D&D General Solasta: Crown of the Magister reaches 1.0!

[MichaelSomething]

Solasta 2

In a Mana-infused land, a dark force led by the enigmatic Shadwyn threatens Neokos. Bring your party of adventurers together across perilous realms in Solasta II, a Turn-Based Tactical RPG based on the SRD 5e ruleset and developed by Tactical Adventures.

www.solasta-game.com

It's a computer game based off of the D&D SRD 5.1 and it's finally out of early access, meaning it's ready to be played by the masses!

EDIT: I forgot to check the weekly News Digest (News Digest for the Week of May 28) )before posting this! NO!!!

 

[GreyLord]

It's probably okay, it probably should have it's own thread...though maybe in the Geek talk and media forum.

I just downloaded it, haven't played it yet though.

 

[MNblockhead]

Looks like something that I might be interested in playing, but I'm not a fan of PC gaming. I much prefer sitting back with a controller and a dedicated gaming console. Also, currently, the only PC I have is my work laptop, which I obviously can't install games on. I suppose, I could run it in the Win 10 Arm preview I'm running in Parallels on on my Macbook, but I just don't enjoy gaming on laptops.

 

[Ixal]

It will be interesting to see if Solasta puts any pressure on Larian/BG3.
BG3 has faced continous criticism for deviating too much form 5E and that the changes Larian did made the game worse as they were not made in the spirit of the D&D combat system and rather try to cancel out features of it.
One often cited defence is that changes are necessary to adapt D&D to a video game and Solasta proves them wrong.

 

[Iry]

It will be interesting to see if Solasta puts any pressure on Larian/BG3.

I think they scratch different itches. One thing I love about Solasta is how fluid many of the actions are. Your characters automatically crawl under rubble, automatically push over rocks, automatically pick locks, etc. That's the kind of smooth gameplay I would love to see in BG3.

Likewise, BG3 obviously brings the story in a big way. Solasta was never advertised or tried to be an earthshattering story (though it has a perfectly serviceable one). BG3 also has pretty faces, compared to Solasta's Oblivion potatoes faces.

But I'm going to play them both. Play the heck out of them. They do different things, and I want it all!

 

[EthanSental]

I’m a few hours into Solasta, fun game so far.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I've purchased it, looking forward to playing it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Should just plug this, it is a very good, very faithful recreation of 5e 5-foot grid combat. I was in early access, and they even picked up on one of my suggestions!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It will be interesting to see if Solasta puts any pressure on Larian/BG3.
BG3 has faced continous criticism for deviating too much form 5E and that the changes Larian did made the game worse as they were not made in the spirit of the D&D combat system and rather try to cancel out features of it.
One often cited defence is that changes are necessary to adapt D&D to a video game and Solasta proves them wrong.

I've heard people say this, but they never seem to given any concrete examples. What are the specific things BG3 "unnecessarily changes"? I can only think of two changes and both are really signposted and intentional (the way Inspiration works, which ironically is more like how most groups us it in actual D&D, and optional RNG reduction thing, which defaults to off).

 

[Ixal]

I've heard people say this, but they never seem to given any concrete examples. What are the specific things BG3 "unnecessarily changes"? I can only think of two changes and both are really signposted and intentional (the way Inspiration works, which ironically is more like how most groups us it in actual D&D, and optional RNG reduction thing, which defaults to off).

Main complaint is that you get advantage when standing higher than the enemy, even just slightly, while the enemy has disadvantage. Likewise when you attack an enemy from behind you get advantage.

When you know how to play you will have advantage every turn for every attack and when you look at other changes like to the RNG generator and read the comments from Larian its obvious that they are not happy with all the random part of D&D and want to remove rolling and randomness as much as possible. That fits with them reducing AC and increasing HP instead (without compensating spellcasters who target HP instead of AC with certain spells)

Other changes include giving every character Cunning Action as disengage is a bonus action by default. As is jumping which also does not trigger any attacks. And so far no one could explain why those changes to the combat system have been made and what purpose they serve. Considering how much Larian likes jumping ( often with AoE effect in case of the minotaurs) it seems that Larian does not like typical D&D combat and would like a much more mobile jumping orgy.

The final complain is that Laria very often uses gotcha combats. Encounters which are very, very hard unless you figure out the gimmick of this combat Larian expects you to use, like burning down spiderwebs to make the spider fall down or shoving enemies down pits in which case the combats are very easy. And if you can't figure out the gimmick you still have items way above what you are supposed to have like tons of potions of speed and several applications of Wyvern Poison at level 3. And when all else fails, barrels.