Solasta: Crown of the Magister Early Access Preview - Page 2
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Moving on to the roleplaying system itself. The fifth edition of D&D sits somewhere between the third and the second editions. Unfortunately, what I consider to be the main draw of the third edition, its hundreds upon hundreds of feats, is no longer a thing in the fifth. They’ve been replaced by a pitiful selection of supposedly game-changing feats you can opt to pick instead of extra attribute points when leveling up.
And you see, even the full 5E feats are for the most part very lackluster. But, since SRD doesn’t list any of those, Solasta’s developers had to come up with some feats of their own, and I don’t know if those are just placeholders, but the EA selection is beyond pathetic, with most feats simply providing an extra attribute point plus some minor bonus, like a bit of extra carrying capacity.
Skills also received a major rework compared to the earlier editions. Instead of putting points into skills as you level up, you have a Proficiency bonus that grows on its own once every few levels. When creating a character, you get to tag a number of skills, allowing that character to add their Proficiency bonus to the roll when using those skills.
Now, while this may seem pretty dire on the surface, 5E makes up for its lacking skill and feat variety with unique class features and archetypes that add a lot of flavor and some impactful choices to the leveling system.
But because the actual class is so important to how a character plays, it’s kind of unfortunate that we get such a limited number of classes. With 4 character slots and no multiclassing, you’ll probably want at least one divine caster, one arcane caster, one specialist, and someone to hold the line. This means you’re pretty much forced to pick a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Rogue unless you’re going for some challenge run. And to add insult to injury, the one already unveiled DLC class is the Sorcerer.
And let me tell you, in 5E, the Sorcerer and the Wizard are essentially the same class. There are some minor differences in how they memorize their spells, but basically, one of them is a specialist wizard, and the other one is a metamagic wizard.
It makes no sense to me why these are the classes that made the cut when the SRD has Barbarians, Bards, and Druids. How do you have only one divine spellcaster? How do you have three martial classes, and not one of them is the Barbarian? How do you have two arcane casters planned, but one of them isn't the Bard, who can double as a specialist and is considered by some to be the strongest spellcaster in the game?
I understand budgetary concerns limiting the number of available classes, but the actual picks are beyond puzzling to me.
Then, of course, there’s the Rogue. You see, while no one was watching, Rogues somehow managed to go from trap monkeys you had to pick purely for exploration reasons to unstoppable killing machines.
Seriously, it’s like between Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Solasta the developers were competing to see who could create a more overpowered Rogue. And while Kingmaker takes the cake there thanks to its high-level campaign and abundance of magic items, Solasta’s Rogues aren’t far behind.
At one point, I was using my Rogue to scout ahead when the lights magically turned on, leaving the Rogue surrounded by ghouls, while the rest of the party was left dealing with some rabble a few rooms behind. By the time the party reached the Rogue, they witnessed what could only be described as a reenactment of that “I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me” Watchmen scene.
You see, with how armor and attack bonuses work in 5E, it’s very easy to build a Rogue that’s all but unhittable by common enemies, while the Rogue is just a good as a Fighter at landing attacks. Not to mention that sneak attack now works on pretty much everything, including the undead. And, it seems to be very easy to qualify for it.
As an aside, the developers really need to add some indicator for when you’re about to sneak attack, because occasionally I would get one when I wasn’t expecting it, or don’t get it when I thought I should.
And the funny thing is, none of this is on the Solasta guys. I have some familiarity with tabletop 5E, but my knowledge of it is far from encyclopedic. Occasionally, some Solasta feature would raise my eyebrow, and I would go straight to the source, convinced that things must have been altered in some way. But nope, every single time, everything worked exactly as stated in the rulebook.
