So this may be a silly question. Long time ago I played D&D with friends. We had a good DM, and had a great time as a party of friends roleplaying an interesting adventure. Fast forward to now, where life, family, work and all not easily allows to currently play with a great roleplaying group.
So, looking to fill in a bit of the fun, I was looking at doing some solo RPG with FoundryVTT and the Mythic Game Engine. However, focusing more on D&D 5E mechanics in combat I discovered the game Solasta: Crown of the Magister. It looks like it provides a great environment to do some ‘quick’ D&D combat sessions with some light roleplaying. Also, it allows people to create their own adventures and share them. So, on paper it should tick many of the boxes of solo D&D.
Has anyone played with Solasta? What did you like from a D&D perspective? And what not?
BTW, I’m also playing BG3 (100hrs currently into the game).
Yes. Solasta is a faithful implementation of the 5e mechanics, with races and classes copied directly and sub-classes being OC to a large degree. There may be some stuff missing though, at a glance BG3 is more comprehensive in how many spells, items are there. The entire setting is also an original thing, we’re NOT playing in Faerun there, the mosnters are different, the map is different, the lore is different and much smaller.
Compared to BG3 there’s a lot less stories in Solasta. I’ve won the main campaign and the first DLC while trying to find as many subquests as possible and I don’t think it would add up to 100 hours. But then there’s the second dlc (which adds levels 12-16) and a myriad of fan content, so sky is the limit. Most quests are excuses to go out there and clear a dungeon or a swamp. Main plots are fairly on the rails and not too deep. The first DLC tries to be a bit more of a sandbox but in my playthrough the ending had a glaring contradiction in it so you see it’s not too polished.
But boy, is the dungeon clearing pleasant. Solasta embraces the dungeon crawl and combat aspects of D&D - maps are very diverse, there’s a good balance in number of different enemies (enough to not be boring, but not too many to lose track of how to deal with anyone), very granular difficulty settings. And the UI.
Coming from Solasta I can say BG3 has missed the mark in converting 5e to a computer game. Solasta is much cleaner and more accessible (bigger icons, better controller integration, clear movement in combat), multiplayer is easier to start, but is fairly unstable once the game is going. It’s not a serious problem tho, desync doesn’t kick out anyone from the game (just now everyone plays single at their machines), I can save and re-start the multi session with a save from the moment the server failed.
So if you want the tactical d&d with smooth multiplayer Solasta is the best thing there is. If you care for stories and roleplaying… not so much.
Tactical combat with the D&D 5E mechanics, and with a quick setup for a battle that could be started playing in a short amount of time, is something I’m definitely looking for. For the FR lore, stories and roleplaying I’ll stick with (another playthrough) BG3. :)
Solasta is a pretty fun story light DND game. I enjoyed it, but I never finished anything other than the original campaign. It’s pretty generous with long rests and short rests, which kind of ruins dnd’s precarious balance.
Personally I’m super tired of DND specifically. I’d love something like solasta but with a different system .
Short rests are meant to be plentiful in 5e. One of my biggest complaints with BG3 is the limit they placed on them.
But yeah, I would LOVE Pathfinder 2e as a CRPG. That’s something that keeps popping into my head as I’ve been playing through BG3.
Yeah I didn’t like how they limited short rests in bg3. It’s pretty hard on warlocks. But letting people long rest as much as they want means you can solve most fights with three fireballs, which isn’t how the game is really designed. (Bg3 sort of limits it based on supplies, but supplies are plentiful and you can always cast good berry)
On the other hand, I’ve seen polling that shows most real life tables do like one or maybe two fights per long rest, which is insane.
On the other hand, I’ve seen polling that shows most real life tables do like one or maybe two fights per long rest, which is insane.
I always hated that fact, since when I was playing 5e, the tables I played at actually made liberal use of short rests. It meant that classes like Monk and Fighter were solid choices. People complain about 5e and then don’t play it the way the designers intended. I feel like most people just ignore maybe the most important bit of text in the PHB, which says that you can’t benefit from a long rest more than once in a 24-hour period.
I think a large chunk of people have simply never read the rules. They watch a podcast and “learn by playing” with their friends. A large chunk of that subset don’t retain rules very well, so no matter how many times you tell them “you have to roll to hit before you roll damage” they might not remember.
I don’t want to say they’re idiots because that’s mean, and they’re usually having fun, but as someone who’s extremely rules oriented it grinds my gears.
I agree, but then you get DMs complaining “my game isn’t fun, players are too strong and chew through encounters and I can’t challenge them” or players complaining “The warlock and monk are the worst classes in the game”, or people who convince themselves that “every party needs a dedicated healer” and then you find out they are doing a single encounter with a single monster every day with nothing else that drains resources and then long-resting. It’s like, no wonder your game is unbalanced, you’ve thrown the thing the entire system was balanced on out the window.
Yep. Completely agreed.
The adventuring day is a very specific kind of game and I don’t think it’s how most people actually want to play. I think most people would enjoy a game that wasn’t built around it more. There are countless other ways to balance a game.
But DND is so mega popular it sucks all the air out of the hobby. People don’t even imagine a game that’s not based on per-rest powers.
I have a wizard in my DND game who “just wants to do cool stuff”. He blows spell slots on silly or suboptimal stuff all the time. But if I’m like “do you want to play a game where that’s expected?” he’s like no I just want to play DND.
I hate it an unhealthy amount.
Yeah I’m so glad I switched to PF2e
What kind of system would you like? Maybe Pathfinder 2E? Or something completely different?
Whenever someone suggests Pathfinder over DND I’m reminded of that blues brothers joke “we’ve got both kinds of music here. Country and western”
Anyway it depends on if you mean for tabletop or computer.
For tabletop I’d want something that takes advantage of human creativity like Fate. Or Mage: The Awakening (2e). People will say that DND let’s you be creative because “you can do whatever you want” and that’s technically true, DND doesn’t really help you out. You can make your own spells, but there’s not much guidance (pun intended). Same with classes. Aside from that, stuff like “spend a fate point to declare a story detail” isn’t something computers can handle yet.
For computerized, something written from the ground up to take advantage of that. Tabletop games need to have simple math that players can do in their head. You couldn’t practically do like “randomly pick 100 numbers from 1-100, and count how many match.” at the table. The computer can do whatever weird math you want to get whatever outcome shape you want.
For either, there’s like a three page scried in me about all the dnd’isms I don’t like. I should probably just write it once so I can repost it when it comes up. I’ll spare you unless you really want to know what some rando online dislikes about DND specifically.
We would like to start playing some tabletop with a few friends, none of us played any game of the genre, what would you advice us to do? Is DnD a good choice for beginners given that it doesn’t have as much customisation as others, as I understand?
This is kind of a tricky question.
You are correct that DND doesn’t have as much customization. A lot of character choices are kind of eclipsed by the big 1d20 random factor, too. Like, it doesn’t matter a lot if you have +2 or +5 if you’re adding 1-20 to it and looking for a result of 13. You’re going to hit it a lot either way.
As to what you should play instead, that’s really hard to answer from here. What is your group like? What do they want out of the game? Is it really a bunch of people who have never played anything before?
Personally, I really like Fate and think it’s more intuitive. But it requires your players to be a little more bold and creative than DND. If you have a bunch of timid wallflowers it’s not going to be great. But if you have a bunch of fun storytellers it can really sing. Also it’s free and only uses standard d6 dice. But if no one’s played anything before you might struggle, and might want to look into sourcebooks for sale.
Powered by the apocalypse games are also really popular. Some of them are meh, but that’s sturgeon’s law. They tend to be a lot more narrative and less concerned with “you can move exactly 15 feet”.
Blades in the dark is also really popular. It’s about heists. Pretty easy to pick up. Probably I’d recommend this one if the theme is interesting. It’s a decent system and doesn’t have any dndisms.
There’s also a whole universe of dnd-likes, but to my knowledge most of them aren’t different enough to be worth it. Most of them bring a lot of dnd-isms with a handful of tweaks. I don’t see the point.
I personally really like the Chronicles of Darkness games. They can be a little crunchy, but I started them many years ago so they have a soft spot in my memories. If you wanted to play a game about being a vampire or werewolf or mage in modern day, they have you covered. They do require more reading and investment though.
Which goes back to not knowing your group. Most groups have at least one person who’s not going to read or learn shit. Some have more. How many do you have?
Tldr: fate is awesome. Pbta is worth checking out. Blades in the dark is good.
I thank you for your very detailed reply.
We are all beginners in the world of tabletop, as for what we want out of the game, I think we don’t have enough knowledge of what the different games out there entail to really know what we may want. I think everyone in the group is willing to learn how to play, but most won’t be going as deep as me, but that’s OK.
I will keep your recommendations close.
Solasta is an incredibly faithful recreation of the 5th edition rule set. And I absolutely love it. I’ve played the main campaign, all the DLC, and a fan made recreation of the temple of elemental evil.
The rule implementation is fairly strict, especially when compared with BG3. Can’t be casting somatic component spells with something in your off hand. Your wizard spell book is something that you can accidentally sell (oops). Need to attune those magic items. But I find it all pretty fun and I felt like I actually learned more of the D&D rules.
The cutscenes and dialogue animations are… actually comically bad. But I like the idea behind the way scenes work. Basically you set your character’s personality at the start of the game and then they automatically speak according to that. Some of dialogue is hilarious. Some of it is even internally hilarious.
But what really shines are the encounters and campaign design. The encounters are all very fun and well designed, there’s a fair amount of verticality and environment interaction. Each encounter feels like it could plausibly be part of an an actual tabletop adventure. And the overall story also feels like something that your friend would come up for his homebrew world. It lacks the style and polish of BG3 but makes up for it with authenticity and heart.
Assist
Solasta is the closest I’ve ever felt to playing dungeons and dragons in a video game and I would highly recommend checking out the base game at least.
