Dungeons & Dragons 5e

## What is Dungeons& Dragons?

Sword Coast Legends is based on the Dungeon & Dragons 5th edition, a fantasy tabletop role playing game.

Dungeons & Dragons was originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974. It has since gone through many iterations, the most recent of which is it's 5th edition ruleset.

A game of Dungeons & Dragons usually consists of a group of players taking on the role of fantasy characters they can create within the ruleset (Called player characters, or PCs.) and one person taking the role of Dungeon Master. (often abbreviated as DM.)

The DM is the game organizer and in charge of creating and describing the setting and challenges of an adventure, as well as the one who describes to the players what they see and hear when they perform their actions. Besides the actions the PCs decide to take, the Dungeon Master controls all aspects of the game. He or she describes the various non-player characters (NPCs) that the party encounters, the settings in which these interactions occur, and the outcomes of those encounters based on the players' choices and actions.

Before the game begins, each player creates their player character. First, a player determines their character's ability scores, which consist of Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The player then chooses a race (species) such as human or elf, a character class (occupation) such as fighter or wizard, an alignment (a moral and ethical outlook), and additional features to round out the character's abilities and backstory.

During the game, players role play as their in-game characters, and describe their actions to the DM, such as picking someone's pocket, or trading with a merchant NPC. The DM then describes the result or response. The outcomes of these actions are determined by rolling dice. Contributing to the outcome are the character's ability scores, skills and the difficulty of the task. In circumstances where a character does not have control of an event, such as when a trap or magical effect is triggered or a spell is cast, a saving throw can be used to determine whether the resulting damage is reduced or avoided.In this case the odds of success are influenced by the character's class, levels and ability scores.

## Sword Coast Legends Adaptation

The single player campaign of Sword Coast Legends takes place on the fictional continent of Faerûn, which is part of the Forgotten Realms setting in Dungeons & Dragons. The ruleset the game uses is also largely based on the tabletop version, though many adaptations have been made and the gameplay has overall been streamlined to better fit with a real-time computer RPG.

Players still create their own character at the beginning of the game and assign them their ability scores, race, class, alignment, as well as a background. However, Where the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons features a wide array of skills the player can use, such as Sleight of Hand for when the player wants to pick someone's pocket, or Stealth when they wish to hide from sight, the game has cut many of these skills. Some of these, like Stealth have been incorporated in the various character ability trees, while others have been converted into abilities unique to the game. Where one would use perception in the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons to search for hidden doors or traps on locked chests, in the digital game this has been replaced by the Search ability.

The tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons also features Vancian spell casting, a system where spells must be prepared before use and of which a caster has a limited amount of uses per day or rest. The Sword Coast Legends game replaces this form of spell casting. Instead, spells such as are used by classes like the wizard, cleric and warlock have also been converted to be used in the ability trees, meaning that a large majority of the spells available in the Dungeons & Dragons system are either not available to the player at all, or work differently from their tabletop counterparts.

The ability tree system works with ability points, which players gain as they level up and can subsequently use to unlock or upgrade their abilities. Once learned, these abilities and spells can be used from a hotbar in-game, though the player must wait some length of time after using an ability before they can use it again. (Also called a cooldown.)

Attacking enemies and using abilities still features dice rolls, though these are made on both the NPC's and players behalf by the computer, so the player can not influence these rolls directly besides the choices they make in what abilities to learn and upgrade, and how to spend the ability points their character gains as they level up. However, the way these rolls are resolved is shown in the message window if the player so chooses.

The game also features a DM mode, which allows the player to create their own module using the games resources The DM can create areas in his module, and populate these areas with items, NPCs and enemies. Once a module has been created, it can be shared with other players. a group of players playing the module will create their characters and progress through the content, while another player will act as the DM. As the PCs are making their way through the modules content, the DM can use their "threat level" to place monsters, lock doors, set traps, or otherwise manipulate the dungeon.