Well folks, this is it. Big changes are coming!

Ever since the announcement of Solasta II, many of you asked us if we would ever consider updating our game’s ruleset from D&D 5e’s original 2014 version described in the SRD 5.1 to the new 2024 version. To which we answered - let’s wait for the new SRD to be released… which did eventually happen on April 22nd, a little more than one month ago. Since then we’ve been working tirelessly to see if we could make that change happen! Verdict? Well, it’s today’s entire article!


Wake up. Tactical Adventures finally announced the switch to the 2024 ruleset. The wait is over!

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Before we start diving into our usual wall of text, we’re sure many of you have burning questions regarding the switch to the new 2024 ruleset. This is why we will be hosting a Community Stream with our CEO (Mathieu), CTO (Karim) & Game Director (Xavier) alongside yours truly (Emile, Community Lead) right after this post is released, in about an hour. And for once, we'll be live both on Twitch and YouTube at the same time!



Starting at 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT / 6 pm CEST, we will be here to talk about the changes and take questions from all of you. We might not be able to answer everything in a single session, but know that we will take note of every question - and we’ll tackle those that we didn’t have the time to answer in a later update (alongside those that we already answered, for those who don’t necessarily have the time nor interest of joining the livestream).

If everything that we wrote so far sounded like arcane gibberish to you, worry not and let us explain. Our first game, Solasta: Crown of the Magister, used the SRD 5.1 ruleset - an extract of D&D 5th edition core system, also known as the 2014 version, as the core rulebooks were released in 2014 (that’s now 11 years ago, holy guacamole). If that’s too many acronyms being thrown around, just think of Solasta 1 as using the 2014 ruleset.

Now, about 3 years ago Wizards of the Coast announced and then released a new version of D&D, initially called One D&D during playtest and then later changed to D&D 2024 (its first sourcebook’s release date). This new 2024 version is stated to be compatible with the 2014 version, and share most of its core components. However, it also introduces a lot of improvements that many D&D fans always hoped for - such as more combat options for martial classes with the Weapon Mastery system, and reworking some features that just felt too conditional like the Ranger’s favored terrain (enjoy playing your Forest Ranger when the campaign takes you to the Underdark…). This, to make it simple, is the 2024 ruleset - presented mostly as an upgrade to the 2014 ruleset.

Of course, due to the release of this 2024 version, many Solasta fans started asking us if we would use this new ruleset in Solasta II, which is what this article is about. Hopefully that makes it a bit clearer if you aren’t following D&D!

You have a good eye! For those who played the Solasta II demo during February’s Steam Next Fest, you already noticed that it was using the same ruleset as Solasta: Crown of the Magister - the 2014 version. So! If the 2024 ruleset is already available, why isn’t Solasta II using it?

Keep in mind, Tactical Adventures is not using the D&D ruleset per se - we are using the System Reference Document which Wizards of the Coast kindly provides to all creators, containing most of the rules necessary to play D&D. This means until now, there were three main points that prevented us from implementing the 2024 ruleset:

1. The new SRD was not available yet, meaning we could not legally implement the new ruleset to Solasta II
   
2. We did not know its content, we did not know what would be included in the SRD or not.
   
3. We did not know its release date, so we couldn’t know if we would be able to change our ruleset in time for Early Access (and the demo).

For those following the scene, you know that the SRD 5.2 was released on April 22nd of this year - and yet we’ve been silent so far as to whether or not we’d make the change to 2024. This is mostly due to point #3 - updating our game’s ruleset is no simple task, and we needed to make sure we could commit to it before making any announcement. Can we implement those changes and still make it in time for Early Access? Do we need to sacrifice something to make it fit the schedule? Is there anything in there that doesn’t work well in a video game?

So, can we definitely say now that we’re committing to the 2024 ruleset? Like everything in life, rolling a 1 is always possible even though we don’t wish for it. But yea, we have started converting our system to follow the SRD 5.2, a.k.a. the 2024 version - so that’s a 99% sure in our book!

If you know nothing about the 2024 update, you are in for a treat! While we won’t cover everything that changed (the SRD 5.2 is 364 pages long, we’d probably be able to talk about it for days on end), let us share two highlights of what you can look forward to:

Weapon Masteries
Each weapon now has a special Mastery that can be used by martial classes. When a Cleric hits you with a Mace, you’re going to feel that 1d6 bludgeoning damage the next morning. But when a Fighter hits you with a Mace, you're going to have disadvantage on your next attack roll on top of the damage you just received! Rude!

There are a total of 8 weapon masteries: Cleave, Graze, Nick, Push, Sap, Slow, Topple and Vex - each of them granting more utility to martial classes on top of the damage they already bring. Look forward to playing around with this new feature!

Class Upgrades
Most classes have received a new paint-job and feel fresher than before! The Cleric for example no longer have their Heavy Armor tied to their Divine Domain, instead they can choose at level 1 between being a Protector (unlocking Martial Weapon & Heavy Armor proficiency for a more frontline role) or a Thaumaturge (for a more spellcaster playstyle).

The Sorcerer now gets some exclusive new shiny tools like Innate Sorcery, similar to the Barbarian’s Rage but for spellcasting, increasing their save DC by 1 and giving them advantage on spell attack rolls. The Fighter gets more non-combat utility with Tactical Mind allowing them to use Second Wind to succeed ability checks. And that’s just scratching the surface!

Ever since the discussion around 2024 started, some people have asked if it would be possible for us to include a setting to switch between 2014 and 2024 rulesets for those who prefer one or the other.

This is unfortunately not something we can do, as it would almost be equivalent to us releasing two games at once - Solasta at its core has a strong focus on tactical combat, and it is known for its faithfulness to the ruleset. Making sure our game works in two different rulesets (even though they share similarities) would take us an incredible amount of time, not to mention the massive amounts of mental damage it would inflict upon our small (and beloved) QA team. Design-wise, every monster, every class and subclass would need two different versions, and many spells no longer work the same. So… yea, this is just not a possibility for us.

But worry not, the 2024 ruleset is going to be fire. With us at the wheel, fun is and will always be mandatory!

We want to know what you think about it! Just like for Solasta: Crown of the Magister, we intend to make the game with you - our players - in mind. This is why we have a short survey ready for you! Make sure you leave your opinions for us to read.



And then… we wait. No but seriously, we are still cooking up the Early Access which is slated to release later this year (and this is still the plan!), so we’ll have to ask you to be a little more patient before we can announce the date. We want to make sure the game we release is up to your expectations!

In the meantime, make sure you drop by our Discord server and our Community Streams to ask your questions if you have any!

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Hey there folks,

We’re back with the winner of the Trades & Sails Community Contest! This article will be a short one as we’re cooking something fierce for our next news - so keep an eye out for June 10th, which will hold June’s Community Stream at 9am PDT / 12 pm EDT / 6pm CEST.


Hey guys I just rolled 12 on my Stealth Check, do you think it’s going to be enough?

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Without further ado, we present to you the winner of April’s Community Contest: Captain Tucker Stoutarm, aboard their ship The Sea Mermaid.



With its shipment mostly comprised of alcoholic beverages, the Sea Mermaid will make many locals merry and slightly less productive for a period of time.

Congratulations! We will be contacting the winner shortly by mail with the rewards.

As you all know by now, our line of communication has always been about honesty and transparency - so when we saw questions arise after announcing the results of the previous Community Contest in March, we decided that we’d go ahead and give everyone a little more context.

The main question we want to answer today is: “Hey, how do you actually choose the winners?”. A very fair question! After all, many of you put a lot of time and effort into participating in these contests, so you might want to know a little more about the process.

First things first! When a contest ends, we usually have a LOT of submissions to go through. Usually what will happen is that we’ll first quickly go over each of them to strike those we deem invalid - for example, referencing copyrighted material, not following the rules of the contest, being incomplete, asking for content that we wouldn’t be able to implement, etc etc…

Once those are removed, we are usually left with… a lot of entries still, which is not surprising since many of you put a lot of thoughts into your submissions (for which we are ever grateful). Now, from there we’ll have two different “types” of contests - those with long answers that are usually related to design or creative writing, and those with short answers that are usually more about names or images.

Of Quills & Ink, March Community Contest, is of the former type. In this case, we will read through every single remaining entry (that wasn’t in the first pass) and we make a rather large selection of favorites. Then a core group will step in, which usually consists of me (your community lead), our game director, our lead gameplay designer, our creative director and our writers plus sometimes others depending on the nature of the contest (for example if it’s a contest about designing a new subclass, we’ll involve our technical director as well to make sure that the subclass features are feasible). This group will make a final selection by voting to crown a winner.

Trades & Sails, April Community Contest, is of the latter type. Choosing between several hundreds / thousands ideas of ship emblems is much harder than judging someone’s creative writing or design suggestion, as we did not want to limit submissions to actual drawings (which would make it harder for non artists to participate). In this case since all the remaining submissions could be winners, the fairest way we found was simply RNG - we randomly pull a selection of twenty to thirty entries, and we vote on our favorite within that selection.

When you put time and effort into your submission, it is understandable to feel a little down when you’re not selected. We want to reassure you that not winning does not necessarily mean that your submission was “worse” - there is no objective way to judge here, there isn’t a right or wrong answer.

Sometimes we really like an idea even though the writer’s skills may not be fantastic, because it’s original or it resonates with one of us. Sometimes something oozes flavor, but unfortunately would be too costly to implement. Sometimes it simply comes down to preferences, or the reader’s mood! That also means - if you’re worrying that you’re not good at writing or that your English is bad because you’re not a native speaker, it’s alright! Writing is a medium to convey ideas and feelings, and you don’t need to do it perfectly to do so.

Let’s be honest, we’re constantly amazed by the creativity you have shown. To the question: “Why don’t you give more specific guidelines as to what tone/topic you want to see?” the answer is that it is not the point. The goal of our contests isn’t to replace our writers by giving you clear instructions about what WE want and have you write it - it is to let you write what YOU want so that we can add it to the game.

Long story short - don’t let failure prevent you from joining future contests. And with this, we’re out!

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Ready your quills, students.

Today we will be learning about the most refined of all classes, the distinguished and esteemed Wizard. For knowledge is power; and you are here to accumulate, to devour, to consume every last bit of it. May you have a spell penned for every situation, or rightfully suffer the consequences of your own ignorance.


Only simpletons sleep in my class. I should have known to expect this behaviour from a cat named Chat (no, seriously, that’s his name).

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Ahhhh the good old Wizard, formerly known under the simple name of “Magic-User” in the Original version of D&D and Advanced D&D 1st Edition. In the past they were THE weakest class at low levels, with a measly 1d4 HP per level and no cantrip to speak of! I hope you like throwing daggers and shooting crossbow bolts while hiding behind other party members, because you’d do that a lot back then. And dying too. You’d die very easily.

Nowadays however, Wizards pose a respectable threat straight from the get-go - not having to rely on their low physical ability scores to score a hit with their crossbow or quarterstaff, instead being able to cast an endless amount of cantrips like Fire Bolt or Shocking Grasp. And with a d6 HP Die plus defensive spells like Mage Armor, Shield or even the newly buffed Blade Ward cantrip, they are a lot harder to take down too!

But enough reminiscing. Wizards, what are they good for? Absolutely n- no no no that’s not how it goes, if anything they are good at almost EVERYTHING. This is due to Wizards being the only Arcane spellcasting class that can accumulate an endless amount of spells thanks to their ability to scribe more spells in their spellbook. Unlike other arcane magic users, they are not just limited to learning new spells when leveling up. With enough gold and time, you can just copy any wizard spell from Spell Scrolls or other Wizards’ Spellbooks into your own.



You might be wondering - aren’t Divine & Primal spellcasters able to prepare spells from their entire class spell list without restriction? So why are we talking like the Wizard is anything special here? Well, that would be because the Divine & Primal classes spell list are much more restrictive than the Wizard’s. They sport the insanely high number of 241 spells available in the PHB 2024. Compared to that, Clerics have 117 spells and Druid 135 spells.

This, in THEORY, gives Wizards the widest selection of spells and thus unreal versatility as there’s a spell for everything out there (there was even an attempt at giving Wizards the Modify Spell and Create Spell features in the Unearthed Arcana leading to D&D 2024). Now in practice it depends on how often you stumble upon Spell Scrolls and Spellbooks to copy spells from, as otherwise you’re still limited to 2 new spells per level (and that’s not a lot).

Because outside of spells, Wizards don’t get that many features. At level 1 Arcane Recovery gives them the ability to regain a few spell slots to avoid running out of fumes too early. At level 2 Scholar gives them the opportunity to specialize in one of the Knowledge skills (Arcana, History, Nature, Religion), Medicine or Investigation by giving them Expertise - which makes sense considering Wizards are supposed to be well learnt (although Investigation might feel a little outside that box). At level 5 Memorize Spell allows them to swap one prepared spell after each short rest to help with “oh no, I forgot to prepare that one spell which could really help us with this situation”.

Their next feature only comes at level 18, with Spell Mastery allowing them to choose one level 1 and one level 2 spell with a casting time of an action to cast at will - and the ability to swap them on a long rest. At last at level 20, you can select two level 3 spells to cast for free once per short rest with Signature Spells (although these ones can’t be swapped).



Now some of you newer players may wonder - how come Wizards get so few features? Well, you have to understand that each new spell you learn is somewhat like unlocking a new feature, but that you can choose. Wild Heart Barbarian can fly using Power of the Wilds (Falcon) at level 14? You can simply cast Fly from level 5. The Rogue’s Cunning Action allows you to Dash as a bonus action? Expeditious Retreat can do that too! The Shadow Monk gets Darkvision with Shadow Arts at level 3? Guess what, Darkvision is a level 2 spell as well.

Of course, it would be disingenuous to say every class feature can be replaced by a spell (and false) - not to mention you have a limit to how many spells you can prepare and cast every day. However, it does highlight just how versatile you can be as a Wizard if you learn the right spells for the right occasion. When people complain about the Martial vs Spellcaster gap, it’s most often due to outside combat activities. Infiltrating a castle becomes much easier if you can cast Invisibility. Who needs to roll Athletics to climb a wall when you can just use Fly? You intercepted a letter but no one can read Goblin? Comprehend Languages is here for you!

So, who’s up to roll a Wizard and become the magic-wielding swiss army knife of the party?

Alright, time to dive into the Wizards from our first game! Which archetypes were good, which ones weren’t, and who was our favourite of the lot?



Before we jump into the Shock Arcanist, let’s first talk about a little issue that pertains only to the Wizards. While all other classes had their SRD subclass with two homebrew subclasses, the Wizard’s subclasses were themed around the eight schools of magic - Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion Necromancy, Transmutation - with only Evocation being available in the SRD. Consequently, we thought it would be a little strange if we had Evocation but none of the other schools of magic as subclasses, so the Wizard was the only class to not feature their SRD subclass.

Due to this, The Shock Arcanist was quickly designed at the very start of the development cycle to have a functional Wizard subclass - which is why it has a lot of “video game” feel to it (vs the usually more Tabletop-driven approach we’ve taken in the subclasses that were designed later). Very much a lore-driven archetype, it was meant to represent the elite war wizards of the Manacalon Empire and to act as a parallel to the Evocation SRD subclass - a sort of “blaster” archetype with focus on pure damage numbers.

One consequence of needing to be playable very early can be seen with their War List spells, which instead of being selectable by the player were imposed on them. Those 15 spells were not given to you automatically - you had to select them when leveling up or scribe them, meaning you could theoretically be a Shock Arcanist with no spells that would benefit from your Arcane Warfare feature in-game. Not an ideal situation! For those who never played Shock Arcanist, this feature made you cast any spell from your War List as if you were using a spell slot of one level higher.

At level 6, you gained the ability to use a Bonus Action to enter Arcane Fury for one minute, increasing the damage of evocation spells by a flat amount scaling with your Proficiency and INT mod once per long rest. Unsurprisingly this caused a lot of inconsistencies as the wording wasn’t clear, with some assuming that multi-projectiles spells would multiply that extra damage (and to be fair there was a bug at first that did just that with Scorching Ray, making that one spell deal an disgusting amount of damage). Our intention was to make it proc’ once per spell at most, but we never properly wrote it down. Looking back there was also the issue of Arcane Fury being a little too similar to the Evocation Wizard’s level 10 Empowered Evocation feature (+INT mod to evocation spell damage), which isn’t great as we want our homebrew subclass to have their own identity.



At level 10 things were starting to get even funkier, with Arcane Shock taking a Bonus Action and forcing YOU to roll a CON Saving Throw DC 14 (why 14?) or take 2D6 psychic damage. In return, you would become restrained but spells would deal no less than half of the maximum dice roll value - for example, a fireball (8d6) would deal at least 24 damage (out of a maximum of 48 damage). You also did gain Proficiency in Constitution Saving Throw at that same level to offset that a little, also boosting your chances to keep concentration when hit.

Finally at level 14, Greater Arcane Shock would similarly force you to roll a CON saving throw DC 16 or take 7d6 psychic damage, but this time maximizing the dice value on your next spell damage roll - usable only once per long rest. Now of course those designs parallels that of the Evocation Wizard’s Overchannel, which in exchange for forcing the spell to deal maximum damage would deal 2d12 necrotic damage per spell level if you used it more than once a day. Again, a result of us rushing to make a usable Wizard subclass when we decided Evocation wouldn’t be implemented - many features do feel very similar, and not in a better way either - arbitrary DC and damage numbers with little rhyme or reason were not the way.

Understandably when we started working on the revised Sourcebook, we went back to the drawing board with the Shock Arcanist to try and pry it away from its Evocation roots. Arcane Warfare now worked on all spells that would increase their damage roll when upcast and was no longer at will, having a set number of uses per day. Arcane Fury was removed and the entire identity of the archetype, Arcane Shock, was moved to level 6. It would allow the Shock Arcanist to access different options, all with different drawbacks - but only if used more than once a day.

Arcane Shock (Power) would be unlocked straight away at level 6, and would allow you to roll the spell damage twice and keep the highest of the two rolls, with the drawback of taking psychic damage equal to twice the spell slot used. Arcane Shock (Pierce) got unlocked at level 10 and allowed you to bypass Magic Resistance and any damage resistance, with the drawback of taking damage equal to thrice the spell slot used. Finally, Arcane Shock (Overwhelm) became available at level 14, allowing you to inflict full damage on your spell even if your target succeeds on their saving throw (only affects the damage, not the other effects) - with the drawback of becoming blinded and deafened until the end of your next turn.



Additionally, you also unlocked Prepared for War at level 10, a unique feature that improved your Wizard Hit Die from D6 to D8 to better soak the damage from Arcane Shock, and Wrath of the Magister at level 10 improving Arcane Warfare to cast spells as if you used a slot of two level higher (instead of one), and allowing you to combine different options of Arcane Shock together (also combining the drawback).

Final Verdict? You could very much feel the circumstances that led to the birth of the Shock Arcanist, who very much started as an offshoot of the Evocation Wizard (and not in a good way). However even with all their issues, many players do appreciate having a full blaster spellcaster archetype as - let’s be honest - it is very much entertaining to see big numbers and make enemies go boom. Still, after the rework the Shock Arcanist manage to stand on their own two feet with a strong identity, without treading into the Sorcerer’s Metamagic either (which did happen in some of the rework iterations).

Another product of its time, the Greenmage was our way to add Primal spells to a game that did not have the Druid planned! You have to remember that Solasta 1 was intended to launch with only 6 classes: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, Ranger, Paladin - plus the promise of the Sorcerer after launch. However, we were not sure we would ever get around to adding the 5 other classes: Barbarian, Druid, Bard, Monk, Warlock - as there were debates between supporting post-launch with DLCs or moving on to another project.

As Crown of the Magister’s release was well received, we ended up deciding to stick around for a bit longer - and that “bit longer” became even longer when the addition of Multiplayer gave our game a second wind with Lost Valley. Which in turn motivated us to make that one last push to get all the missing classes AND a higher level cap (the two most popular requests by our players) before moving on.

Anyway, back on track with the Greenmage - as you now understand, this archetype was created to make use of Druid spells as we did not know if we would ever implement the Druid. But did you know Greenmage almost got shelved? All the way back in December 2019 just 3 months after our Kickstarter Campaign, we held a vote to see which Wizard subclasses we would keep - with the 3 choices being Loremaster, Greenmage and Stonemage. While the Loremaster won convincingly with 44% of the votes, the Greenmage was barely 2% ahead of the Stonemage. You almost got a Stone / Rune / Dwarf themed Wizard in Solasta 1!



Woops, got sidetracked again. Lorewise, the Greenmages were the counterpart to the Shock Arcanists. Sylvan elves who broke themselves away from the High Elves Manacalon Empire, they developed more hybrid skills as skirmishers and managed to tap into Primal Spells on top of Arcane ones. They not only covered the lack of Druids, but also of Multiclassing - giving you a full caster with some martial options. This made them very popular with our players, but let’s be honest balance-wise they were a little too strong, not to mention they stepped on both the Ranger’s and Druid’s toes (one foot for each).

Starting with Green Magic at level 2, which simply gave them access to most Druids spells available in Solasta. This alone would make the subclass broken on Tabletop, because unlike Divine Soul Sorcerers who can learn Cleric spells or Bards who can learn spells from almost all lists with Magical Secrets, the Wizard… has the ability to scribe spells in their spellbook. So they’re not just learning one or two spells for each level up, they are potentially penning down the entire Druid spell list into their sourcebook, pushing their versatility even further beyond!

Because of that, their other level 2 feature is often forgotten, even though it’s also extremely strong too. Warden of the Forest provides the Wizard with Light Armor proficiency (removing the need of casting Mage Armor and allowing Wizards to benefit from magical Light Armors later), Archery Fighting Style AND the Ranger’s Natural Explorer (Forest) feature. So not only are we stealing from the Druid, we’re also blatantly taking the Ranger’s belongings as well. You wouldn’t scribe a carriage, would you?

Moving on to level 6 with Entangling Shot, which allows you to restrain enemies you hit with your arrows for a round if they fail a STR saving throw. This feature is interesting as it gave you more crowd control that did not rely on you using Spell Slots - and while as a Wizard you would often rather be casting spells, at level 6 your cantrips still haven’t completely eclipsed your bow shots with Archery Fighting Style if you have a decent DEX score. Effectively, you could think of Entangling Shot as a limited use Cantrip that could also restrain, which is pretty good!

At level 10 you got one of the more powerful defensive tools in Solasta’s arsenal: Leaf Scales. Using your reaction, you could halve any damage from a spell or ranged attack - not unlike the Rogue Uncanny Dodge, but with a twist. And a rather positive one at that! Being able to halve damage from spells that don’t require an attack roll is pretty huge, as the damage of a single spell tends to quickly overshadow the damage of a single attack. From the simple 8d6 Fireball to the 7d8+30 Finger of Death, you’ll be glad to halve those, especially as a squishy mage.

We round it up at level 14 with Weakening Entangling Shot, an improvement to the level 6 feature that gives its target disadvantage on all saving throws for a round. A simple, yet deceptively powerful debuff - usually when class powers inflict disadvantage, it’s limited to one instance (like against the next spell), or to you (only get disadvantage against spells cast by you). But this power gives disadvantage on ALL saving throws to your target, no matter the situation, no matter who is targeting them, it doesn’t even care if it’s from a spell or not! Obviously a little too overtuned, it would likely need to be hit with a nerf bat pretty hard.



So how did we balance all that in the Sourcebook, which had to take into account both Multiclassing and the fact that Druids simply exist? Well, first Green Magic had to be reined in. We decided to tune it more to the likes of Domain Spells for Clerics, with the Greenmage getting access to an expanded spell list at level 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 with spells from the Druid Spell List. Spells that lore-wise would fit the Manacalon era conflict like Animal Friendship, Call Lightning, Freedom of Movement and Insect Plague. It does cull down the versatility of the Greenmage by quite a bit, but it was necessary for it to not power creep all other Wizard subclasses.

Warden of the Forest remained relatively the same, with the only change being the removal of the Natural Explorer (Forest) part since that was 100% a Ranger Feature (which also got removed in the 2024 edition, and we wanted our Revised Sourcebook to be as 2024 friendly as possible). Level 6 Entangling shot was tweaked a little by now requiring a bonus action to trigger after the hit (to avoid cheating the action economy too much), but now also added your Wizard level as extra damage to give it a little more oomph.

And while the power Leaf Scales remained unchanged, the level 14 feature changed to Infused Shot. And oh boy, where to start. Infused Shot as an idea came from the Arcane Archer prestige class in 3.5e, who from level 2 got the Imbue Arrow feature. This would allow them to cast area spells into an arrow, then shoot the arrow and have the spell trigger from where the arrow lands. Theme-wise, perfect for the Greenmage! Gameplay-wise, when you start digging into it you realize how complex it became - what happens in this case? That case?

Even though it was a huge headache, we still decided to go with it as it really felt right for the Greenmage to have that - and considering it is a level 14 feature (and for Tabletop and not the video game), we could afford to take a little more risks. Using Glyph of Warding as a baseline, we wrote a long set of rules to hopefully make sure everything was clear.

First of all and independent of all that, you would now be able to use range weapons with your INT instead of DEX at level 14 (to avoid the situation of feeling frustrated to be gated by your DEX instead of using your INT as every Wizard does). Only spells with a cast time of 1 action and not a range of self could be infused in the arrow. Spells would automatically fail if the target was invalid (like shooting a Haste arrow on an unwilling creature). So on and so forth. Honestly the list is very long, but for those of you who are curious remember that the Revised Sourcebook is being sold by Modiphius (both in physical and PDF format) so you can grab a copy if you want!

Final Verdict? The Greenmage is extremely interesting as an archetype, as it was born from a void left by another official class not existing in Solasta 1.0. Obviously if you were to take the original Greenmage and put it on Tabletop, it would make little sense - but the fact that many players loved them likely points to the lack of “multi-spellcaster mix” archetypes like the Mystic Theurge in 3.5e, who would level both arcane & divine spellcasting classes at the same time. Reworked Greenmage feels more like a Wizard-Ranger, but where Ranger is 80% martial 20% caster, Greenmage is more 90% caster and 10% martial. An unique archetype that really pulls the Wizard away from their classic staff-wielding book-reading robe-wearing elder image.

As if we were going for opposites after the Greenmage, the Loremaster’s role was to be the Wizardiest Wizard to ever wizard. Winner of the 2019 December Wizard Community Vote, this archetype took everything from their core class and offered just more of that. To be to the Wizard what the Champion is to the Fighter.



And it did its job very well! At level 2, Keen Mind gave them advantage on Arcana, History and Investigation checks - something that we did quite a bit in Solasta, giving advantages on Skill Checks, not necessarily for the best - including the Arcana Check to scroll new spells into their spellbook. To top it off, they also reduced the time required to craft potions and scrolls by half. Nothing flashy, but that made your life as a Wizard easier.

At level 6, Spell Academic simply gave you an extra spell each time you leveled up. Granted this feature would be much better on any spellcaster that is NOT a Wizard (due to them being able to scribe more spells already), but since you’re not always guaranteed to find the spell you’re looking for out there it helped plan out your spell list with more consistency.

Arcane Lore at level 10 let you learn 2 additional cantrips and increased the maximum number of spells you could memorize, giving you more versatility by having more spells prepared than your peers. And at last, at level 14 came Arcane Professor, granting you 4 additional cantrips from ANY class, and an extra level 1, 2, 3 and 4 spell slots. More spells!

Now compared to most other subclasses we designed, the Loremaster is one of the most straightforward ones so there is fairly little to say. With its Revised Sourcebook rework, we mostly aimed at ironing out the kinks in its design. Keen Mind no longer gave advantage on some skill checks, instead giving out skill proficiencies. An additional feature called Pursuit of Knowledge was given at level 2 that grants one additional level 1 spell and cantrip from any class to the Loremaster, giving them a little more of an interesting welcome package to play with.



Spell Academic got a little boost as well, allowing the 3rd spell each level to be a spell of any class as long as they had the ritual tag - giving them a little more identity than simply “I learn more wizard spells, which spell scribing already allows every wizard to do”. Arcane Memory also changed a little, removing the two additional cantrip (since Arcane Professor which stayed the same already gives you four more later) but instead allowing you to replace a prepared spell after each short rest on top of the rest of the feature. But wait isn’t that…? Yep, that’s 2024 Wizards’ level 5 Memorize Spell feature! Turns out many wizards out there wanted such a feature, so it’s not surprising that some ideas between our homebrew and the official 2024 D&D ended up the same.

Final Verdict? The Loremaster is as Vanilla as can be, but sometimes vanilla is just what you want. For Wizards that just want to learn more spells, memorize more spells, cast more spells and borrow a few from other classes, that’s what the Loremaster does perfectly.

Our final wizard archetype, and probably our… strongest one? Arguable, considering what we said about the Greenmage. But where Greenmage shines by their vast selection of spells and their tendency to “borrow” features from other classes, the Court Mage simply does one thing extremely well: protecting their VIP.

The idea of the subclass comes from the Solasta lore - in the Manacalon era Arcane Magic reigned supreme, so unsurprisingly the need of expert bodyguards specialized against magic would appear. Where Shock Arcanists make the brunt of the elite warforce, Court Mages would be more a private service for nobles and rich aristocrats. After all, in such a society, accidents tend to happen… right?

But thematic isn’t the problem with this Lost Valley subclass - it's the power level that’s a little overtuned. Starting at level 2, you get proficiency with Shields and the Protection Fighting Style. So far, nothing crazy. But then comes Spell Shield, a power that grants an ally AND you a shield with Temporary HP equal to FOUR times your level.

Just… let that sit for a moment. 4 HP per level is more or less how much a Wizard with 10 CON would have as max HP. So this power would not only almost double your own HP, but also grants that amount to another party member. Independently (your shield and their shield don’t share the HP pool). For an hour. Twice per long rest. Yeaaaaaa you can start to see how that was a tad bit too much.

So what comes after this? Counterspell Mastery at level 6 gives you advantage on your checks when casting Counterspell against level 4+ spells, and enemies have disadvantage on their Counterspell rolls against your spells. Nice, and in line with the idea of protecting your client against other mages.

At level 10 Improved Spell Shield further boosts the feature by granting advantage on all saving throws against spells and magic effects when you’re under the effect of Spell Shield. Now here’s a fun tidbit - due to how Spell Shield was coded, even at 0 HP the condition was still applied (and lasted for the full hour). So due to technical limitations, it would still work even if the Spell Shield was broken.

And finally at level 14, Expanded Spell Shield shielded an additional ally. Simple, but again mathematically that’s boosting its efficiency by a whopping +50%. Now, some of you might be wondering - wait, it also says that it extends the casting range to 60’, what’s that about? Well originally Spell Shield had a limited range (like a tether): if you got more than a certain range away from your shielded ally, the shield would disappear. This would add more limitations to this extremely powerful feature. However, it is very simple for people (especially in video games) to move a little too far, and having a twice per day power suddenly get cancelled because you mistakenly moved away felt very bad.



This is why the range limitation was removed in the video game version of Solasta. Now, in the Sourcebook we put it back as you can remind your ally not to do that (as opposed to “whoops I clicked too far guess it’s too late” on PC), and also reduced the amount absorbed to three times your Wizard level. The duration was lowered to 10 minutes (to make it less of a fire and forget move), but the amount of uses now increases with your Proficiency Bonus - starting at two per day, but scaling up at higher levels.

Funny anecdote, we had to modify the rest of the archetype quite a bit not because the features didn’t fit or because they were too strong / too weak, but because… we noticed Court Mage was just way too similar to Abjuration Wizards. Arcane Ward vs Spell Shield granting a temporary shield. Improved Abjuration vs Counterspell Mastery granting bonuses to Counterspell. Spell Resistance vs Improved Spell Shield granting Spell Resistance.

So, Counterspell Mastery made way for Careful Protector, instead allowing the Court Mage to teleport at will to their ward by using a bonus action, and granting passive flat AC bonus to allies next to them. After all, the easiest way to take down a target is to get them away from their bodyguard, a quick stab to the guts can be harder to prevent and more unpredictable than a Fireball in a society of Wizards.

Improved Spell Shield was replaced by Shield Resonance, which instead gives you the ability to choose a damage type to resist when creating the Spell Shield. Did your boss happen to piss off a circle of famous Pyromancers? Well, Fire resistance it is then. And finally, at level 14 Expanded Spell Shield became Shield Shatter. Instead of the boring +1 shielded target, you instead get a Spell Shield that explodes when reduced to 0 HP, potentially blinding, deafening and silencing surrounding enemies and granting resistance to all damage types to the Spell Shield target for one round.

A sort of final layer of protective magic - get through the Spell Shield, get hit with a powerful flashbang that prevents you from casting most spells for a bit. And good luck bursting your target down with that damage resistance. Thinking back on it, that was probably a little overtuned again. Damnit!



Final Verdict? The Court Mage oozes flavour and we love them - which is probably why they were given a little too much power at first. We also ran into the “lore vs gameplay” issue where going straight for our own ideas, we realized only later that it was too similar to an existing subclass. But at the end of the day, the Court Mage is now its own archetype with a well defined role and a good synergistic set of features.

No Wizard was in the demo, so what could the Wizard archetype from Neokos be? We’ll let you guess, what do you think it will be?

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Good day recruits,

Stop waving your hands and chanting your whimsical incantations, today’s Class Spotlight is on the Fighter. Pick up a weapon and start swinging, for heaven’s sake! Your job will be to be in your opponent’s face, stand your ground and make their life miserable. Sure you won’t get to play with fancy powers or colorful spells, but by the gods as your friends run out of magic or get caught out of position, you WILL still be standing firm and resolute. Now keep swinging, and don’t let me catch you slacking.


For those who wish to multiclass into Monk, you may seek ol’ Kaiju’s wisdom (please don’t, Fighter/Monk is terrible).

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While the others out there are playing around with forces they cannot comprehend, Fighters are your good old reliable - give them a weapon, any weapon, and point them at the enemy. With their D10 HP die (only second to the Barbarian), the ability to wear any type of armor and their extensive weapon proficiencies, Fighters make for perfect frontliners. And although high-level Monks can attack 5 times through Flurry of Blows with unarmed strikes, Fighters are also the only class with the ability to strike up to 4 times with a single Attack action.

… And that’s without taking Action Surge into consideration! Do you want to attack even more? Pop that Action Surge and lay down the pain. Put a powerful magic weapon in a Fighter’s hands, and watch your enemies melt. Within the 2024 D&D Rules and the new Paladin Divine Smite restricted to once per turn, the single target nova potential of the Fighter may be the highest among martial classes.



Now for those who may not know, nova is a term used when someone goes all-in to deal massive amounts of damage in one go, burning down their resources in order to do so (like a Supernova blowing up and dying down). It used to be that Paladins could quickly burn through their spell slots by attacking multiple times and using Divine Smite on each blow in D&D 5e 2014, but this is no longer possible in 2024 D&D thus limiting their nova potential. The Fighter, on other hand, still scales fantastically well with weapons that deal extra damage such as Flametongue - a sword that deals an extra 2d6 fire damage on hit. At level 11 with 18 STR and a Flametongue Greatsword, you are looking at 6 attacks with Action Surge, for a potential 24d6 + 24 of single target damage (without counting any other flat bonuses)! Wowwee, whoever is on the receiving end is in for a world of pain.

And that’s not all the Fighter has, far from it, especially looking at the 2024 upgrades. Second Wind keeps you in the fight by giving you a multi-usage self-heal. Weapon Mastery allows you to add all kinds of effects to your attacks to ruin the day of your foes, from slowing them down to making them easier to hit. Tactical Mind allows you to add 1d10 to any failed ability check, improving the Fighter’s capacity to perform outside combat. Indomitable almost guarantees that you turn a failed saving throw into a success by allowing you to reroll it with a bonus equal to your level, making you much less vulnerable to save or suck spells. At last, Studied Attacks gives you advantage on your next strike when you miss one, lowering the odds of your target eluding you too many times. One last thing that we didn’t mention yet - Fighters also get feats more often than any other classes. While almost all classes gain those at level 4, 8, 12 and 16, the Fighter gets two extra at level 6 and 14. More chances to raise your ability scores or grab those nifty feats!



Actually we lied, there's another thing we forgot to talk about. While most picture the Fighter wearing heavy armor with a sword and shield, the beauty of that class is that it’s very customizable. Dexterity Fighter sporting dual blades and light armor? Sure. Longbow Fighter banking on their extra attacks to provide massive ranged damage? Go for it. Want to swing a Greataxe or a Maul with indiscriminate violence while protected in heavy armor? You’re on!

So, are you ready to roll a Fighter? Just don’t name them Bob and you’ll be fine.

Alright, now let’s see how our armored folks fared in the first opus of Solasta. Considering Crown of the Magister was very combat-focused, the gap between spellcasters and martial classes tended to be less prevalent.



It is hard to be more “vanilla” than the Champion Fighter. With almost all of their features being passive upgrades, the Champion is just… an extension of the core Fighter class. After writing all these retrospectives about 4 classes and their 20 subclasses, it’s funny that we’re getting stumped by the Champion of all archetypes.

We start with Improved Critical, increasing your critical range to 19-20, which gets further improved later with Superior Critical for a range of 18-20. Now don’t get us wrong, rolling a crit is fun. It is exciting! So, rolling more crit isn’t bad per se - no, the issue mostly lies in the fact that critting with a regular weapon isn’t that impactful. Rogues love crits because their Sneak Attack already makes them roll a truckload of dice. Paladins love crits because it also doubles the impact of their Divine Smite. Fighters don’t really have something of the sort to take advantage of their crit.

It used to be that in 3.5e there were crit-fishing builds (the term used to try and “fish” for a critical hit), as there were special weapons, feats and features that would complement each other well for that purpose. We even found builds (although we didn’t verify if they were legit) where you ended up critting on a 9+, but even then most people would argue that crit-fishing wasn’t really good. It was fun, that’s for sure - but you could probably get more out of your character with a non crit-centered build.



Going back to 5e, there is much less support for crit-fishing than 3.5e - making a niche build even less viable. Gone are the days of Keen Kukris on Psychic Weapon Master. So you can imagine why for many more veteran players, Improved Critical just didn’t feel very exciting in the end.

Unfortunately for the Champion, the next few features were no more exciting. At level 7, Remarkable Athlete allowed you to add half your proficiency bonus to STR, DEX or CON checks - but only if you did not already use your proficiency bonus. A strictly worse Jack of All Trades that all Bards get at level 2, with the only upside being that you could jump a little further. Thankfully in the 2024 version, this feature instead unlocks as soon as level 3, and changed to grant you advantage on Initiative Rolls (which is huge!) and on Athletics checks. Additionally, you can now move for free without provoking Opportunity Attacks after scoring a Critical Hit - boosting the interest of Improved Critical by providing synergy. Huzzah!

The Champion also gets an additional Fighting Style (at level 10 in 2014 / level 7 in 2024), allowing them to further specialize or keep their options open. Now at level 10 in the 2024 ruleset, they get an archetype defining feature - something that the old Champion truly lacked outside being able to crit a little more often than others. Heroic Warrior gives them Heroic Inspiration at the start of each of their turns! This allows them to reroll ANY die after they rolled it once per round. You missed that last decisive strike on the big bad? Reroll. The evil wizard managed to use Charm Person on you? Reroll! The Champion just. Does. Not. Fail. EVER! This is the perfect flavor for them - they are THE Champion after all. Just remember that Heroic Inspiration doesn’t stack, so make sure you use it when you can.



The rest of the Champion’s features remain relatively the same after that, with Superior Critical at level 15 and Survivor at level 18 - the only upgrade in 2024 being that Survivor gives you advantage on Death Saving Throws and also makes your 18-20 crit range work when rolling them. Once again, a perfect fit for the Champion’s fantasy - you don’t miss, you don’t fail, and when you fall your rise again. Ah, let’s not forget to mention what Survivor did in the first place: While under half-HP (bloodied) and above 0 HP, you regain HP at the start of each of your turns.

Final Verdict? Honestly, Champion went from a fairly bland and weak archetype to something that’s genuinely fun and exciting with a strong flavorful identity. If we were not so limited in the number of Subclasses we could implement in Solasta 2 (due to team size and time), it’d definitely be one of the more interesting choices to select.

Aaaah the Mountaineer, one of our first subclasses ever designed. We imagined the Mountaineer as this axe and shield dwarven fighter holding out waves of monsters inside tight tunnels underground. This one went all-in trying to bank on the shove feature - something that started as very interesting and filled with potential, but that tapered on the later you get in-game. Why is that? Well, turns out most larger creatures that you start encountering at higher levels are immune to shove and prone from Medium size creatures (hint: that’s you).

They start out with Shield Swipe, giving advantage on shove rolls when wielding a shield, and Tunnel Fighter giving them a flat AC bonus when next to a wall. You can see here the idea of fighting in confined spaces with very little room to manoeuvre, where controlling where the enemy position with shove can really change the flow of the battle. Fun fact, in the very early conception stage of Solasta 1 (waaaay back, even before we started working on the Kickstarter demo), the game had a much smaller scope. We’re talking 4 classes, no character creation, and a focus almost exclusively on dungeon diving. Here, let us share an early Concept Art from that time to illustrate what we mean.


Just pulled that one from the Solasta 1 art vault. Our party of 4 adventurers are about to square off against a troll on a tight hanging bridge in the dark.

As you can imagine, that changed quite a bit (notably with the success of the Kickstarter), and Solasta 1 grew into the game we all know and love nowadays; with a Character Creator, all 12 classes, and a vast world with diverse locations not limited to caverns and corridors… Which means the Mountaineer just became a lot more situational! Dang it!

Moving on, at level 7 they got Close Quarters which gave them the ability to swap position with an enemy with a bonus action and gain advantage on attack rolls against it. An interesting feature, unfortunately hindered by the prerequisites to make it work: it only worked on creatures of your size or smaller (medium), and you needed to win a contested shove roll (albeit with advantage thanks to Shield Swipe). Close Quarters itself is an interesting idea, but its limitations made it very situational - especially later when many enemies are bigger than Medium size.

At level 10 they got Shield Push, another buff to their shove by making it a bonus action - once again putting all eggs in the shove basket without giving a solution for larger creatures. And finally at level 15 they had Pack Strider, which basically gave you the equivalent of Pack Tactics - giving you advantage on melee attack rolls if you have another ally next to the target.

Wew! Now that we know the weaknesses of our dear Mountaineer, how did we rework it in the Sourcebook? Well, we kept the initial idea of this shield-focused fighter, but without the whole shoving theme as it would quickly become size-gated - and the Mountaineer is no Path of the Giant.



At level 3, we start with Shield Expert instead of Shield Swipe, giving you the bonus of the Shield Master feat with a bit of extra on the side - being able to use the shield as a 1d4 bludgeoning weapon and strike with it as if it were a light weapon with your bonus action. We also get Close Quarters instead of Tunnel Fighter, which now both allows you to move through the space of any creature of a larger size than yours (making it useful against bigger creatures) and to swap place with creatures of your size instead of shoving them if you so desire (keeping it useful against smaller creatures).

At level 7 we see the return of Tunnel Fighter, which only sees a little update in its wording to clarify that the bonus AC is granted when next to an obstacle that can grant total cover (so not limited to walls). At level 10, Shield Push is replaced by Shield Bash, giving you the ability to force enemies hit by your shield to roll a CON save or be… Dazed? Wait, that doesn’t exist! But you’ve got the idea - we didn’t want to hand out too many hard CCs when making our subclasses, so Shield Bash would only halve the target’s speed and prevent them from using Bonus Actions and Reactions until your next turn.

At last, at level 15 you would get Watchful Sentry instead of Pack Strider, allowing you to use your reaction to swap places with an ally next to you that is getting attacked (and forcing the attack to target you instead). After all, with the Mountaineer archetype being all about defense, positioning and control - we had to make it so they could protect their allies properly!

Final Verdict? The Mountaineer is a real window into the very first drafts of Solasta 1 - its entire theme born from our original game plan: a deep delve into dark caverns with a small party of four: Fighter, Wizard, Rogue and Cleric. The theme of the Mountaineer was good, its execution needed a little bit of readjusting but overall we believe that there’s a lot of room for a shield-focused archetype for the Fighter.

The Spellblade is where we start to get into some design struggle - we want a Fighter that can cast spells, but that’s already the turf of the Eldritch Knight. Does that mean there is no room for something new? No, of course not! But theme-wise we are bound to have some similarities because they both fulfill the same fantasy, a magic wielding fighter. Small funny anecdote: we remember seeing a comment about the Spellblade that made us laugh quite hard. “This is not a fighter, this is a rogue running on fighter hardware”.

Let’s forget the Spellblade for a moment and think about the idea of a spellcasting Fighter. What does a Fighter want to do to be relevant in a fight? Well, they need to be attacking to make use of all their extra attacks, which is the main draw of the class. But that means spending a turn casting spells is not a good thing, right? Well then, how do we make it work? There are a couple of solutions. First of all, spells are also useful outside battle - that’s one of the main reasons why people complain about the spellcaster vs martial gap at higher level on tabletop. Spells can give a lot of utility, like helping to sneak into a castle with Invisibility and Sleep, preventing combat with Suggestion or illusion spells, and so on and so forth.



But as you already know, Solasta 1 is mostly combat focused. So that doesn’t work out for us. The second solution is bonus action spells and reaction spells, which allow them to keep their main action to attack. Problem is, there are only a few of them (wizard spell list) - such as the well known Shield spell which is already something the Eldritch Knight has. The third solution is encouraging spellcasting by giving something in return. For example, Eldritch Knight’s Eldritch Strike makes your opponent roll their next saving throw with disadvantage if you manage to land a weapon attack on them - encouraging you to cast spells by making them more likely to land.

Now let’s go back to the Spellblade. When we started working on this archetype, we hadn’t come to such conclusions quite yet, so we were mostly testing things around to see what stuck. At level 3, Magic Weapon made your weapon be considered magical against creatures resistant to non-magical damage. Honestly, this one was completely a filler feature - something that quickly became irrelevant as you would find +1 weapons while adventuring.

At level 7, Into the Fray made you able to use Melee weapons as spellcasting focus and the ability to cast somatic spells even while wielding such weapons - as well as allowing you to cast ranged spells without disadvantage while in melee. This feature was much more on point, as one of the biggest issues for spellcasting martial classes is the inability to cast somatic spells if both of their hands are occupied, with the only option being to drop a weapon to cast or to be playing Two-Handed weapons.

At level 10, Spelltyrant was a strange telekinesis power which allowed you to shove enemies from afar with a bonus action. While interesting, it didn’t really synergize with the rest of the Spellblade’s features - and a 5’ shove rarely mattered anyway.

At last, at level 15 they got Arcane Escape, which made Spellblades get the benefit of Dodge whenever they cast a spell. This was a strong feature which fell into the 3rd category - giving you a reason to cast a spell by rewarding you with something significant. Normally, dodging would take your main action anyway - so being allowed to cast a spell for that is just cherry on the top!



After all of this, and looking back at it, when we started writing the revised Sourcebook Spellblade was one of the archetypes that we decided to completely rework. Into the Fray got moved to level 3 so that Spellblades could immediately start casting somatic spells when they got their subclass going. At level 7, they get Arcane Conduit which makes them imbue their weapon until the end of their next turn whenever they cast a spell with a casting time of 1 action, making it deal an extra 1d10 force damage. With the amount of attacks a Fighter can dish out, this bonus damage would quickly stack up.

At level 10 Arcane Shield now gave them temporary HP when casting a spell, allowing them to stay in the fight longer. And at level 15, they would get Swift Cast to change the casting time of a spell that used a main action into a bonus action once per short rest (while still getting the benefit of Arcane Conduit).

As you can see, the Spellblade now had a much clearer pattern of play - one that was easy to understand. Unlike the Eldritch Knight that would cast spells and still attack thanks to War Magic, the Spellblade was supposed to alternate between spellcasting on one round to receive buffs and attacking on the other to spend them. Later on they would get the ability to cheat once per short rest by cutting the first round of spellcasting with Swift Cast, vastly improving their initial impact on the battle. However, the pattern remains simple: cast a spell to get damage buffs and temporary HP, then go slap the baddies with indiscriminate violence.

Final Verdict? The Spellblade wasn’t terrible in its first iteration, it got two good features for two mediocre ones. Previously an “okay” archetype, it fortunately became quite a lot of fun to play around with thanks to its rework, and managed to find its own identity!

With the Commander the aim was to provide a non-spellcasting support archetype, not unlike the 4th edition Warlord. Rallying the troops while standing beside them, without any divine blessings or magic shenanigans - just pure unadulterated guts. The fact that you could now have a strong frontliner who could also empower the rest of the team was a godsend for many players, who really enjoyed the addition of the Commander in Lost Valley.

At 3rd level, the Commander gains proficiency in Intimidation and Insight, as well as Rousing Shout - a bonus action to give all nearby allies (including themselves) advantage on their next attack. This feature can be used multiple times per short rest, allowing the Commander to heavily lower the chances of his party missing during combat, giving them a good use of their bonus action.



At level 7 they get Coordinated Defense, where they can sacrifice one of their attacks to grant any ally (or themselves) Dodge - again boosting their action economy by making Dodge usable without having to sacrifice a main action, and massively increasing the survivability of their teammates.

At level 10, Invigorating Shout increases the range of Rousing Shout and now also grants a small amount of temporary hit points, which over time considering the high amount of uses this feature has adds up to quite a lot, further enhancing the team’s tankiness. And at last, at level 15 Lead by Example marks enemies that you hit - making them additional damage any time someone makes a successful weapon attack against them.

As you can see, a very straightforward fantasy of a commander leading their troop to victory, by increasing both the offensive and defensive capabilities of nearby allies. There isn’t much to add since the Sourcebook version only saw minor tweaks, such as changing the name of Lead by Example to Take Them Down and increasing the additional damage from 1d4 to 1d6, and giving a name to the level 3 Bonus Proficiencies. It is now Gruff Authority, which on top of giving the 2 skill proficiencies also allows them to add their STR modifier to Intimidation & Persuasion checks.

Final Verdict? The Commander had an idea in mind when it was designed and they perfectly filled their role. A strong support martial class that can still kick ass on their own!

In the demo, Neyra was a Cleric / Fighter who did not have the level to unlock her Fighter subclass, so there is very little that you could surmit from there. Let’s just say that we’re cooking something quite interesting, and we’re excited to see how you will like it!

A little earlier than the other times, May’s Community Stream will take place later this week on Friday May 2nd! You’re many to have noticed the SRD 5.2 is now live, so we’re taking a deep dive into the document to discuss about the new content and what a passage to the 2024 ruleset would imply!

See you on Friday, 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT / 6 pm CEST!



Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Hey there folks!

No news this week, just a big thank you for participating. We hope you enjoyed the contest! There will be more coming later (not next month though) so more of you get a chance to leave a mark in the world of Solasta II. 

We will be contacting the winner of Trades and Sails in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more news and contests, and drop by our Discord server to chat with other players!



Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Hey there you wonderful folks!

Today we’ll be diving into the powerful Cleric class - very likely THE most versatile class when it comes to rounding off a team. Don’t make the assumption that they are just healers; depending on their domain and spell selection, Clerics can become stalwart frontliners, devastating spell slingers, high value supports or all of the above. But before we jump into that… We have some winners to announce!


And a warm welcome to Emji, the newest member of the Tactical Adventures team! May his barks be sonorous and his meals plentiful.

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It took us quite some time to sort through all your submissions as we did not exactly expect the amount of participants to be this high. To give you an idea, the amount of words we had to read through added up to several novels in length…

But enough stalling, who won? Now as there were a LOT of very good entries (and because it was our first Community Contest), we decided to select a lot more winners than we initially intended to. Here is the list of all 20 winners of the “Of Quills & Ink” Community Contest!


Hope you enjoyed participating in the contest! Don’t forget that there’s another one going on right now, ending next Tuesday.

Children's Tale:

• John Kui'tunn - An Unseen Horror
  
• Augustus Pindrop - The Mess that Grew

Adventurer’s Journal:

• Thea Morningdew - Reverse River
  
• Crikk - Faded Diary

Herbalist’s Journal:

• Belmora Stormhammer - Fragmented Flora Log

Journal recounting events from Solasta I:

• Cyrania de Bergerac - Mage Tower's Library

Love Letter:

• Iela Valienne - Letter of Devotion
  
• Rune Sharstop - Tear-stained Letter
  
• Caedmon Delfias - Letter to a Daughter

Show or Circus Flyer:

• Rias Orde - The Circus is here!

Public Board Flyers:

• Milo Introcaso - Mushrooms Wanted
  
• Pym the Jug - Pogle’s Perfect Wigs
  
• Enialis Siannodel - Exterminators
  
• Valour - Sidekick Needed!
  
• Haris Murin - Looking for Maid
  
• Evan Boorthearth - Public Complaint

Complaint about a product:

• Rex Thunderquill - Delayed Doom
  
• Ragn Twinbeard - A poor ale delivery

Speculations about Shadwyn:

• Kaeroth Orinel - Dusty manuscript

Bogus research on Kobolds:

• Roth the Raucous - Horde Among Hoards

Just to be safe, we’ve elected to use the in-game pen name to announce the victors considering some people may have given us their real name to put in the credits. We’ll be sending the prizes later this week, so if you find your name up there make sure you check your emails! We’ll inform everyone on our Discord server once they are sent, in case you want to make sure you didn’t miss them

Important: Please note that not all of the above entries may be included in-game from the start of Early Access! Some books / scrolls are likely to be added to areas that will only be available in the 1.0 release.

One of the OG classes of D&D when it was first released in 1974, the Cleric is technically the oldest and arguably the only remaining class of the original game. For those who are curious, the other two were the Fighting Man which later became the Fighter in AD&D 1e, and the Magic-User which became the Mage in AD&D 2e and then the Wizard in D&D 3e. Only our good old Cleric got to keep their name for more than 50 years! Surprisingly, their well-known cousin the Paladin appeared as early as 1975 in a Greyhawk supplement as a subclass of the Fighting Man, later becoming a standard class starting in AD&D 2e.

But enough history lessons you may say! Clerics! What are they good for? Absolutely noth… Scratch that, we meant to say absolutely EVERYTHING. As stated in the intro, playing Cleric is like ticking the “Fill Role” box when queuing for a game. 80% of the time you’re going to end up as a support, but you can still play any other role decently well (and with that we just lost everyone who never played a MOBA). Long story short, a Cleric may not be a better frontliner than a Barbarian, and they may not be as destructive as a Wizard when it comes to causing indiscriminate devastation from afar… but they sure stand a much better fighting chance than both a Wizard in melee range and a Barbarian unable to reach their target. And on top of that, think of all the support they can provide! Heals! Buffs! Resurrection spells! Even if you don’t specialize into it, every Cleric has access to those tools - simply getting access to these options make you an invaluable asset.

Now this is the moment where we would go “and you too could become one for the mere price of 150 gold coins”, but this merchant is no charlatan - simply head to the nearest temple and you too could become a Cleric. For as you may already know, they get their powers from the deity they revere - they are their god’s chosen. No matter how devout, only a handful of followers are given this privilege.



While all clerics have access to the same list of spells, depending on the divine domain they choose their Domain Spells will vary - sometimes even giving them the ability to cast spells from other classes, such as the well known Fireball for the Light Domain, or even Hypnotic Pattern for the Trickery Domain (both official D&D subclasses). It used to be that Domain also heavily influenced whether or not you would be more of a frontline cleric or a caster cleric, as in the original 2014 5e ruleset only some would get Heavy Armor proficiency, and their level 8 subclass feature would either be Divine Strike (encouraging you to swing your weapon) or Potent Spellcasting (encouraging you to use Cantrips instead).

In the 2024 version this is no longer the case as those subclass features got merged into the base Cleric powers instead, allowing each and everyone to choose at level 1 if they would rather be a Protector (with Martial Weapons & Heavy Armor proficiency), or a Thaumaturge (with an extra Cantrip and a bonus to Arcana & Religion checks). Similarly, at level 7 (instead of 8, one level early yay) they get to choose between Divine Strike or Potent Spellcasting - it is no longer imposed by their Divine Domain.

All and all, we believe that’s a good improvement - let players decide themselves what role they want to fill, regardless of the theme of their Divine Domain.

Oh boy, this one is going to be massive. Unlike the other classes which each had 4 archetypes to talk about, the Cleric doubles that amount with 8 Divine Domains in total. But why?! Well, as gods were a fairly central theme for Crown of the Magister with all the focus on the Cataclysm, gods not being native to Solasta and their fight with Sorr-Tarr, we didn’t want each god to only have a single domain to lord over. So… we put some extra effort in creating more Divine Domains - some which worked better than others.

Note: Before we dive further - please keep in mind that we may not be able to make the same exception for Solasta 2. Crown of the Magister released with 6 classes, each with 3 subclasses (except for Cleric with 7), for a total of 22 archetypes in total. If we manage to include all classes with 2 subclasses at the 1.0 release of Solasta 2, that would already be 12 classes each with 2 subclasses, for a total 24 archetypes (on top of implementing 6 extra classes). Now we repeat it often - with a studio of only 35 people, there’s a limit to the amount of content we can include!

Anyway, let’s not bore you with production constraints. To the subclass breakdown we go!

As with most of the SRD subclasses, the Life Domain fulfills the base Cleric fantasy very well. Most people would look at the Cleric in any game and immediately think Healer or at least Support - well, Life Domain is exactly that. Be it Domain Spells or subclass features, everything from the Life Domain is about keeping your allies (and yourself) healthy and ready to party (and by party we mean punching foes in the face, if that wasn’t obvious enough).



Immediately out of the gate, Disciple of Life squeezes more value out of your healing spells by healing more… With its well known 2014 loophole giving Goodberry incredible value on Life Cleric, as instead of 10 berries healing for 1 HP they would heal you for 4 HP each (for a total of 40 HP in exchange for a level 1 spell slot). This interaction has been removed in the 2024 version as the extra-healing only occurs on the turn the Life Cleric casts the spell, so no more bonus if an ally is healed during their turn or over time.

Next comes Preserve Life, one of the least understood Channel Divinity out there - and for a good reason, it is quite convoluted. You can heal a number of HP equal to 5 times your Cleric level, distributed as you wish between multiple allies… but only up to half of their HP. Design-wise, this is likely because Clerics regain their uses of Channel Divinity on a Short Rest, meaning that if you could Preserve Life to heal allies to full health you easily keep your party at max HP without having to spend any Hit Dice or Spell Slots, completely bypassing those systems. Still, not a bad Channel Divinity at all considering you can heal multiple allies from range, which can save the day when things go south and you have multiple friends downed and you don’t have Mass Healing Word at the ready.

The rest of the features are as straightforward as the previous ones. Blessed Healer grants you minor healing when you heal others, reducing the chances of you needing to spend your turn healing yourself because you took too much damage. And finally Supreme Healer simply removes the need to roll your dice when healing, automatically making it as if you rolled the maximum score. Technically speaking this is quite insane as variance is a very big part of D&D - so bypassing it as a passive feature without a limited amount of uses is very, very powerful.

Final Verdict? What’s to say, really? It fulfills the healer fantasy and makes healing others feel good, instead of waiting for them to go down before dropping them a single Healing Word and pushing back into the action. With Life Domain on top of the buffs to healing spells in 2024, proactive healing may actually be pretty good!

Like many of our fans would say, “That’s Battle!”. The Battle Domain is very well liked by Solasta players as it fits the fantasy of the “Cleric fighting on the frontline next to everyone else”. Put them in Half-Plate Armor with a Morningstar in one hand and a Shield in the other, and let them run wild.

While they did not have access to Heavy Armor, they did get Martial Weapons proficiency and the ability to cast Somatic & Material spells even if they had both hands occupied. Now, not every table plays with spell components - in fact, when Solasta 1 Early Access came out many were confused as to why they couldn’t cast some spells (turns out quite a few have somatic components) - so this may not appeal to everyone, but for some the ability to cast spells without having to drop or sheathe your weapon every time was a god-send (haha). Divine Fortitude also granted them a large pool of temporary HP once per day, giving them more staying power when diving into danger.

Now, the rest of the subclass features were a little controversial - not from an external standpoint, as stated above people loved the Battle Cleric - but mostly from a design perspective looking back at our own creation. First came Decisive Strike, their Channel Divinity - which gave them the ability to attempt to stun an enemy on hit… which stepped on the Monk’s foot (Stunning Strike). In the Sourcebook, we would rework that into Incapacitation instead of Stun.



Next came Herald of Battle, at level 6. An aura which gave nearby allies +1 to attack rolls, damage rolls, AC and Saving Throws. Once again… biting into another class’ design, this time the Paladin. Now the difference was that Herald of Battle only worked when next to the Cleric (5’ radius only), but still. On top of that, flat +1 bonuses are usually not very common in 5e design as it both threatens bounded accuracy and creates complexity for tracking - anyone who played 3.5e knows that you would often have to calculate god knows how many +1s and +2s and -2s to add before you rolled your D20. Entangled? -2! Flanking? +2! On higher ground? +1, but only for melee attacks! Sun in your eyes? Believe it or not, that will be a -1 because we’re the DM and we make the rules! 5e generally did away with all of that by simply giving advantage or disadvantage depending on the situation, and with both cancelling each other out no matter how many there are.

And finally, the Extra Attack. Instead of the classic Potent Spellcasting or Divine Strike, the Battle Cleric was the only one getting an Extra Attack just like a Fighter or a Barbarian would (although at level 8 instead of 5). For many, that was the selling point of the Battle Cleric - you get to attack twice! In all situations, an extra attack is better than Divine Strike too - two attacks means less chance of missing and dealing 0 damage, and even a regular non-magical morningstar would still be 1d8 + STR modifier, so you get a little more than the flat 1d8 damage from Divine Strike. This is where the issue lies - while it is great and gives a strong identity to the Battle Domain, this feature is just better than what the other Cleric domains offer. Balance-wise, this isn’t a great thing to do.

It is difficult to know how the Battle Domain would change with the changes to Clerics in the 2024 ruleset - but one thing’s for sure, the Extra Attack feature would probably need to be reworked. Maybe they will still be able to attack twice per turn, but not without a cost!

Final Verdict? A great domain beloved by many, fulfilling the promise of a strong “frontline full caster” fantasy. Inside though, a domain that likely borrowed a little too much from other classes, and which would need a few tweaks going forward!

Woowee this one was a bit of a mess! The Elemental Domain was effectively three very similar Domains: Fire Domain, Ice Domain, Lightning Domain. Half of their features were excellent, and the other half were fairly terrible. Let’s dive into it.

First, the Domain Spells: almost none of them are from the Cleric spell list, granting them a lot of additional options. Area of effect spells such as Lightning Bolt and Thunderwave, mobility spells such as Fly and Misty Step, utility with Fog Cloud and Conjure Elemental… this was a huge boon for those looking to play a more “caster” type cleric.

On top of that, you got Primal Harmony immediately granting you Resistance to either Cold, Fire or Lightning (depending on your domain). This was only possible because Crown of the Magister did not have multiclassing - otherwise the level 1 Elemental Cleric dip would be insane. You also got an extra cantrip, which may not seem like much but those of you who had to spam Sacred Flame during the entirety of Solasta 1 know that it was very welcome.

Now at level 2, if you remember what we wrote about in our Sorcerer article about the Haunted Soul… a similar issue can be seen here. All three Channel Divinity Lightning Blade, Fire Burst and Ice Lance were just bad spells turned into a power instead. Lightning Blade dealt a laughable 1d8 damage, but could potentially stun for 1 round. Fire Burst dealt an okay 3d8 damage… but with no other effect. Ice Lance dealt a meager 2d8 damage and had the potential to… push 10 feet. That’s all it did. And all of those powers were single target on top. That’s pretty bad!

Level 6 gave you a neat power that allowed you to use your reaction to absorb damage from your domain type, healing you instead of harming you. We envisioned the Elemental Cleric stoically standing in a Dragon’s Fire Breath and coming out unscathed. What we got instead were Fire Clerics running into the fray and Fireballing themselves to both destroy enemy packs and healing themselves in the process. Looking back on it, it was pretty obvious that this would happen.



Level 8 also had the mistake of not following the standard 2014 cleric subclass progression, with Herald of the Elements taking the place of Potent Spellcasting… and once again giving very mediocre spell-like powers. Lightning gets a 2d8+WIS mod AoE that can restrain for one turn. Fire gets a 1d8+WIS mod single target spell that can shove 5’. Ice gets a 1d8+WIS mod single target that can restrain for a turn. Yea, Fire got completely shafted there (and Ice too).

As you can see, not our best work! Mostly because it was created at the very beginning when we were still running to get a few subclasses implemented and having very little time to change anything afterwards, but still - the three Elemental Domains were quite a mess. Which led to us reworking them into a single Elemental Domain in the Sourcebook afterwards. No longer would you choose Fire, Ice or Lightning - the Elemental Cleric is blessed to master all elements!

First, as Multiclassing needed to be considered, Primal Harmony and its level 1 Damage Resistance had to go - instead giving the Cleric the ability to change the damage type dealt by their spells to Fire, Cold or Lightning when they so desire. The bonus cantrip also went from being pre-selected to allowing them to choose any cantrip from any class as long as it dealt fire, cold or lightning damage.

The bigger changes came at level 2, with their Channel Divinity now offering them three choices (instead of being locked to one). Call upon Thunder is a teleport that deals AoE damage on arrival with a potential deafen. Call upon Wind deals damage in a line with a potential shove and prone. Call upon Ice deals single target damage with a potential restrain. And all of them deal the standard 2d8 + cleric damage which scales with levels, making this feature much less terrible (on top of giving them versatility since they can use all three).

At level 6 the feature also changed to needing a use of Channel Divinity as it was too strong to have unlimited uses. And instead of healing, using your reaction would grant you immunity to either Cold, Fire or Lightning damage until the start of your next turn, and then grant you Temporary Hit Points equal to the damage that you would have taken plus resistance to that damage type for 1 minute.

Finally, level 8 simply got replaced by Potent Spellcasting. Sometimes, simplicity is the best answer, and the level 2 Wrath of the Elements Channel Divinity already gave enough options to not need another three powers.

Final Verdict? An interesting base that was left a little undercooked - a bit of shame really, as a large part of the archetype already had a lot of good things going for it. Would love to revisit it in the future if we ever have the time to give it due diligence.

If the Elemental Domain was undercooked, the Insight Domain was simply raw. Sometimes you shoot and you miss the target by a little, sometimes the gun just blows up in your hand. And unfortunately, the Insight Cleric was more of the latter. Let’s be honest here, it was just bad. But why? Why, as its creator, are we so harsh on the Insight Cleric?

Well, you have to remember that Solasta 1 was mostly combat-centric. With a small team such as ours, we had to make decisions as to what we would focus on - and for us Tactical Adventures, the choice was a given: Tactical Combat. That doesn’t mean we don’t intend to polish the other aspects of the game (especially now that we learned from Solasta 1), but when we started on our first project we had to make sure we got the core of our game right.

So, going back to the Insight Domain… which as you would imagine from the name, was mostly suited for social exchanges. Dialogues. Investigations. None of which were very developed in Crown of the Magister. To the point that some players started saying that choosing the Insight Domain was like trying to play a Cleric without subclass. Ouch. Fair, but ouch. Let’s take a look.



At level 1, they got Divine Intuition giving them advantage on Arcana, History and Nature checks - none of which are very useful in Solasta 1. They also got Inspired Diplomat to know the odds in dialogue choices, which is somewhat useful but often not required. Those were reworked in the Sourcebook to grant two extra skill proficiency and expertise in Insight, plus the ability to add your Wisdom modifier to any Charisma check when attempting to influence someone after observing them for 1 minute.

At level 2, Foreknowledge makes the first attack directed at you be rolled with disadvantage, lasting 1 minute. Doesn’t sound so bad, but the kicker here is… First, you need to use your action to activate it. Second, it can only trigger once per round. Not per turn, per round. And since it’s not a reaction, you can’t decide on which attack it triggers - so if a tiny goblin attacks you before a Giant tries to punt you to Narnia, you are very much boned. In the Sourcebook, this was changed to make the Cleric actively target a creature, making that creature have disadvantage on all attack rolls against them for 1 minute, or until the Cleric uses a bonus action to switch target.

At level 6, Divine Eye gave advantage on rolls to detect traps, hidden doors and objects. Once again, a nice little bonus but nothing great really - and again, completely useless in combat, which is the largest part of Solasta 1. In the Sourcebook Divine Eye permanently gave the effect of See Invisibility and Detect Magic to the Insight Cleric, on top of doubling their proficiency bonus when making an ability check looking for traps, hidden doors and objects.

Finally at level 8, Divine Lore allowed them to read / speak all languages, with the addition of being able to identify one magical item for free per Long Rest. Again, could be great if the game had more uses of different languages being relevant, but that was not the case. Sourcebook just replaces it with the standard Potent Spellcasting.

Final Verdict? The Insight Domain was just doomed from the very start. It carries an inherently social-heavy theme in a game that’s simply not very developed in the dialogue / investigation themes. We’d like to imagine it would have probably found a better home in a game like Baldur’s Gate 3, or Disco Elysium if it were a D&D game.

Now that the Insight Domain is out of the way, let’s talk Law Domain! This one is little more in the middle of the pack, a decent domain power-wise with a straight-forward theme: Protecting the innocents and pushing the guilty. The Law Cleric has access to quite some powerful tools but there are a few bits that needed a tiny bit more varnish. Let’s get into it!

First came their Domain Spells, with access to two of the most powerful ones in Shield and Counterspell. This alone already pushes the archetype to the top of the pack… if not for two little tiny problems. Remember when I talked about the 2014 cleric subclass design pushing you towards either being a frontliner or a caster? Well, the Law Cleric is more of a frontliner… meaning they are likely close to danger with a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other.

But wait! Isn’t Shield a somatic spell? Uh oh… so basically you either keep one hand free to be able to cast Shield, but lose out on wearing a shield (-2 AC) or having a weapon out (your attack of opportunity deals almost no damage), or you keep both your weapon and shield and can’t cast Shield (losing on a potential +5 AC). Damn it! And what’s the other problem? Well, in Solasta 1 you need to succeed an Arcana Check to recognize the spell being cast by an enemy, meaning you need Intelligence. Not a big problem if you’re a Wizard, but if you’re a Cleric… you’re often going to end up casting Counterspell blindly without knowing if it's worth it or not.

This in no way makes the Law Cleric bad (those spells are still amongst the most powerful ones in D&D), but it makes the experience a little less smooth than we’d have liked. Arguably the Counterspell one is fine (after all you aren’t learnt like the Wizards, so it’s only fair that you might have to do a little bit of guesswork), but the Shield one is painful.



Jumping on the level 1 feature, Commanding Presence grants proficiency and advantage on Intimidation checks, and Unyielding Enforcer gives advantage on rolls made to resist being moved or shoved. In the Sourcebook we changed that to expertise on Intimidation (instead of advantage), kept the advantage against forced movement and also gave proficiency with Martial Weapons since it is a frontline archetype.

Level 2 Holy Retribution is a reaction Channel Divinity, where getting hit with a melee attack allows you to strike back and deal psychic damage. Fun fact, there was a strange bug out there that sometimes caused Holy Retribution to damage the Cleric instead, leading some players to wonder why their Cleric decided to wack themselves. While quite powerful (as it used a reaction and not an action), one thing that felt quite bad was that you could completely whiff and thus “waste” a use of Channel Divinity. This is why in the Sourcebook we buffed it to deal even more damage and potentially frightening the target for one round, but looking at the 2024 rules it probably would have been better to simply add “you only expend a use of Channel Divinity if the attack lands”.

Another use of Channel Divinity at level 2 is Force of Law (for some reason we gave them two choices), which simply makes the target of your spell roll their saving throw with disadvantage. This one was removed in the Sourcebook as it was just Heightened Spell Metamagic disguised under a different name.

Level 6 gave them access to Word of the Law, an action which forced the target to roll a CON saving throw against your spell casting DC or lose their concentration on their spell. The Sourcebook changed it to a bonus action (since anyone can make someone lose concentration with an action, that’s called bashing them in the face), and turning it into an INT saving throw as it was more a battle of will than a punch in the gut. Thinking back about it, would WIS be more suited than INT here?

At level 8 we continue on the non-standard streak with Anathema, a strange power that can be used once per short rest dealing minor damage each turn and restraining a target up to 1 minute. As with the other non-standard features this got changed to Divine Strike in the Sourcebook.

Final Verdict? A strong divine domain with a lot of good tools under their belt, and only some little flaws to polish out. A solid choice!

Onto the Sun domain! Considered by some to be the second strongest Cleric subclass in Solasta after the Battle Domain, it features strong AoE damage and debuff thanks to its Domain Spells, as well as good utility paired with great action economy. If that just sounded like a bunch of buzzwords mixed together, that’s because it kind of was - but long story short, it’s a very solid choice.

Starting with the Domain Spells, Sun Clerics get an early access AoE damage from level 1 with Burning Hands, and Faerie Fire is quite a good tool to have in Solasta against Soraks who always try to remain in the dark. Later on you unlock spells like Scorching Ray (good damage spell with flexibility to target one to three foes), Hypnotic Pattern (one of the best control spells as it doesn’t allow repeated saving throws), Daylight (great against Defilers and Broods) and Wall of Fire (great to control tight spaces like corridors) - quite a good arsenal as you can see!

At level 1 you also get Holy Radiance, which forces your foes to roll their saving throw against your Sacred Flame with disadvantage. While not a very flashy feature, Sacred Flame is often your bread and butter long range filler option as a Cleric in Solasta 1, so you’ll be casting it a lot - having a boost to help it landing adds up quite a bit over time.

At level 2, Herald of the Sun is a Channel Divinity that damages a single target and can blind them for up to 1 minute. We felt that this was a little too weak so in the Sourcebook we gave a lot more flavour. You instead clad yourself in fire for 1 minute, shedding bright light in a 10’ radius around you with a small Spirit Guardians-like effect - foes take half your cleric damage when starting their turn or moving near you, while allies gain that amount in temporary HP.



At level 6, Indomitable Light gave the Sun Clerics another use of Channel Divinity - however considering that it was extremely similar to the spell Daylight we simply removed it in the Sourcebook. The star of the show at level 6 though was Soothing Hands, a bonus action that not only healed an ally for an amount equal to your Cleric level, but also removed either Stunned, Deafened, Blinded or Frightened. As you can imagine, that was too powerful compared to most other cleric subclasses, and also a little bit too similar to the Paladin’s Lay on Hands. So in the Sourcebook it no longer heals, and the conditions removed also got changed to not overlap with Lesser Restoration (blinded, deafened, paralyzed, poisoned) - instead removing Charmed, Frightened and Incapacitated.

Lastly at level 8 we changed Divine Strike to Potent Spellcasting in the Sourcebook. Many players did accurately point out that considering their other features, the Sun Cleric was more a long range spellcaster than a frontliner type, so it made more sense to give them Potent Spellcasting.

Final Verdict? Both very straightforward in theme and execution, one of the better Divine Domains we made for Solasta 1.

The last of the 7 original Divine Domains available at the 1.0 launch, the Oblivion Domain is interesting. Outside being a very solid Cleric subclass, it has one feature that made many claim that they are required for Ironman (no loading allowed, game over = run over) Cataclysm runs, thus catapulting its popularity amongst those seeking the hardest of challenges. What is that feature? Let’s take a look!

At level 1 Oblivion Clerics get Gatekeeper, a passive feature that gives every ally (including yourself) within 30’ advantage on their death saving throw. Not a great proactive power, but it can save a few runs when things go sideways and you’re either out of heals or can’t spare an action to heal a downed ally.

At level 2 comes Herald of Pain, a Channel Divinity that can make all enemies within 30’ get disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks for up to 1 minute. When successful, it increases the survivability of your party by a significant amount as your enemies will be missing a lot more under its effect. But the feature that takes the crown at level 2 for those Ironman runs is Peaceful Rest - a very simple power that lowers the chances of being attacked at night on the world map and makes it impossible to be surprised during those encounters. And if you’ve played a good amount of Solasta 1, you know how deadly random encounters can be.

Fun fact, random encounters were reworked after the 1.0 launch as they were very inconsistent, and their difficulty was raised to make them challenging for freshly rested adventurers. After all, you enter a random encounter with all your HP and resources, and you long rest right after! Now that’s all good buuuut… The D&D 5e 2014 ruleset has an extremely powerful variable for any encounter… and that is getting surprised. In Turn-Based tactical games, there exists the concept of Alpha Strike - killing the enemy in a single round before they have the chance to react - and the 2014 ruleset made it possible to achieve in Solasta 1. Now in the 2024 ruleset surprise no longer makes you potentially lose your first turn, instead simply making you roll initiative with disadvantage which will significantly lower the variance created by surprising someone.



So how does that relate to the Ironman Cataclysm runs? Well, let’s just say that when you get ambushed by a deadly difficulty encounter at random while traveling on the world map, and with most of your party asleep… in the hardest game difficulty without the ability to load or run away, that’s often a death sentence. On top of that, we did go overboard buffing some of these random encounters, which made them very difficult to win even without being surprised. Most infamous at lower levels were the 8 bandits + 2 thugs (action economy hello), and at higher levels the twin Dragons or the Remorhaz trio (2 adults + 1 youngling). The biggest issue with random encounters in Solasta 1 was the variance added on top of the fact that unlike on Tabletop, we never implemented a feature to flee the encounter.

Alright that’s enough for story time, going back to the Oblivion Cleric with Strike of Oblivion, which for some reason was a 1d6 Divine Strike at level 6 instead of 8, and Mark of Fate which was a sort of group hex on a single target (everyone who attacked them who deal extra necrotic damage equal to the Cleric’s WIS modifier). In the Sourcebook those were changed to Mark of Fate being moved to level 6, only triggering once per turn (to avoid having the target blow up when attacked by extra attacks or spells with multiple projectiles) and giving its target a saving throw on their turn to remove the mark (so it’s not 1 min of free pummeling on the poor chap). Level 8 saw Potent Spellcasting replace Strike of Oblivion as once again this domain is more of a spellcaster cleric archetype than a frontliner one.

Final Verdict? Well, the Oblivion Cleric definitely does some things very well. While Gatekeeper isn’t great as it’s only useful when things go south (and even then usually Healing Word is a better solution), both their Herald of Pain and Mark of Fate are extremely potent at debuffing enemies or making sure that one target goes down fast. Peaceful Rest being what it is is less a testament of the Oblivion Cleric being good, and more a makeshift fix to a flaw that Solasta 1 had - namely, encounters being balanced for Normal Difficulty sometimes becoming a wall too tall to scale on Cataclysm, especially when layered with both the variance of surprise and the inability to run away. Not balancing for Cataclysm was intended (we simply don’t have the time for that), but we’ll be exploring options to lessen this feeling of inevitability in Solasta 2 (aka “the game decided that the run was over, without even allowing me a dice roll”).

Ah, the Mischief Domain! Last of the 8, introduced in Lost Valley with the addition of Misaye. It is… serviceable. Great domain spells, but the features don’t necessarily mesh well together. You’re encouraged to go in melee combat, but you don’t get Martial Weapons nor Heavy Armor proficiency. I guess Misaye does not only inflict mischief on others, but also on their own clerics!

Mischief Clerics have a plethora of options to control the battlefield with their Domain Spells - Grease, Slow, Confusion, Mind Twist and the like, on top of getting also great spells to buff themselves like Blur or Greater Invisibility. The higher the difficulty, the more control spells become an invaluable commodity: it doesn’t matter how accurate your enemy is or how hard they hit if they can’t play!



At level 1 Mischief Clerics get proficiency in Stealth and Deception, and get Borrowed Luck which allows them to use their reaction to reroll a failed saving throw that was rolled without disadvantage. Doing so will force disadvantage on their next saving throw, a fun design that pairs well with the name of the feature. In the Sourcebook this changed a little, you still get Deception but you get to choose between Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Performance and Persuasion instead of being forced into Stealth. You also get to learn Vicious Mockery as the little mischief maker that you are. Borrowed Luck also changed to be usable on any D20 rolls without disadvantage, usable without drawback a number of times per long rest. You can decide to use it even after running out of uses, but then your DM gets to inflict you with disadvantage on one D20 roll of their choice for each time you do later down the line…

At level 2 you get Strike of Chaos, a Channel Divinity that inflicts a random condition to the enemy hit for up to 1 minute. As the Mischief Cleric wasn’t a frontliner archetype, in the Sourcebook this changed to Playful Whispers, with a similar effect but AoE around you and the condition only lasting 1 round, and making you go invisible for the same duration.

At level 6 Elusive Target allows you to use your reaction to gain Dodge and Disengage until the end of your next turn after getting hit by a melee attack, making any subsequent attempts to target you less likely to be successful. At level 8 you get Divine Strike, later changed in the Sourcebook into Potent Spellcasting.

Final Verdict? A fun subclass, really. Borrowed Luck is plenty flavorful, the Domain Spells are fantastic and with the Sourcebook changes Playful Whispers just adds even more to the potential for mischief and control on the battlefield. Even before that change, Strike of Chaos itself could be devastating - at best it could paralyze an enemy for a full minute!

Can’t believe we’re finally done. That article took ages to write, we’re nearing 7,000 words there! Now for Solasta II, it is possible that Clerics won’t get a new Divine Domain considering the pantheon doesn’t change. We have a few designs ready in case we decide otherwise, but there are a few reasons as to why we might be reusing the updated version of Solasta 1 Divine Domains.



And with that, we’re done! See you next week for the end of the Trades & Sails Community Contest!

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2975950/Solasta_II/

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Heyo people!

April has now started, and with it comes a new Community Contest for one of you to leave their mark in Solasta II! As a heads-up we're almost done selecting winners from the previous contest and we'll be announcing them soon. We haven't forgotten about it, no sir, not at all! (anxiously flips through pages like a DM going through their session notes to find the name of that one random NPC the party decided to hyperfixate on four sessions ago).


Read faster, puny Community Lead. Your people demand to know their victors.

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Solasta II's second Community Contest is now live! Fancy yourself the captain of a merchant ship? This contest will give you the opportunity of having your boat anchored in the port of Caer Mar, one of the largest cities in Neokos. Name your captain, name your ship, let us know what goods you're carrying and describe the emblem on your sails!



Trades & Sails is the second of many community events where anyone can participate to get their ideas implemented in-game. Trades & Sails is about implementing a Merchant Ship that you will find in Solasta II anchored in the port of Caer Mar. The winner will have his boat implemented in-game and available for anyone to find.


Want to participate? Simply click on the image and it will take you to the form!

• What name do you want to appear in the credits if you win
  
• What's your Email Address (so we can contact you if you win)
  
• What's your captain's name (needs to be high-fantasy friendly)
  
• What's your boat's name (20 characters max)
  
• Describe your boat's emblem (we will design it according to your description)
  
• What's your emblem primary & secondary colors
  
• What trade goods is your ship carrying (70 characters max)

These questions are all explained in more details inside the submission form.

It starts now (Tuesday April 8th 2025) and ends in 2 weeks, Tuesday April 22nd!

Well, have we something for you! Winners get the following:

• 1x Steam Key of Solasta II (playable once Early Access launches)
  
• 1x PDF copy of the Solasta Revised Campaign Sourcebook
  
• Their submission will be added in-game
  
• Their name will be added in the credits of Solasta II as Community Contributor
  
• The “Bard” role in our official Solasta Discord Server

What is it that you bring in this fine city, captain?

1. Please do not participate more than once
   
2. Please do not submit text from existing books / games / etc.
   
3. Please note that we may slightly adapt the text you submit
   
4. By participating, you agree to Tactical Adventures using the content you submitted. The legal guidelines can be downloaded here, if you’re proficient in legalese and want to dig into the document.

TL;DR: If you submit something, you allow us to use it! Please only participate if you’re fine with all of the above.

We will announce the winners in a future news post in the weeks following the end of the Trades & Sails Community Contest, and will reach out to them for the rewards around that same time! Again, we're almost done selecting our previous Community Contest Of Quills & Ink winners - it took us quite a bit more time than we originally expected due to the amount of submissions!  



We’re back with April's Community Stream! As a reminder, we’re now down to one Community Stream per month until Early Access gets closer. For this stream, we're going back to dissecting Solasta & D&D 2024 Classes & Subclasses! Let's talk design and power level!

See you on Friday, 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT / 6 pm CEST!



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Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Hello adventurers!

We’re back this week with a Class Spotlight, featuring the Sorcerer - the eternal rival of the Wizard. While these nerds have to learn magic by reading books and waving wands, us superior Sorcerers are naturally gifted with it. We feel it, we mold it, we bend it to our will. Mastery of magic? Oh my dear, wait until you hear about Metamagic…


My dear, I do believe someone has Twin Cast Polymorph on our offspring. They are quite fluffier than last I saw them.

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Ahhh, the Sorcerer. Always compared with the Wizard - and for good reasons! Both are arcane spellcasters with access to very similar spell lists, which can sometimes make them hard to differentiate for newer players aside from their theme: Wizards being the studious spellcasters who scale off their Intelligence, while Sorcerers are natural born geniuses who rely on their Charisma.

The consensus has always favored Wizards over Sorcerers however, as the former can learn an infinite amount of spells and thus become incredibly versatile, while the latter is stuck with learning only two spells per level. It turns out these nerds have unlocked the legendary power of LITERACY - truly the most overpowered skill in existence.



During the 3.5e era, this was counterbalanced by the fact that Sorcerers could cast more spells per day - but this is no longer the case in 5e. Instead the class now focuses on Metamagic by making the feature more easily accessible (previously it would require you to upcast the spell, meaning you had to sacrifice higher spell slots to cast weaker spells with metamagic). Sorcerer subclasses also often allow them to dip their fingers into other spell lists - with the most well known on Tabletop being the Divine Soul Sorcerer who can tap into Cleric spells.

Now for those not familiar with it, Metamagic is a very powerful tool. While newer players may be attracted to Empowered Spell or Quickened Spell seeking to deal more damage, veterans often eye Heightened Spell and Twinned Spell to ensure their opponents end up skipping their turn paralyzed, charmed, frightened or affected by any sort of annoying debuff - a foe that’s almost dead can still hit as hard as one that’s full HP, but a foe that’s stunned is effectively non-existent until the condition is removed.

The 2024 edition also further pushed the differentiation between Sorcerers and Wizards by giving them the Innate Sorcery feature. Long story short, the idea here is: Wizards are more versatile and have access to a wide array of spells, but Sorcerers are just better at casting theirs.

Alright, now that we’ve talked about the class, let’s take a look back at our subclasses from Crown of the Magister. How did they hold up compared to the rest?



Usually when we look at an SRD subclass, it’s the “vanilla flavour” of that class. Think Berserker Barbarian who is the embodiment of “I use Rage and I hit people”, or Life Cleric filling the classic healer fantasy role. But for Sorcerers… there isn’t really a “standard” Sorcerer, is there?

Draconic Bloodline is pretty close to that though - a clear ancestry giving them access to magical powers, brimming with prestige and strength (who doesn’t like dragons?). It is also easier to picture than more esoteric archetypes like Aberrant Mind or Storm Sorcerers (my grand-grand-grandpa was a Dragon vs I was born during a tempest on a sinking ship somehow infusing me with the power of wind and lightning). This thematic simplicity was a boon when it came to work on facial features exclusive to Sorcerers - just add some dragon scales!

While we usually like to keep our SRD subclasses as close to Tabletop as possible, we decided to give Draconic Sorcerers Origin Spells. Origin Spells are an addition to more recent Sorcerer archetypes, helping to mitigate the feeling of being too limited in known spells (2014 Sorcerers know less spells at level 20 than Paladins, a half-caster class!) - and we thought that was a great idea to give that class a little boost.

Other than that, Draconic Bloodline is fairly straightforward - nothing overly exciting here. You basically get a permanent Mage Armor with Draconic Resilience, saving you a level 1 spell slot and more importantly allowing you to learn another spell instead. You also are a little beefier with +1HP per level, which is never bad when you’re rocking D6 Hit Dice.

At level 6 Elemental Affinity and Draconic Resistance give you a little more damage and resistance when dealing with your ancestor’s element, and much later at level 14 you gain the ability to permanently fly (which in Solasta is pretty cool, it does put you out of reach of many more devastating melee attacks). Also before I forget: we did give them some of the best spells with Shield and Counterspell which turned Draconic Bloodline from an already pretty decent archetype to a really good one.



Final Verdict? While not the most exciting subclass, Draconic Bloodline did its job very well. Some might say it lacked the fun and wonders of the other archetypes and didn’t give you many new tools to play with, but you could never go wrong with it - it was rock solid.

Hohoho, the Child of the Rift. Where to start. Let’s say that most of you were very quick on picking up an oversight that came with Offering of the Rift. But let’s leave that for later and start with an introduction of the subclass.

Our initial idea regarding our sorcerer archetypes was that each would have an underlying connection to a type of magic: Arcane, Divine, Primal (which was something One D&D toyed with during their playtest, but ultimately dropped). Draconic Sorcerers being related to dragons whose greater intellect often allow them to become powerful spellcasters, were given Arcane Origin Spells. Mana Painters, who draw Mana from the very land they walk upon, would be given Primal Origin Spells. Finally, Children of the Rift, whose power comes from the very cataclysm that brought Gods to Solasta, would have access to Divine Origin Spells.

The first feature, Rift Magic, was an attempt at translating the supernatural instability that is the Rift into a power, allowing them to sometimes cast spells for free. However its low chance of happening and more importantly, its relatively low impact made it… not very satisfying. An immediate comparison that comes to mind is Wild Magic Surge, which solved both these issues: you can force it to trigger with Tide of Chaos, and its effect is much more entertaining - even if it’s not always positive, it’s sometimes to remember! On the other hand, “I can cast one more level 2 spell, yippee”... Rift Magic was just not enough in its existing iteration.

But let’s not be discouraged by one dud. Rift Deflection came next at level 2, giving you a proactive defensive power in exchange for sorcery points. Although powerful as it protected you against both attacks and spells with saving throws, it was balanced by not being a reaction, making you preemptively use a bonus action if you thought danger was coming your way. A very strong tool for survivability!

But wait a minute… A level 2 subclass feature on Sorcerer?! That’s not in the books! The story here is that early on we designed features using Sorcery Points, but only remembered later that they are unlocked at level 2 (since Sorcery Points = Sorcerer Level, we kind of glossed over that…). Now, we could have just removed those extra features, but considering the original Crown of the Magister 1.0 release was capped at level 10 and Sorcerers only unlocked Subclass Features at level 1 and 6… we decided to make a little exception and keep them so each archetype could build a stronger identity.

Now, you were waiting for it - Offering of the Rift came at level 6. By sacrificing max HP you could regain Sorcery Points, and you would only get those HP back after a long rest. Again, the feature drew upon the theme of the Rift requiring sacrifice and giving power in return… But then came the exploit. Greater Restoration removes any effect reducing one’s max HP. And you know what Cleric spell Children of the Rift get in their Origin Spells at level 9? That’s right, Greater Restoration!

This effectively gave Children of the Rift infinite spell slots. You’d use up your spell slots, convert your Sorcery Points into new spell slots, sacrifice your HP to get Sorcery Points again, and cast Greater Restoration. There you go, as good as new! This incredibly overpowered loophole catapulted the archetype to the front of the power chart - as long as you got to level 9.

The final feature at level 14, Riftwalk, gave you free Misty Steps with very minor force damage on arrival a few times per long rest. A nice little power as mobility is always great, especially when you don’t have to spend spell slots on it - but nothing really new. At the end of the day, the star of the show was Offering of the Rift and the Origin Spells.



In the Sourcebook version we completely reworked the subclass to power it up while removing the exploit, slightly altering the angle from which we addressed its theme. Instead of honing into the raw, unstable and dangerous aspect of the Rift itself, we leaned into the idea that the Child of the Rift’s power came from the fusion of a soul from Solasta and Tirmar through the Rift.

Rift Magic was transformed into Between Two Worlds. It now gave expertise in two skills, languages or tools of your choice, which could be changed after each long rest - the Child of the Rift would tap into souls from Tirmar and could therefore gain temporary understanding of any skill. It improved their versatility outside combat, which is always a good thing as the Sorcerer small spell pool limits their choices.

Rift Walk moved to level 6 and now triggered whenever you used Metamagic to cast a spell, building upon the Sorcerer’s core identity instead of being another standalone power with its own resource to track. Rift Deflection moved from level 2 (since RAW Sorcerers don’t get subclass features at level 2) to level 14, changing from bonus action into reaction to avoid having to gamble your precious Sorcery Points away to prevent damage that may or may not come your way. In exchange, its power level was also lowered - it now granted damage resistance to a damage type of your choice until the start of your next turn, reducing instead of completely negating it (by making the enemy miss or by succeeding your saving throw).

Final Verdict? Probably one of the best themes when you take into account Solasta and its history, and good ideas that probably just needed a little more time in the oven to make sure all the kinks were ironed out. The original version was obviously overpowered past level 9, but the reworked version has a lot of flair with a constant flickering around the battlefield to reward the use of metamagic.

The Mana Painters are a middle ground between the “safe but kind of standard” Draconic Sorcerers and “broken combo” Children of the Rift. Drawing their power from the mana swirling around them, they had access to a few Druid Spells in their Origin Spell List.

As a subclass, Mana Painters had excellent survivability due to Mana Absorption, their level 1 feature which allowed them to use their Charisma Modifier for all their saving throws. This was only possible because Crown of the Magister did not have multiclassing in mind, as a level 1 dip Mana Painter would make any Paladin insanely powerful with both Mana Shield and Aura of Protection. This made the subclass very front-loaded, with its most powerful feature - and arguably their identity - at level 1.

At level 2, Mana Painters got access to Mana Drain, a high risk, unfortunately not high reward attack that would make them regain Sorcery Points if successful. While the idea was interesting (encouraging a range class to go into melee for a reward), the balance wasn’t good enough here: the damage was low and did not scale with levels, and it would only give back a single sorcery point. This made Mana Drain not worth using.

This is especially the case since at level 6, Mana tap would allow you to regain half your maximum Sorcery Points after a short rest once per day. Now you might start to see a pattern here - the Mana Painter was supposed to be the Sorcerer with an overabundance of Sorcery Points, since they constantly draw mana from the land. This defining feature was supposed to be their greatest strength, but unfortunately got overshadowed by the Child of the Rift infinite Sorcery Points exploit.

The last feature was the level 14 Mana Balance, which would make them regain 5 HP per Sorcery Points spent. Again, the issue we ran into was that regaining HP is a reactive power, something you would want on a frontliner like a Fighter or a Monk, not a Sorcerer. And without the ability to generate Temporary HP, most of the time Mana Balance would do nothing. It was a nifty tool in case you got targeted and needed a bit of healing, but you had little control over it.



In the Sourcebook version we had to make a few tweaks, notably to prevent the level 1 dip exploit. Mana Absorption was moved to level 6, requiring a significant investment to unlock (while also not arriving too late as it’s their archetype-defining feature), getting replaced at level 1 by Mana Shield which grants Temporary HP equal to 3 times the level of the spell cast, helping Sorcerers build a little buffer in case they get targeted (instead of waiting to get walloped and heal afterwards). Mana Drain moved to level 14 as a reaction, highly empowered to give more flavour to the subclass. It would weaken a spell you see being cast, halving its damage and allowing its target to roll saving throw with advantage, while also regaining a number of sorcery points equal to the level of the spell cast.

Final Verdict? Again, a very interesting theme and good underlying ideas. A few tweaks and a buff to Mana Drain was all it needed to express itself fully. It’s just a shame the Mana Painter couldn’t shine with their overabundance of Sorcery Points due to the Child of the Rift exploit.

Let’s be honest, Haunted Souls had a fair share of issues. While a lot of Lost Valley subclasses ended up being fan-favorites, we got a little stuck with the Haunted Soul. We had the theme figured out - drawing power from malevolent spirits, making them lean into Necromancy and Fear effects… but then realizing that not a lot of Necromancy spells were implemented in Solasta 1.

This made us create very “spell-oriented” features for the Haunted Soul, as if they unlocked subclass-specific spells. Level 1 Spirit Visage would be a Bonus action “spell” that would force a target to succeed a Wisdom Saving Throw or be frightened until the start of your next turn. Level 6 Vengeful Spirits would be a Bonus action “spell” that was basically a long range Spirit Guardians that you could move once per turn. Only Level 14 Soul Drain broke the pattern by making you regain 1 Sorcery Point whenever you killed a CR1+ creature with a spell of level 1 or higher.

In the Sourcebook, we tried to move away from that sort of design. Spirit Visage was replaced by A Helping Hand, giving you Chill Touch for free and allowing you to cast it as a Bonus Action whenever you cast a spell of level 1 or higher. That spirit haunting you is giving a hand, literally.

Vengeful Spirit also changed into giving you resistance to necrotic damage and allowing you to use your reaction to spend sorcery points and haunt your attacker when you get damaged, making all attacks targeting them roll with advantage until the end of your turn. Clearly delivering on its name, Vengeful Spirits!

Lastly, Soul Drain was simplified to be a singular use power per day. By touching the body of a creature that died within the last minute, you could regain up to half that creature’s number of Hit Dice in Sorcery Points. A little more sinister and requiring a conscious action rather than passively draining Sorcery Points in the battlefield by mowing down enemies with spells!



Final Verdict? Honestly, although its original design made a little bit of a faux pas by filling it with spell-like features, Haunted Soul wasn’t bad at all. It did not scale well, but for Tier 2 campaigns it did its job well. Flavour-wise, we like it! Especially on Tabletop, we could see it thrive as it has a pretty juicy thematic.

Unlike Knut and Daisy who both teased the Solasta II Rogue and Paladin subclass in the Steam Next Fest demo, Joralas was a Mana Painter! Here’s a little secret: The Sorcerer’s new subclass oscillated between two different themes - so it needed a bit more time in the oven before we decided on which we wanted to go with. But this is a story for a future article!

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Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Hoy hoy my good people,

You've been many to participate to March's Community Contest, Of Quills & Ink - so many that I had to ask for help reading through all your submissions, something that never happened on Crown of the Magister! If anything we're a little sad that so many good reads willl not make it in, as ultimately we will have to select a handful of winners. Thank you for taking the time to make this event a success, we'll come back to you soon(ish) with the results!

You who win shall become... King. Odin decrees it so.



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Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Alright!

It’s finally time to get around answering your queries from the Steam Next Fest AMA event. Get ready for us to go over a list of 30+ questions, as we will be answering each and every single one of them - and this time with directors from each department stepping in!


Directors when they receive my mail with 32 questions to answer.

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Will critical hits / misses have any special visual effects on the dice roll on screen? What about the damage dice rolls resulting from a Critical hit? (from LJ the Brave)
Mathieu (CEO): This is an interesting suggestion! Depending on the time we have at hand (which isn’t a lot), it might be a little time consuming to create new VFX for that but we could try to look at better UI feedback, camera shakes and the like. 

 
Will Solasta 2 have a higher difficulty, with more/unique enemies or with more/unique abilities, comparable to the changes of honour mode in BG3? (from Bloody Val)
Karim (CTO): We plan on having customizable difficulty settings so that you can fine tune your experience to your liking, similar to Solasta I. If all goes according to plan, this should in turn impact the ruleset and basic AI behaviour. Regarding unique abilities like Legendary Actions, they represent quite a large time investment to implement so we believe everyone should get to enjoy them regardless of difficulty. 
 

Are there any internal discussions or plans to develop a sourcebook for use as a setting for a tabletop/VTT D&D 5e Solasta II campaign? (from DiceWrangler)
Emile (Com. Lead): We are indeed considering it. We already released a Campaign Sourcebook for Solasta I (available on Modiphius’ website), so we’d love to publish another one for Solasta II. That being said, creating a Sourcebook is very time consuming - and as you know, we’re already very busy developing a video game. We’ll probably take a more serious look at the question when we get closer to the 1.0 release! 
 


Will there be a supporter pack for solasta 2 as well? (from Liza)
Emile (Com. Lead): It’s very likely going to exist, yes! As a reminder, the Supporter Pack only exists for people who want to give us a little extra to help the studio - it is absolutely not interesting in terms of value, so don’t feel like you’re missing out if you don’t get it. 
 

Will there be an option to make our party characters silent (no voice acting) so we can RP our own voice? (from Vollen_sl)
Mathieu (CEO): This is not planned for now, but I suppose we could add that as an option in the settings. Note that even though it should be an easy thing to do, right now our planning schedules are packed to the brim with important features so even a feature being easy doesn’t mean that it will automatically be added!  
 



Will any of the longer-lived NPCs from COTM, Lost Valley or Palace of Ice make an appearance in this new continent and in the new time period? (from SirRupt)
Xavier (Game Dir.): No, even though it’s still the same world and era, we wanted to bring our players to new faraway lands. While there will be mentions of events from Solasta I, there will not be any returning characters. 
 

Are mounts gonna be a target for an expansion or dlc? (from Fenixy)
Mathieu (CEO): This is unfortunately something we can’t commit to, as it would be a very costly feature to add. That said, one of our programmers managed to fuse a character to a crab while working on something completely unrelated, so I guess technically crab mounts did exist for a brief moment in Solasta 2.
 

Will Flying be just as easy as in Solasta I? (from Ressque)
Karim (CTO): We are hoping we can make flying as smooth and intuitive as it was in Solasta 1, but with a new engine comes a new set of constraints. Just know that we love how flying worked back then, so we hope we can still replicate this as accurately as possible. That said, as long as it’s not implemented we don’t want to promise anything!
 

Will you guys follow BG3’s implementation of the ruleset / features for the development of Solasta II? (from Ryan Rinaldhi)
Emile (Com. Lead): No, although Baldur’s Gate 3 is a fantastic game that many of us have spent countless hours in, Solasta has always based its ruleset on the SRD of D&D 5e. Note that it’s likely that some features will end up similar due to both games originating from the D&D ruleset. 
 

Will Solasta II be optimised for older hardware, and I am screwed and need to upgrade from my GTX 980? (from Itomon)
Karim (CTO): We will do our best to have a quality setting working for older hardware, but I fear a GTX980 will be out of our target minimum configuration (doesn’t mean it won’t work, but it means we can’t promise it will).
 

Will we see the return of custom difficulty sliders? (from Sigismund)
Karim (CTO): As stated above in Bloody Val’s question, yes! We aim to have custom difficulty sliders / options just like in Solasta 1. 
 

Are karmic dice going to be back and on by default? (from Princeps08)
Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, something we’ve noted during the Early Access of Solasta 1 and looking up at other tactical games is that most players have a very skewed perception of probabilities, heavily favouring remembering bad streaks of luck over everything else. 

For example did you know that in XCOM 2 Veteran difficulty, hit chances are multiplied by x1.1 behind the scene? So when the game shows you 50% chance to hit, in reality you have a 55% chance to hit. And if you miss, your next shot has a hidden flat +10 bonus which stacks until you land a hit (as long as your base chance to hit is over 50%). And even with all that (and more!), XCOM2 has a reputation of being hard!  

There are plenty of other examples of games helping the player without telling them to make sure they don’t get too frustrated with RNG. Our take on this was the Karmic Dice setting, though we made the decision of allowing players to turn it off instead of hiding it in the code. 
 

Can we romance the boss? She looks badass (from Papiko)
Emile (Com. Lead): Unfortunately that’s not planned for now!



Do we need to play the first game to understand this one? (from Dead)
Emile (Com. Lead): No, Solasta 1 takes place in the same world but it’s not directly related to the story of Solasta 2. 
 

Is the Unstable Nexus from the demo something we can expect in the future Dungeon Maker? (from Agathys)
Mathieu (CEO): That could be interesting, and who knows we might even have different nexus types in the long run. Note that the one in the demo had some complex scripting to destroy stone platforms, so I’m not sure it would be simple to replicate in a Dungeon Maker (though I have seen crazy stuff in community developed Solasta 1 campaigns). Also as a reminder, we can’t promise a Dungeon Maker yet, we still have to scope that feature!
 

Are there plans to eventually bring the level cap all the way to 20? (from LittleFadeleaf)
Emile (Com. Lead): Not right now no, we want to avoid planning too far into the future and focus on finishing Solasta II first. That said, even with DLCs level 20 cap would probably not be something we’d go for. As I explained in a previous article, good high level adventures in D&D are incredibly challenging to run - on Tabletop your party would be zooming around with teleportation and would have enough power to raze entire countries and challenge gods, putting a lot of strain on the DM to adjust and improv’ accordingly. In a video game the options are predetermined, making it potentially frustrating for players - lore wise they have near infinite powers, but the game dictates that they can only do A, B or C. 
 

Seeing so many steam threads asking for language localization, have you considered which will be implemented? (from LJ_the_brave)
Pierre (Marketing Dir.): We’re super thrilled to hear how excited our community is to play Solasta II in their native language. Audio language will be in English only, but texts will be adapted to different languages. Localisation is an important topic for us and for a game such as Solasta II, because it supports our narrative and the gameplay, but also because of the sheer volume of texts (dialogs & answers branching, banters, cutscenes, adventure logs, item description, menus, etc.) that we’re expecting for the final game. Once we have a better understanding of the cost/time/resource we can invest, we’ll probably start working on a first batch of languages that should mirror the ones from the first game, and then expand to new languages depending on community (roaring) requests and opportunities.
 

Will the Dragonborn get a visual overhaul in Solasta II? (from Delta)
Thierry (Art Dir.): Yes, in fact when we started Solasta II we’ve done research and experiments on each species. We’re still iterating on the Dragonborn at the moment, which is why there weren’t any in the Steam Next Fest demo. 
 

Any chance for QWERTZ keyboard layout? (from Gildoriel)
Mathieu (CEO): The plan is to have remappable key bindings!
 

Will the next demo/update come with character customization or a deeper look into classes and subclasses? (from H)
Emile (Com. Lead): We will share more information about character creation and class / subclasses in upcoming articles before Early Access starts, however we do not plan to update the demo (or make a new one) because it would be a huge time investment! Time that wouldn’t be spent working on the final game…
 

Will Siklas be playable as a race for PCs? (from Pomellow)
Eleonore (Production Dir.): This was not in our plans, but seeing how much the community loved Jabori we’ll consider it. One thing is that in terms of narrative, it would potentially cause some issues - though I’m being told elaborating more would be a spoiler! So… not a No, but not a Yes either for now! 
 


Will we be able to customize the PCs personality? (from Pomellow)
Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, we plan to allow you to select personalities during character creation, similar to Solasta 1 (although to a lesser extent). You will have less choices to choose from, but each personality should have more impact in-game. 
 

Is free weapon switching something you intend to keep? (from Pomellow)
Mathieu (CEO): For now we don’t plan to change it as it makes it easier to use and removes the frustrating “oops I switched but I apparently don’t have line of sight and now I’m stuck with a bow in my hand instead of my trusty sword and shield”. We understand it’s less faithful to the ruleset so let us know if it’s something you disagree with. Note that it’d be difficult to make this a toggleable option setting as it does have an impact on how some stuff work behind-the-scenes. 
 

What are the Devs’ take on 5e 2024 Dual Wielding? (from NoWokLurker)
Xavier (Game Dir.): This is a tricky question because the 2024 rules about light properties, weapon masteries (Nick) and the dual wielder feat make it quite complicated. There are those who would rule that a level 1 fighter with Dual Wielder and 2 light weapons including one with the Nick weapon would make 2 attacks with their main action (light + nick) and then an additional one with their bonus action (Dual Wielder) - while others consider that the convoluted wording of Dual Wielder simply means you’re able to make your second attack with a non-light weapon, and that it shouldn’t stack with light. 

In any case, we haven’t decided yet on if we’ll be using the 2014 or 2024 ruleset for now. 
 

Could we get enemy AI that frees its fellow enemies from control spells, like hypnotic pattern? (from Artyoan)
Karim (CTO): I would love to have more interesting AI behaviors like that, which I hope we’ll have enough time to add. If you remember, you could see in the demo one Kobold running to get reinforcement instead of fighting - that’s an example of more exotic AI behaviours that we’d want to have. 
 

Do you plan to use Epic Online Services for the eventual multiplayer for S2? (from Frost CA)
Karim (CTO): Yes, that’s the plan for now - though as far as we know, you won’t need an Epic account to play multiplayer. 
 

Will you add the function that lets you move the party by opening the map and clicking on a location? (from BlackguardRogue)
Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, that’s planned. 
 


Since the story in the Demo is not how the main campaign starts, will you use metrics for popular choices to determine what the canon events are? (from Fawz)
Emile (Com. Lead): Technically none of the events in the demo are canon, as you are sort of playing a version of the main game’s party. In terms of timeline, the demo story would probably be happening somewhere during the early-mid campaign. Although remember, it was a standalone adventure so these events won’t happen in the final game - think of it as an alternative timeline (where the party got TPK’d…) 
 

Will there be upgrades to enemy AI compared to S1? While S1's AI is decent, even supposedly intelligent enemies give you too many attacks of opportunity. They rarely target your casters if you move a little bit out of the way. Enemies often cast too many cantrips, etc. I'd love a hardcore AI mode. (from Blackguard)
Karim (CTO): AI is heavily dependent on creature type and designer will. While we want to have smart tactical AI, our main objective (as it is for some dungeon masters) is to make the fights fun while still challenging the heroes. We will try to balance things so that the AI is and feels smart, but still leaves openings for players to use to not pigeonhole them into that one optimal strategy to reach victory. That being said, we do plan on having the merciless AI make a comeback, and if time allows it would showcase more of the behavior you describe!
 

Will we be getting hand crossbows? (from Sigismund)
Eleonore (Production Dir.): Not currently planned, but depending on if it’s highly requested by the community we could consider adding it in future updates or DLCs. 
 

I was testing a few things and it looks like if you save before a combat round your next roll is locked in. Will it be possible to randomize it? (from Ankou)
Emile (Com. Lead): Yes, that’s the plan. The option setting was just not implemented in time for the demo. 
 

When is a console version expected to be released? (from Ephemerant)
Pierre (Marketing Dir.): For the moment, we’re focusing on the PC experience first. That said, you’ve probably already noticed that the camera, the controls and even the UI are now better adapted for the gamepad. This is an important step for us to anticipate a future console release, and identify where we can implement common solutions vs. console-only features. At the moment, we are exploring our options for console adaptation, so it's a bit early to give you a precise date; but we can already say that Early Access will be PC only. Once the content of the game becomes more and more complete and we’re nearing 1.0, the decision on when to release on console will become clearer to us.
 

Will this game be complete after early access or is the plan to again hold back content to sell as DLC? (from MonoPegasus22)
Emile (Com. Lead): So, there’s sometimes a misconception from players who joined later after Solasta 1’s release that we are “holding out content to sell as DLC” - which honestly, is understandable if you didn’t know about our initial promise. Why does Solasta, a game claiming to be based on D&D, not have all 12 official classes included in the 1.0?

The answer is very simple - budget. Solasta started as a game promising FOUR classes: Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue. Through our Kickstarter we pushed through 2 other classes - Paladin, Ranger. At the end of the day, we delivered on everything we promised during Early Access - and more! Level 12 max cap instead of 10, a complete campaign, 7 classes by adding Sorcerers for free, a Dungeon Maker for players to create their own adventures and later, even Multiplayer for everyone (with DLC sharing!). 

So, why couldn’t we simply add the other classes for free? Again, the answer is just “money”. As a company we can either just release 1.0 and move to our next game, leaving Solasta 1 as a game with 7 classes - or try to add the remaining ones (and higher level cap) through DLCs to pay for everyone’s salary. And as you all know, we did the latter! 

Long story short, Solasta 2 will be complete after early access just like Solasta 1 was complete after early access. Just make sure you carefully read what our promises are so that you know what to expect from the 1.0 release, we are very transparent on what we can or cannot do. 
 

Are quests going to be time-limited on the rest mechanic or can we play the game at our own pace? (from EE Eternal)
Xavier (Game Dir.) In general we don’t want to put time pressure on the players. There might be one or two key moment where we might think about using time pressure, but we want to avoid at all costs players to play hours before realizing they’re now penalized for having been “too slow”
 

Why does the character switch from wielding sword and shield to wielding the sword 2-handed when attacking? (from Morghy)
Emile (Com. Lead): Very simple, that’s because we did not have the attack animation for sword and shield in time for the demo so it used the two-handed sword attack animation instead.
 


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2975950/Solasta_II/

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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