Sword Coast Legends, the upcoming 5E Dungeons & Dragons-based CRPG / DM toolset gave the ravening horders a bonus stream today on their Twitch channel at:

http://www.twitch.tv/SwordCoastLegends

More gameplay shown and more game details revealed. Like my previous post on Sword Coast Legends, notes from today’s stream and also answers given during Q&A are below.

MY NOTES / OBSERVATIONS

Ash Sevilla (Community Manager) only this time, no Tim Schwalk (Design Director). Team is super busy.

More news / big announcements coming on Thursday.

PAX will be first time public will play Sword Coast Legends.

We have not seen even half of Sword Coast’s creatures yet.

Ash takes his character through dungeon created by Torey, another team member. He does not know what to expect but assumes lots of traps based on what he knows of Torey. (proven correct later)

Moon elf rogue abilities on character Ash is using (6th level):

Victorious Surge

(didn’t catch name of ability)

Sneak attack

Riposte

Death strike

Whirlwind attack

Misty step

Disengage

Hidden dagger

Hide

Search

Ash searches for, finds, disarms lots of traps. Similar to other cRPGs.

Torey used custom creature set: bandit set.

Tried to assassinate a bandit but it didn’t work. Not sure if assassinate is an ability or a play style.

Picks lock on a chest and gets loot.

We see the DM wisp. Ash says again DM wisp can be turned off if DM doesn’t want to reveal where they are (this was mentioned last Twitch stream).

Ash says his main character is a ranger and they are a lot of fun. Rangers should be playable at PAX.

I’ve seen a couple of people recently remark Sword Coast is more of an action RPG. After paying more attention to combat today yes I think this is the case. I guess I had been assuming more of a real time with pause approach, but no… very action RPGish now that I am paying attention.

Ash’s main character was defeated and got back up more than once. I am assuming either assist from NPC party members or maybe a setting that allowed him to continue for demo purposes.

Ash laughs and says crits are ridiculous on occasion. “Did you see that explosion? Poor goblin.”

You can definitely see the DM’s wisp moving frantically around certain encounters, the DM is obviously busy engaging.

Minor sound glitch while music overrides everything for about a minute. Ash says well a glitch but this is a build from 2 weeks ago. Fixed a lot since then.

Fails disarming at least one trap and it goes off (similar to other cRPGs).

Sound effects today are mainly rogue sound effects. You will mainly hear your own character’s effects while playing.

Ash opens up the map and drops a marker on it.

Skeleton resistant to piercing.

Level of difficulty for traps (spot DC, how much damage, etc) can be tweaked.

Ash’s character keeps saying “I can do that” over and over. A bit annoying to me personally.

Phase spiders.

Sadly, no German Bifi portable corn dogs. I think their reappearance may be one of the big news items on Thurday. Perhaps a new flavor? One can only wonder and dream.

Q&A ANSWERS FROM ASH

Mimics are popular (asked about a lot).

Cannot stack actions.

Randomized loot important for balance for when the same characters are used with different DMs. A follow up question asks about what if you are only ever going to play with one DM. Ash says he understands people want options but for now loot is randomized.

Dungeons shown so far are small / simple.

Players cannot roll d20.

Working on UI for combat log.

Players cannot go to different floors of dungeon at the same time.

Crafting? Not fully answered but blacksmiths can fix broken items.

Not talking about community modding yet.

No multiclassing right now. Can customize within classes however.

A lot of spells and abilities in the game. Ash thinks we will be pleasantly surprised. Ash spends a lot of time building characters and testing them. You can make 8 rogues that play very differently.

PC playing stream on not a high end PC.

You can run dungeon crawls solo.

“Can I upgrade items” question popular but no solid answer yet.

Game is accessible – don’t need a lot of D&D knowledge to play.

Early access date announced soon.

Someone asks about symbol on skull in game logo. Ash says ooo you noticed and is sort of mysterious about it.

No prestige classes or specializations per se, but plenty of character customization.

You can create, upload, and download player campaigns.

You can “do all sorts of wild things with your skills” (in response to a question as to whether you can build a mage with no fireballs or make a summoner).

Wait a bit for character customization episode, we’ll be happy.

No weapon decay currently. Ash is happy about that.

Dialogue with NPC #1 can be set to trigger a quest with NPC #2.

Ambush triggers cannot currently be used for non-combat reactions.

Early access comes with “digital pre-order pack”.

In the player campaign there are a “wide variety of nasty things we haven’t shown off yet”.

Quests can be re-ordered within an NPC or object. (Not sure exactly what this means)

If your character is level 5 you can play in level 10 adventures created by someone else but you’ll likely get squished.

Characters have multiple ability bars (quickslot bars?).