Cool. I actually never played any of the Drakensang games. I tried a pirated copy many, many years ago but it was too buggy. And nowadays I buy all my games. Which ones do you recommend?
Solasta - Review @ PC Gamer
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I can recommend both Drakensang one and two. Personally I prefer the first one (simply called "Drakensang"), but also like the second one (Drakensang: The River of Time).
Most people find the second one better, since it is more polished.
I just made a quick check and GoG only seems to offer the first one while steam has both.
By the way back to topic: Since I don't have time to try out Solasta right now: Can somebody who also likes Drakensang tell me how Solasta would compare to that one?
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Definitely check out Drakensang 1 & 2.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/12640/Drakensang/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/33770/Drakensang_The_River_of_Time/
There's Blackguards 1 & 2 that are also based on The Dark Eye, but I feel like those might not be for you because they're almost entirely combat oriented.
*Edit* bkrueger beat me to the punch.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/12640/Drakensang/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/33770/Drakensang_The_River_of_Time/
There's Blackguards 1 & 2 that are also based on The Dark Eye, but I feel like those might not be for you because they're almost entirely combat oriented.
*Edit* bkrueger beat me to the punch.
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Nereida
Guest
Well this is called Action Economy, and it is what every turn-based RPG that ever existed is about, as far as I can tell. Being most efficient at reducing the enemy health to zero, while avoiding yours being reduced to zero.
A few games use "wound" systems, others use "energy/morale/stamina/etc" bars that must be depleted for an enemy to become vulnerable or be defeated, but it is just giving another name to the currency that you need to take from your enemies in order to defeat them. I don't know how you could ever be happy about playing a RPG in your life, considering that.
Especially since a RPG without combat situations and fleshed out combat rules is not a RPG. You would be looking at other genres like Graphic Adventure (ie: Day of the Tentacle) or Puzzle/Hidden Object (ie: Myst). Or you can just read a "Choose your own adventure" book. I used to enjoy those when I was a kid.
vanedor
Keeper of the Watch
Well, 2nd Edition, or AD&D, got many options that aren't in 5th Edition. Such as the ability to specialise in a specific weapon or select which thief skill you actually want to improve when you level up. It had two types of multiclassing, different XP requirements depending of the class. Sure, there are certainly many things in 5th edition that aren't in 2nd edition but I was surprised by the idea that 2nd edition somehow felt bare, to Redglyph, in comparison to 5th Edition.
It is not necessarily only another name for the same mechanism. For example wounds may cripple a character and make it weaker or cause it slowly bleeding to death. Also healing a wound may be more complicated than simply drinking a potion or using a healing spell. In some systems wounds can only be mended after battle so you have to be much more careful in avoiding them...
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Nereida
Guest
True but then for comparison DnD has curses, a large number of different diseases, hexes, poisons, and worse conditions such as petrification, lycanthropy, tadpoles, spores, etc, that all persist after battle, sometimes kill you very quickly if you don't do something about them and typically it takes more than the party cleric to deal with.
All those conditions weaken you and need specific cures that are not trivial to get, unless you are in a major city and have a hoard of gold at your disposal. Even when the cleric in your party can cast a spell to get rid of them, you also need access to rare, limited components to cast such spells. I don't see a lot of difference other than the tag it is given.
I'm thinking games like Battle Brothers or Darkest Dungeon that have these "wound" systems that persist after battle, but they also have means to remove them once you get to a settlement equipped for it.
I agree. If these things a modeled adequately to be relevant in battle, than this is quite similar. May be all sufficiently complex systems are comparable, like all sufficiently complex programming languages are equivalent.
Edit: Are mechanisms like this in Solasta?
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Not all of those were positives though imo. I still like 2E, but the multiclassing system for example is completely nonsensical. There was no logic in restricting humans to dual-classing and every other race to multiclassing.
vanedor
Keeper of the Watch
Personally, I thought it was the sort of of things that gave some flair, some spirit, to the game. In your example, it could be rationalized by the fact that humans, with their much shorter life, could adapt differently to "new ways" than the other races. With 3rd edition, DnD got much more mathematic. Everything got equalized, balanced... The D20 system... and it lost a lot of flavor, a lot of life.
Sorry, I know we aren't many in my clan, but I'm a 2nd edition nostalgic
Personally, I thought it was the sort of of things that gave some flair, some spirit, to the game. In your example, it could be rationalized by the fact that humans, with their much shorter life, could adapt differently to "new ways" than the other races. With 3rd edition, DnD got much more mathematic. Everything got equalized, balanced… The D20 system… and it lost a lot of flavor, a lot of life.
Sorry, I know we aren't many in my clan, but I'm a 2nd edition nostalgic
I'd rather it was a better system than have to rationalize.
I understand what you're saying though. I sort of liked the class restrictions in 2E, and even now I still feel a little weird about equipping a Cleric with a bladed weapon.
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Nereida
Guest
If I like one thing from DnD 5e compared to 3rd is that they got rid of all the bunch of stackable buffs and the game is much more balanced and fun for it, at least from my point of view. Now casters can only maintain one "buff" spell at most, and that together with only being able to attune 3 magical items and the "hard" cap to 20 on ability scores, makes for a much more balanced game less prone to gaming or minmaxing the system.
Stay a while and listen. It started a few years past when the unwashed masses realized thy could use Twitter to start digital crusades. They claimed D&D was discriminating.
They harped in tweets and online articles how they couldn't role-play how they wanted to. They specified race, skin color, sex, alignment, and yes racial bonuses/penalties.
They exclaimed a female shouldn't be weaker and you shouldn't label certain races evil anymore. WotC caved in and adjusted the rule-set to accommodate the masses.
The end.
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JFarrell71
SasqWatch
Stay a while and listen. It started a few years past when the unwashed masses realized thy could use Twitter to start digital crusades. They claimed D&D was discriminating.
They harped in tweets and online articles how they couldn't role-play how they wanted to. They specified race, skin color, sex, alignment, and yes racial bonuses/penalties.
They exclaimed a female shouldn't be weaker and you shouldn't label certain races evil anymore. WotC caved in and adjusted the rule-set to accommodate the masses.
The end.
Oh no! That all sounds terrible!
Except none of that is true. In 5th edition D&D, the most current edition, there are still playable races that are designated as more likely to be evil. "Half-orcs inherit a tendency toward chaos from their orc parents and are not strongly inclined toward good. Half orcs raised among orcs and willing to live out their lives among them are usually evil."
Or the Tiefling: "Tieflings may not have an innate tendency toward evil, but many of them end up there."
Races all still have specific bonuses. High elves are smarter. Dwarves are more sturdy. Halflings are more agile. All the traditional stuff. "But as a champion of diversity, I want to play a super smart Half-orc!" Well, you can pump points into the intelligence attribute, just like you always have been able to, but you're not going to get a racial advantage toward it. Elves are. Just like always.
As far as females being weaker, I don't recall the last time females had any kind of penalty to strength, but it isn't a recent change. And why should every single female automatically be weaker than every single male? It's not the case in the real world. It makes even less sense in a fantasy world that a female paladin is going to be working with a strength handicap next to a male wizard.
Nothing I said was false search google. Plenty of articles on this topic.
Don't expect a wall of text from me. I'm done good day better things to do.
Don't expect a wall of text from me. I'm done good day better things to do.
JFarrell71
SasqWatch
Nothing I said was false search google.
Why would I need to search Google? I have a 5th edition D&D book right in front of me and I play the game. Everything *I* said is true. I don't care how many posts you can find of people wanting this or that to happen, if it didn't actually happen it doesn't allow you to claim that WofC changed the game to mollify them.
vanedor
Keeper of the Watch
For me, 5th Edition is a very simplified version of 3rd Edition. From wikipedia : "Skills, weapons, items, saving throws, and other things that characters are trained in now all use a single proficiency bonus that increases as character level increases. Multiple defense values have been removed, returning to a single defense value of armor class and using more traditional saving throws." It certainly makes playing Pen and Paper DnD a lot easier and faster. But for video games, the advantage isn't really there since most of the complicate stuff, such as calculating all the spells and bonus, is handled by the game anyway. Playing 5th Edition feels uselessly restricting, to me, in a video game.
I know how most games do this. It doesn't mean it is very fun. Games give the possibility to experience something not possible in the real world and still most games chose the most boring way of representing being hurt: a number decreasing and the number not even having any gameplay effect until it is zero.
Total realism is rarely fun (most people get hospitalized or even die from one single knife wound - not very fun in a game), but at least a little bit of it might make fights actually matter. Every fight should be exciting in some way, otherwise it is just a time sink or a grind.
As you mention in a later post: There are spells or abilities which give instant gameplay effects, like stun, negative attack scores, petrify, slow, haste, and so on. This shows it is possible to have negative effects from being injured. And it doesn't have to be tied to a HP score or a wound score.
There are ways to do this. Tabletop games and computer games have done this by having hitpoints for limbs, and/or injuries from critical hits. Personally I'd prefer every single attack, depending on how well it hits, possibly impeding or even knocking out the one being hit.
This would also make healing mean something more than just filling up the health bar.
Maybe "bare" a poor choice of word and I was thinking "raw", the rules seem all over the place, and feel more unified starting from 3E. The multiclassing is restricted or at least feels more constrained, the THAC0 counts backwards (I was so confused by that, and it was so badly explained in Beamdog's manual that I had to search for the original Baldur's manual), the kits... many things seem more complicated.
But I'm repeating bits of what others said, so I saw your point of view and I understand if you started with that edition, I just happened to start late, with NWN and 3E
In 3E they made the rolls more logical, the multiclassing easier. And the final result in 5E is a simpler way to specialize with the advantage/disadvantage system and the proficiencies, it added more significant feats (that are optional, they actually started in 3E I think) to give an edge beyond what the class provides. I think it may look less complex but I rather see it as getting rid of a "complexity by obscurantism". It allows more flexibility and is more intuitive, but I don't know 2E enough so maybe I'm misinterpreting or missing some of its mechanisms (and I don't pretend to know 5E that well TBH). It feels like I can have more diversity in my characters and be less on a track set by the choice of race and class.
I also like Pathfinder 1E, but it's deep, and the rules are specified in more details. In a video game it's fine, but it must be difficult in a P&P game.