Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The 'Solasta argument' and why it's irrelevant to me

Since it seems to come up a lot again:

I fully agree that Solasta did a near perfect job of faithfully adopting "by the book" 5E rules and showing clearly that those rules work absolutely fine in 'a videogame', without creating accessibility issues - best proof: friends of mine who didn't know the first thing about DnD and enjoyed playing it (at least mechanically - regarding the writing they felt it was somewhat lackluster, and I agree, but that's not the point here).
I love Solasta for that proof of concept. Great job by Tactical Games, I was genuinely + pleasantly suprised to see how well it all worked out, even better than I had initially felt it could.
And: I'm convinced that the most important reason why TG managed to do this, is because that was exactly what they were going for. It was their highest priority the whole time.

Now Larian seem to have very different priorities for their project, and I don't blame them for that at all.
Their goal is not to create just 'a videogame'. It's first and foremost to make an incredibly complex C-RPG with countless stories, choices, variables and possibilities, at a size that defies everything any of us have ever seen in any C-RPG to date - and I'm excited for that mainly.
And given the budget and level of investment of Larian into this one big title, it absolutely has to be a priority to make that game and it's more complex mechanical choices as accessible as possible to an audience that to a large part may not have played D&D before, while at the same time exposing and advertising the fundamentals of 5E to that widest possible audience in a way that it can promote one of WotC's ( = big investor) most popular products.

So their highest priority is most likely not to deliver a 100% PHB-compliant 5E adaptation. It's not top of their list, and it never will be. They never claimed it was, and they never "lied" about it either, as some more vocal forum posters like to throw around. Quite the opposite: In the early days Swen even had mentioned in interviews that the attack roll / low HP system would feel like a hard sell to non-D&D players so they wanted to change it to a high HP / most attacks hit system, but apparently WotC had put their feet on the ground in that regard - because it would otherwise deviate too far from the published rules probably.

I've said it before, and I'll gladly say it again: When EA began, I was firmly in the camp that liked to yell "this is not 5E..!! You must make it 100% compliant with 5E!!!! Like Solasta did!!! Why can't you do it, when Solasta obviously can!?!?!"
Answer: Larian could, if they wanted to. But they don't, and there are numerous reasons for that.

Since then, I told myself 2 x 3 words:
Get. Over. Yourself.
Deal. With. It.

I sleep a lot better since then. And I'm excited for early August.

Solasta is more faithful, but outside of the combat mechanics, incredibly boring, too.

Solasta argument was almost never about 100% compliance to 5e rules. It was to point out that some features could be translated to video game format when others were claiming otherwise.

- “You can’t have reactions in video games, it will slow down the combat.”

- “No, you can, Solasta did it.”

That.

Solasta...just the d&d gameplay gets high marks....
Out of all recent crpg my favorite is still by far Pathfinter Wotr. Yes its FAR from perfect, but it has so much stuff going for it in terms of gameplay options, UI, companions, builds etc...that just excels BG3. There are some extremely annoying parts, just like BG3 but as a whole I just prefer the controls and options we get.
And d&d 3.75 (pathfinder) rocks in my opinion.

Except it did slow down the combat, especially with certain classes. Solasta is a good game for DnD combat fans, but for casual players its a boring game. Not every DnD fan is obsessed about combat, actually most of DnD fans just want to RP and do fun stuff, not play fantasy chess with overcomplicated rules.

I'm so glad that BG3 is not like Solasta because Solasta sucked really really bad. It is a game without soul, it's just empty shell. Even hardcore crpg DnD fan gamers don't really like it. They play it once and never touch it again because it's just not that good.

... been seeing people mention it so much lately I had to go look it up again. For some reason the game rubbed me the wrong way and I never got it, but I couldn't remember exactly what bothered me. It seems that the lack of races and classes did it, but that has been somewhat rectified by expansions. Still no aasimar, but not a dealbreaker. I might pick it up some day if it's sufficiently discounted.

I like Solasta on a mechanics level, I just can't get into their setting. A game with Solasta's mechanics translation (which weren't 100% true to PnP either) and set in Faerûn would be a dream come true.

Solasta did a lot of things right though, it's just their writing sucks (which is also true for various other companies).

The real question is:
"Why not both???"

What about Solastas mechanics exactly is it, that would make it impossible to still have good roleplaying or better graphics etc?

It is not an either, or. Solasta being ugly and having worse RP (in large part due to budget differences between the two games!) is Independent from them implementing certain mechanics differently

Call me crazy but I actually prefer the combat in BG3. I know it’s not as directly faithful to 5e but I enjoy using the environment and positioning.

I don't think we need them to make the game 100% 5e compliant. We just don't want them to make something else clearly worse when they make a change away from 5e.

Example:

a) Quickened spell doesn't shouldn't allow you to cast 2 spells in a round of combat. It should just be 1 spell, 1 cantrip. No one seems to complain about this as it isn't really hurting another aspect of the game.

b) On the other hand. The racial change has people up in arms because instead of choosing the pros and cons of elf vs half-elf. You are now taking away all the pros of half-elf so there isn't anything to weigh the decision against. (I suppose this issue also has lore-based complaints as well)


My biggest concern is that rumor of changing the way spells are learned when you multiclass. Right now, you have to weigh the opportunity cost and that makes it fun. If they just give you all the spells anyway, then they've removed the cons of multiclassing and left single classes with no advantages, and there just isn't a choice anymore. One is clearly better than the other.

I would happily read that interview. Would you, endolex, or anyone else who reads this and know about that intervew, be kind enough to give me a link ? (Save that, if anybody remembers the journal or the time period in which this interview was published, I guess that could help me find it.)

This isn't meant as a mean spirited rebuke, sorry if it comes across this way because its the internet - but that's what story mode is for. On top of that D&D is sadly a combat focused RPG - you see it in the class progression and focus on combat abilities. There are no complicated or really thought through rules outside of combat either - which is the main reason I am actually not a fan of D&D and I only picked it up because it fits what my co-players wanted - a simple but tactical combat game, with some easy going rules beyond that that's quickly to pick up - that's were 5e excels - it's a rare blend of casual and somewhat deep combat/rpg mechanics.

If someone doesn't like a combat focused RPG I really suggest taking the time and look around for much more modern and satisfying RPG rule-systems.

For martial classes, yes. But arcane and divine spellcasters, rogues have lots of non-combat abilities. For example assasination rogue lvl 9 and 13 features are about infiltration and creating false identities rather than raw combat strength. Also almost every skill is used mostly for exploration or social encounters instead of combat. If DM lacks imagination and can only do dungeon crawl campaigns it's his lack of imagination that turns DnD party into a tactical wargame.

So true, I prefer basically every other RPG system over D&D for roleplay. D&D has always been a game heavily focused on combat, which is mostly due to it's origins as a tactical combat game.

I played Solasta and found it excelled at the genre's most prevalent and ancient flaw: too much combat, too little anything else. That it was imcomplete - plot-wise - is almost an afterthought compared to that.

I certainly would NOT want BG3 to follow that pattern, and it seems that it doesn't, thank all the gods of Faerun.

Yes, Solasta is ugly and the story is not very interesting.

But Solasta also proves that it is possible to make a computer RPG with proper flying, spiderwalk, reactions, ready action, dodge action and so on.

BG3 is the better game, but there are some things I do not like:
- shove as bonus action and a too long shoving distance.
- too many effects hit also on a miss. The point of a miss is that you have no effect on the target.
- several other rule changes that make your choice of class less relevant ( pointing to the thread of Niara where she finished EA by only using the throw and shove comand and it was the easiest run she ever had)

I do not want a game where a few game mechanics (that were massively changed compared to DnD) make all the other game mechanics completely irrelevant.

I like both these changes! Team elf sorcerer!!!

BG3 is my type of game, and Solasta isn’t. I don’t see any issues with there being different types of games, though. That way different people can play the type of game they like.

Assassination rogue is a combat build. It works with surprise, but even that is (RAW) limited to what a rogue can do in combat. You can't even slit someone's throat while sleeping and be sure they die if you follow the rules. You can even survive falling from extreme heights once you have enough levels (no spells needed). Can your DM rule those things possible? Sure. But D&D doesn't have rules for it beyond empowering DMs.

But perfect example are the 'creating false identities' - compare the rules for creating a false identity with a single strike in combat. Other system go into much more detail for that.

You can run D&D outside of combat, but its not made for it, no matter how much I would love to. I don't do dungeon crawls, I don't count experience points, I prefer narration focused games where you can limit combat to the most meaningful situations - D&D simply isn't the best system for that even though it has it in there to some degree. Like Kendaric said - it comes from the history of the game's development and its at its core to this day.