Honestly it sounds like the riddles may be clever, but the creature simply thinks the correct answer is wrong. Like “what has four legs in the morning, 2 legs in the afternoon, and 3 at night?” The answer is a person, but maybe the creature says it is another creature that operates literally on this premise. Or it presents the riddle about the head that lies and the head that speaks truth, and has a totally different idea on how the riddle is actually solved, much to the chagrin of your players who are, hopefully, smarter.
“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs midday, and three legs in the evening?” “A dog.” (Because it always walks on 4 legs, which means it also is walking on 2 and 3 legs)
This is a twist on the classic riddle of the sphinx. The actual correct answer is “man”/“mankind”.
Edit: Also, he could claim the answer is specifically “a dog” he will not accept any other 4 legged animal as an answer. If the players insist that, say, “a cat” or “a sphinx” are also valid answers for the exact same reasons, he could be really condescending and belittle them by insisting that they just don’t get it. He could insist that it’s understandable they don’t get it because “It’s a really tough one. A real thinker.”
He has no experiance in ever fighting anyone or anything
Nooooope! He can fight. You’re an adventurer. Maybe you come from humble roots, but you are now a roaming mercenary who fights for money (and maybe a few other things). Make sure you can work with the rest of the party. Make sure you bring value to the group both in and out of a fight.
As for the character concept…
in a world with bards, there had to be critics too, right? So this character had a weekly column in some newsletters published from town to town (is that a thing?) and developed a reputation for being a snob. He barely ever hands out a score higher than 6 out of 10.
His only real talent seems to be intuitive analysis and articulate critique - skills that have helped him at what he does…
College of Eloquence Bard. Just don’t play him elequent. Instead, use his great powers for “evil” (not literal evil). To tear down the art of others and crush the confidence of his enemies into dust.
When Giants attack, he makes them feel small.
When Gods rage, he gives a solid, “meh…6/10. I’ve seen better.”
Me and a friend played it side by side, we thought it was an absolute blast.
Character creation is probably the most D&D aspect of the game. You get almost every race and class from the PHB, although Variant Human is unfortunately not there, and many of the subclasses are unique to Solasta. There are 12 backgrounds, most of which add side quests to the main story, and all of which give some benefit to the character. Stats are determined with either 4d6 drop lowest, or point buy, and there’s an option for unlimited points. The game won’t punish you for choosing 18s in every stat, but that’s kinda boring. Character customization is kinda barebones. There are a few faces to pick from, like 30 hairstyles, and a wide color palette for skin and hair colors. Imagine Skyrim, but only preset faces.
Your background and personality traits determine your character’s attitude, and what dialogue they say. The game is almost entirely voice acted, which is really nice.
From a D&D perspective, it takes the combat rules directly out of the SRD, and it plays explicitly RAW. No bending the rules for the new guy because he didn’t know he couldn’t make a bonus action attack after drinking a potion. No scooting someone’s mini one more square over so they can do something cool.
Also worth noting, thanks to the strict adherence to the rules, rangers are actually viable!
There isn’t a ton of roleplay, as your dialogue options are usually just “which character says something right now?” There are a few points throughout the campaigns where you have to make choices, and those choices do matter to an extent, but they don’t make an impact on the overarching story. The main campaigns are pretty much linear, you just decide how to kill the enemies the game throws at you. The side campaign has a lot more in the way of role playing, because you do have to pick a faction to work with.
The game is a lot harder than typical D&D, thanks in part to the strict adherence to the rules, and in part to the fact that they have to balance out the insane amount of loot you get. Seriously, by the end of the second campaign, we were leaving +2 weapons and Winged Boots on the ground because we had that Tier 4 drip. Everyone had 24 for their main stat. The paladin had 28 AC, and a Cloak of Displacement. The sorcerer could fly, and had a +like 15 to hit. The rogue had two daggers each dealing 4d4 damage, so them sneak attacks were crisp. The cleric… could heal, when the party needed it.
All in all, it definitely scratched the D&D itch for me and my friend. I recommend buying the game and the DLCs.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Seeing some gameplay footage I also noticed that Solasta shows all the dice rolls explicitly on screen, which gives it a nice touch of feel like playing D&D. The game sticking closer to the D&D rules actually is something I’m looking forward to, and it makes the mechanics of D&D combat indeed more explicit.
I’m going to give Solasta a try, and will pick up some DLC from the get go. Any DLC in particular recommendable? There are many packs available. Or should I just try to get them all.
For the DLC, it really depends on what catches your fancy.
Inner Strength gets you Warlocks, Bards, and Monks, all extremely fun classes to play, along with the Dragonborn race. Just like 5e, the breath weapon is a bit underwhelming, but the class makes for a fantastic Paladin.
Primal Calling gives you the Half-Orc race, along with Barbarians and Druids. Barbarians can be overpowered at times, especially the Path of Stone subclass, which was very fun to play. Druids are basically walking health potions–their only really viable subclass (at least that I could tell) is the Circle of Balance, which is an extremely strong healer.
The Lost Valley is a side campaign that’s somewhat shorter than Crown of the Magister, but has much more replay value because of the different factions. It also gets you one new subclass for most classes.
Palace of Ice is a sequel campaign to Crown of the Magister, where you play with the same characters as before. It also gives you the Tiefling and Gnome races.
I would recommend Inner Strength over Primal Calling, and Lost Valley then Palace of Ice, unless you really want to play a Tiefling or something. If you’re more interested in making characters, get the race/class DLCs first. If you’re more interested in playing through the stories, get the story DLCs first. But also, there’s nothing wrong with playing the main campaign before buying any DLCs. That’s what I did!
Thanks! I’ll probably start with the main campaign first. Unless there is a certain class or race that may be more fun to play, then I’ll maybe consider that as the first DLC.
Been playing Baldur’s Gate 3. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a lot of fun and the game is polished and great. But I miss solasta for how close it is to 5e rules implementation and how clear and concise the mechanics are. (It draws predictive line of sight for you as you consider where to move). I’ll be going back to solasta for more custom campaigns (and the UB Mod) when I’m done with BG3.
He has no experiance in ever fighting anyone or anything.
Don’t forget your character should have a reason to be with the group and fit with them and go adventuring. Not knowing how to fight is commoner-levels of skills and will force rapid character progression from the start.
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.
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. :)
I’m thinking go rogue with the folk hero background.
Rogue: You know your line of work brings enemies. You’ve learned how to get out of tight scrapes quickly and discretely (Cunning Action, stealth) and how to sucker punch and run (sneak attack.) You always carry a dagger for protection, and picked up a rapier and shortbow when the heat was picking up just in case you got jumped.
Folk hero: You started as a commoner, and gained a good reputation for being able to take the celebrities down a peg. The people love you, but the establishment wants your head. Choose the options involving a tyrant for the defining event and flaw: you insulted their favorite bard, and now you’re in trouble.
Choose Calligrapher’s Supplies as your artisan’s tools, since you write your critiques in style.
Stats: Dexterity and Constitution, in that order. The rest you can put wherever. Put Intelligence third if you want Arcane Trickster, otherwise Wisdom is always a solid third choice.
Subclass you can figure out at level 3. Inquisitive and Arcane Trickster may be viable options.
This is a great idea and a good write up! I don’t know why I didn’t even think of rogue when I wrote my comment. I think it makes a lot of sense as someone with a lot of enemies
Charisma is the most important stat for a successful Bard, but it kinda sounds like this person is unlikeable and not even a good Bard, so they would probably have bad Charisma. You can always make your character bad at what they are meant to do, but it will probably get old pretty fast when you’re useless in most situations.
I would recommend just not choosing that class. Maybe pick a background that gives you proficiency with a musical instrument, but even then, it’s probably funnier if they can’t even play. Then choose a completely unrelated class that doesn’t care about Charisma. Maybe they’re a Wizard who read about Bard spells and tries their best approximation while singing and playing poorly. Or maybe they’re just a Fighter or a Barbarian who has to learn to fight off haters while continuing to talk shit.
If you do choose to play a Bard, I would just give yourself high Charisma and role play as an insufferable asshole anyway. At least that way you can have some magic that actually works. Or you could forget Charisma and spell casting and lean into something like College of Swords Bard and focus on Dexterity and Constitution. You’d be better off just picking Fighter, but at least this way you could actually cast spells poorly for the joke. You’d just be hamstringing yourself in the long run. Maybe they are a Bard at level 1 just for the basic spells and then start taking levels in something else when the Bard stuff clearly isn’t working
Make a bard with rock bottom charisma, but he doesn’t know it. You could play it for laughs or tragically. Sound like it would be a fun concept to play either way.
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What’s the Enthusiasm About?
Hello there! Are you familiar with Go High Level? If not, let's break it down. Imagine managing multiple apps for marketing. Sounds busy. That's where Go High Level comes in. It's like that friend who has a solution for everything. Whether you are working on creating an outstanding sales funnel or sending out an email campaign, this platform has your back. The best part? They let you test drive everything with a 14-day free trial. It's like trying out a new car but for your business. And if you ever need assistance, their support team is just a click away. Pretty exciting, huh?
So, How Much Does It Cost?
Alright, let's talk about the financial side. Go High Level offers 3 main plans. The Agency Starter Plan is perfect if you're just starting or have a small business. It's loaded with all the essential tools, and it's quite cost-effective. But if you're looking to scale up, the Agency Unlimited Plan is your best choice. It's like the VIP pass at a concert, giving you access to everything without any limitations. Not sure about committing? Remember that 14-day free trial I mentioned? It's a great way to give it a try without any obligations. Lastly, they offer a Pro plan that includes "SaaS mode," where you can white label the product under your brand. Fantastic!
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