Hey there folks!
This week we're posting a recap of the Q&A that happened during PAX Online last week. Saddle up, because there's a LOT of text coming your way.
Obligatory cat picture to lessen the upcoming impact with the wall of text
== Character Building ==
Q: You will add some new class post-launch ?
A: Solasta launches in Early Access with the 6 classes available in the Demo, however we have already promised to add the Sorcerer as a free post-launch DLC during our Kickstarter Campaign.
Ideally, we'd love to have all official SRD classes in Solasta - however we don't want to make any promises. We'll likely be looking at DLCs post-launch to add new classes (depending on how the game performs!). As for the order of release, we'll likely involve the community like we did during the Kickstarter!
Q: Will there be anything like Bladesinger or Eldritch knight?
A: So just to make sure people don't misunderstand - we won't have the Bladesinger or the Eldritch Knight as they are not SRD.
That being said, we do have the Spellblade that is our version of the magic-wielding fighter archetype, and the Greenmage which is a sort of Wizard / Ranger hybrid (vs the Wizard / Fighter that is Bladesinger)
Q: Are you only including content from the core 5e books in terms of class and races, or will you be expanding out to Xanathar's, Tasha's, etc. ?
A: As stated before, we're using D&D SRD 5.1 - we do not have a full D&D license. As such, we can't use any content from Xanathar's or other official D&D sourcebooks. Even taking the Player Handbook, we don't have access to all the archetypes for instance.
Q: Are Half-orcs going to be included?
A: Half-orcs have unfortunately not been confirmed for Solasta! So... maybe post-launch, but maybe never - I don't like to make empty promises, so we'll have to see!
Q: Is multiclassing something you are looking into for the future?
A: This is unlikely, as multiclassing brings in a LOT of bugs and balancing issues (who doesn't know of the Warlock dip when playing a CHA character). That being said, Solasta is a single player game so it's mostly for technical reasons than balancing reasons (it's not like we have a scoreboard or something).
Ideally we want to make more Archetypes / bring more Classes if variety is what is lacking, rather than do multiclassing. But again, we have the philosophy of "never say never" - if the community is behind it, and we find the time and decide to prioritize it, it may be a thing post-launch (but most likely not).
Q: Is Divine Intervention going to be in Solasta?
A: I'm pretty sure that it won't be part of Solasta. Divine Intervention is one of those very RP feature that shines with good DMs, and we unfortunately don't have a highly performant AI brain locked behind our game. Early Access only goes up to level 6 which leaves us time to think about another Cleric lvl 10 feature.
Q: Will the Sorcerer have chaos bolt to add to his spell repertoire?
A: I just checked, Chaos Bolt is Xanathar - so nope, we can't have that in Solasta
Q: Are more races going to be added? Seems a bit limited for now. Also, will we get variant humans as an option?
A: More races: Again we don't like to promise things when we don't know if we're going to make them. We may have more races in the future in DLCs.
Variant human: Unfortunately not SRD, so nope!
Q: Will it be possible to read through all character options in a more friendly format than the steam demo? A pdf would be great
A: No, and the reason is simple enough: It takes time to make and format properly. Time that would be better spent working on the game^^
Q: What skills/languages won’t be relevant/needed?
A: Rule of thumb: If it's not relevant in-game, it won't be offered in-game. We might have some remnant during Early Access, but at launch skills that can't be used in Solasta won't be there in the Character Creation (same for languages)
Q: For character generation, other than the unlimited free points, will we be able to establish our own standard stat array for all our characters? For instance, could I set my play through to use an array of 16,14,13,12,11,8 for all my characters?
A: We've implemented the standard creation rules. If you want to use a specific array, you'll need to use the "Free Edit" option and set the stats manually.
Q: There will be any homebrew feats that make more viable certains category of weapons like Great Weapon mastery or Polearm mastery?
A: I wouldn't know about that, feats are not finalized for now.
Q: About how many tool proficiencies (including things like musical instruments, gaming sets, and vehicle proficiencies) will have a role in the game?
A: Not that many. We'll mostly be gameplay focused, so gaming sets or musical instruments likely won't make it in - we'll have stuff like thieves tools, scroll writing tools and stuff
Q: Will we have to reach level 4 in the campaign to see the feats?
A: Yes. Thankfully Early Access goes up to level 6.
Q: Will we get proficiency feats?
A: I believe there are a few, yes.
Q: Will it be any reason to have multiple characters with the same skill profiency
A: For general skills, not really. Some skills like Stealth can be useful as each individual have their own detection meter, but for group checks the game picks up the highest modifier only.
Q: Would you consider allowing two proficient characters to assist one another with, for example, a History check (granting advantage to the character receiving the Help action)?
A: That's more or less what the Help action would do, but it could be interesting. I'll submit that to the design team.
Q: Will there be a playable race similar to Duergar?
There are only 2 available dwarven races at launch, Hill Dwarves and Snow Dwarves. That being said it doesn't mean we aren't interested in adding more later.
Q: How many Cleric subclasses are there ?
A: 7 Domains: Life (SRD), Sun, Elemental, Battle, Law, Oblivion, Insight
Q: Is there no way to plan a character around a specific feat?
A: That's actually a good point, we'd probably need to have the list of feat available somewhere so that people can plan their characters in advance.
Q: Will there be any way to respec/re-level up a character?
A: I don't believe so, it's not really something you do in D&D... but I do think that's one of the things modders will add in-game, if there are any :D
Q: When the vote was around for extra classes there was a lot of talk about differentiating Ranger from a Fighter or Rogue - how are you working to make the Ranger feel like a unique class distinct from those two? How are the (generally considered underpowered) abilities and mechanics of that class influencing its development?
A: Vanilla rangers are often considered underpowered not necessarily because of their fighting prowess, but because most of their features are conditional. Like, they are not always going to be useful (and in fact, most of the time they are not going to be).
These features also happen to be the ones that are very RP reliant, so they don't work as well in a video game if just implemented as such. Ranger is one of the classes who've received quite a few tweaks in Solasta. We're looking forward to your feedback during Early Access!
Q: In regards to the answers about multiple characters with the same skill, if two characters have Thieves' Tools proficiency, can they both take a crack at a lock or is it still one group check?
A: So our current philosophy is to have one roll for the group, to avoid slowing down the pace of the game too much. That being said, it's something that we will refine during Early Access, so if you feel strongly about the need of each proficient character rolling, be vocal about it!
We may also think about implementing a passive Help, where if two characters (at least) have proficiency than the character with the highest modifier automatically rolls with advantage or something.
Q: What is the expected level cap for the game? Will it be extended in the future?
A: Level 10 at launch, who knows for future DLCs?
Q: How many races/classes do you guys have planned in total in the game (sub races and sub classes included)
A: 5 Races (8 subraces), 6 Classes at launch (22 archetypes), 1 additional class post-launch already announced (3 archetypes)
Q: How many voices will there be?
A: 2 voices male, 2 voices female (Player Character, NPCs not included)
== Exploration & Quests ==
Q: Will some side quests have a similar structure, offering different outcomes and affecting other side quests in turn, even possibility new side quests that only become available by certain past actions/choices?
A: Some side quests may be locked if your reputation with certain factions is too low, but I don't believe there are quests that are locked if you answered A rather than B in a previous quest for instance (unless that put you in a very bad spot with said faction).
Q: Are all quests timed?
A: No, quests are not timed. We wanted to avoid putting that pressure on the player.
Q: Is any of the content "gated" by class choice or race choice? Corollary: Is any content gated by the choices we make in dialogue or other quest-based decisions?
A: Class / Races may unlock you special dialog options in certain cutscenes, however I don't believe they are blockers per se. Content may be gated if you get on the bad side of some factions however, as they will stop giving you quests.
Q: In world map travelling system are present horse or caravan or other stuff to change the pace or the risk to encounter bandit or monster ?
A: As far as I know you won't be getting horses or caravans, but according to the ruleset you have 3 different travel speed (with different bonus / penalties).
Q: Is it possible to explore all the content in one playthrough, or will there be mutually exclusive options (faction-related storylines for instance)?
A: I think it should be possible to explore all the content as far as quests go, but you will be missing dialogs / lines of course depending on what you select during your playthrough.
Oh, and background quests of course. Since you can only choose 4 out of the 8 existing ones.
Q: We know that the party can reach level 10 throughout the course of the game, but how difficult is this going to be to achieve? Will the main storylines provide enough experience to cover it all?
A: The goal is to have the party reach level 10 by the end of the campaign, so I don't believe hunting down every side quests will be a necessity.
Q: How many cities, villages will be in the game? Or will game contain only small hubs and dungeons/ruins to explore?
A: There are two main cities if I remember correctly (one much bigger than the other).
Q: You mentioned earlier that quests will not be timed, but that the party will be able to travel at the three different travel speeds described in the PHB. What is the in-game benefit to traveling at a faster speed if quests are never timed?
A: Sometimes you may not have enough rations to survive the trip otherwise? :p
Q: Will there be different ways of moving beyond what we’ve seen in the demo such climbing ropes, swinging on ropes, walking tightropes...?
A: I don't believe there will be that many additional props to use for movement, as each always demands a new set of animations. You will be however able to use Spiderclimb and Fly to move around the level in ways that were not shown in the Demo.
Q: Is there going to be different endings ?
A: Single ending
Q:What will the background quests be like?
A: Can't reveal that yet!
== Gameplay ==
Q: What craft are in game ? we saw crafting scrolls in the demo
A: There are fairly basic crafting recipes, notably potions and scrolls. We didn't want to go the route of let's say Skyrim and have you be able to craft everything and nothing, so keep in mind that crafting will not be a principal aspect of the game (it's more a supporting system).
Q: A lot of D&D adaptations scale back monster XP to make the campaign last longer - digital combat is much faster than tabletop combat. Are you making any adjustments to the XP values of monsters, or to how much XP is needed to level up?
A: This is something we're still working on, and is one of the reason Early Access is so useful. We need more data to see just how fast people chew through the levels, and find ways to tone it down (or not) if it breaks the campaign.
Q: Long rest could be done only in specific area like in the demo ?
A: Yes, that was a design decision after playing around with Long Rest for a while.
Q: In 5th edition D&D, you can spend gold (and time) to learn new tool proficiencies and new languages during downtime - higher Int means less time and gold is required for this. Will this game feature options like this, or downtime activities in general?
A: No downtime activities are planned in Solasta - aside from crafting which takes time and will be done during Long Rests.
Q: About reaction. It will be possible prepare spells as a reaction?
A: There is a reaction system in Solasta, so you'll be able to cast counterspell, shield and the like.
If you mean prepare action, we have a more simple version of that implemented, which is like the overwatch action of XCOM (and only with weapon attacks or cantrips). With full spells it started to become too complex to use.
Q: Will spells that enemies cast be identified or unidentified by players by default
A: They will be identified by default. On Tabletop the DM can describe the spell and let you hanging with suspense, but on computer you need to feedback the effect of the spell anyway, so you'll know how much damage you take (and what the rolls were), what stat is going down the drain etc. So we found no use in "hiding" the name of the spell
Q: Will all the content be hand-placed, or will there be some randomly generated content
A: There are some randomly generated content, such as random encounters on the world map.
Q: Will Stealth work as described in the rules
A: As in, exactly as on Tabletop: Probably not. We need to make some adaptation for things to make sense on computer. So far we don't have hide as a bonus action during fights, because there were quite a few issues with "when is hide valid". Like can you only hide if there is no direct line of sight? do you need to be in dim light? etc etc.
We're still working on it though
Q: How was ready action changed from the demo?
A: No change from the demo at the moment.
Q: How many homebrew spells have been made?
A: Only a few, I think like... 3 cantrips? The only reason we created homebrew spells was because we didn't have enough cantrips in-game (a lot of cantrips are very RP heavy, such as Prestidigitation and the likes). There are enough official spells that we don't need to homebrew more.
Q: Will the game differentiate between full, half, and three-quarters cover?
A: Yes.
Q: Will the game apply passive Perception penalties for dim light?
A: Yes, dim light = disadvantage on perception rolls / -5 passive perception (except if you have darkvision)
Q: How much of the game will have destructible environments
A: Not a lot. There are interactable props that highlights when moused-over, so you know you can interact with them (use a spell on them etc), but I don't believe you can lightning bolt a door away (you can use Knock though).
Q: In terms of character death, how will resurrection work?
A: For resurrection we've discussed A LOT about it. Initially we were thinking of allowing players to create new characters, but then we realized that the narration was completely borked because of that (hello, meet bob who is replacing patrick who just died. Bob has been here for 5 min and he already knows everything patrick did, and talks to the party as if they are old friends).
Anyway, we realized that we had to keep the party together since we're not using the "one main character, multiple sidekicks" formula that's common in most RPGs. If one guy dies and you have no resurrection options available - game over.
Overall you'll have resurrection scrolls and magic items to help you, otherwise you'll be using the good old save/load tactic. If you end a fight without resurrection options available and one guy is dead, it's still game over.
Q: Will the find familiar spell appear in the game?
A: Not planned for now.
Q: Are diseases and other long term conditions something we can face and deal with?
A: Not at launch.
Q: Can characters use the Help action to grant advantage to skill checks outside of combat?
A: Not for now, no.
Q: Have there been any decisions made to have an option where we can choose to NOT have our characters regain full health after a long rest.
A: That's probably a difficulty options we could add to the game.
Q: Have you found yourselves creating any homebrew ritual spells? If so: can you tell us about them?
A: We have not created any Homebrew Ritual Spells so far!
Q: will you implement in external area weather condition like wind/rain and apply the malus to ranged weapons/spell attack and other stuff ?
A: This sounds very cool, but we don't have weather conditions that affect the gameplay.
Q: How will Guidance be used ?
A: Guidance can currently be used pretty much whenever, although we'll have to see if we decide to add limitations in the future to avoid making the player feel like they must "Guidance spam" in order to get the best out of every roll.
Q: Xanathar added variant little rules for toolkits allowing them to do some small features (cook a good meal to heal more per HD, improve a potion, etc) anything similar possible in Solasta?
A: That would be fantastic! However, we need all the time we have to make sure the core gameplay is as good as it can be - and that means small features / improvements like those are usually not the focus... of the first game at least! (if we are to make a second one)
Q: Will we be able to hire temporary help for tough missions?
A: Hire? No, there isn't any NPCs for hire. However, some quests will have NPCs join you for a limited time - and some of them can kick major butt.
Q: Is there any sixth level spells used by npcs?
A: I don't believe so. Level 10 spellcasters can only cast up to level 5 spells, so there is no reason for us to implement level 6 spells so far (since it takes time to do so).
Q: Are you going to make creatures that turn slain adventurers into undead, game ending bosses?
A: Slain adventurers won't be raised into undead, remember that in Solasta if one of your party member dies and you can't resurrect him, you have a game over. It's the story about the party, not a single character.
However, if you're asking if we're going to have big undeads that COULD do that to your party? I won't be saying no :3
Q: What happens if one of the characters fails all their death saving throws and the other characters dont have a means to resurrect them?
A: Game over
Q: Will personality flags have a real impact on the game?
A: Yes, dialog lines depend on your personality flags
== Items & Crafting ==
Q: Will the Whip be available as a weapon?
A: Whips will NOT be part of the base game. We had to cut down on weapons due to the amount of animations we had to produce (remember we're like... 17 people...), and whips are one of those weapons where you can't re-use the animations for anything else.
Q: Will slings be in-game?
A: I believe not!
Q: Will reach weapons be implemented eventually?
A: For the moment Reach Weapons are not planned for Solasta, we've had quite a few headaches about how to deal with the animations and we just didn't have enough time to work it out.
Q: Will there be any setting specific weapons or armors? I mean your homebrew things
A: Yes, as far as magic items go we will have homebrew ones.
Q: Are there going to be cursed weapons in the game?
A: Not planned for now!
Q: Can we buy horses or other mounts?
A: No mounts are planned for now.
== Lore & Visuals ==
Q: Why Solasta?
A: Solasta is a derivative of the Gaelic word "Solas" which means Light. We liked the sound of it.
Q: Will the new faces make it into the early access?
A: We are currently implementing them! At the moment our build has both old and new faces, and plenty of bugs thanks to that too (our internal chat channel is full of screenshots of weird ape-like faces)
Will they all be available when Early Access launches? That's our goal. Will it happen? We sure hope so! The only reason why we might be stuck with old faces during Early Access would be if we find out huge game-breaking bugs linked to the new faces, but so far that hasn't happened yet
Q: How much lore of the world is discoverable? Are there parts that require us to do more investigation as we go or does it come up mostly in cutscenes?
A: There will definitely be lore that you can miss out on, whether due to failed skill checks, passing by some interactable props or missing out on some lore items.
Most will come up during the main campaign (to avoid players feeling disconnected from the setting), but you can find more if you dig.
Q: The demo had the fantastic archaeological site - will we be seeing more ruins and historical sites and, as the story goes on, will we learn more about the history of those places?
A: The adventure will be taking you into the Badlands, where you will find more about the past of Solasta through ruins and ancient places - so yes there are a lot of things to discover here.
Q: About feat will you create beautiful icon like for fighter style and deities or simply plain text like languages
A: Feats are text only
Q: Will the Solasta Sourcebook be made available to the public at some point if the game is successful enpugh or will it always be backers only?
A: At the moment there is no plan for a second printing. These things take a lot of time, money and effort and we're a video game company, not a tabletop company - the sourcebook is more like a goodie for our backers, we don't have plans on expanding on it. You can still buy it on Crowdox for now even if you're not a backer by the way
Q: Will there be a lot of cutscenes
A: Well every dialog in Solasta is a close-up "in-game cutscene", so yea there will be a lot of them if that's what you define as a cutscene.
If you're only talking about scripted cutscenes where you have the camera pan around and stuff, those are a little less common - but as far as I know every cutscene is in-game camera, not CGI or anything like that.
Q: Will the party develop a bond overtime in the story ?
A: This will be reflected in the dialog and how the characters react to each other, but it will be mostly depend on the writing. There are no "evolution" in characters' personality in Solasta (you don't have say, a Paragon / Renegade gauge like in Mass Effect), you choose your personality flags at the start and the remain as such.
Q: Is there going to be a lot of party banter ?
A: Define a lot? There are going to be barks and quips, but not specific banter
== Game Information ==
Q: How much will EA cost for non-backers?
A: We haven't announced the price yet, but we're probably going to reveal it in a few weeks (before Early Access launch). Let's just say that we're not a $60 AAA game, so we're not going to price it as such :P
Also, keep in mind the base tier during Kickstarter was at $28 - meaning we're not going to go lower than that at launch.
Q: On what platform should we buy the game so that devs get the maximum revenue?
A: This is very nice of you, thank you! That being said, we've currently only announced Solasta on Steam. Notably because making deals and signing papers take a lot of time, and we're very busy on the development side of things - we'll likely have more platforms supported after launch (not forgetting about you folks out there who are asking for GoG every so often).
So short answer: For the moment, Steam is fine!
Q: You will add French voice-over (or other languages)?
A: No, voice recording is very expensive which is why we only have English voices.
Q: Obligatory steamplay / linux support?
A: This is something we checked before, and making sure the game works on Linux takes quite a lot of time for a VERY small amount of players in total. So we can't promise there will be Linux support.
Q: Has there been optimization work to put less strain / generate less heat on older devices?
A: Optimization is usually done when getting closer to launch (if you look at recent games, sometimes even after launch...). Honestly, even Early Access will be far from being perfectly optimized - but yes, optimization is something that will be an important task in the upcoming months.
Q: Multiplayer/coop?
A: We haven't built the architecture of our game with multiplayer in mind, it's not something we can add on top.
So, maybe for our next game - I know it's something a lot of people have been asking us for.
Q: This may have been asked before so please forgive me, but will it be mod-able so we could add in our own content/classes/races later on?
A: The game will be moddable since it's on Unity (and we don't plan on obscuring the code specifically against modders).
We don't have modding tools planned for now though, as we have scoped it in the past - and while we could have a Unity Modding SDK up and running fairly easily, it would be very difficult to use for anyone who isn't a game developer already. Discussions with prominent RPG modders led us to understand that if it's too hard to use, people won't care about it.
Q: What sort of content are we most likely to see, post-launch?
A: Most likely the usual, such as additional campaigns, new classes, races, archetypes.
Q: Once the game is released, what kind of content do you intend to focus on next? Additional content for the game (classes, races, modules, quest lines)? A standalone game with the same base engine? A completely different game?
A: Hard to answer that, it will depend on many things - such as how well the game sells, if there are opportunities popping up, etc etc...
But yea ideally we'd support Solasta with DLCs, and also start working on another game. Whether that future game is Solasta or not, that I can't say (simply because I don't know).
Q: Can I still back this or is it a case of waiting for early access ?
A: Wait for Early Access!
Q: Will you be adding controller support for those of us with disabilities
A: This is something we'd like to add in the long run. It's probably not going to be a launch feature as it takes time to adapt the UI for controller (can't just slap some key binding and be done).
Q: Is there going to be a way to "auto-toggle" interactable objects on and off?
A: I think there already is - if not, we'll add a button for that. Being colorblind myself, such feature is needed :p
Q: Could we have Twitch Integration where Chat could choose what to pick in conversations as Baldurs Gate 3 is planning on ?!
A: Surely not for Early Access, but that's something we're discussing internally to see if we could add that!
Q: Could we make community translation for game?
A: Probably through modding! As stated before, we can't officially endorse community translation since as a company we'll be held responsible for it. That means if the quality is poopy, it's on us (because we accepted to implement it) - so we'd need to hire proofreaders, and eventually translators to re-write some part...
This is why community translation through modding is OK, but we can't implement it ourselves and just call it a day.
Q: Will there be a replay feature that we can use to watch every battle after it happens in real time (without extra time spent on making decisions such as which action to take or to what exact tile to move)?
A: That sounds dope, I've seen games like that. Unfortunately, that's not planned!
Q: Can we expect multiple campaigns and if so, will all of these campaigns start the party off at level 1?
A: For launch you'll only have the main campaign, but adventure DLCs will likely be separate campaigns. Some may start at level 1, some may start at a higher level!
That's it for today! You can find the rest of the questions / answers on our website (Steam has a character limit on their news): https://www.solasta-game.com/news/98-ask-us-anything-pax-qa-recap