Get both versions of The Beastheart! The classic version we released for 5E and new version written from the ground up for Draw Steel.

About the Draw Steel version

The beastheart is the eleventh heroic class for Draw Steel, joining the summoner and the nine classes in Draw Steel: Heroes. When you play a beastheart, you actually get to play two characters: a wild beast and their (also pretty wild, honestly) humanoid companion.

Back in the day, MCDM published a 5E version of the beastheart. Our new Draw Steel beastheart is not a direct translation of that class—it’s more like a continuation of the conversation. You still control two characters, but we’ve leaned harder into the “beast” aspect of the beastheart: Rampage.

In battle, your beast becomes more and more riled up until they fly into a rampage and attack enemies and allies alike. Sure, you might accidentally bite some of your friends. But they won’t be too mad, because that friendly fire actually fuels the pain you’re dishing out to your enemies.

And in true Draw Steel fashion, your abilities get bigger and wilder as combat goes on. On turn one, your wolf, condor, lightbender, or other companion is a more or less ordinary beastie. By turn three or four, as their rampage grows, they cast aside their mortality and become a primordial avatar of destruction, towering above the battlefield like a kaiju or phasing through walls to gulp down enemy minions.

The beastheart’s a chunky class. It sits at the big kids’ table, joining the summoner as Draw Steel’s second master class. That means that it can break the rules a little. Like the summoner, the beastheart expects you to juggle more than one character at a time. And like the summoner, the beastheart plays with Draw Steel’s action economy. You and your faithful beast share a main action and a maneuver between you: while one of you spends
their main action on a traditional heroic ability, the other can unleash one of our many new beastheart maneuvers (a lot of which are pretty beefy attacks in their own right).

And of course, you get to pick a beast! We’ve got 14 companion species to start, ranging from the mundane (panther, wolf) to the fantastic (drake, lightbender, sporeling). Each species comes with its own bespoke powers and traits, and it earns new ones as it levels up. And just as the beast becomes more bestial, so does the beast’s partner: if you have a gummy ball companion, you can gain the ability to stretch like taffy, while a spider buddy can teach you to websling your way around the neighborhood.

About the 5E version

MCDM's Beastheart and Monstrous Companions codiﬁes the fantasy of adventuring alongside a wild companion. This supplement presents rules for companions: wild creatures that any character in your 5e game can befriend and bring along on adventures. They aren’t always easy to control, but having a basilisk bud is totally worth it.

The Beastheart class then builds on those rules, letting a character work in maximum harmony with a companion. This new class presents a hero who is never without their faithful friend, and who shares a supernatural bond with a companion that allows both to perform incredible feats fueled by primal power.

Monstrous Companions

In battle, your companion builds ferocity, a new resource they can spend to use special actions like Earthshaker, Slime Shower, and Owlie Oop. But beware: if your companion builds up too much ferocity, they can enter a rampage and might just attack you instead!

The Beastheart Class

The Beastheart is a brand-new class that uses the companion rules to create an adventurer with a wild partner. The Beastheart is presented with five new subclasses.

Extras

We've also added eight new magic items made for companions and their caregivers, and an original piece of fiction from Matt Colville, “The First Meeting”.

Product Details

Draw Steel Version: Full-color, bookmarked, and hyperlinked PDF; 46 pages. Includes a form-fillable Beastheart character sheet as a separate PDF.
Version: 1.0

5E Version: Full-color and black and white (grayscale), bookmarked, and hyperlinked PDF; 48 pages. Includes a form-fillable Beastheart character sheet as a separate PDF.
Version: 1.0