to counter or limit the typical summoner strategies. You need to strike a careful balance of targeting the summoner and targeting their party to ensure that the hero still gets to do what they do best without completely upending your encounters.
Entrap the Summoner¶
If the summoner is unable to move or becomes isolated from their allies, their minions' ability to intercept threats gets limited. Minions normally can't listen to new commands once they leave the Summoner's Range. Not only that, a summoner in immediate danger is more likely to call their minions close to them instead of controlling the battlefield.
Use Area Abilities¶
Damaging burst abilities and effects that create damaging terrain are some of the quickest ways to burn through a summoner's entourage. Hexer, controller, and occasionally artillery monsters have strong tools for dealing with multiple enemies without putting themselves in danger.
Conversely, the summoner's minions are particularly good at withstanding strikes that target multiple creatures—avoid treating them like heroes treat your own minions!
Fighting Minions with Minions¶
Enemy minions aren't built to last very long, but they can often hold the summoner's forces back just long enough to allow your other units to sneak up behind their leader. That said, some enemy minions can put a serious dent in the summoner's minions if they have a captain.
Map Matters¶
Draw Steel is already a game that heavily depends on interesting and varied encounter maps. The summoner's heavy reliance on positioning makes choosing good maps non-negotiable!
On larger, open maps, the summoner must maintain their position while responding to the battle on multiple fronts. Smaller maps or tight battlefields with a lot of choke points force the summoner directly into the fray, juggling between keeping themselves and their minions alive. A good mix of maps not only keeps the summoner on their toes, it prevents the experience from becoming repetitive or routine.
How Many Summoners Is Too Many?¶
Draw Steel supports at least two players using the same class without issue, and that includes multiple summoners. How many summoners your gaming table supports is another issue entirely.
If you plan on directing a combat-heavy adventure with mostly tight, indoor locations or lots of cliffside scaling, limit the number of summoners to one. The party will have a difficult time comprehending the encounter map when it's filled with terrain changing elementals, and adding pixies on top will cause the players to lose sight of the heroes' goals during the fight.
You won't necessarily need bigger encounter maps to play with multiple summoners, but maps with wide open areas will provide the whole party with enough breathing room to read the situation. Encounter maps with multiple floors can also be exciting, especially if the summoners coordinate their efforts between layers.
Alternate Rule: Standby Minions¶
The summoner is built in a way to keep the complexity of their turn in check and fewer bespoke effects to keep track of. As is, when each of the summoner's squads are filled with non-signature minions, they are unable to automatically summon signature minions at the start of their turn. This means you'll usually only have to contend with a signature minion and one unique threat, or two unique threats in limited quantities.
But if a player wants finer control over their summoner character and has a good handle on their toolkit (and at your discretion), you can use the standby minion rule. This will enable the summoner to still summon signature minions that can be converted into essence for other minions or abilities.
Standby Minions: Any signature minions you summon at the start of each of your turns during combat aren't organized into a new squad until you choose to do so as a free maneuver on your turn. While a minion summoned this way is not in a squad, they can't move or listen to commands, they don't activate any traits or effects upon death, and they are automatically dismissed at the end of your turn. These minions still count toward your maximum number of minions.
Converting Minions into Monsters¶
Most minions the summoner can call forth can be turned into Director-controlled enemies with a couple of adjustments to their numbers. Draw Steel: Monsters provides more detail about the specific characteristics and potencies you should be using for your desired level.
Number Adjustments: Summoner minion stat blocks can use the EV, Stamina, and damage values from the following charts, based on their role and level. If one of their preexisting values uses the summoner's characteristics, it can usually be replaced by the target level or the minion's own characteristics.
Number of Minions: Minion stat blocks now account for four minions, regardless of the number of minions the stat block previously summoned.
Signature Ability: Minions that don't have a signature ability can still rely on their free strikes when converted into monsters. That said, you can convert their free strike trait into a signature ability using the desired level's damage values and adding the text to the ability's effect.
Captain Benefits: Enemy minions can receive a small bonus while a captain is attached to their squad. Choose between a speed or strike damage bonus equal to the minion's power roll bonus, or use a captain bonus from an existing minion stat block.
Repeating Attacks: Minions that can make repeating subsequent attacks, such as the Iron Reaver, should be limited to one additional attack maximum.
Minion Stamina and Damage Categories by Role¶
| Role | Stamina | Damage |
|---|---|---|
| Hexer | Low | Std |
| Controller | Low | Std |
| Artillery | Low | Pow |
| Harrier | Med | Std |
| Support | Med | Std |
| Mount | Med | Std |
| Ambusher | Med | Pow |
| Defender | High | Std |
| Brute | High | Pow |
Minion EV and Stamina by Level¶
| Level | EV | Low Stamina | Med Stamina | High Stamina |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 for four minions | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 2 | 4 for four minions | 4 | 5 | 7 |
| 3 | 5 for four minions | 5 | 7 | 8 |
| 4 | 6 for four minions | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 5 | 7 for four minions | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 6 | 8 for four minions | 9 | 10 | 12 |
| 7 | 9 for four minions | 10 | 12 | 13 |
| 8 | 10 for four minions | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 9 | 11 for four minions | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 10 | 12 for four minions | 14 | 15 | 17 |
Minion Damage Values by Level¶
| Level | Std T1 | Std T2 | Std T3 | Pow T1 | Pow T2 | Pow T3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| 2 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 6 |
| 3 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 6 |
| 4 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
| 5 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 7 |
| 6 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
| 7 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 8 |
| 8 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 9 |
| 9 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 7 | 9 |
| 10 | 4 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 8 | 10 |
T1, T2, and T3 are the damage values at each tier of the minion's signature ability. Use the T1 result for the monster's free strike value.
Converted Minion Example¶
The following pixie bellringer has been converted from a summoner signature minion into a level 3 enemy minion.
Pixie Bellringer (Converted)¶
Pixie Bellringer (Converted)
Ringing Strike
The next strike made against the target has an edge, or a double edge if two or more bellringers strike the same target.
Fairy Chime
Each ally within 1 square of a bellringer has a +1 to saving throws. Each enemy within 1 square of a bellringer has a -1 to saving throws.
Minuscule
The bellringer has cover while occupying a larger creature's space.