Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,886
I got to the island and there's a bunch of stuff I want to talk about. First of all, Solasta's second biggest problem outside of crappy official campaigns is ironically 5E. The RNG is your biggest and toughest enemy, characters have almost 0 tactical options, including spellcasters due to how many spells require concentration, so your only recourse most of the time is praying to RNGesus. It makes the game tedious, especially since most combat encounters can be overcome with a single Spike Growth cast, but those that can't are an RNG fest through and through. At least with the party I've chosen. Solasta's RNG feels especially malicious because the characters are constantly rolling sub-10, even sub-7 and having trouble hitting mobs even with relatively high stats, while it's incredibly rare to see an enemy roll lower than a 10. I have karmic dice turned off, so maybe I just have very bad luck. However, even if I rolled everything well, the RNG problem would still be there. I already have an idea of how to mitigate the RNG in the combat system I'm brewing up, so we'll see how that turns out. Oh, and how to mitigate 5E's issue of only a few spells being viable and everything else beyond trash due to opportunity cost.
Second of all, in the Forgotten Island specifically there are too many fights, even identical ones (bunch of spiders, bunch of orcs, bunch of similar undead). Your tabletop party would hate you for it. The enemies depend on swarming you rather than being composed well with fewer but tougher mobs. This becomes a tiny little bit better just after you get out of the crypt and onto the island proper, though, so we'll see how that goes. The crypt itself had room for more story, like some foreshadowing or vague hints at why there are undead there at all.
Third of all, the AI loves to focus fire a single character while most characters are unable to withstand such an onslaught in 5E unless you are metagaming or using specific builds with specific subclasses with maxed out stats. Even the barbarians with their resistance to all forms of physical damage are easily felled, let alone everyone who doesn't have this. Again, there isn't a way to mitigate this with the tools you are given because melee characters need to be in melee to be effective, the moment you start running away you are in a death spiral. Healing is weak even with characters specifically made to heal. The Ranger is almost dead weight too, dealing half as much damage as the barbs.
TL:DR - 5E, at least at lower levels, lacks effective tactical options to deal with tougher encounters and requires specific classes/builds to circumvent that.
Second of all, in the Forgotten Island specifically there are too many fights, even identical ones (bunch of spiders, bunch of orcs, bunch of similar undead). Your tabletop party would hate you for it. The enemies depend on swarming you rather than being composed well with fewer but tougher mobs. This becomes a tiny little bit better just after you get out of the crypt and onto the island proper, though, so we'll see how that goes. The crypt itself had room for more story, like some foreshadowing or vague hints at why there are undead there at all.
Third of all, the AI loves to focus fire a single character while most characters are unable to withstand such an onslaught in 5E unless you are metagaming or using specific builds with specific subclasses with maxed out stats. Even the barbarians with their resistance to all forms of physical damage are easily felled, let alone everyone who doesn't have this. Again, there isn't a way to mitigate this with the tools you are given because melee characters need to be in melee to be effective, the moment you start running away you are in a death spiral. Healing is weak even with characters specifically made to heal. The Ranger is almost dead weight too, dealing half as much damage as the barbs.
TL:DR - 5E, at least at lower levels, lacks effective tactical options to deal with tougher encounters and requires specific classes/builds to circumvent that.
