Draw Steel Conduit Guide

Introduction

The Conduit uses the power of their deity (or saint) to bless their allies and curse their foes. Most deities have four domains, which you can draw power from two of. Together these two domains determine most of the features for how the Conduit develops.

For each choice I've assigned a star rating based on how powerful I think the option is and how often it will be useful, as well as a short explanation.

Base Features

The heroic resource Piety fuels the Conduit's abilities. The amount of Piety you gain at the start of your turn can be increased by praying, which might either damage you or activate the Prayer effect of one of your domains. Generally, you should be praying every round until you think you can end the encounter safely with the amount of Piety you have.

The domains also add specific events that will give you more Piety the first time they happen in a combat. All these factors together can allow you to gain a massive amount of Piety the first round of a combat, letting you activate your most impactful abilities much faster.

Healing Grace is the maneuver for the Conduit class and is an extremely efficient healing and condition ending tool, but you'll likely want to find something that helps end the combat faster with your maneuver when this isn't necessary.

Of the two triggered actions you have to choose between I prefer Word of Guidance. Word of Judgment is a good ability against a single large attack, especially if you spend a piety on it, but there's situations where it won't be very impactful and it only works on one target of an aoe. Alternatively, Word of Guidance will give its buff to an entire aoe ability and is easier to make sure you'll get value out of.

The Conduit class has a lot of buffs they can apply that last until the end of an encounter. The "Piety Outside of Combat" rules technically let you activate these for free outside of combat with a five-minute duration, which can make them a lot better if you can accurately predict when a combat will start. Some directors might not like how much Piety you can cheat by pre-buffing for large combats, so you might want to talk about it before taking advantage of these rules.

Prayers

It's kind of weird how these options are called prayers, but domains also have prayer effects. Surely they could have called one of them "favors" to prevent confusing the two.

Prayer of Destruction ★★★☆☆ +1 damage is such a small bonus that it's hard to say it ever makes a significant difference. The Conduit gets a lot of good area abilities which could add up to a lot of +1 bonuses.

Prayer of Distance ★★☆☆☆ All of your ranged abilities except the War Domain's 6th level ability have a range of 10. Bumping this number to 12 is irrelevant in the majority of circumstances.

Prayer of Soldier's Skill ★★☆☆☆ Just worse than the Prayer of Steel unless you really want a light armor/weapon treasure, and if that happens you can just switch later. Technically your director could say that you can't Imbue Armor unless you take this prayer, but considering imbuing clothing is an option I consider this a silly ruling.

Prayer of Speed ★★☆☆☆ Mobility can be nice, but this isn't really a huge bonus to it and you're a ranged class anyway.

Prayer of Steel ★★★★☆ This is a lot of stamina at level 1 and can make the difference between dying immediately or getting to your turn to spend your recoveries at every level.

Wards

Bastion Ward ★★★☆☆ Often it will be better to remove a saving throw effect in advance with "Healing Grace", but you can do something funny with this, the Sun Domain, and any ancestry that improves your saving throws for a total chance to pass a saving throw of 80%.

Quickness Ward ★★★☆☆ During ambushes or similar encounters that start at close quarters you can use this to try to gain a lot of distance quickly. I think it doesn't do much as you can usually just disengage, but none of these wards are super impactful.

Sanctuary Ward ★★★★☆ If you're being specifically harried by assassin type enemies this could force them to find a new target, which has some good tactical utility.

Spirit Ward ★★★★☆ This isn't a lot of damage, but it works well with damage weakness, which you can force to happen by provoking an opportunity attack.

Ancestries

I'm not going to run through every Ancestry you can take, just point out any that are interesting for the Conduit for some specific reason.

There are so many viable ways to build your character that it's hard to give an objective star rating to these options, so most of these get a high rating for being any good at all.

Dragon Knight ★★★☆☆ The two abilities you can get can help you achieve the Domain Piety from some combination of Creation/Nature/Storm/Sun. I just don't consider these abilities any good.

Wode Elf ★★★★☆ The Conduit doesn't have many good melee abilities so being able to shift in difficult terrain can be pretty good to avoid taking a bane on your ranged attacks.

Human ★★★★☆ Also ignores certain kinds of difficult terrain and can take a maneuver to supplement the times you don't have a good use for "Healing Grace".

Polder ★★★★★ Ignoring all difficult terrain is even better than the Wode Elf/Human versions, and Shadowmeld is a great way to keep yourself safe when you don't otherwise need your maneuver. A Creation Domain Conduit has access to two summons you can control while shadowmelded.

Ability Choices

Signature Abilities

Blessed Light ★★★★★ Most abilities that generate surges require a heroic resource to use. This does so at a good rate, on a ranged ability that deals good damage, and any Shadow on your team will love you.

Drain ★★☆☆☆ One of the only melee abilities the Conduit gains access to, but most of the time you can just shift out of melee or use the "Quickness Ward" to do so for free. Allowing an ally to spend a recovery is not a good benefit when you can just use "Healing Grace" to do so anyway. As a melee ability "Staggering Curse" is just better.

Holy Lash ★★★★☆ Great damage if you can pull a creature into another, or into the air if they're far enough away. The Storm Domain especially likes the pull ability.

Lightfall ★★★☆☆ A low damage burst area ability isn't really what you want on your ranged character that has a lot of other good aoe options. The short-range teleport is okay as a disengage and to remove the prone, grabbed, and restrained conditions from any of your team in the area.

Sacrificial Offer ★★★☆☆ The damage isn't impressive, and neither is the bane. Can be cute with "Word of Judgment" to impose a double bane without having to spend a Piety.

Staggering Curse ★★★☆☆ Similar to "Drain", there's still no reason to be in melee with an enemy, but it is a noticeably better ability.

Warrior's Prayer ★★★★☆ The extra benefit of adding temporary stamina is a decent way to add extra value over time, but I think the surges from "Blessed Light" are better. Protection domain can take this as the way to gain their bonus Piety.

Wither ★★☆☆☆ This ability deals slightly more damage than "Sacrificial Offer" but is noticeably worse at what it intends to do. Requiring passing a potency isn't very reliable, and the target can try waste the bane on a less important power roll using a maneuver, whereas with "Sacrificial Offer" you get to choose the most impactful time to apply an incoming bane.

3-Piety Ability

Call the Thunder Down ★★★★☆ There are a lot of area abilities in the Conduit class, but this still has its niche as a solid low-cost option. Really needs to stack some damage/force push bonuses to stay relevant at higher levels, such as from the Storm or Sun Domain. 

Font of Wrath ★★☆☆☆ Super low damage but can be used as an area control tool from enemies not being able to move through it. Only really useful against melee enemies in corridor combat, and in a tactical, forced movement-based system like Draw Steel, corridor combat isn't very interesting.

Judgment's Hammer ★★★★☆ This is nice as a pseudo-dazed condition. A lot of strong enemies have good maneuvers they'd prefer to use rather than standing up, and a melee focused enemy who can't stand up is much easier to kite.

Violence Will Not Aid Thee ★★★★☆ Can stack up to a lot of damage in some situations. Pretty easy to get two triggers by the target making a triggered attack on one of your turns, and then again during its own turn. Some creatures deal damage automatically when struck, which depending on the number of allies you have can really add up to a lot of triggers. The best way to take advantage of damage weakness as a Conduit.

5-Piety Ability

Corruption's Curse ★★★★☆ Damage weakness is always welcome. The Conduit can't easily take advantage of it in the same turn you apply it, but if you time it right it could last a while. Might is a hard potency to target, so something like the War domain to gain surges can help.

Curse of Terror ★★★☆☆ Not as much damage as "Violence Will Not Aid Thee", but frightened is good against melee enemies. The 3rd level ability "Fear of the Gods" is an aoe version for only 2 more Piety, which makes this ability look much worse.

Faith Is Our Armor ★★★★★ I actually really like this ability. It only costs a maneuver; which the Conduit doesn't always have a good use for. Preserves recoveries for long adventuring days, and it can always be useful, in a class with a lot of situational abilities.

Sermon of Grace ★☆☆☆☆ To be more Piety efficient than "Healing Grace" there needs to be 4 allies in the area who all have a condition to end. Even then this costs a main action instead of a maneuver, and can't even end the dazed condition as it prevents the target from taking free triggered actions.

7-Piety Ability

Fear of the Gods ★★★★★ This ability singlehandedly shapes how I view all other options for the Conduit. A 5 cube can hit a lot of creatures, the damage is good even if it were a single target ability, and it applies a condition that can cripple any melee enemies in the area. All of your Domain's bonus Piety should be to make sure you can use this ability as soon as possible.

Saint's Raiment ★★★☆☆ "Faith Is Our Armor" should give substantially more temporary stamina than this. It's still a fine ability, and the surges can help an ally apply an important condition, but mostly this is just too expensive and overlaps poorly.

Soul Siphon ★☆☆☆☆ Letting an ally spend any number of recoveries is usually a max of 3, and only when they're already dying. A conduit can do this with their maneuver for only 2 Piety. The damage of the ability is decent, but really not enough to make up for the poor effect.

Words of Wrath and Grace ★★☆☆☆ This ability is unique as I get to compare it unfavorably to "Fear of the Gods" and "Healing Grace" at the same time. A 5 burst is a huge range but practically isn't going to be much better than a 5 cube, and for way less damage. It's kind of fine if for some reason you need to do a low damage aoe and a small amount of healing at the same time.

9-Piety Ability

Beacon of Grace ★☆☆☆☆ Pretty similar to "Soul Siphon". At least this one discounts your "Healing Grace" Piety expenditure for the entire encounter, but if you're in a large enough encounter that this ends up being a good refund, you should just use an aoe or a value over time ability.

Penance ★★☆☆☆ This ability deals less damage, in a smaller area, with a weaker condition, and costs more Piety, than "Fear of the Gods". Good otherwise.

Sanctuary ★★★☆☆ Removing an ally from the encounter map is an interesting benefit, which could allow them to dodge some dangerous area abilities. Pretty similar to the Trickery Domain feature "Trinity of Trickery" but with less of a guarantee to actually be useful.

Vessel of Retribution ★★★★☆ This is really strange wording, surely it should be "the next time" instead of "the first time". Regardless, a guaranteed 15 damage aoe as a maneuver is actually really efficient.

11-Piety Ability

Arise! ★★☆☆☆ Even the most heavily debuffed ally would likely only get about 5 Piety worth of "Healing Grace" value out of this, and as a surge generation method "Blessing of the Blade" is much better.

Blessing of Steel ★★★★☆ This can save a lot of stamina in a long combat, as solo monsters and villains often deal damage multiple times a turn. Forced movement damage will also be lowered which prevents one of the major downsides of grouping up. Damage immunity doesn't stack, so in some situations or party comps this will be a lot less good.

Blessing of the Blade ★★★★☆ This gives a lot of surges very quickly and lasts for the whole encounter. Great to easily bump potencies on future turns or is just a lot of extra damage per turn.

Drag the Unworthy ★★☆☆☆ You should have much better things to do with this much Piety than just a decently damaging attack. Save a bunch of Piety by using a signature ability and "Healing Grace" instead.

Domains

Each of your two domains adds a way to gain Piety. At 1st, 4th, and 7th level you choose one of your domains to gain a feature from, while you gain the other domain's feature one level later. At 2nd, 6th, and 9th level you choose one of your domains to gain the heroic ability from.

If you've read my Censor guide, most of the domain features will be the same. Any differences within the 1st, 4th, and 7th level features will be pointed out in blue.

The overall rating given to a domain is weighted by how early it receives its most useful features, and could change if you are starting your character at a higher level.

Creation

Domain Piety ★★★★★ In a group combat one of your team will want to use an area ability, while in a solo combat the enemy should have an area ability. Pretty automatic.

Domain Prayer ★★★★☆ Creating cover, blocking off enemies, or making sure there's something to push an enemy into are all good effects. Try not to roll this too many times or the battlefield will look like hell.

1st Level Feature - Hands of the Maker ★☆☆☆☆ With no wealth or encumbrance to juggle there's no real reason to be without anything this feature could create.

4th Level Feature - Improved Hands of the Maker ★★☆☆☆ The larger size means there are some items that become relevant to create, but it's still largely irrelevant to Draw Steel's heroic fantasy.

7th Level Feature - Divine Quartermaster ★★★★★ This feature prints project points for free. Consumables are the obvious choice, making one fight every adventure much easier, or even using scrolls of resurrection between adventures. At 8th level you can create 4th Echelon consumables, while at 9th you can bring along any leveled treasure you like to suit what you expect to fight. Insane.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Statue of Power ★★☆☆☆ Similar to the 3-Piety ability "Font of Wrath", which isn't a favorable comparison. Gives you a nice piece of terrain for your enemies to smash you against, and the surge gain is pretty slow. At least it's only a maneuver.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Gods' Machine ★★★☆☆ This has poor up-front value, but it gives you access to a reliably okay maneuver. Leaving a 50 stamina body around can help prevent damage to your team, if it doesn't just get taken out with area abilities. With no stability and limited movement, it can be hard to get it into position. Ideally, you could activate it out of combat for free and just roll it into the encounter location.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Divine Dragon ★★★☆☆ In combat you can replace your own turns with this dragon friend for a while. Unfortunately, the maneuver it has only moves the dragon or uses the claw attack which can be very awkward, and the main action isn't anything special. The main use you get out of this is probably to just summon it before combat so you can dramatically fly in.

Overall ★★★☆☆ If you're going to get to 7th level you could take this domain just for "Divine Quartermaster", the Piety and Prayer effect are good enough that you won't feel too sad about it. Your other Domain will hopefully have better heroic abilities.

Death

Domain Piety ★★★☆☆ Pretty dependant on encounter design. In solo encounters or those with just 2 or 3 larger creatures this can take a long time to trigger, which is when you want it the fastest.

Domain Prayer ★★★☆☆ When you manage to roll a prayer effect you'll probably want to choose something more impactful than a little extra damage, but it's a fine baseline for taking out a couple minions.

1st Level Feature - Grave Speech ★★★☆☆ Solid information gathering ability.

4th Level Feature - Seance ★★★☆☆ Costs a respite activity, but still great for information.

7th Level Feature - Word of Death Deferred ★★★☆☆ The largest benefit here is the extra damage to winded creatures. The Conduit isn't great at doing damage multiple times a turn, so this is hard to make great use of.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Reap ★★★☆☆ This can get a lot of healing out of killing minions. The problem is that you shouldn't be going into combat wounded and minions should be the first to die, so it's a hard one to make use of.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Aura of Souls ★★☆☆☆ This kind of works as a value over time aoe option, but aura abilities aren't great for the Conduit, and you should just use all this Piety for a real aoe.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Word of Final Redemption ★★★★☆ Being able to use Malice abilities back at the enemies is awesome. A lot of non-minion enemy abilities will be better than what you could do otherwise with this Piety and won't even cost you any action. The biggest problem is finding an appropriate time to use this, as the enemy usually won't be able to move before taking its action.

Overall ★★☆☆☆ The Piety gain being inconsistent can really hurt your ability to power out your best abilities, and the rest of the features aren't enough to make up for it.

Fate

Domain Piety ★★★★★ This benefit just happens, regardless of anything else happening in the encounter, and you can even encourage it to happen with either of your triggered actions.

Domain Prayer ★★★★★ Forcing the best ability on your team to be tier 3 can really swing things in your favor by making sure an important effect happens.

1st Level Feature - Oracular Visions ★★★★☆ Depends on how many victories you expect to be able to gain in a row, at its best to easily turn an edge into a double edge.

4th Level Feature - Oracular Warning ★★★☆☆ At this level it should barely give a recovery worth of stamina to each character, but not needing to heal as much can make the first encounter much more efficient.

7th Level Feature - Word of Fate Denied ★★☆☆☆ Only useful if it stops someone from dying, or if your initiative order is bad somehow. Usually, "Healing Grace" should be able to solve any healing problems you ever have.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Blessing of Fate and Destiny ★★★★★ For those that are interested I've added a section called "Fate Math" at the bottom of the article. It's really good against solo encounters or once you trim a group to just it's elites, especially for adjusting crit probabilities which can swing combats wildly out of control.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Your Story Ends Here ★★☆☆☆ This is an okay high damage ability to dump Piety into, but weakened isn't the best status, and one of the 3 or 5 Piety single target abilities would probably be better.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Bend Fate ★☆☆☆☆ By this level, "Fate Math" shows that "Blessing of Fate and Destiny" can have close to this effect already. Which means this is just more expensive, less versatile, and fewer targets than the 2nd level version.

Overall ★★★★☆ The Piety, Prayer, and second level heroic ability are all enough to make this domain well worth taking. Really should be paired with a domain with good late game abilities.

Knowledge

Domain Piety ★★★★☆ Malice will be spent in an encounter, but sometimes the director will want to save up for a larger ability that might not happen until near the end of the second round, which is pretty late compared to how easy some of the others are.

Domain Prayer ★★★☆☆ Only giving out 1 surge isn't enough to let allies increase the potency of their abilities, so this benefit is just okay on its own.

1st Level Feature - Blessing of Comprehension ★★★☆☆ Not worrying about crafting languages gives a lot of freedom to take other character options and makes for a very versatile crafter.

4th Level Feature - Saint's Epiphany ★★★☆☆ An average of 8.5 extra project points per respite is a large bonus, but by now you should have followers helping you craft which means it's not as high a percentage increase as you'd expect.

7th Level Feature - Gods' Library ★★★★☆ Ignoring research materials means you can craft echelon four treasures early, and 12 skills is a lot to gain. Director dependant on how useful these benefits are.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - The Gods Command You Obey ★★★★★ Creatures can't generally target themselves with their own attacks, but there's so many strong abilities that you could force a creature to use against its allies that this will end up being a lot of damage, which even scales with how strong the enemies get.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Invocation of Undoing ★★★★☆ This actually does pretty comparable damage to "Fear of the Gods", and if you can throw objects into your enemies even more. Doubles as an anti-assassin button.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Word of Weakening ★★★★☆ This is basically the 5 Piety ability "Corruption's Curse", just double the cost for double the effectiveness. By this point you probably really need a single target ability to dump your Piety into, so this is pretty good!

Overall ★★★★☆ Consistently gains decent features, and all of its heroic abilities being useable means it can pair with any other domain effectively.

Life

Domain Piety ★★★★☆ It's easy to regain stamina, the problem is giving up the action economy to take an action that does "nothing". Ideally most of the healing you do in a fight is in one burst from your "Healing Grace" maneuver, which normally won't have to happen until round two. Some abilities make this easier to achieve quickly, in a variety of classes.

Domain Prayer ★★☆☆☆ The first mode of this prayer is largely irrelevant as your "Healing Grace" maneuver can do all of this anyway. The temporary stamina is slightly better to generate a little extra value, but the Love Domain prayer does it a lot better.

1st Level Feature - Revitalizing Ritual ★★☆☆☆ Much worse than in the Censor class, as each character has to use their own recoveries when targeted by "Healing Grace". A better percentage improvement at higher levels.

4th Level Feature - Blessing of Life ★★★★☆ At least +3 to every recovery on the team instead of just one person.

7th Level Feature - Font of Grace ★★★☆☆ Saving a Piety on each of your uses of "Healing Grace" is fine, not super relevant normally.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Wellspring of Grace ★☆☆☆☆ So much worse than just spending your Piety on "Healing Grace". Super slow, costs your main action, and provides no value.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Revitalizing Grace ★☆☆☆☆ If each target can spend 2 recoveries and end an effect it takes about 4 targets to start being better than just using "Healing Grace". Even then it costs your main action instead of a maneuver which is much worse.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Radiance of Grace ★☆☆☆☆ This ability can technically be more Piety efficient than "Healing Grace". It's like the 11 Piety ability "Arise!" but can hit 4 targets. The odds that 4 people need this much attention at once seems very low.

Overall ★★☆☆☆ The only redeeming feature of this domain is giving extra healing to your team's recoveries. Completely reliant on your other domain for a good Prayer effect and good heroic abilities.

Love

Domain Piety ★★★★★ Both of the starting triggered action options target an ally, making this an incredibly free way to gain Piety.

Domain Prayer ★★★☆☆ At early levels this is a surprisingly good way to save healing resources, but as enemies get better at dealing damage it becomes less relevant, and you're not going to have the opportunity to activate it too often.

1st Level Feature - Blessing of Compassion ★★★☆☆ The extra patience can be essential to achieving your negotiation goals. Everything else isn't amazing.

4th Level Feature - Invocation of the Heart ★★☆☆☆ Great roleplay ability.

7th Level Feature - Covenant of the Heart ★★★☆☆ This is basically a get out of jail free card. Can be used for scouting or making sure you don't party wipe, but generally it would be better to have an ability that helps you win the fight.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Our Hearts Your Strength ★★★☆☆ If you're in a large party of say, at least five characters then this is a good bonus to set up. It's good that it's only a maneuver, but you can't use the bonus damage the turn you activate it. In a large party I'd usually prefer to just use "Corruption's Curse" at the right time for damage weakness, but the damage bonus is great for your aoe abilities.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Lauded by God ★★★★☆ Between praying and Domain Piety the Conduit creates a lot of its heroic resource very fast. Being able to give some of this to other characters is convenient if their abilities are better suited to the encounter than yours, or to give two people at once enough of their resource to use their most impactful abilities. It's similar to the 9th level feature "Faith's Sword" but more efficient.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Alacrity of the Heart ★★★☆☆ Basically costs 8 Piety to turn your maneuver into someone else's main action. This is a pretty expensive deal, but it is an effective use of your maneuver and can let your allies do some powerful combos.

Overall ★★★☆☆ Really leans into being a support-based class. Can easily get a lot of Piety before their first turn to activate their best ability asap.

Nature

Domain Piety ★★★★☆ There are plenty of ways to deal damage with these damage types within the Censor class, and you can even double dip with the sun class to get all of your Domain Piety out of just fire damage.

Domain Prayer ★★★☆☆ The slide can be interesting for positioning enemies in your aoe abilities, but this effect is too small and spread out for most levels.

1st Level Feature - Faithful Friend ★★☆☆☆ The rules for the spirit aren't very clear about what it can actually do, so this mostly depends on the director. Some of the more obvious uses of the spirit are for flanking or the aid attack maneuver, which the conduit won't get great use out of.

4th Level Feature - Wode Road ★★★☆☆ Having a teleportation network is super cool and can be used to retreat and quickly return to out of the way dungeons.

7th Level Feature - Nature's Bounty ★★★★☆ Damage immunity is a huge benefit if you can accurately predict what you'll be fighting next, and temporary stamina is a good baseline regardless.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Nature Judges Thee ★★☆☆☆ Really low damage unless you get a tier 3 result, but it's a strong aoe condition against melee creatures. Unfortunately, "Call the Thunder Down" is a similar option that costs less Piety, and "Fear of the Gods" is a much better option that you can take next level.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Spirit Stampede ★★★★☆ Because of how lines work this is an extremely versatile area to place, often much harder to spread out to avoid than cube abilities. Deals a good amount of damage, and the condition can really mess with certain enemies.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Thorn Cage ★★★★☆ The amount of damage this can do is pretty variable depending on who goes first and whether the saving throw passes. It's not great for solo monsters, but there's a good chance that it can disable an important target in a group combat for a while.

Overall ★★★☆☆ Mostly a consideration because of the strong late game options, but I think other domains do it better.

Protection

Domain Piety ★★★★★ There's a lot of good ways to trigger this. Your allies could have triggered actions that reduce damage, or you could take "Warrior's Prayer". But you should probably take "Word of Judgment" even if you have other ways to trigger it, which I'd be a little sad about.

Domain Prayer ★★★☆☆ When you don't need a different Prayer effect this is a fine way to generate value on the squishiest party member.

1st Level Feature - Protective Circle ★★★☆☆ Strong defensive tool only if you can set up beforehand.

4th Level Feature - Impervious Touch ★☆☆☆☆ Already extremely situational and only works on untyped damage. Doesn't even do what it's supposed to.

7th Level Feature - Blessing of Iron ★★☆☆☆ Only works against strikes and has a rather small range, which is even worse for the Conduit who shouldn't be very close to melee. A bane isn't even that big of a downside considering enemies can't miss.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Sacred Bond ★★☆☆☆ Making it easier to spend recoveries isn't very good when your maneuver is all about easily spending recoveries. Kind of useful if you're very squishy and bad at avoiding damage and you want to make this your tanks problem.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Cuirass of the Gods ★★☆☆☆ At 8th level you can take "Blessing of Steel" which has this effect until end of encounter and could affect your whole party instead of just three targets. It can block a lot of damage in the right situation but using an aoe and/or applying a condition is likely to be more effective.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Blessing of the Fortress ★★☆☆☆ This ability has the problem of being too binary in whether it's useful. In most combats the enemy should have competent ranged options, and the first time you single handedly solve a combat with this ability will probably also be the last.

Overall ★★☆☆☆ The Domain Piety is great, but everything else about this domain is pretty terrible.

Storm

Domain Piety ★★★★★ Forced movement is one of the main mechanics of Draw Steel, and a lot of strong abilities are all about forcing movement. Very easy.

Domain Prayer ★★★★☆ At low level this is an extremely relevant amount of aoe damage for dealing with minion groups, but usually only at the beginning of combat, so it is pretty luck based how useful this ends up.

1st Level Feature - Bless of Fortunate Weather ★★★☆☆ This would be a lot better if it weren't locked to one weather condition for the entire respite, but there's enough utility here to be interesting.

4th Level Feature - Windwalk ★★☆☆☆ By the time you have five victories you're generally either desperately needing a respite or very close to. I don't see this being useful when you need it to be.

7th Level Feature - Thunderstruck ★★★★☆ This ability has a new name and a noticeably different effect to the Censor feature, which makes sense as the Conduit is much better at area abilities. The extra force move distance can add a lot of damage to abilities such as "Call the Thunder Down". The surge gain isn't very noticeable, but nice for the occasional potency bump.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Saint's Tempest ★★★☆☆ Like "Call the Thunder Down" but slightly better and more expensive. But if you're wanting a better aoe it's probably better to wait even longer and take the 3rd level ability "Fear of the Gods" and/or the 6th level ability "Lightning Lord".

6th Level Heroic Ability - Lightning Lord ★★★★★ Placing three separate 10 x 1 lines can hit a wide variety of formations of enemies. Once you get your 7th level feature this will be an amazing push ability as well as doing good damage, really tearing holes through any groups of enemies.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Godstorm ★★★★☆ Summoning the Godstorm is a rather bad turn that gives you access to a rather good maneuver for the rest of the combat. Passively gains surges from "Thunderstruck" and deals a lot of damage over time with some "bonus to rolled damage" buffs.

Overall ★★★★☆ The Piety and Prayer effect carry this domain into the 3rd echelon where it becomes incredible at dealing forced movement based aoe. Your second domain probably wants to have a more consistent Prayer effect, and a 2nd level heroic ability that overlaps less with the rest of your kit.

Sun

Domain Piety ★★★★☆ Dealing holy damage is a simple task for the Conduit so you can always activate this yourself. Generally, I would prefer not to need to use my action to activate the Piety gain so that I can use it on a high Piety cost ability instead, so this isn't my favorite option.

Domain Prayer ★★★☆☆ Not an amazing amount of damage to deal to a single target, but it is a hilarious high roll for Nature/Sun Domain Conduits as a Prayer that gives them all of their Domain Piety.

1st Level Feature - Inner Light ★★★☆☆ Save ends abilities range from minor annoyances to crippling debuffs. Being more likely to pass them is convenient, but often it's better to remove them in advance with the Piety upgrade of "Healing Grace".

4th Level Feature - Light of Revelation ★★★☆☆ Useful against certain kinds of enemies, but hidden creatures will often be outside of the range anyway. The search bonuses are nice.

7th Level Feature - Light of the Burning Sun ★★★★☆ Undead are already easily countered by the Disrupting imbue, but the 5 extra fire damage is good for the Censor's much better area abilities. The fire immunity stacking with other sources is uniquely useful.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Morning Light ★★☆☆☆ It's a good amount of area damage, but being short range is bad. You'd prefer to be at range, and it means the group you're targeting has likely already taken it's turn which is much less efficient. If you wait another level, you could instead take the much better aoe option "Fear of the Gods".

6th Level Heroic Ability - Blessing of the Midday Sun ★★☆☆☆ This is similar to the 2nd level War Domain ability but for almost double the cost. The 8th level ability "Blessing of the Blade" does mostly the same thing but for triple the surges. Generally outclassed.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Solar Flare ★★★★☆ This is a good amount of extra damage over "Fear of the Gods" which can be important for one shotting minion groups. Not coming with a condition is sad and might not be worth the extra 4 Piety, but it has its place.

Overall ★★★☆☆ The best part of this domain comes at 7th level and makes sure your area abilities will deal plenty of damage. This is a great benefit which makes it quite unfortunate how full of holes the rest of it is.

Trickery

Domain Piety ★★☆☆☆ Neither of these maneuvers are what I'd call normal to use in a combat outside of specific builds. Great to have with most Shadow builds.

Domain Prayer ★★★★☆ Quite a versatile effect, can deal good damage by sliding enemies into each other, or send a strong melee enemy far away.

1st Level Feature - Inspired Deception ★★☆☆☆ A good amount of Intrigue skills are already Intuition checks. This lets you skip on putting points in Agility if you want, but Agility is good for reducing fall damage. Won't make you anywhere near as universally good at skills as it would the Censor.

4th Level Feature - Blessing of Secrets ★★★☆☆ Depends on the director how effective sneaking is in a given campaign. Theoretically strong to surprise enemies easily.

7th Level Feature - Trinity of Trickery ★★★★☆ A maneuver that stops two abilities from hitting is quite efficient, and the free triggered switching of places means you can make sure it isn't wasted on minion attacks.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Divine Comedy ★☆☆☆☆ This effect is awkward because if something is within 5 of you, it's probably also in melee with you. You can try to stagger yourself with your allies to make this have some tactical application, but even then, spending 5 Piety for such a minor effect is going to be a terrible investment.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Invocation of Mystery ★★☆☆☆ Becoming invisible does very little unless you subsequently also use the hide maneuver. Even if your team does become properly hidden from this, there's a good chance an enemy can find at least one of you by searching for hidden creatures as a maneuver. The only reason this isn't one star is that you can technically use it out of combat to surprise or hide from enemies.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Night Falls ★★☆☆☆ Darkness gives concealment, which applies a bane to incoming strike abilities and can be used to hide. Permanently giving your team this option is okay, but having to do it within a single 5 cube means you will be easily hit be area abilities anyway.

Overall ★☆☆☆☆ There's too many things missing from this domain. If you have a Shadow on the team making use of the hide maneuver it might be two stars, but it just doesn't contribute much of anything.

War

Domain Piety ★★★★★ The Censor doesn't have a lot of abilities that will consistently trigger this, but your allies should, and any of the stronger enemies for your level.

Domain Prayer ★★★★★ Better than the similar Knowledge domain feature as gaining 2 surges doesn't require any other payoff to be able to increase potency immediately. Could also help make sure you gain the extra Domain Piety.

1st Level Feature - Sanctified Weapon ★★☆☆☆ I'm not very impressed by a +1 damage modifier, and it costs a respite activity to do so. Better if you can find good multi target weapon abilities.

4th Level Feature - Improved Sanctified Weapon ★★★☆☆ +3 is a much more reasonable bonus to grant as a respite activity. I'm still unhappy about the opportunity cost but at least it's a noticeable bonus.

7th Level Feature - Your Triumphs Are Remembered ★★★☆☆ Having your first victory without spending any resources can snowball into greater benefits overall, but at the same time it's not very impressive.

2nd Level Heroic Ability - Blessing of Insight ★★★★☆ This can easily hit your entire team and can add a lot of value to a long combat. Great that all of the surges are given out at the end of your turn, and that it only costs a maneuver. A bit unfortunate how long it takes for you to obtain 2 surges from this so you can bump a potency.

6th Level Heroic Ability - Blade of the Heavens ★★★★★ One of the best single target abilities the Conduit gets, a creature with both of these conditions will be extremely disadvantaged and will still be stuck prone even if they save against the restrained. Notably awful against an enemy that can teleport.

9th Level Heroic Ability - Righteous Phalanx ★★★★★ Does a guaranteed 15 damage in a versatile area. It's quite easy to get the damage again every round through forced movement and applying conditions, so this can be an amazing ability to set up even in solo encounters.

Overall ★★★★★ The features aren't great, but all the rest are some of the best options available within their category, letting War pair well with any Domain it wants really.

Deities and Saints

The Conduit's choice of which patron to follow effects which domains they are allowed to choose from, so to build the kind of character you want to create, you also need to follow an appropriate patron. I decided this section was necessary to give a simple explanation of each major deity and the kind of builds available to them.

Among the default deities of Orden there are several domain combinations not represented, especially as a few of these combinations are represented only within evil deities, which typically do not work well in a cooperative heroic fantasy such as Draw Steel. Most of the saints in the cosmology of Orden only have two domains, so I won't be talking about them unless they add something of value to the discussion.

The only not-explicitly-evil way to access the Death domain is by following Kuryalka, the hellish saint of ambition. Fate can only match under a good patron with Knowledge, Protection, Storm, Sun, or Trickery.

Love has no way of matching with Knowledge, Nature, Storm, or Trickery.
Nature can't pair with Trickery or War.
Storm also can't pair with Protection, Trickery, or War.

A pairing I was hoping to see available is the Love and Storm domains. The Love 2nd level ability can give a large bonus to rolled damage, which would make the Storm 9th level ability deal good damage on all of its activations. You can set up both in the same turn for the low, low cost of 16 Piety.

Adûn

God of strength, hard work, and truth.

Domains: Creation, Life, Love, Protection.

Builds: These domains don't have amazing heroic abilities to take and are very support focused. Love has the most viable 2nd level heroic ability, and could pair with Life to go full support, or with Creation for much better late game abilities.

Cavall

God of law and justice.

Domains: Life, Love, Protection, War.

Builds: War is the best domain here by far, and none of the others will contribute too much. Life has a good 4th level feature, while Love has better bonus Piety.

Cyrvis

Evil god of magic and revenge.

Domains: Death, Fate, Knowledge, Trickery.

Builds: The best combo this evil god has going for it is Fate and Knowledge, which is also available to OV the Wave Pilot. Fate has great early game features, and Knowledge has the heroic abilities it needs later.

Kul

Orc god of flames and the forge.

Domains: Knowledge, Life, Sun, Trickery, War.

Builds: Knowledge or War could both use the Sun domain for its amazing 7th level feature. War has the better heroic abilities and Prayer effect, but Knowledge has the better features that are very flavorful for a crafting focused Orc Conduit worshipping the Lord of the Forge. Taking Knowledge and War together is a waste of potential as they are very similar, but they're both good so it's a fine combination.

Nebular the Star Mother

Goddess of creation, life and suns. Seems to roam around the Timescape creating galaxies.

Domains: Creation, Life, Love, Sun.

Builds: This is the only patron that lets you take Love and Sun together. It's not a bad combination; they cover each other's weaknesses and give you a solid suite of supportive and offensive capabilities.

Nikros

Evil god of strength and tyranny.

Domains: Death, Fate, Storm, War.

Builds: War can only be paired with Storm or Fate by patroning Nikros. War and Storm overlap each other poorly so don't really add much to each other, but Fate can use the late game War abilities extremely well while providing great base Domain features.

Ord

Dwarven god of honor, courage, and creation. Created Orden along with his siblings.

Domains: Creation, Knowledge, Protection, Sun, War.

Builds: Ord has access to a lot of great domain options. The combinations of Sun, Knowledge, and War have already been talked about from Kul. Creation can do a similar thing by providing a great 7th level feature to the solid baseline of Knowledge or War. Ord is the only patron who can combine Creation and War this way, but there are several options to take Creation/Knowledge.

OV the Wave Pilot

God of navigators and safe passage. Embodies the energy that is used for timescape travel.

Domains: Fate, Knowledge, Storm, Sun.

Builds: Knowledge or Fate are the best domains to pair Storm with for their amazing 2nd level ability and are unavailable otherwise (you could take Fate/Storm with an evil deity). Fate/Sun is also only available with OV but really misses out on having a good 6th level heroic ability.

Salorna

Goddess of Nature

Domains: Life, Nature, Storm, Sun.

Builds: None of these domains have great 2nd level heroic abilities, but Sun/Storm gets both of the 7th level features for making amazing area abilities. Apart from one saint this is the only patron that can take Nature/Storm, which is interesting as its bonus Piety can fully refund an early casting of "Call the Thunder Down". Nature/Sun can also get all of its bonus Piety out of just fire damage, but the Conduit isn't great at doing this for themselves until they get the Sun 7th level feature.

Val

Elvish god of art and beauty.

Domains: Creation, Knowledge, Life, Nature, Protection

Builds: Creation/Nature is a unique combination but doesn't have a good 2nd level heroic ability, while Knowledge/Nature is also unique but a lot more well-rounded.

Hakaan Saints

Instead of deities, Hakaan generally worship the great heroes of their kind. Three of these heroes are described as the saints of the Hakaan - Atossa the Shepherd, Mahsiti the Weaver, and Prexaspes the Stargazer.

Builds: Atossa's domains of Fate, Protection, and Trickery create three combinations not found on any good patrons, none of which are very good. Mahsiti uniquely has both Creation and Trickery, which also does very little.

The only decent combinations these saints can get are Mahsiti's Creation/Knowledge, or Prexaspes' Nature/Sun.

Fate Math

This section applies to the 2nd level Fate Domain heroic ability "Blessing of Fate and Destiny".

"Bad Fate" is 3d10 drop the highest. "Good Fate" is 3d10 drop the lowest. I used the website AnyDice to simulate the rolls, and hopefully I did the math right.

Percentage chances for each tier are formatted
Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3

For a regular roll with a +2 bonus
36% | 43% | 21%

For Bad Fate with a +2 bonus
62.2% | 30.9% | 6.9%

For Good Fate with a +2 bonus
15.4% | 42% | 42.6%

For a regular roll with a +5 bonus
15% | 40% | 45%

For Bad Fate with a +5 bonus
32.7% | 45.8% | 21.5%

For Good Fate with a +5 bonus
4.2% | 24.8% | 71%

Regular critical chance is 3%
Bad Fate critical chance is 0.4%
Good Fate critical chance 7.9%

Overall, Bad Fate approximately doubles the chance of a Tier 1 result and halves the chance of a Tier 3 result, while Good Fate does the opposite.