Controlling the godling. Combat will probably only last for three or four rounds, so there’s a pretty low chance the party will be able to coordinate an attack.
Unless it’s a godling of Order I think semi-controlled chaos is exactly what I’d expect, and unless you’re planning around the fact that they will be able to coordinate, it honestly sounds like fun.
They’re pretty good about avoiding table talk when I ask them to. We play through Roll20, so I’ll ask them to type their attacks into the chat and all hit Enter at once.
DnD doesn’t really have rules where you can’t coordinate with your other players, and requires a hive mind consensus. My worry is that it will be too far afield from what the players are used to.
If you wanted to keep it more similar to 5e rules, you could give the players a free action to order the godling to do something, but require a DC roll to make the check (whatever makes sense, Arcana, persuasion, wisdom, religion). If the DC is failed, or multiple characters do the order action, then some random combination of target/ability is executed. If no order is given, do some random stuff.
I like the idea of the DC. It feels more likely to produce a desired outcome than relying on consensus. At the same time, I want a bit of chaos, so maybe something like:
The godling has two attacks.
On the godling’s turn, each party member can command it. Requires a DC 15 religion check.
Assign the attacks in the order of successes.
I want some chaos, so any tie (with differing targets) results in a random attack.
I’m really into this. I recently dropped out of a campaign and have been thinking about trying my hand at DMing. Reading through your post, it suddenly doesn’t feel so overwhelming lol.
that site is horribly laid out, it breaks the entire story up with spam for it’s other stories that aren’t even related? Terrible.
Honestly i could care less if official D&D products used AI art, considering how little the art in the books matters. I’d honestly prefer if they were more like some other RPG’s books and had less art and more text.
I will say this: i’ve been on a binge of reading old dragon and dungeon magazine issues, and even AI art is better than the art that people endured for much of the 1980’s and early 1990’s.
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.”
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.
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.
Lots of great suggestions but none really focussed on your concern about keeping track of magic in combat. If this is a question of keeping track of buffs, concentration, magical effects, or conditions, I found using “condition rings” on the players’, creatures’, and NPCs’ minis made this much easier. I started off with just the plastic rings off milk jugs or pop bottles, but fancy ones with the words written right on them make a nice gift request for a birthday etc.
I choreograph fights. First, I figure out end conditions: are they highwaymen who will bail after one of them are seriously hurt? Are they cultists fighting to the death? Is there a countdown for a plot action (the ceremony finishes and the demon is summoned, the noble escapes the kidnapping attempt, etc).
Once I know how the fight will end, I go to themonstersknow.com and figure out what each critter will do in the fight. Is it a tank that charges and whacks with a sword? Is it a caster that hides in the back and lobs spells in? Is it a sneaky hider that wants to get into cover?
Then I figure out the first round (casters will either buff or hit with their nastiest spell), tanks charge, bbeg monologues, etc.
The subsequent rounds continue with the strategy until an end condition is reached.
What kind of tips are you looking for? Do you mean that you want to create characters with a lot of depth and backstory? Or do you want to min-max and create a very powerful character? Or just some general tips for how to come up with ideas? There are a lot of resources on youtube, and for example if you’re interested in roleplaying and character depth I think Ginny Di might provide some ideas and suggestions. I don’t have any links for min-maxing because I don’t play that way myself, but I’m sure those exist too. If you only want a little inspiration to get started I think a character generator can serve as a starting point, and you can modify and/or expand on the random character until you get something you like.
Personally I find a lot of inspiration in watching professional DnD (there are indeed people who get paid to play TTRPGs), such as Exandria Unlimited: Calamity which is a prequel/spinoff to Critical Role (a group of voice actors) and a collaboration with Dimension 20 (a group of comedians). Just don’t expect all your home games to be like that, at least not in the beginning.
As for finding groups, you could be the first person to post to /c/[email protected] :) If you live in Sweden there’s the Sverok national organization that sponsors tabletop and rpg clubs all over the country. Otherwise you could try finding a local store which sells these kind of games and ask there.
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