Draw Steel Conduit Class Guide: In-Depth Tactical Analysis

Introduction

Hey folks, Aestus here, back with another Draw Steel class breakdown. In this article, we’ll be talking about the Conduit, which is Draw Steel’s version of the cleric or priest archetype – a holy caster class, a representative of their saint or god that channels divine destruction or blessing from the heavens to the earth.

This is the second article in a series covering each of the nine base classes in Draw Steel’s Heroes book with an in-depth tactical analysis. If you haven’t checked it out yet, see my Censor article, the first in the series. It has a longer introduction that talks about the series as a whole and what I hope to accomplish. In this article, we’re going to keep the intro short.

If you want my opinions without all of the blather, I’ve linked a spreadsheet in the video description which ranks every tactical class feature the Conduit gets. You can just check that out and skip the rest. However, if you keep reading, I’ll be going into detail on my reasoning for each of those rankings.

Summary Opinion

My overall thoughts on the Conduit class are this: the Conduit is one of the elite classes in the game due to its unmatched healing, cleansing, and support capabilities. With a single maneuver, Healing Grace, it can carry 80% of your composition’s healing or cleansing needs, which leaves its main action open to use its wide range of solid control and buff spells. It enables potency-dependent builds through its abundance of edge, surge, and general variance-controlling mechanics.

To put it simply, it’s just an incredible class. Honestly, it might be too strong in my opinion. It’s on my short list of classes that need a nerf, but we’ll discuss that as we go.

Starting Stats and Piety

Starting Characteristics

The Conduit’s starting characteristics give them a 2 in Intuition and then a wider range of arrays to put into their other stats. This is one of the two ways that classes can gain characteristics (or attributes, as I like to call them). Compare it to the Censor, for example: Censors get Might and Presence automatically maxed as they level, and then they get a smaller array. The Conduit’s approach is equivalent to having one automatically maxed attribute and getting a wider range of arrays that effectively allow you to pick what your second max stat is going to be. I like being able to pick my secondary stats because it gives me more freedom in my build.

My recommendation: choose a stat that your team composition is weak in when it comes to skill checks. If your team is lacking a face, maybe max Presence. If they’re lacking a brainiac, maybe max Reason. If you’re not sure or nothing is lacking, Might is always a solid pick, especially if you’re going any build that uses wings, grabbing, pushing, or anything like that.

Stamina

Starting Stamina of 18, you get 6 per level, and you have 8 recoveries. This is the weak Stamina progression, which is usually on casters like the Elementalist or the Talent. It’s just a little bit behind what some of the more frontline classes are going to get when it comes to durability, but that’s okay for the Conduit because you will get class features which make up for the weak starting durability.

Piety as a Heroic Resource

Piety is a chaos heroic resource. That means you’re rolling a 1d3, which is a minor disadvantage compared to a Law HR. For example, the Censor’s Wrath gives a flat +2 per round, whereas the Conduit is rolling 1d3. I greatly prefer the flat +2 because it averages to the same and you can predict it every round. The 1d3 has this variability to it – you could roll a lot of threes in a row, in which case you’re having an HR feast, or you can roll a lot of ones in a row and you’re having an HR famine. To me, variability is a tactical weakness, not a strength.

It doesn’t really matter that much for the Conduit, though, because the riders that Conduits get for Piety are so valuable that they almost always have enough of their heroic resource to do the cool things they want to do.

Piety Riders

The Conduit’s riders are a little different than a standard class. They’re kind of getting three riders, but two of them are half-riders that depend on your subclass – those are the domain Piety effects. We’ll look at those in a bit.

Your primary HR rider is called Prayer. At the beginning of each of your turns, you can choose to pray (no action required). When you pray, you roll a 1d3:

• Roll a 1: You gain 1 additional Piety, but you also take a little bit of psychic damage.
• Roll a 2: You gain 1 additional Piety without taking the damage.
• Roll a 3: You gain 2 additional Piety and can activate a domain effect of your choice.

The domain effects are tied to your domain and some of them are really cool and interesting. But the fact that you cannot control when they proc matters. Mathematically, this effectively averages to around one proc of a domain effect per encounter, but you can’t choose when it will proc. It could proc on round one and be very valuable, or it could proc on round three or four when the fight’s already kind of decided. So from a tactics perspective, you can’t depend on this. It’s a cool flavor ability – I love the feeling of receiving a special blessing from your god – but for tactical planning, treat it as a bonus.

Overall, Prayer is a really good rider. You’re always getting at least 1 Piety just for using it, and the only detriment is taking a little bit of damage, which at level 1 can be a real choice. But by the time you reach mid-to-late Echelon 1 or Echelon 2 and above, you have enough defensive options that this damage is negligible and you should pretty much always be praying at the beginning of every turn. On top of being very consistent (a guaranteed proc for no action), you get the chance of rolling 2 Piety. So you can think of this not as a 1-Piety rider but as a 1.33-Piety rider, since there’s a 1/3 chance of getting an extra. Excellent.

Domains and Subclass Construction

How Domains Work

The other rider that Conduits get for heroic resource is tied to their domains. Unlike other classes with fixed subclasses, Conduits have expanded choice where you get to construct your own subclass. There are all of these domains (mostly identical to the ones we looked at with the Censor). Unlike the Censor, though, the Conduit gets to select two of these, and they come with extra benefits. Your choice of these two together become your subclass.

Each domain gives you a bespoke way to gain 2 Piety once per encounter. For example, the Creation domain gives you 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that a creature within 10 squares uses an area ability. The Fate domain gives you 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that an ally within 10 squares obtains a tier 3 outcome on a power roll, or an enemy within 10 squares obtains a tier 1 outcome. You get the idea. All of these give you 2 Piety whenever you meet a condition, but the ways they trigger are not well-balanced against each other.

Piety Rider Rankings

I have a ranking system for these domain riders that I want to explain, because the difference in power between the tiers is drastic.

S-tier rider: You can control it yourself at a low action cost, usually a maneuver. These are things you can guarantee to proc by doing something yourself on your turn, so you don’t depend on teammates. And because you trigger the rider on a maneuver, you still have your action left over to spend the HR you just earned. S-tier riders are very powerful.

A-tier rider: You can control it yourself, but not at a low action cost. Typically these cost your main action, or you have to build specifically to trigger them on a maneuver.

B-tier rider: You can control it, but not yourself. These are ones your teammates have to do on their turns. This is more restrictive because it binds you when it comes to turn order – if you want to get the most out of your HR on round 1, your teammates might have to go before you.

C-tier rider: Proccing it is completely outside of your control. Usually these depend on dice rolls (like the Fate one), or on something the Director does (like a monster deciding to use an ability with Malice). The power difference between C-tier and S-tier riders is very drastic, such that I’m very hesitant to pick C-tier ones unless they have really good other abilities to compensate.

Recommended Domains: Love + Trickery

For the Conduit, I really recommend the Love domain. It has a fantastic Piety rider (one of the best in the game), a solid prayer effect, and pretty much across-the-board good abilities – definitely frontloaded good abilities, which I value highly because an ability you get at level 1 or 2 you’re going to use over an entire campaign.

Trickery is another fantastic choice, mostly because of its rider. It also gets a really good prayer effect that scales well with levels. Its weakness tends to be in its heroic ability options, but you actually end up getting choices between your two domains. If you notice, Trickery matches up really well with Love domain: Love has strong 5 and 9 costs but a weak 11, whereas Trickery has weak 5 and 9 costs but a strong 11 cost. Picking these together creates a really good overlap.

A note: in the base vanilla game, if you’re using the setting gods of the Draw Steel Orden setting, there is not a god that has both Love and Trickery as the same domain options. The book does include a rule where you can petition your Director to allow you to construct your own portfolio of domains representing your own god or saint creation. So it’s not outside the rules to mix Love and Trickery, but it is a Director request.

Love + Trickery Piety Riders

For the Love domain, you gain 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that you or an ally within 10 squares uses the Aid Attack maneuver or an ability that targets an ally. Both of these are things you can do yourself at the cost of a maneuver. Aid Attack is a maneuver (not the greatest in the game, but not useless). An ability that targets an ally – Healing Grace covers this. So on your turn, if you’re the first person to act, you can do either of these and get +2 Piety on round 1. That’s very strong.

For the Trickery domain, you gain 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that you or a creature within 10 squares takes the Aid Attack or hide maneuver. Again, this triggers on your turn on a maneuver without fail.

And here’s where it gets interesting: there’s overlap. Aid Attack triggers both of them. If you pick Love and Trickery like I recommend, on your turn you take the Aid Attack maneuver and you will trigger both of your riders and gain +4 Piety on round 1. It’s extremely strong. In fact, I consider it so strong it may even need a nerf.

Prayer Effects

For the Trickery domain prayer effect, you can slide one creature within 10 squares of you up to a number of squares equal to 5 + your Conduit level. This is a very high-value slide that scales really well. By level 10, this is +15. And you’re getting this for free as a free action. There’s a lot of tactical things you can do with this – you can slide targets out of position so that your teammates can more easily kill them. I love Trickery domain. This is almost always useful.

The Love domain prayer effect is: each ally within 10 squares of you gains temporary Stamina equal to 2x your Intuition score. Temporary Stamina is very good because it’s effectively proactive healing that does not take recoveries. Spamming temporary Stamina when you can get it really allows you to get more out of your Respites and snowball into more difficult fights.

Both solid prayer effects. But remember, because you can’t control when these trigger, they aren’t the main reason to pick your domain. The big reasons are for the Piety and for your heroic abilities.

Heroic Resource Tempo: Why It Matters

I want to show you how picking S-tier Piety riders can really set the Conduit drastically ahead of heroic resource generation tempo, and why that’s such an extreme advantage. It’s one of two things that really sets the Conduit apart for me and makes it one of the strongest classes in the game.

Comparing Censor vs. Conduit: Round 1

To understand why it’s good, you have to compare to something more baseline. Let’s use the Censor, which we covered in the last article. Imagine we’re at level 1, no victories, the heroes won initiative, and we allow our Censor to go first.

The Censor’s round 1: At the beginning of the round, the Censor gets +2 Wrath. Not enough to do anything powerful. To get more, he has to use his maneuver to judge a creature. Now he’s spent his maneuver but hasn’t actually gotten more HR yet. To do that, he still has to walk forward and hit his target with a damage-dealing ability. He deals 7 damage, triggers his rider, gains +1. He’s now at 3. He’s used his movement, maneuver, and action – turn over. Then on the monster’s turn, it attacks the Censor back, dealing 16 damage. Because a judged creature just dealt damage to the Censor, that triggers his second rider for another +1. Good round: both riders triggered, he’s at 4 Wrath. At the beginning of round 2, he gets +2, reaching 6 Wrath. Now he can start using heroic abilities like Repent or Purifying Fire.

The Conduit’s round 1: Beginning of level 1, round 1. First, roll for Piety – sadly, I low-rolled a 1. That’s a risk of being a chaos HR class. However, we still have Prayer: rolled a 3 on Prayer, which gives +2 Piety. So it evens out. We have 3 heroic resource and we haven’t technically done anything yet. We still have our movement, maneuver, and action. Because we’re a Love and Trickery domain Conduit, I move adjacent to a creature and use Aid Attack. It costs a maneuver, and because of that, I trigger both of my riders for +4 Piety. Now I’m at 7 heroic resource and I still have my action left.

I can cast Corruption’s Curse or Call the Thunder or whatever else I have for my heroic abilities. I’m doing it an entire round earlier than the Censor did. The Censor couldn’t do it till round 2. The Conduit does it round 1.

Why Acting Early Matters

One very important tactical principle: doing the same action early in a fight is better than doing it later. There’s a lot of volatility on round 1 – more enemies exist that can take actions and deal damage. If you use a buff spell on round 1, you get more value because there are more rounds to use it and more enemies to use those buffs against. If you use a control spell, there are more enemies on the map to hit. If you use an AoE nuke, you can potentially kill targets and stop them from taking their turn.

Almost everything proactive is better used early. In a game where most fights are decided in around 3 to 4 rounds, getting one round early is huge. It’s the principle of spending resources early to snowball.

The Balance Problem

In principle, getting all of this Piety up front is supposed to be balanced by the fact that it only triggers once per encounter. So over many turns, someone like the Censor will get more heroic resource total. But to me, that’s a very poor way to balance it because doing things early has its own advantages. And this is a game where fights tend not to last that long, so stalling out so other classes get more HR doesn’t really make up for the huge boost in HR tempo that the Conduit gets.

Piety is really the best heroic resource in the game, as far as I can tell. In my experience as a player and as a Director, this is a real problem. In all of my games, there is a Conduit player. In the game I’m running right now that’s been going for months and months, the Conduit player consistently has more heroic resource than everyone else. And he didn’t even pick riders that are that good.

A Design Critique

I think the logic here relates to the class’s designer. James Introcaso designed this class, and while I don’t know James well, he is someone that I know a little bit. I’ve done some interviews with him – we have three interviews together that are over an hour long where we talked about design and his career. I’ve really studied James as a designer.

If I had to guess his reasoning: he wanted to give the Conduit more Piety than other classes because of what he thinks of as the healing tax. The Conduit gets Healing Grace, which is like Healing Word in D&D 5e – it’s going to heal your allies and you can spend Piety to make it stronger. It’s one of the best abilities in the game, but it’s also kind of uninteractive. Every team composition feels like they need a healer, and you want to avoid the situation where one player gets pressured into playing a Conduit when they don’t want to. I think his way of solving this was to give the Conduit more heroic resource so they can pay their healing tax and still have more left over to do cool and fun things.

To me, this is the wrong way to solve the problem. Obviously James is a much better designer than me, and he had an entire team and lots of playtesters. But the question I’d ask is: why is healing with Healing Grace so unfun that you need to compensate for it? I would try to make healing more fun. That would be the design problem I’d try to solve.

Regardless, as a tactical player and someone who runs for a very tactical team, the fact that the Conduit gets so much Piety is a problem. It’s hard for other players not to resent the fact that the Conduit can always do their cool stuff while other players are waiting rounds and using their abilities at less impactful times.

Domain Features

Domain features are mostly identical to the ones you get on the Censor, which we talked about in the last article. These are mostly non-combat abilities, and if they do affect combat, only a little bit. Because the Conduit has two domains, at this level you choose one domain and get the feature from that domain. I have a separate spreadsheet ranking all the features, which is the same as the Censor’s with a few exceptions (for example, the Storm domain gives the Conduit Thunderstruck at 7th level instead of Ride the Lightning). There are also some wording differences – the Life domain features affect Healing Grace rather than My Life for Yours, but they amount to pretty much the same thing.

I don’t want to spend too much time on features because Conduits have so many abilities to cover. Check the spreadsheet for the rankings.

Healing Grace

Healing Grace is the Conduit’s class maneuver, and it is an S-tier ability. It’s probably one of the best abilities in the entire game when you factor in that you get this at level 1. It’s the second reason (beyond the HR generation) that I think MCDM should consider giving Conduits a nerf.

Healing Grace is a ranged maneuver heal. You target yourself or an ally, and that target can spend a recovery with no HR cost. However, you can spend your HR to tack on additional effects:

• Target one additional ally within distance, healing more than one target on your maneuver.
• Cleanse conditions that end with a saving throw.
• Cleanse being prone.
• A target can spend one additional recovery.

Cleansing while reactive is very important. There are conditions in this game that are absolutely debilitating, and getting them off your allies before they start their turn is a critical part of the game.

Here’s how this ends up working from my experience as a Director: I design these very nasty monsters, put them into really cool maps and scenarios, take my turns on round 1, and deal as much damage as I can. Then the Conduit takes their turn and undoes all of it. They use one maneuver, dump 5 Piety into it (which they can do because of their insane Piety generation), and completely erase an entire round of damage. And I hate that. As a player, it’s super fun and extremely powerful. If healing is your fantasy, Healing Grace dominates this game. Play a Conduit.

Why is it so strong? One thing you can just see: it’s a maneuver. You’re paying a Piety cost for all of these benefits, but the actual action cost is so low for what you get. You can erase an entire round’s worth of damage and still have your action left to do something else. It also feels like it’s very efficient for the Piety you spend – where other abilities that give multiple recoveries to multiple targets usually cost lots of heroic resource, this one is just 1 for each effect.

Healing Grace functionally does 80-90% of all the healing your team will need, and it does it on a maneuver. If you have just one other slightly dedicated support or healer (like a Tactician or Censor) plus one Conduit with Healing Grace, you’ve covered your healing needs. You shouldn’t pick other healing abilities because Healing Grace is good enough. This actually affects your build choices, since a lot of your domain abilities give you more healing that you don’t need.

Triggered Actions: Word of Guidance and Word of Judgment

You have a choice between two triggered actions: Word of Guidance and Word of Judgment. These are effectively the same except one is a buffing variant and the other is a debuffing variant.

Word of Guidance

This is a range 10 triggered action affecting one ally. It triggers whenever that ally makes an ability roll for a damage-dealing ability. You can use this to give that ability an edge. Notice it says “makes an ability roll,” so you actually get to see the result of the roll before triggering this ability. This allows you to recognize that if you give this a +2, it will bump up a tier – and that’s when you use Word of Guidance.

Alternatively, if you spend 1 Piety, you can force it up a tier by giving a double edge. Sometimes this is really important, especially for abilities with a potency check. Getting a high result can be the difference between an ability working as intended or barely working at all.

Overall, I like Word of Guidance. I think it’s a great tactical ability. I love what it does in the game, forcing players to work together. Fantastic design.

Word of Judgment

Same as Word of Guidance but for debuffing. You’re targeting an ally who’s about to take damage from an enemy ability, and you impose a bane on that ability to reduce it by one tier. You can impose a double bane for 1 Piety.

Both are good, but I think Word of Guidance is more flexible. You already have ways to cleanse crowd control effects through Healing Grace, which is the main thing you’d be avoiding by imposing banes. Boosting ally abilities is more within your control and your team’s control. Pick whichever you like for flavor or tactics.

Prayers and Wards

These are features that replace your kit. Because you’re a caster class, you don’t train with arms and armor. Prayers and wards are the alternative, and you can change them as a Respite activity.

Prayers

All of these are relatively small statistical bonuses:

• Destruction: +1 damage
• Distance: +1 distance to ranged abilities
• Soldier Skill: A little bit of Stamina; allows you to use light armor or light weapon treasures (you switch into this whenever you get the treasures you want)
• Speed: Bonus movement
• Prayer of Steel: Increases to Stamina and stability, giving you a lot of durability

Prayer of Steel is by far the best choice in my opinion. The durability it provides is actually important for this class, as we’ll see. But all the bonuses are minor, so if you don’t go Prayer of Steel, it’s not that sub-optimal.

Wards

Defensive magical effects:

• Bastion Ward: +1 to saving throws. Nice.
• Quickness Ward: Shift whenever an adjacent creature deals damage to you. Hard to get a lot of use from this.
• Sanctuary Ward: Whenever a creature damages you, that creature cannot target you with a strike until you harm them, an ally harms them, or the end of their next turn. Forces enemies to spread damage across your team, which is what you want. Also prevents enemies from bursting you down effectively. Great for you because you have lots of healing over rounds.
• Spirit Ward: When an adjacent creature deals damage to you, they take corruption damage equal to your Intuition score. Retaliation damage is always nice – it’s low, but action-economy-free damage adds up over a fight.

My recommendation is between Sanctuary Ward and Spirit Ward, but again, they’re all pretty minor.

1st Level Abilities

Signature Abilities

Conduits don’t get a kit, so you get to choose two class signatures. My philosophy: pick one “spammable” or “bread-and-butter” signature that’s broadly useful in most scenarios (typically doing damage or force movement or both), and then use the second slot for a more niche signature that’s situationally powerful.

Bread-and-Butter Choices

Blessed Light is my recommendation. It’s the most flexible choice and an overall really solid signature. It’s a ranged attack, single target, dealing holy damage. One ally within distance gains a number of surges equal to the tier outcome of your power roll.

On a tier 3 result at Echelon 1, you’re dealing 10 holy damage (8 + your Intuition). You’re generating 3 surges for your allies. If they spend those surges on damage, each surge deals 2, totaling 6 additional damage – 16 total damage on a signature. That’s a lot. And remember, dealing damage with surges isn’t even the most efficient use. Probably the best use is to boost the potency of abilities to get devastating crowd control effects. So Blessed Light also gives you a consistent way to generate surges for potency boosting. You cannot go wrong picking it.

Holy Lash is another good choice: a ranged attack dealing equal holy damage, but instead of generating surges, it adds a vertical pull. Let me explain how vertical pulls work in more detail than I did in the Censor article.

A pull has to move the target one square closer to you each time. A vertical pull unlocks the Z-axis. You can pull an enemy down and forward (dealing forced-move damage, calculated as forced move minus stability, plus 2), or you can pull them up diagonally toward you and let them fall. Fall damage is calculated as: (fall distance - target’s Agility) x 2.

For example, at 10 squares range with a tier 3 vertical pull of 4: if you pull them diagonally up, they reach about 4 squares high. A fall from that height against a target with 0 Agility deals 8 extra damage. The key insight: the closer you are to the target when you cast, the less high you can pull them. The formula for max height is roughly half the initial distance on your cast. So if you’re 10 squares away, max height is 5 squares. If you’re 2 squares away, max height is 1.

Both signatures are pretty equal at Echelon 1, but Blessed Light scales much better because surges become more valuable at higher levels. That’s why I prefer it, but you really can’t go wrong with either.

Niche Choices

Lightfall is a 2-burst AoE dealing holy damage with a great effect: you can teleport yourself and each ally in the area to an unoccupied space. Since teleports cleanse conditions like prone or restrained, Lightfall is effectively giving you an AoE multi-target cleanse. Not broadly useful, but in those circumstances where you can get multiple allies with this, it’s extremely valuable for a signature.

3-Piety Heroic Abilities

Font of Wrath (S-Tier)

I’m obsessed with Font of Wrath. For 3 Piety, at range 10, you summon a spirit of size 2 that cannot be harmed, appearing in an unoccupied space within distance. The spirit lasts until the end of your next turn. You and your allies can move through the spirit’s space, but your enemies can’t. An enemy who moves within 2 squares of the spirit for the first time in a combat round or starts their turn there takes holy damage equal to your Intuition score.

The holy damage is low, but what I really like about Font of Wrath is the tactical things you can do with it. You’re effectively creating a terrain object. Imagine you want to prevent a werewolf from getting close: you cast Font of Wrath and summon the spirit in a chokepoint, blocking the alleyway. The enemy has to move around, potentially wasting their main action converting it to movement.

You can also summon it behind a target so an ally with a lot of force movement (like Brutal Slam) can push enemies back into it. Because it takes no damage and enemies cannot move into it, it functions like pushing into a wall. Those are two uses I like, and I’m sure there are many more. The ceiling for this ability depends on how creatively you can use it.

Violence Will Not Aid Thee (A-Tier)

If creative positioning isn’t your thing, Violence Will Not Aid Thee is an extremely spammable, consistently good ability. It’s a ranged attack dealing lightning damage with this effect: the first time on a turn that the target deals damage to another creature (which they’re almost guaranteed to do), they take an additional 1d10 lightning damage (averaging 5.5). And it has a save-ends effect, so you could get even more procs out of it. Ultimately, this is adding a lot of consistent damage for not much cost. 3 Piety isn’t that much.

What I like about this: it’s multiple instances of damage. There’s the initial damage and then another trigger, which you can exploit with abilities like Corruption’s Curse.

5-Piety Heroic Abilities

Corruption’s Curse (S-Tier)

Corruption’s Curse is very similar to Purifying Fire that we looked at with the Censor. It deals initial damage, targets Might, and if it goes through, imposes damage weakness 5 (save ends) – and it’s 5 at every level. Whenever you have a damage weakness on a target, multi-proc damage instances get more value because on your initial hit you deal 5 bonus damage, and on every subsequent damage instance they take 5 more. With Violence Will Not Aid Thee’s multiple damage instances, this gets especially potent.

Now, I need to talk about the downsides of Might-targeting abilities. I’ve made a spreadsheet tracking the stats for all leaders and solos in the vanilla monsters book, ranked by echelon. The color coding shows which stats are reliably hittable:

• Red: You cannot reliably hit them at this echelon.
• Green: You can reliably hit them.
• Yellow: You can hit them, but it’s a coin flip.

The math: almost 70% of leaders and solos will resist Might potencies at their echelon. So an ability like Corruption’s Curse, using the vanilla book monsters, has roughly a 30% chance of making it stick. Compare that to Reason-targeting, which is almost the reverse – about 65% chance to stick.

Personally, I don’t mind the Might-targeting because damage weakness 5 is so powerful. I like having this in my kit for the fights where I run up against a leader or solo I can burst down. Your heroic abilities don’t need to be universally good in every scenario – as you level, you’ll have enough options. I still count this as S-tier.

Faith Is Our Armor (S-Tier)

If you want to avoid the Might-targeting issue, Faith Is Our Armor is incredibly hard not to choose. For 5 Piety, range 10, affecting 4 allies (which in a typical team of 4 is your entire team, and you count as well):

• Tier 1 result: Each gains 5 temporary Stamina. That’s 5 x 4 = 20 total Stamina for your team. Not bad. And remember, this is Stamina that isn’t costing recoveries, so it’s breaking the recovery economy.
• Tier 2 result: 10 per person. 40 total Stamina for 5 Piety.
• Tier 3 result: 15 per person. 60 total Stamina for 5 Piety.

How many recoveries is 60 Stamina? On good targets at levels 2-3, that could be as high as 6 recoveries’ worth, except you don’t even have to spend the recoveries to get it. This feels overloaded to me. And remember, this is on a Conduit that can reliably get 6+ Piety on their turn and still have their action left to cast Faith Is Our Armor before anyone else on the map takes a turn.

I technically gave this an A in my original ranking, but I’m upgrading it to S. It’s the kind of ability that’s outsized-efficient for the cost without even needing to build around it. S-tier now means either an ability you want to build around (like Corruption’s Curse) or an ability that’s so efficient it doesn’t need you to build around it (like Faith Is Our Armor).

2nd Level

Lists of Heaven

Your deity is aware of your growing influence, making it easier to draw their attention and power you when you heal your allies. Whenever you allow another creature to spend a recovery, you can also spend a recovery. This is good – it’s another feature that gives the Conduit a lot of sneaky durability. Even though their Stamina is low, they can generate recoveries for themselves at a very low action cost just by using Healing Grace, which you want to be using anyway.

Domain Heroic Abilities (5-Piety)

At this level, you pick your first domain-specific heroic ability. Let’s look at the main recommendations.

Love Domain: Our Hearts, Your Strength (S-Tier)

This is a ranged buff affecting both yourself and one ally until the end of the encounter or until the target is dying. At the start of each of the target’s turns, they gain a bonus to speed and a bonus to roll damage equal to the number of allies within 10 squares of them. The bonus lasts until the start of their next turn.

Increased roll damage is interesting. There are some interactions with particular abilities where this can get pretty busted – I’ve heard there’s a Fury ability it’s really good on. I also suspect there could be interesting interactions with the Summoner (a new class that summons lots of allies), though I haven’t investigated this in detail. If you know how that works, let me know.

Even assuming a team of 4, that’s a +3 to roll damage, which can add up over a few turns if you build around it right. It could also be underwhelming if you don’t have the right composition. Still a pretty solid ability for 5 Piety.

Trickery Domain: Divine Comedy

For 5 Piety, this is an AoE ability (5-burst, self and each ally in the area). Each target can choose another creature in the area, then swap places with that creature. Under typical circumstances, this isn’t likely worth 5 Piety, but there are some creative tactics you can pull off.

For example, if you and your allies can fly, you all fly to a certain area, cast Divine Comedy, swap places with enemies, and move them 5 squares off the ground for fall damage. If multiple allies line up vertically above enemies, you can create a cascade of falling and landing-on-top-of-each-other damage. It’s such a niche circumstance that I can’t call it tactically reliable, but it’s so fun and funny. My friends and I would love using this.

Death Domain: Reap (S-Tier)

This is a buff (range 10, each ally) lasting until the start of your next turn. Each time a target kills an enemy, they regain Stamina equal to 5 + your Intuition score. This is healing without using recoveries. In Draw Steel, there can sometimes be a lot of enemies on the map, especially minions, and it doesn’t specify they can’t be minions. In certain maps, this can give you a massive amount of free healing. I sometimes look at Death just to get this ability.

Fate Domain: Blessing of Fate and Destiny (S-Tier)

Range 10, targets 3 creatures (you can target yourself instead). Notice it says creatures, not allies, because you choose 3 creatures (ally or enemy), and they get one of the following effects: either whenever they make a power roll they roll three dice and choose which two to use (advantage), or they roll three dice and use the lowest (disadvantage). You can apply advantage to allies or disadvantage to enemies, and you can cast this multiple times – buff your team first, then debuff enemies later.

How valuable is advantage and disadvantage in Draw Steel? I’ve done the math. With standard rolls at +2: 36% chance of T1, 43% T2, 21% T3, and 3% crit.

With advantage: 15% T1 (halved), 42% T2, 42% T3 (doubled), and roughly 8% crit. That’s massive.

With disadvantage: 62% T1, and only about 7% T3. Crippling for enemies.

For an effect that lasts until the end of the encounter, this adds up to a lot of extra damage, better potency rolls, and variance mitigation. I like to be able to predict my turns in a tactical game. A 36% chance of rolling a tier 1 is too high for me. Blessing of Fate and Destiny at 5 Piety is beautiful.

3rd Level

The last level of Echelon 1 is a big one for Conduits.

Minor Miracle

This allows you, as a Respite activity, to restore a dead creature to life. As long as your Conduit survives a fight and you’re willing to chain a few Respites, you can raise your entire team back to life.

How valuable is this? Extremely. Think of it mathematically: at the very least, this allows you to fight one extra encounter per Respite. Normally, you fight battles that chip away at your recovery resources until someone hits zero recoveries and becomes scared to enter another fight – that’s when you’d take a Respite. But once you have Minor Miracle, it’s not that much of a risk. You might as well push, because if you die, you get raised. If you don’t die, you’ve gotten another victory and can push further.

More battles per Respite means more victories. More victories means more power. Eventually, if you play right, you can get so many victories that you can spam all your abilities on round 1 and snowball the fight from there. I cannot say enough good things about Minor Miracle.

7-Piety Heroic Abilities

Fear the Gods (S-Tier)

This feels just better than the other choices at this level. It’s a 5-cube ranged AoE dealing psychic damage (not out of this world, but solid considering the area). The big effect: it’s an Intuition-targeting frightened condition in a massive AoE. Frightened targets cannot move closer to the person frightening them. You can pass the source of the frightened to one of your allies, maybe a frontline ally, to better control where enemies can move.

This can straight-up shut down multiple melee enemies. On a Conduit that can cast this on round 1, it can win a fight right at the beginning of an encounter. Incredible ability – it’s hard not to pick this.

Saint’s Raiment (A-Tier)

If you don’t like the theme of Fear the Gods, Saint’s Raiment is a good backup. It’s a single-ally buff giving 20 temporary Stamina and 3 surges for 7 Piety. A lot of stats for the cost, and we’ve covered why both temporary Stamina and surges are valuable. It’s a solid choice, but Fear the Gods is just better in most situations.

4th Level (Echelon 2)

At the beginning of Echelon 2, you get your typical echelon increases.

Blessed Domain

This is the Conduit’s Echelon 2 HR boost. Whenever you gain Piety from a domain effect, you gain 1 additional Piety. So now that +2 you get from Trickery and Love domains on a maneuver becomes +3 from that source at Echelon 2. Instead of 4 HR on a maneuver, it’s 6 HR on a maneuver. This just makes the Piety imbalance worse, in my opinion. But setting that aside, Blessed Domain is incredible – one of the best Echelon 2 HR bonuses I can think of.

You also get your characteristic increases (standard) and a 4th-level domain feature. I’ve ranked all of those in the domain spreadsheet – too many to go over individually. If you have questions, leave them in the comments.

5th Level

At 5th level, you gain another domain feature (because you have two domains, you picked one at 4th level and get the other here – it’s just a one-level delay). The big thing at this level is your 9-Piety abilities.

Vessel of Retribution (A-Tier)

I think this is the best choice at this level. It’s a range 10 buff on a maneuver, self or one ally. The first time the target is dying or winded before the end of the encounter, each enemy within 5 squares of them takes 15 holy damage. Cast this on a Fury who wants to drop to zero anyway, and you end up dealing 30 guaranteed holy damage in a 5-square AoE. They can position themselves around the enemy, and whenever they take damage, an enemy is probably adjacent. For 9 Piety, you can’t exactly control when it triggers, but it’s one of the better options at this level.

Sanctuary (A-Tier)

Range 10, maneuver, self or one ally. The target is removed from the encounter map until the start of their next turn and can spend any number of recoveries. Being able to spend any number of recoveries is nice, but you’re probably not using this as a healing ability since Healing Grace has that covered. What you’re really doing is: if a target is badly out of position or has zero recoveries left and you want to shift aggro, taking them off the encounter map forces enemies to spread damage around. Again, for 9 Piety it’s not a great spend, but these are the two I recommend for this level.

6th Level

Burgeoning Saint

This is a passive with four bonuses:

1. Edge on Presence tests made to interact with other creatures. Good out-of-combat bonus.
2. Whenever you deal damage to an enemy, you can spend a recovery. As long as you’re using a damage-dealing ability, you’re getting at least one recovery per round if you want. Combined with Lists of Heaven (which lets you spend a recovery whenever an ally does), you always have enough recoveries to spend. At this level, you’re really not in a position as a Conduit where you’re lacking recovery opportunities, giving you a lot of innate durability.
3. Corruption immunity 10 or holy immunity 10 (your choice). The correct choice is corruption immunity 10. Holy damage from monsters and enemies is really rare in the vanilla monster book, and also rare in homebrew design – try to imagine a monster that heroes would be fighting that deals holy damage. Corruption damage, by contrast, is a very common damage type. So having immunity 10 to that is excellent.
4. A flavor-text appearance change with no tactical impact.

Burgeoning Saint is a pretty good durability passive. It’s important for you to survive fights due to Minor Miracle’s resurrection ability.

6th Level Domain Abilities (9-Piety)

Love Domain: Lauded by God

Maneuver, range 10, affects two allies. Each target gains 3 of their heroic resource. So you’re spending 9 Piety to give out 6 HR split between two targets. Your net loss is 3. But 3 Piety for a Conduit isn’t that much – it’s very easy to be in a situation where you’ve been rolling high on prayers and your 1d3 rolls and you just have extra Piety that is better spent by your allies.

This also tempo-breaks ally classes. We talked about HR tempo earlier: some classes are hard-locked into a standard progression curve, and being able to break out of it and do abilities one turn earlier can be very important. I’m thinking specifically of the Elementalist (which we’ll talk about in the next article) – they are hard-locked into their tempo and really incentivized to break out of it. Lauded by God is quite efficient when used on classes like that.

Trickery Domain: Invocation of Mystery

4-burst, affects self and each ally, maneuver. Each target is invisible until the start of your next turn. Invisibility isn’t that great in Draw Steel – mostly, it gives you an edge on your rolls and a bane on enemy rolls against you. Is that worth 9 Piety just until the start of your next turn? Kind of not. This might be better if your Director interprets it as enabling the hide maneuver, which we’ll discuss more when we get to the 11-cost Trickery ability.

7th Level (Echelon 3)

Starting Echelon 3, you get your normal echelon increases.

Faithful’s Reward

This gives you +1 Piety on your initial 1d3 roll. I like that it takes away a lot of variability on the 1d3 – you’re always getting at least a guaranteed 2 now. I’m glad they didn’t increase the dice size and instead just added a +1. Not much to say: it’s an additional +1, just like every other class would get.

7th Level Domain Features

The 7th-level domain features are really powerful, just like they were for the Censor. Love domain, unfortunately, is kind of weak at this level. Trickery is strong here, which is nice.

Nature domain is worth highlighting: Nature’s Bounty. Whenever you finish a Respite, you can create a magic meal. Choose two benefits for creatures who consume the meal: 20 temporary Stamina, bonuses to speed and saving throws, or immunity to damage. This is really powerful for this level. You could pick Nature if you’re planning on getting this high in the game.

8th Level

You get another domain feature (same as level 7, check the spreadsheet) and your 11-Piety abilities.

Blessing of Steel (S-Tier)

11 Piety, 5-aura, maneuver to cast, affects self and each ally until the end of the encounter. Any ability roll made against a target takes a bane, and each target has damage immunity 5. This lasts until the end of the encounter, and it really adds up. It’s effectively giving you healing without spending recoveries – avoiding damage is the same as getting healing. Absolutely worth casting for 11 Piety in typical fights at this echelon.

Blessing of the Blade (A-Tier)

Effectively the same concept but offensive instead of defensive. At the end of each of your turns until the end of the encounter, each target gains 3 surges. At Echelon 3, a surge is worth 4 damage, so 3 surges = 12 damage per ally per turn in a 5-aura. That adds up to a lot.

Both are great. I find that damage immunity is harder to get while surge generation is easier to come by on this class, so I lean toward Blessing of Steel, but it’s up to you.

9th Level

Passives

Faith Sword: You pick an ally on a Respite, and that ally gets the benefits of Burgeoning Saint. Tactically, this gives them recoveries when they deal damage and corruption immunity – the recovery part is really good on a character like a Fury that wants to take a lot of damage. Additionally, you can spend Piety as a free maneuver to give the hero 1 of their heroic resource for every 2 Piety spent. This 2:1 conversion is pretty expensive, and I doubt I would use it in most circumstances. There might be particular moments where it’s worth doing, but even if you’re overloaded with HR, you can probably spend it more efficiently. Be wary of the conversion part, but the Burgeoning Saint part is excellent.

Ordained: Your characteristic scores are treated as one higher for the purpose of resisting potencies. This feels like you’re getting +5 to your attributes and you’re thinking “Yes!” – except at this echelon, many of your attributes will be too low for a +1 to function well. But even a +1 to your main stats is really good. I value Ordained pretty highly.

9th Level Domain Abilities (11-Piety)

Protection Domain: Blessing of the Fortress (S-Tier)

This is the only S-tier at this level. You cast this on yourself, and until the end of the encounter, you have a 5-square aura where enemies cannot move into that space. They’re hard-blocked: they can’t move willingly, and they can’t be forced-moved unless you choose to force-move them. This is 100% the kind of ability you can build a team composition around. If you build a lot of ranged damage on your team, everyone can cluster around you and you can kite enemies, preventing them from getting within melee distance and shutting down an entire vector of attack. Very strong.

Love Domain: Alacrity of the Heart (A-Tier)

This is like a haste ability. Range 10, maneuver, one ally. The target gets an additional main action on their next turn and gains 3 of their heroic resource. At 3 HR for 11 cost, extremely expensive. Does handing them a main action make up for it? It’s tough. You’re technically generating a main action, but you’re spending your maneuver to do it. Not bad, just steep for 11 Piety. Be careful about when you use this.

Trickery Domain: Nightfall (A-Tier)

Similar to the Darkness spell in Baldur’s Gate 3 or D&D 5e. It’s a 5-cube AoE lasting until the end of the encounter. The area is filled with magical darkness that enemies cannot see through, but you and your allies can.

Here’s where it gets interpretive: line of sight is not a thing in Draw Steel (it operates on line of effect). When I looked through the rules about what “being able to see someone” actually does, I could only find the rules around hiding and concealment. Every character can hide as a maneuver when an enemy cannot see them. While hidden, enemies cannot target you with single-target abilities – only area abilities.

So the play is: summon the darkness, you and your allies go into it to hide, and enemies can’t target you with single-target abilities. Phenomenal, and it lasts until end of encounter. This could borderline be S-tier, but the entire value hinges on a specific interpretation. Your Director might decide that Nightfall’s darkness counts as “the general area” and won’t allow you to hide in it. If they don’t allow hiding, this ability is terrible for 11 Piety. Talk to your Director before selecting the Trickery domain at this level.

10th Level

Tenth level is always very cool in Draw Steel because it counts as its own echelon. You get a characteristic increase and Most Pious, which boosts your Piety generation to 1d3 + 2.

Avatar

The first thing Avatar does is let you benefit from up to three Prayers at once (the Respite-based passive stat bonuses). That’s nice, but for 10th level it’s not a huge boost. The big change: you can now use a maneuver to activate one of your domain prayer effects.

This is the same thing Censors got at their highest level. For example, if you pick the Trickery domain, the prayer effect at 10th level lets you slide a target 15 squares – and you can now do that at will by spending a maneuver. There are tons of domains with really powerful effects that become incredible when you can use them on a maneuver for no HR. This is the big upgrade at 10th level.

Divine Power

At level 10 you’re max level, so XP is replaced. Whenever you take a Respite, you exchange your victories for Divine Power. Divine Power is a resource you can use to replace Piety. But there’s a unique use for the Conduit: you can spend Divine Power as if it were Piety to use any Conduit abilities that you don’t have.

All of the abilities that exist for the Conduit that you did not select – even other domain abilities – you can cast them as long as you’re using Divine Power as the resource. Yes, you can open up the book and cast any of their abilities. But remember, you’re gated by the amount of victories you got. If you got 5 victories on your last Respite, you have 5 Divine Power. You could cast one 5-cost ability, and by the time you’re level 10, 5-cost abilities aren’t the most powerful thing in your arsenal. It’s one 5-cost per Respite, roughly.

I haven’t hit level 10 with my players yet, so I’m speculating more than I am for other features. My feeling is that it’s maybe a little too limited. But there’s also a tension: if you buff it, it feels like it invalidates your build choices. You’ve picked specific abilities and mutually exclusively locked yourself out of others, but that’s what a build is. Divine Power kind of negates those choices. I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s cool, but there’s a design tension there.

Domain Selection Strategy

One of the cool things about the Conduit is that it gets to create its own subclass by mixing and matching domains, and there are so many factors that go into this decision. It’s easy to be overwhelmed. So let me offer some strategies.

Love as Your Anchor

I’ve talked about Love as a really solid first choice that flattens the rest of your choices. Love gets a great Piety rider, a solid prayer effect, and good (definitely usable) heroic abilities. Its big weakness is its domain features, which are pretty much across the board weak.

Pairing Options

• Love + Trickery: My top recommendation. Great rider overlap, complementary heroic ability coverage (Love has strong 5 and 9 costs, Trickery has a strong 11 cost). Requires a Director petition for the vanilla setting.
• Love + Life: Life gets really good features where Love is weak. Life’s weakness is its heroic abilities, so they synergize well.
• Love + War: A decent choice, and legal if you’re a Cavall Conduit using the vanilla gods and saints.
• Storm and Sun: Both have slightly better Piety riders than even the A ranking gives them – they’re borderline S-tier. They also get powerful domain abilities and not-as-weak features. These always make good secondary choices.
• Death: Tends to be weak overall, but has the really good 5-cost Reap at level 2 that you can build a team composition around. Pick Death and then find a domain to compensate for its weaknesses (one with better Piety and good 9 and 11 costs).
• Fate: Not the strongest, but has abilities I enjoy. Blessing of Fate and Destiny is excellent.
• Creation: Getting the Creation prayer effect where you make a wall feels more fun than it probably should.

General Principles

If you pick a C-tier rider domain, compensate by pairing it with an S-tier or A-tier rider. Two C-tier riders together can be tough. Look at each domain’s strengths and weaknesses across Piety riders, prayer effects, heroic abilities, and domain features, then mix and match to cover the gaps.

Closing Thoughts

That’s the Conduit in full. A holy caster that carries your team’s healing and cleansing needs almost singlehandedly through Healing Grace, generates heroic resource at an unmatched pace through its domain rider system and Prayer, and uses its remaining action economy to drop devastating control spells, team-wide buffs, and variance-controlling effects.

The class has two standout strengths that, in my opinion, push it beyond what’s balanced: the HR generation tempo (especially with S-tier domain riders like Love + Trickery) and the sheer efficiency of Healing Grace as a maneuver. These are the two reasons I’ve been saying MCDM should consider giving the Conduit a nerf.

But don’t let my balance concerns kill your enjoyment. This is a blast to play. There are tons of cool things this class can do, from creative Font of Wrath positioning to devastating round-1 Fear the Gods openers to the satisfying feeling of completely erasing a Director’s best-laid plans with a single Healing Grace dump.

My recommendation: Love + Trickery domains. Take Blessed Light as your bread-and-butter signature and Lightfall as your niche pick. Start with Font of Wrath or Violence Will Not Aid Thee at 3 Piety, and Corruption’s Curse or Faith Is Our Armor at 5. Build around your S-tier riders, cast early, and snowball. If you make it to level 10, enjoy the 15-square slides.

The next class in this series will be the Elementalist. Stay tuned.