KickStarter Solasta: Crown of the Magister Thread - now with Palace of Ice sequel DLC

[ERYFKRAD]

Munchkinism is in our blood

Bullshit.

 

[Reinhardt]

But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much?

you can select pronouns and with the help of fantastic face generator create true ma'am like you always wanted, so codexers are excited.

 

[Nortar]

Munchkinism is in our blood, so adding options that only cripple you just for role playing in a computer game goes against the human soul.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, RP is fun, but in tabletop where it actually matters. RP can in no way excuse bad mechanics in a computer game.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Yes, RP is fun, but in tabletop where it actually matters. RP can in no way excuse bad mechanics in a computer game.

You don't RP in IWD?

 

[Nortar]

Yes, RP is fun, but in tabletop where it actually matters. RP can in no way excuse bad mechanics in a computer game.

You make it sounds as if role-playing depends on game mechanics.
But it's not. RP can be done without any mechanics at all, just take Codex' larping for example.

And if you dislike or never use a particular game mechanic, it does not mean it's bad.
I don't remember another game where lighting was nearly as important as in Solasta.

Maybe some tactical options are not really necessary in the official campaigns, but give a try to community adventure modules.

Placing Dancing Lights next to enemy archers while yours stay in the darkness is very useful, life-saving even.
After starting the Morrows Deep I learned I can (and often - need to!) manualy cancel Light previously cast on my characters.

And there is more to verticality than just flying and ranged weapons.
Pushing enemies off ladders is extremely satisfying. Especially after they had spend round getting up there.

 

[Cryomancer]

RP can be done without any mechanics at all

Agreed but proper game mechanics can make the RP experience much better.

 

[gurugeorge]

I've been rather busy lately (family stuff mostly) so I'm somewhat late to this discussion. But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much? A disclamer: I acknowledge that the devs did implement some parts of 5E SRD more or less faithfully. Aside from that obvious fact, is there anything else good about Solasta?

I've only played the CotM campaign. Maybe LV is better but I doubt it. The game has too many fundamental flaws.

First of all, it's not even an RPG. It's a story-driven (to put it mildly) tactics game where combat essentially means using the same thing nearly all the time. Unless you are facing a dragon, the winning strategy is to turtle under the Spirit Guardians dome and focus fire enemies one by one in the usual order: spellcasters > weaklings > tough guys. If there is a choke point, use terrain/wall spells to abuse it. That's it.

Positioning somewhat matters in theory but doesn't in practice because story missions and encounters routinely force you to defend in an unfavorable spot (which is especially stupid when you're supposedly the ambushing side in a random encoutner). You can actually do something clever about positioning in certail optional fights and those are the only enjoyable ones.

It's not just combat though. Everything's really bad in Solasta. The setting is the laziest generic fantasy I've ever seen which is a bit of an achievement but not in a praiseworthy sense. I mean "Cataclysm", really? They couldn't even come up with a less generic name for the defining event. The story is "kill all the bad guys" completely on rails. There are no choices, no consequences and no free exploration. Adding insult to injury, right before the final mission a minor NPC basically lectured my party about knowing their place. Girl, you didn't have to. Your whole cardboard world had been giving us the same lecture for 60 hours.

The writing is the dumpster fire grade garbage, the dialogues are worse than NWN2 OC (I didn't think it was possible). Ironically, character models look like they were imported from NWN2 too almost 20 years later. I don't know why the devs are so insistent on all those close up cutscenes where your party just stands in a line. A typical cutscene in Solasta is ugly puppets standing in one place and spewing out horribly voice acted absolute nonsense one line at a time. Sometimes bad games at least have nice music, but this isn't the case.

Objectively, even Sword Coast Legends was a better game (just not really a D&D game) and that's coming from someone who played SCL once and would never play it again. Solasta is just a pile of trash. If you compare Solasta to an actually good tactics game (e.g. Knight's Tale), it'll be like a fight between a malnourished junkie and a heavyweight champion.

You make good points, but for example, there being a winning strategy in a d20 type of game - big whoop, they're all like that. The fun of these games is trying things out, and you can definitely try things out in the game, and most of the wizard wheezes that occur to you will work.

The encounter design does improve in Lost Valley, it's more like how the OC should have been in terms of the way it flows as a campaign, and the way the encounters are doled out. But sure, there's room for improvement.

I guess for me it's a lot to do with the way the UI is laid out and the way the game flows. The UI becomes kind of transparent in use, so you're more focused on the gameplay. Granted that will happen with any game after some time, but with games that use tiny icons you have to peer at, and a more traditional layout in the UI, they just take longer to get the muscle memory, whereas this goes down like butter to play.

And although I've never played any tabletop at all, far less 5e, it seems to me that the rules are streamlined in a good way. One certainly misses some of the intricacy of 2 and 3e, but on the other hand you do gain some in terms of flow and pacing. The game leans more into feeling like an adventure than like a plain series of encounters.

Story wise the OC is a bit generic "epic" but fun enough for a playthrough, the Lost Valley is more interesting and involves the factions more.

 

[rojay]

Yes, RP is fun, but in tabletop where it actually matters. RP can in no way excuse bad mechanics in a computer game.

And there is more to verticality than just flying and ranged weapons.
Pushing enemies off ladders is extremely satisfying. Especially after they had spend round getting up there.

Maybe Solasta doesn't do as good a job as KotC2 in demonstrating the "push enemy into bad thing" mechanic, but it's there if you know about it/care to use it.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

After 14 years, I'm of a mind to support a rule that we just instaban everyone who

- says something is or isn't an rpg
- is responsible for any line of posting that leads to discussion about whether something is an rpg

Reported for suggesting the destruction of RPG Codex.

 

[Parabalus]

Yes, RP is fun, but in tabletop where it actually matters. RP can in no way excuse bad mechanics in a computer game.

And there is more to verticality than just flying and ranged weapons.
Pushing enemies off ladders is extremely satisfying. Especially after they had spend round getting up there.

Maybe Solasta doesn't do as good a job as KotC2 in demonstrating the "push enemy into bad thing" mechanic, but it's there if you know about it/care to use it.

Pushing spiders to their deaths is extremely satisfying the entire game.

 

[Grunker]

After 14 years, I'm of a mind to support a rule that we just instaban everyone who

- says something is or isn't an rpg
- is responsible for any line of posting that leads to discussion about whether something is an rpg

Reported for suggesting the destruction of RPG Codex.

qft

 

[ERYFKRAD]

After 14 years, I'm of a mind to support a rule that we just instaban everyone who

- says something is or isn't an rpg
- is responsible for any line of posting that leads to discussion about whether something is an rpg

Reported for suggesting the destruction of RPG Codex.

qft

Threat level: dime-a-dozen

 

[Reinhardt]

After 14 years, I'm of a mind to support a rule that we just instaban everyone who

- says something is or isn't an rpg
- is responsible for any line of posting that leads to discussion about whether something is an rpg

Reported for suggesting the destruction of RPG Codex.

time to rename it to "shitty vn codex". no combat - not an rpg.

 

[Nortar]

TL/DR All the talks about verticality and now it turns out that Solasta has no ceiling.

I'm going through Morrows Deep and found an area with a pretty tough encounter - a bunch of vampires, paired with a few ranged skellies and some melee muscle in form of a spectral minotaur and a crypt wight. All in a large dark hall with no choke points.

But not far from there was a room with a door that couldn't be opened and a hole in wall as the only entrance.
So I've set what I thought to be the perfect ambush.

And the damned vamps entered the room right through the damned ceiling as if there was no damned roof!

Spoiler

 

[Artyoan]

I’m not sure why they made the ‘thin’ walls as they did for the DM. The player can fly over them as well which could easily sequence break a campaign if the creator doesn’t know it’s possible.

In the witch hut for the 4 man version of the forsaken isle, there was a dice roll to open one door of four. But the player can fly over those doors and get every prize.

 

[Abu Antar]

I’m not sure why they made the ‘thin’ walls as they did for the DM. The player can fly over them as well which could easily sequence break a campaign if the creator doesn’t know it’s possible.

In the witch hut for the 4 man version of the forsaken isle, there was a dice roll to open one door of four. But the player can fly over those doors and get every prize.

By the way, one of my most disliked "features" of the game is the attunement system for items. A a creator, can you ignore that feature, and let the party wear whatever they want, without being restricted to three magical items?

 

[Nortar]

In the witch hut for the 4 man version of the forsaken isle, there was a dice roll to open one door of four. But the player can fly over those doors and get every prize.

I wish I knew that back then, haha.

By the way, one of my most disliked "features" of the game is the attunement system for items. A a creator, can you ignore that feature, and let the party wear whatever they want, without being restricted to three magical items?

This is the 5E core rules restriction.
But the Unfinished Business mod has an option to increate the number of attuned items to 4 at level 10 and to 5 at level 18.
Or you can just embrace your inner munchkin and turn it off completely.

 

[Artyoan]

I’m not sure why they made the ‘thin’ walls as they did for the DM. The player can fly over them as well which could easily sequence break a campaign if the creator doesn’t know it’s possible.

In the witch hut for the 4 man version of the forsaken isle, there was a dice roll to open one door of four. But the player can fly over those doors and get every prize.

By the way, one of my most disliked "features" of the game is the attunement system for items. A a creator, can you ignore that feature, and let the party wear whatever they want, without being restricted to three magical items?

Nope. That can be changed with UB I believe but not from the DM portion.

 

[Alienman]

What even is attune lore wise? Why can you only equip so many "special" items? Does you head explode like Scanners?

 

[Infinitron]

What even is attune lore wise? Why can you only equip so many "special" items? Does you head explode like Scanners?

Attunement isn't something the Solasta devs made up, it's a feature of 5E D&D: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Magic Items

Attunement​

Some magic items require a creature to form a bond with them before their magical properties can be used. This bond is called attunement, and certain items have a prerequisite for it. If the prerequisite is a class, a creature must be a member of that class to attune to the item. (If the class is a spellcasting class, a monster qualifies if it has spell slots and uses that class’s spell list.) If the prerequisite is to be a spellcaster, a creature qualifies if it can cast at least one spell using its traits or features, not using a magic item or the like.

Without becoming attuned to an item that requires attunement, a creature gains only its nonmagical benefits, unless its description states otherwise. For example, a magic shield that requires attunement provides the benefits of a normal shield to a creature not attuned to it, but none of its magical properties.

Attuning to an item requires a creature to spend a short rest focused on only that item while being in physical contact with it (this can’t be the same short rest used to learn the item’s properties). This focus can take the form of weapon practice (for a weapon), meditation (for a wondrous item), or some other appropriate activity. If the short rest is interrupted, the attunement attempt fails. Otherwise, at the end of the short rest, the creature gains an intuitive understanding of how to activate any magical properties of the item, including any necessary command words.

An item can be attuned to only one creature at a time, and a creature can be attuned to no more than three magic items at a time. Any attempt to attune to a fourth item fails; the creature must end its attunement to an item first. Additionally, a creature can’t attune to more than one copy of an item. For example, a creature can’t attune to more than one ring of protection at a time.

A creature’s attunement to an item ends if the creature no longer satisfies the prerequisites for attunement, if the item has been more than 100 feet away for at least 24 hours, if the creature dies, or if another creature attunes to the item. A creature can also voluntarily end attunement by spending another short rest focused on the item, unless the item is cursed

Part of 5E's move towards deemphasizing the powerbuilding of previous editions.

IIRC, not all magic items in Solasta require attunement.

 

[Abu Antar]

In the witch hut for the 4 man version of the forsaken isle, there was a dice roll to open one door of four. But the player can fly over those doors and get every prize.

I wish I knew that back then, haha.

By the way, one of my most disliked "features" of the game is the attunement system for items. A a creator, can you ignore that feature, and let the party wear whatever they want, without being restricted to three magical items?

This is the 5E core rules restriction.
But the Unfinished Business mod has an option to increate the number of attuned items to 4 at level 10 and to 5 at level 18.
Or you can just embrace your inner munchkin and turn it off completely.

I know it's a 5E thing. Solasta was my first encounter with the system, and I am not a big fan.

It's like, here are these cool items, and here are all these item slots, but fuck your fun, only three items allowed!

 

[Mortmal]

In the witch hut for the 4 man version of the forsaken isle, there was a dice roll to open one door of four. But the player can fly over those doors and get every prize.

I wish I knew that back then, haha.

By the way, one of my most disliked "features" of the game is the attunement system for items. A a creator, can you ignore that feature, and let the party wear whatever they want, without being restricted to three magical items?

This is the 5E core rules restriction.
But the Unfinished Business mod has an option to increate the number of attuned items to 4 at level 10 and to 5 at level 18.
Or you can just embrace your inner munchkin and turn it off completely.

I know it's a 5E thing. Solasta was my first encounter with the system, and I am not a big fan.

It's like, here are these cool items, and here are all these item slots, but fuck your fun, only three items allowed!

It's not a bad idea to limit the monty haul, you could also make it so magic items are really rare to unexistant and more significant when you find some , the exact opposite of a diablo loot system.
But in a computer video game ? Unthinkable , people arent ready for that.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm not ready for that when I have 10 equipment slots.

 

[lukaszek]

never had an issue with hard cap of 3 slots, there are not that many good items to spread across your party