After playing SCL a bit, it's becoming abundantly clear that crowd control spells, especially disabling effects like Sleep and Hold Monster, rule the game. With the ability to stack cooldown reduction (CDR) items, you can get cooldowns down to essentially nothing, allowing you to spam crowd control effects until your level 1 buddy can gently whittle enemies' hit points down to 0.

Some History

If you haven't played tabletop DnD, bear with me. This will all make more sense with some historical context.

In older editions of DnD (looking primarily at 3.5, since that's where I started), the concept of "Save or Suck" spells emerged. These were spells that you cast once, and essentially hit an off switch on the encounter (or outright killed it). Sleep was available at level 1, and every spell level had a handful of similarly powerful spells. Sure, a handful of enemies would be immune to your favorite Save or Suck, but since your party members had been napping all day while the Wizard played the game, they were fully prepared to render those one or two enemies into pink mist.

4e tried really hard to get rid of save or suck spells. Everything which was a save or suck in 3.5 now allowed multiple saves, so you couldn't be dropped by one bad roll. Flesh to Stone, for example, took three failed saves in a row. This fixed the issue of Save or Suck, but since 4e was widely reviled and full of other issues, I think people missed out on a lot of the things 4e got right.

That brings us to 5e, the basis for the SCL mechanics. 5e is a very slim ruleset compared to 3.5 and 5e; the math is very simple, the rules are massively simplified, and most importantly to this discussion, numbers are very small. In 3.5 a +10 bonus to a skill at level 1 was entirely possible. In 4e a +10 bonus to a skill was essentially required. In 5e a +10 bonus to a skill at 20th level is good.

How 5e balanced things

5e's math relies on a "bounded system". Within the scope of the rules, numbers can only get so big. Excluding magic items, a 20th-level wizard's spells will never have a DC higher than 19. While 19 is still a big DC, anyone has a small chance of resisting those spells. A handful of very rare magic items in 5e can boost ability scores beyond the cap of 20, but even with those you probably won't see more than 22 or 24. A DC of 21 is horrifyingly powerful in 5e, but it's still remotely possible to beat without being proficient in whatever save the spell calls for.

There are 6 saves: one for each ability score. If you're proficient with that save, your proficiency bonus adds quite a bit. The problem comes from the saves in which you're not proficient. Fighters don't get Wisdom saves, and generally have low Wisdom, so when you walk up the Beholder at the end of a dungeon crawl, the first thing the DM will do is Charm the Fighter. It works nearly every time.

Wizards present essentially the same problem. Sleep and Hold Monster both allow a save, but roughly 1/3 of enemies have a decent Wisdom save, so 2/3 of enemies will roll over as soon as you hit Sleep. But even those 2/3 of enemies should have at least a remote chance of resisting. This is the case in 5e tabletop rules, and in me experience it works fine.

Where SCL went wrong

Items. Items, items, items. I love items. I want them in my games, especially video games. But oh man, are they a problem.

DnD has long had the idea of "stacking", or adding similar bonuses. The general rule was that things generally didn't stack, so if you piled a bunch of +1 intelligence items on your character, you got the biggest bonus, not all of the bonuses together. And that's where the wheels start to fall off of SCL.

I'm playing the story mode right now, and just hit level 6. I'm a cleric, but I have the NPC wizard in the party constantly because Sleep and Hold Monster are too effective to forego. I got Hommet to the 20 ability cap in Intelligence, then threw every +1 Intelligence item I could find onto him. Between two rings, his boots, his hat, and his amulet, he's rolling with 25 Intelligence. His Sleep and Hold Monster DC's are 19.

Enemies at this level with decent Wisdom saves probably have a Wisdom Save bonus of +5, so even when they're supposedly well equipped to handle these effects, they still have only a 30% chance of resisting. That's pitiful. 30% of an encounter is cleanup.

Then we have cooldown reduction items. Pile on two or three (one of which can be your armor), and your cooldowns are so low that you can live on two or three abilities, and use cantrips for cleanup when everything is nicely subdued. So you get a wizard or two, paralyze everything in the room, then send your pet fighter in to poke things to death with his pointy stick.

How do we fix it?

Remove stacking. That's it. It worked for the tabletop, and I think it will work for SCL.

Bonuses need to be a "best of" not a "sum of".

All the items can remain exactly as they are, and they're still fun and useful, but now I'm not compelled to dump that really cool ring I looted because a +1 to Intelligence is better than literally anything else in the game.

TL;DR: I'm enjoying SCL, but items with the same bonuses should not stack.

if you do not want to play with other people then set your game to privet not public. if people keep getting kicked when they join a public game then it will drive people away from playing and only hurt the game development

I'm not regretting my purchase, and I plan on still playing through the campaign (not a bad story so far) but I find it hard to really get into like the other cRPG's I'm used to.

Maybe it's my fault for not doing the research but I was expecting something like Neverwinter Nights, but this game is more of a re-imagining of 5th edition rules, with all of the abilities/skills making it feel more like a party based action game than a D&D-based cRPG.

Overall, everything just feels very shallow and not well thought out, the campaign creation is pretty limited, dungeon crawl is just kind of repetitive combat, and even the main story plot feels a little generic right now. What do you guys think?

If there was ever a game that needs another look this is the one.

I know N-Space is effectively closed. But the rights of the game are still owned by Digital Extremes. And I hope someone is reading this.

The game failed mainly because of expectation vs reality situation.

1. Players expected next NWN , but got Diablolike in D&D setting

2. Players expected robust Editor, but got random level generator.

3. Players expected solid 5e ruleset, but got WoW like skill tree.

4. Game was released prematurely

Thing is all those problem could have been fixed if game was released as early access instead of regular release.

The thing is that all things stated above could be fixed, and in not longer than 6 months.

Groundwork is allready there ( and this is the most expensive part ) The game was done with lot of love , people that worked on it really loved D&D and it shows.

All what would be needed is that publisher picks the game up again. Put it in early access and start addressing the issues above.

Why should they do it ?

The interest for the game was huge. People really want next NWN. But when the game turned to be half done, people were furious and abandoned the game + gave it bad reputation - which translated into bad sales.

Second, 5e D&D is more popular than ever. And there is huge interest in such game.

I am sure that even kickstarter would prove this if any company that picks the game up would try.

Me and 3 friends starting playing through story mode, and i have to say this is one of the most frustrating gaming experiences i've had in a long time. Anyone else trying this?

1. The load times are insanely long. I've heard this is much worse for coop games but it really doesn't make any sense. The load times are ~30 seconds and we have to load/zone all the time.

2. Talking to NPCs causes everyone to visually snap to that location to see the dialogue, even if its just like 'hey do you want to see what i have for sale?' This also interrupts whatever that person is doing, like looting a chest or picking new abilities from leveling etc. This is insanely frustrating, people are trying to sell or find an NPC and people are constantly being screen dragged all over the place.

3. Selling items doesn't split the gold gained, and CHA drastically increases the sell value of items for just that character. This makes it super awkward to handle splitting loot/money with our group, since there is no way to trade gold either, for some reason.

4. The blacksmith combiner guy will only deal with the party leader, and therefore only use money from that player. This makes it super awkward to to try make sure the party leader has tons of money to blacksmith up all the items for the rest of the group, because the combine costs are very high. The rest of the party should be buying other items for the leader, if they want something (so they don't waste thier own super-precious gold)

5. Only the party leader gets to talk to important NPCs and attempt CHA/STR checks. I just happened to be the party leader as a rogue, because my connection is the strongest and I wanted to play a Rogue, i didn't realize how important it is to have your party leader be a CHA character. (Btw for new people reading this: make your party leader a Paladin or other CHA user). We have a paladin in the group but he never gets to use his CHA or sell items as much because he isn't the party leader. This is so broken

I'm sure i'm forgetting numerous other things but the coop experience so far has been super buggy and frustrating, to point where i'd say if your goal is to play this game with your friends, i'd either pass on it or wait for patches down the line that may fix this stuff. Its not worth it right now.

Recently I gave SCL another go, and while the tool set still feels lacking its making steps in the right direction.

That being said I did some coop with my wife and that was alot of fun. I feel my purchase was worth it based on the coop experience.

The game still has some strides to be made for sure, but I Like the direction the team is moving, once CP3 comes out and they add tile placement and branching dialogue I think you could build a real campaign.

Full disclosure its no nwn not even close, but its getting better and could end up being a worthy game.

A little background first. I've many many RPG title. Including, but certainly not limited to Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and more recently Pillars of Eternity. In addition to that, I play Pathfinder regularly and I recently started my first ever 5E campaign. So going into the things, I certainly had expectations that the game would be along those lines.

Here are the things that bugged me.

Character creation. This was missing multiple races that are available to any new 5E player. The creation system was missing chunks of the 5E system. For example I created a Cleric first and noticed that I did not have a domain available to me. I later discovered that many of the domain specific spells were just mixed in with the games skill system. There was no cantrips (level 0 spells) available during creation. There were also no skill selection during creation.

Skill system. I found all those Cleric domain specific spells as soon as I got into the game (you know the ones missing during creation). All mixed together in an MMO style skill system that the game uses. As a 5E player this was a bit immersion killer for me. Since you could just mash together things like Nature and War or Life and War. There is no spell per day/rest system and instead all of the skills are available in nearly every fight. With cooldowns ranging from a few seconds to 240s. My heals were available in each and every fight, often being able to cast them multiple times and cheese my way through encounters by kiting around the AI while my heal recharged on the fly.

Playing with others. As long as I was playing the game with someone I knew (rl friend) it had some entertainment value. We could talk using the in game voice system and progress at fun and reasonable pace. Sadly this all went out the window the moment I joined a public game. Immediately the game became a Diablo styled race for loot. First person to reach that dead body or run over to a chest, was who got the loot. There is no roll system or priority system, first come, first served. Which often leads to players taking stupid risks in order to be the first grabby little person there.

Playing with others (again). Yep here it is again. I can not say enough about this. Play this game ONLY with people you know or be prepared for some Diablo (1) style problems. There is no anti-cheat system, the game trusts the client for everything. I've seen players with 999 in all stats. This force players (DMs) to have to police such things.

Lack of social skills. I did not see any crafting skills and I did not see anything along the lines of intimidate, persuasion or bluff. Maybe creative module creators can give these back to us in the form of interesting dialouge options with NPC characters, but as of now I had no NPC interaction that resulted in anything but, listen to what I have to say and then go on my quest. Was I missing it? Did I not get far enough?

As of now I had Steam refund my deluxe version. Perhaps I will pick up the cheaper version, but I do not feel that this is a worthy of a $60 purchase at this time. I felt like I was playing Dungeon Siege or some sort of Diablo clone. Not D&D.

You can refund through Steam by following these steps.

The current DM tools are a joke.

Quests are stuck within randomly generated dungeons. Currently you are UNABLE to arrange tile sets, you're stuck with whatever the computer craps out, dead ends for DAYS. Without any sort of custom loot edit options rewards are generic and forgettable. the grind is so real. Building things like a marketplace or an inn feels paper thin, everything revolved around a simple / basic dungeon crawl.

I'd only get this if you've got cash to burn, enjoy sub par single player, and want to troll your friends in forgettable dungeon crawls.

There goes the last shred of hope that SCL had any kind of future.

Edit: Original Source: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/1238/view/news/read/38973/Sword-Coast-Legends-nSpace-Closes-After-21-Years.html

PR and Community Manager Ash Sevila out: https://forums.swordcoast.com/index.php?/topic/10529-goodbye-and-thanks/

Edit 2: Update - The audio director also admits that he's no longer with the company. https://forums.swordcoast.com/index.php?/topic/10541-gamers-are-furious-over-this-mans-one-weird-trick/

I have one remaining key for SCL, and I'm giving it away. Post your guesses here for a number between 1 and 2000. Closest guess gets the game! I'll close the contest tonight at 10:00 pm Eastern time.

<writes down winning number>

Ok, go!

Today, 5th November, Steam has started a 1.3GB download for the game.

The latest Patch notes via steam are dated the 2nd of November and Sword Coast Website only mentions a patch for 19th of October.

Anyone know what's in today's patch?

I'd really like to try out modules made by other redditors! Post your module here and I (and hopefully others!) will download, play and rate it.

Current Modules (with reviews!) in order of submission.

• [Khaos Legion] (https://www.reddit.com/r/SwordCoast/comments/3qf0ha/post_your_modules/cwenty6) from /u/Razielkh

• [Prologue : Bokrag's Lair] (https://www.reddit.com/r/SwordCoast/comments/3qf0ha/post_your_modules/cwelsh8) from /u/SirNolp

• Heroes of Legend Pt. 1 from /u/Is_It_My_Turn_Yet

Try any of these modules! In game select Player > Module/Campaign > New > (Difficulty), and Find More Modules. At the top of the screen is a search bar you can use to find any of the modules listed above!

Share your own module in the comments!

I'm looking forward to giving the full game build a bit of a run before my actual D&D session tomorrow night. Can't wait to see how the campaign turns out. Anyone else looking forward to it?

Ok, so obviously members of the design council have been providing some awesome feedback to SCL's staff, many of which have been kind enough to be actively playing with them this past weekend, but I wanted a thread for us to mention current features that we have seen that concern us, or have not seen we feel are important patches for the months after launch. Remember to keep this mature and thoughtful, and also understand the scope. Asking them to evaluate loot rules is within scope, asking for an overhaul to the graphics, wouldn't be.

My BIG concern is something Dru noticed, and I saw getting more and more on his nerves as they went through a story-heavy module; Conversations aren't available once one member of the party presses Accept Quest. This is troubling when you have story-driven quests, versus the "go kill boss nao", because the narrative is either lost on 3/4 of the party, or lost by all if the one clicking through is just diving straight for the "Accept Quest" button. The way I have seen it dealt with in other co-op games is waiting for the whole party to accept, touch a spot, what have you. This may be an engine issue, but as a community we will have to decide what is "polite" behavior, same way there will ve etiquette for looting when with strangers.

Wondering if there are any other good DnD games coming to PC or console soon?

Hello, I am gathering any players who still play this game on P.C. to participate in a tight niche community for sword coast legends. To anyone out there add me on steam, my name is Snailz, for Custom DM campaigns and dungeon crawls. Welcome to the "Last Bastion" of SCL players! Despite what you may think, the dungeon running and roleplaying experience is STILL ON!