I'm really liking the dungeon maker so far. It's quick, simple and the keyboard shortcuts are awesome. I dove right in and created a Dungeon hub with 8 connected maps already (https://www.nexusmods.com/solastacrownofthemagister/mods/32?tab=files). Here are some suggestions from my recent experience using it:
1) Need a way to set your playtest party
- The pregens that are currently used work ok except they revert to level 1 each time you close the game. So testing higher level dungeons is a bit of a pain since you essentially can't do it through the 'Playtest' button without having to level the pregens over and over again (especailly frustrating when running into somewhat crashes with linked dungeons).
2) Need a way to skip combats to test other parts of the dungeon
- It would be good to get the dev cheat codes to kill all monsters when running the dungeon maker playtest. It's a slog to go through each combat when testing other aspects of your dungeons. I've tried making a high level party for this purpose but it's still tedious.
3) Need a scroll bar for connected dungeons
- I'm trying to make a dungeon hub that allows players to come back to a central location each time before starting a new dungeon. It already has more dungeons than fit on the UI.
4) Add typeable filters when selecting items/monsters
- This is somewhat more important for items since some of the lists are incredibly large
- I would love to be able to type in 'Skeleton' on monsters and get the list of all skeletons in the bestiary
5) More furnished/preset rooms (maybe a way to add a room as a preset yourself?)
- The furnished rooms are quite helpful, having more in there would speed up dungeon creation a lot. Being able to make your own presets would be great too!
6) Enable the full Solasta bestiary
- I noticed there are a few enemy types that I've seen in my main campaign playthroughs that aren't available to put in the dungeonmaker (No orc beserker was noticable, I'm sure there are more!). I can understand not wanting to spoil main story elements monsters or if some have particular AI that won't work well in the dungeon maker but please enable what you can!
7) Add the things already on your todo list :)
- Quest systems, dialogs, merchants, more environments, more room shapes, more props. These will all be important for making small campaigns!
8) Add more interactable items
- Part of what makes the main Solasta campaign combat more interesting is the amount of interactable items that can influence combat (rocks, chandeliers etc.). Without verticality this is tough, but adding in say the chandelier or other ways you could change the combat layout would be useful.
- While not interactable adding some 'debris' that is just difficult terrain instead of impassable would also be good.
9) Add ability to name individual monsters/npcs
10) Display the CR of a monster in the 'Selected Gadget'
11) Add a way to view the full Bestiary information of a monster from within the dungeon maker
12) Add bigger doors
- Players can use doorways as chokepoints/abuse enemy melee AI since the doorway is only 2 spaces wide right now.
13) Look into making short rest danger range more lenient
- I've found it hard to find a place to short rest in the dungeons I created. Often times I've had to run to a back corner. Perhaps we need a 'short rest safe' marker of some kind (Do campfires do this? I want to limit long rests so their not quite ideal to use).
14) Make sneaking less powerful
- This is more of a general difficulty change than Dungeon Maker specific. It would be useful to have a sight cone multiplier difficulty option to make sneaking less easy to do. Surprise rounds are very powerful. The best way I've found to get around this in the dungeon maker is to make enemies right behind doors. But sneaking is still a little too easy in my opinion so a difficulty option would be great!
Those are good ideas, in addition I would suggest:
1) a toggle for the duplicate button, it would cut out a lot of mouse clicks when laying out the dungeon.
2) a means of viewing the dungeon, placeables, and monsters as they are seen during game play.
3) the ability to edit the qualities of the monsters.
4) premade rooms that are not as cluttered.
5) more placeables; beds, tables, chairs, etc.
6) floor stains (blood, urine, slime, etc.).
After looking at the map I am working on it occurred to me that being able to open a window and view all the chests on the map and see all their contents would be very useful.
Do your maps transition form one to another, even after populated with bad guys?
I mapped out a 4 level dungeon, and the map to map transitions worked just fine. Then I populated the dungeons, and now they wont open the 2nd level map so I can only assume the 3rd and 4th are also not going to function.
Has ANYONE, made a multi-level dungeon with the DM, that actually works?
EDIT: Also will 2nd the suggestion of nerfing to a fair degree, the effectiveness of in dungeon sneaking. I think once the 1st 3 or 4 battles have been engaged; the denizens pretty much know SOMEONE is there and will assume a heightened state of alert, thereby halfing (?) cautious movement prospects fr success?
Honestly I wouldn't call using Chokepoints "abusing the AI" that's just common tactical play in an actual tactical adventure. You are supposed to be using things like chokepoints and cover.
More placeables is a big one. But this you already know. That and more "Tilesets" per se, like Caverns and Caves..
And unlocking the higher CR monsters.
Prefabs are helpful as not everyone who will attempt to design has artistic talent, so they can sometimes make very plain areas. Not for me mind you, as all of my maps were mostly designed by hand and in a single day. But not everyone can do that. But even I've used some prefabs as time savers and just removed portions of them that didn't fit what I was designing.
SERIOUSLY need to fix those transfer from one module to another exit/entry point bugs. That's killing some people. Not me as I've done primarily one level modules, but a lot of other people wanted to go further.
Agree with the ability to Rename monsters. You do in some instances want a Named Mob for story purposes. I could not in Crypt of the Wight King label the Wraith or Brood as the Named NPC I wanted them to be.
I don't think "Cheat codes" are the way to go for the "Playtest" button or party... but rather create a Playtest NPC like you currently have... but give them the same faction as the Monsters... so they don't attack when you click the Pretest Button.
Factions are missing, so you can't really make certain monsters enemies of other monsters.
SERIOUSLY of importance though...
An easy way for a player to import a module. Not all players (in fact many) are not as tech savy with computers, so they kinda need it done for them.
CHARACTER VAULT: Right now no player can keep the items from their dungeons OR export characters from their current game, so when you design a module higher than 1st level they have to quite literally level up a character from scratch with NO items they should have at those levels so you as a DM have to provide them for them currently. Not even getting into having to leave a Basecamp with a fire currently because they will have auto selected spells not appropriate for the actual challenge they are about to face.
I don't mind this at present as its a Beta Toolset, so I was prepared to improvise for players like that, but it is a situation that will have to improve quickly or players themselves won't be able to enjoy our creations.
On a Note:
Because I generally playtest my modules thoroughly, surprise isn't an issue.
I know exactly where the party is most likely to be and I automatically assume they will be in Cautious Mode. I specifically place encounters to show right at the edge of their perception range in order to get them to break their stealth and get the surprise round.
Example: 1 or 2 Forward creatures right at the edge point with the rest of them hiding back further in the room and Indexed (Encounter Group Indexing) as a single encounter, so when they trigger the first one, they've actually triggered the horde. Ergo, nullifies surprise in many circumstances.
As was brought up earlier I did have one where I had to worry about the Players making it too easy to double Fireball the whole room. But I solved it with a door, and placing Two Monsters facing the door and almost right on top of it. It blows up the surprise round in a heartbeat.
as for the short rest, which the game says is one hour....if a party can long rest (there is a campfire present0< then they should be able to short rest there too, regardless of where 'possible encounters" are, in terms of proximity. If they can rest for 8 hours, they can certainly rest for 1.
First of all, congrats for such a faithful game and such a great tool! I find that some of the default rooms are too large, so I think it would find it a good idea to add walls that can be manually inserted into a default room in order to create smaller rooms, or small corridors to create e.g. a labyrinth. I tried to do it using columns, since it's the only division non-crossable item I could find, but the result was very odd xDDD.