Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Is there a way to streamline looting in this? Like if I just cast detect magic will it ping items on corpses that are magic, or do I have to pick up everything I find and cast it once it's all in my inventory?

I finished the original campaign and now I'm playing through the DLC campaign (just hit level 9). I'm really enjoying it.

The only real flaws are the cut scenes are weak graphically and the story lacks depth, but the game feels and plays like D&D and that's what I care about most. At $15, the DLC is a no-brainer purchase.

The DLC campaign (totally separate from the first) is quoted as taking 20 hours to finish, but I have no idea who came up with that number because it's not remotely accurate. I already have ~40 hours in it and I suspect I have about another 20 hours to finish it.

If you play D&D you're missing out by not playing Solasta and the DLC.

I hope this studio keeps making games and as I've said before I'm excited to see what they could do with a 'real' budget.

ronne said:

Is there a way to streamline looting in this? Like if I just cast detect magic will it ping items on corpses that are magic, or do I have to pick up everything I find and cast it once it's all in my inventory?

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I'm not sure, but generally speaking it's easy to tell what's magic by the name of the item. They'll almost have a descriptor like "magnificent" or "beautiful," etc.

Heriotze said:

I ran ranger, rogue, cleric and paladin for my first playthrough and had some rough spots but ended up clearing everything. I think that my cleric ended up being the MVP for the playthrough. Being able to cast sunlight with at least one character is almost necessary but other than that I think most group compositions can work. I haven't tried the two new classes since I bought this but I imagine that a barbarian would be a huge bonus to any group

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Main campaign or DLC?

For the DLC I'm playing the very traditional Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue.

They're all pulling their own weight, but just like tabletop the Wizard is dominating.

Alright so I've never played 5th edition before, but this shit seems awful so far? Not the game itself, but the rule system they built it on.

Ranged weapons all get dex scaling for damage now? Doesn't that just mean you never want to actually run any kind of str anything? You can just use a rapier in melee for d8 and dex scaling there, get mega AC bonuses from high dex, and have everyone just run ranged weapons with dex as their primary stat regardless of class really for a ton of sustain ranged damage from the casters.

Feats are scaled back enormously in general, and everyone has access to the same lists of feats now? And you have to pick feats vs stats? Aren't we regressing here from 3.5 and fighters are back to just being useless meat while everyone else does all the actual work?

Casters all work like 3.5 sorcerers now and can just cast whatever they want from their prepared list? What on earth do sorcerers do then?

ronne said:

Alright so I've never played 5th edition before, but this shit seems awful so far? Not the game itself, but the rule system they built it on.

Ranged weapons all get dex scaling for damage now? Doesn't that just mean you never want to actually run any kind of str anything? You can just use a rapier in melee for d8 and dex scaling there, get mega AC bonuses from high dex, and have everyone just run ranged weapons with dex as their primary stat regardless of class really for a ton of sustain ranged damage from the casters.

Feats are scaled back enormously in general, and everyone has access to the same lists of feats now? And you have to pick feats vs stats? Aren't we regressing here from 3.5 and fighters are back to just being useless meat while everyone else does all the actual work?

Casters all work like 3.5 sorcerers now and can just cast whatever they want from their prepared list? What on earth do sorcerers do then?

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I had the same problem with this game. Especially after playing Pathfinder, the 5e rules felt rather dumbed down.

After watching some of the Critical Roll stuff, I understand why they went that way for PnP, as even 5e combat takes forever (and watching people math poorly is turrable). I don't much like it for computer games though, since all that math is done by the computer for the player; so why not keep the complexity.

I didn't hate the game, but had no desire to replay it, like I do with almost every other RPG I play.

As for Sorcerers: According to the DnD 5e wiki, Sorcs get all the meta magic feats, and the other casters have to buy them with a feat.

Heriotze said:

main, haven't started up the DLC yet. The end of the main campaign was anticlimactically very frustrating

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I completely agree about the end of the main campaign being lackluster.

Well I finished it, but can't recommend anyone waste their time unless you're an omega DnD nerd and need your fix.

5E rules being pretty meh aside, the game is just bad. Awful models/graphics/voiceovers, pathetic story, essentially no itemization that matters, no multiclassing, super short and with a low level cap. It's just not good.

The actual engine has some promise in terms of the combat grid and the verticality of it, but the actual game they put together around it is not good.

For 5E specifically - it seems fucking horrible? I've been out of the actual tabletop scene for a decade now, but what was the impetus for this? It's a huge downgrade from 3.5/Pathfinder near as I can tell, and undoes years and years of work in trying to make classes that swing swords somewhat more interesting and we're right back to "me fighter me equip 2h sword and roll my two attacks per round". Meanwhile all the casters get sorcerer rules for their spells and are just gods from level 1 basically?

For whatever reason I cant get past the first outdoor walking around mission in the second pathfinder. So I never got very far. I must be missing something basic and in my old age just can't see it.
I just went on and played other games

I got this in the might fucks with it pile

This is now on GamePass for Xbox. Just the base version comes with GamePass but you can get the DLC as a paid addon if ya want. (The sorcerer is included as a free update, paid DLC is for the Druid/Barbarian update as well as the new Campaign with the added paths)

I wonder to what extent the existence of this game, which was released as a DND clone under the auspices of the OGL, has precipitated the current draconian changes being made by WOTC to revoke the open license itself. It made a decent amount of coin when it was just on Steam but now has pulled in a lot more users and revenue from being on Game Pass.

Qhue said:

I wonder to what extent the existence of this game, which was released as a DND clone under the auspices of the OGL, has precipitated the current draconian changes being made by WOTC to revoke the open license itself. It made a decent amount of coin when it was just on Steam but now has pulled in a lot more users and revenue from being on Game Pass.

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While Solasta may have played a part in a small way, I genuinely believe that the dollar-chasing Hasbro (WotC) is pursuing with the changes to the OGL is primarily driven by their belief that the future of D&D is going to continually gravitate to most games being played online. That may be true given the fact that the last couple generations get nauseas at the thought of actually having to talk to someone on the phone instead of texting them. When the boomers and generation X players die, I think VTTs have a high probability of being the preferred way to play and with WotC planning to release their own VTT in 2024, they're trying to kill any competition before it can even find its legs.

As I think more about it, PC/console D&D games could be of more significance than I originally thought. If so, I sincerely hope someone with some brains points out to Hasbro that nearly every D&D game that WotC has ever licensed has been absolute garbage. Every good 'D&D' game that has been produced was developed by a 3rd party using the OGL. Some didn't use the OGL at all, but they were plainly very D&D-esque games. However, the point stands that almost nothing that has been licensed was a commercial or critical success.

At any rate, with the huge amount of backlash that this is receiving I have a hard time believing that it will stand. Following through with the revocation of the OGL would go down in the Hall of Shame as one of the dumbest business decisions of all time.

P.S. Revoking the OGL will never stand in court for reasons that I am not going to bother writing a 3,000 word post to explain. WotCs hope is that they can intimidate people into submission because if they can't win on the merits, they can bleed most, if not all, creators dry before they get their day in court.

Yea the OGL updates are like one part preventing another Pathfinder from ever happening, but Hasbro also is pushing real hard in to the digital space with the DND "one" or whatever.

They think the future of DND is gonna be virtual tabletops that they can sell virtual models in and license each player an individual PHB. I'm sure somewhere in their strategy meetings NFTs have been brought up endlessly as an opportunity to sell players "unique" digital character models and shit.

Grabbit Allworth said:

P.S. Revoking the OGL will never stand in court for reasons that I am not going to bother writing a 3,000 word post to explain. WotCs hope is that they can intimidate people into submission because if they can't win on the merits, they can bleed most, if not all, creators dry before they get their day in court.

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They proved that pretty well with Hex - the wotc case had no merit, and the makers 'won' that lawsuit with making a few cosmetic changes, but the FUD and court costs sent them into a death spiral.

It's pretty clear that any medium to small company is not going to survive risking it even if the suit is obvious bullshit - WoTC is big enough to sue them somewhere that does not have anti-SLAPP laws and they are fucked if they win, fucked if they lose, fucked if it drags out forever.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/OGL1.2_DraftForDiscussionPurpose.pdf

The last page is their new draft VTT policy which specifies that video games like Solasta are considered completely forbidden under their new agreement.