It may seem strange at first to think of a tabletop game being riddled with bugs. Unlike video games, where gameplay requires an immense amount of coding that can contain multiple unseen flaws, tabletop games are based entirely on books and imagination. For many, delving into the world of a tabletop RPG such as Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game or Dungeons & Dragons allows the player to escape the usual bugs and glitches of a video game. However, tabletop RPGs can have severe issues, such as players figuring out how to create game breaking builds in games like D&D.
Either way, it seems that Dark Souls fans aren't exactly happy with the game's tabletop RPG spinoff. While many were hyped for the chance to step into the world of Dark Souls again, with its rich lore and fantasy setting, players have since found some glaring issues with the game, leading to dozens of Reddit users coming together to compile an extensive list of the problems in the Dark Souls tabletop RPG.
To begin, players have been listing smaller issues such as typos and obvious spelling errors. However, players are finding more serious problems as they delve into the 500-page rulebook that comes with the Dark Souls tabletop game. One example users found was how the knight class cannot begin the game with its starting armor because the equipment requires a strength of 16 to be worn, while a player can only start the game with a maximum strength score of 15.
There are other problems with the spells and abilities players can pick up, too. The Fall Control spell, for example, has players make a Dexterity saving throw against their own spell difficulty class, meaning that the higher a player's level, the harder the spell will be to cast successfully. Dark Souls and other FromSoftware RPGs such as Elden Ring are notoriously difficult, so it stands that the tabletop version of Dark Souls should be slightly unfair as well. However, the problems players are pointing out in the game go beyond simply making the experience more difficult and seem to many like a problem born out of Dark Souls trying to mix its tabletop gameplay with the system of Dungeons & Dragons. The Paladin class in D&D does not exist in Dark Souls, but there are multiple references to this class, leading to confusion among players.
Considering Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game was one of the most anticipated tabletop RPGs of 2022, it is a shame for many fans that the game has turned out to be riddled with bugs and errors. However, every tabletop RPG can be changed easily through rulebook tweaks, and even the popular tabletop games such as D&D and Warhammer 40k are constantly changing their rules in order to better balance the game and remove controversies.
Source: Dicebreaker