DND AL Season 8 rules are apparently really bad.

[Snowbluff]

Rules (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/changes-dd-adventurers-league-rewards)

Here's the rub: adventuring earns you nothing anymore. You get points for being present for X number of hours. You apparently earn no gold or magic items from looting in your adventures.

Magic items are instead "Unlocked" for purchase with Treasure Points. I heard random rolls from tables have been removed, so some items are entirely unobtainable. There is a list of basic +X items available to purchase every season. There is also a seasonal list of 10 items, just 10, unlocked for that season. Suffice it to say, this list is less usable for some classes more than others.

Gold is seemingly busted. Since you have no meaningful amount of gold, high cost classes like wizard are less playable. Furthermore, dying and paying for a rez will set you back considerably.

Personally, the only way I see of redeeming this is adding Treasure Points on top of the Pre-Season 8 rewards and the freely unlocked items list is greatly expanded in order to give something to people who haven't run into useful items for their class.

Spread this via twitter if you agree to raise awareness, please. :smallsmile:

[Tanarii]

Oh wow. I know a lot of people that will be screaming about the removal of XP.

I'd like to thank the AL organizers in advance for the flood of players that will soon be looking to join my campaign. :smallamused:

[Snowbluff]

Oh wow. I know a lot of people that will be screaming about the removal of XP.

I'd like to thank the AL organizers in advance for the flood of players that will soon be looking to join my campaign. :smallamused:

You know, the XP is the least of my worries. If it was scaled appropriately, this would mean that players wouldn't be leveling more slowly at bigger tables.

Patrolling other comments has led me to a conclusion:
AL Adventurers are paid by the hour workers now.
There are no rewards for what they do for doing it.
"Hello, sirs! Please help us with this quest! If you do, you will get no gold I will give you a smile!"
Then the adventurers will sit around for 4 hours talking about builds and never help.

[Merudo]

Wow, I just read this passage:



Nonmagical Items. As a general rule, mundane equipment and treasure can’t be kept—even if listed under a treasure subheading. The characters can use the items, but such items are lost at the end of the session—they crumble to dust, break, are lost, or are other rendered useless. The items can’t be sold and any gp found can’t be utilized—it too disappears at the end of the session in which it’s found.


Brutal.

[Merudo]

Also, I am right that this completely changes the availability of healing potions?

Now the cheapest potion you can get is a Potion of Greater Healing, and two of them cost the same as a +1 shield...

[Snowbluff]

Wow, I just read this passage:



Brutal.


Also, I am right that this completely changes the availability of healing potions?

Now the cheapest potion you can get is a Potion of Greater Healing, and two of them cost the same as a +1 shield...

You will not be able to afford your armor, your healing potions, spell components, spell scribing, or even ammunition now.

[Twigwit]

Some of these rules and bans are just arcane. +1 Mithral Splintmail is a "disproportionately disruptive" item? All of the neat end-of-campaign swag is now chucked in the garbage? Gold is gone??? Why ditch XP for "achievement checkpoints"? I wouldn't be surprised if the store owners get fed up with these changes really quickly, ignored them and just told wizards they're using the new and "improved" system just to get the free stuff.

[Tanarii]

Patrolling other comments has led me to a conclusion:
AL Adventurers are paid by the hour workers now.
There are no rewards for what they do for doing it.
"Hello, sirs! Please help us with this quest! If you do, you will get no gold I will give you a smile!"
Then the adventurers will sit around for 4 hours talking about builds and never help.
For hardbacks at least, incentive to work harder or smarter to accomplish more goals in the same amount of time (and get more XP as a result) is removed. Of course, it also removes the incentive to do something stupid because you're in a rush and get yourself killed. Or be penalized because your DM is a slowpoke.

Otoh in normal adventures you still need to accomplish the adventure goals. You're not getting XP-substitute (low cal! It's got what adventurers crave!) for time. You're getting pro-rated XP-substitute based on estimated time for accomplishing the adventure's goals and proceeding. So sitting around won't do you any good.

[Unoriginal]

Isn't Season 8 the Dragon Heist one?

Aren't those rules to countract the fact there will be much more downtime and less straight up "we go and fight X thing for loot and XPs" adventures?

[Foxhound438]

lol

"hey, we put these really strong legendary magic weapons in YP, but we didn't at all foresee that players would opt to just use them rather than turning them in for a reward, so... they were never legal."

also, adventurer's league has always looked really janky and lame to me, but I guess that's a personal opinion...

[Tanarii]

Isn't Season 8 the Dragon Heist one?

Aren't those rules to countract the fact there will be much more downtime and less straight up "we go and fight X thing for loot and XPs" adventures?
It affects anyone wanting to run any adventure in AL. It retroactively affects all XP you've earned towards the next level. Unless season 9 has a way to convert back to XP and start keeping treasure again, it's a lot more than "we're releasing a new adventure which doesn't play well with XP for overcoming challenges and keeping the huge treasure hoard you'll be looting."

Otoh the XtgE variant rules for shared campaigns make a lot more sense, now that it's clear they were prep for converting AL.

[OvisCaedo]

The whole super organized strict play has always sounded silly, and these all sound even sillier, but... Uh...

I am REALLY hung up on the Mithral +1 "splintmail" thing. Did they mean the regular heavy splint armor?? Is splintmail some really specific thing from some adventure book? And how on earth would it have been such a problem when it's virtually identical to like, mithral plate armor? Or was that just not really "available"?

[OldTrees1]

The whole super organized strict play has always sounded silly, and these all sound even sillier, but... Uh...

I am REALLY hung up on the Mithral +1 "splintmail" thing. Did they mean the regular heavy splint armor?? Is splintmail some really specific thing from some adventure book? And how on earth would it have been such a problem when it's virtually identical to like, mithral plate armor? Or was that just not really "available"?

It was +1 Splintmail(-1AC vs +1 Plate. Same disadv on Stealth) that removed the stealth penalty. So rather than needing your +1 Breastplate (-2 AC vs +1 Plate) you could only be at a -1 AC while retaining full stealth.

So it was a +1 item that gave you a +2 bonus instead of a +1. This might be more relevant now since the only way to get non magical/magical armor treats Fullplate and Splintmail as equally priced.


After reading over the rules I am surprised to learn my 4h sessions will level up every other session. That is faster.

[Cybren]

You know, the XP is the least of my worries. If it was scaled appropriately, this would mean that players wouldn't be leveling more slowly at bigger tables.

Patrolling other comments has led me to a conclusion:
AL Adventurers are paid by the hour workers now.
There are no rewards for what they do for doing it.
"Hello, sirs! Please help us with this quest! If you do, you will get no gold I will give you a smile!"
Then the adventurers will sit around for 4 hours talking about builds and never help.

So, the Final Fantasy 8. If there’s multiple choice quizzes I’d be into it

[Snowbluff]

For hardbacks at least, incentive to work harder or smarter to accomplish more goals in the same amount of time (and get more XP as a result) is removed. Of course, it also removes the incentive to do something stupid because you're in a rush and get yourself killed. Or be penalized because your DM is a slowpoke.

Otoh in normal adventures you still need to accomplish the adventure goals. You're not getting XP-substitute (low cal! It's got what adventurers crave!) for time. You're getting pro-rated XP-substitute based on estimated time for accomplishing the adventure's goals and proceeding. So sitting around won't do you any good.
Yeah Hardcovers are sounding pretty worthless. Before you were rewarded amply for putting in hours to finish one. Now you might have 1 or 2 hours and maybe some gold.

lol

"hey, we put these really strong legendary magic weapons in YP, but we didn't at all foresee that players would opt to just use them rather than turning them in for a reward, so... they were never legal."

also, adventurer's league has always looked really janky and lame to me, but I guess that's a personal opinion...
Story wise keeping the YP items didn't make sense. However, there are a lot of other items that were attainable in game. AL was pretty lose in the last few seasons so this is a huge step back.

It affects anyone wanting to run any adventure in AL. It retroactively affects all XP you've earned towards the next level. Unless season 9 has a way to convert back to XP and start keeping treasure again, it's a lot more than "we're releasing a new adventure which doesn't play well with XP for overcoming challenges and keeping the huge treasure hoard you'll be looting."

Otoh the XtgE variant rules for shared campaigns make a lot more sense, now that it's clear they were prep for converting AL.

We knew they were considering the XGtE rules, but this is a pretty bad. A lot of content is looking pretty dead now.

In the mean time, this is the new gold star sticker chart (TM). In comic sans. (http://www.dmsguild.com/product/245187/Xanathars-Guide-to-Everything-Logsheet)
https://www.dmsguild.com/images/8957/245187.png

[Arkhios]

Can't tell if AL management want people to be more or less interested in the campaign, but for me the answer is clear:

Hell no. I'll still much rather play either Patfinder Society or Starfinder Society at local conventions (as if AL had any presence anyway).

[Snowbluff]

Can't tell if AL management want people to be more or less interested in the campaign, but for me the answer is clear:

Hell no. I'll still much rather play either Patfinder Society or Starfinder Society at local conventions (as if AL had any presence anyway).

These rules are very similiar to the PFS ones, which are one of the main reasons I don't play those.

[Arkhios]

These rules are very similiar to the PFS ones, which are one of the main reasons I don't play those.

At least in PFS, characters get a monetary compensation for the loot acquired during the run. The way this is laid out, it seems that you don't get even that in AL. That's a heavy difference.

[mgshamster]

In the mean time, this is the new gold star sticker chart (TM). In comic sans.

Where did you find that? I can't seem to locate it in the DM Guild or on the AL websites.

[Ignimortis]

In the mean time, this is the new gold star sticker chart (TM). In comic sans.
https://www.dmsguild.com/images/8957/245187.png

Well done. Got a hearty chuckle out of me!


So, the Final Fantasy 8. If there’s multiple choice quizzes I’d be into it

At least in FF8 you had to fight monsters between your paychecks to not lose your rank...and money didn't matter whit in that game after Disc 1 was halfway done.

[Snowbluff]

Where did you find that? I can't seem to locate it in the DM Guild or on the AL websites.


Well done. Got a hearty chuckle out of me!

Here you go, a link.
(http://www.dmsguild.com/product/245187/Xanathars-Guide-to-Everything-Logsheet) :smallsmile:



At least in FF8 you had to fight monsters between your paychecks to not lose your rank...and money didn't matter whit in that game after Disc 1 was halfway done.

Well in AL you need money for armor, but also material components. Its going to be super rough just getting some fullplate for the heavy armor wearers. :smalltongue:

[mgshamster]

Here you go, a link.
(http://www.dmsguild.com/product/245187/Xanathars-Guide-to-Everything-Logsheet) :smallsmile:

It's quite beautiful. Thank you.

[Rogerdodger557]

lol

"hey, we put these really strong legendary magic weapons in YP, but we didn't at all foresee that players would opt to just use them rather than turning them in for a reward, so... they were never legal."

also, adventurer's league has always looked really janky and lame to me, but I guess that's a personal opinion...

Those items were never available for keeping, right from the start. Your character was effectively retired till they were handed in, due to every faction chasing you.

As for janky and lame, it's how I met a lot of my friends after moving to where I live now, and its where I met the group I now play with in a home game. And when I go to cons, I see people that I have met, and would probably have never met, if it weren't for AL. Are there some things I don't like about AL? Absolutely. But janky and lame? Never.

[PeteNutButter]

The YP items were never available for keeping, true. But what about the Princes of the Apocalypse items? I am running it now, the party has half of them... They are almost literally the only loot in that place. I'm pretty sure one of my PCs built his character in anticipation of using one of those.

The thing is all those cool one-handed items that had a good damage bonus, were the only way a character can do competitive damage against a GWM/SS fighter who would always rather have a +X item. But I guess everyone is supposed to use GWM or SS, because that's fun.

Overall the system is pretty wacky. It feels grindy. "Unlocked for purchase" is a hellish term that should be reserved for free-to-play atrocities.

DM: You have slain the dragon and can now claim its hoard.
PC: Yay, what do we get?
DM: 2 treasure points
PC: That's what we got last week...

[Submortimer]

All the more reason I won't ever play, nor run AL. I can understand the desire for more structured play, but D&D has never been a board game to me, so playing under constraints that dont allow me to run things as I choose at the table at the time feels inherently wrong.

[Rogerdodger557]

The YP items were never available for keeping, true. But what about the Princes of the Apocalypse items? I am running it now, the party has half of them... They are almost literally the only loot in that place. I'm pretty sure one of my PCs built his character in anticipation of using one of those.

The thing is all those cool one-handed items that had a good damage bonus, were the only way a character can do competitive damage against a GWM/SS fighter who would always rather have a +X item. But I guess everyone is supposed to use GWM or SS, because that's fun.

Overall the system is pretty wacky. It feels grindy. "Unlocked for purchase" is a hellish term that should be reserved for free-to-play atrocities.

DM: You have slain the dragon and can now claim its hoard.
PC: Yay, what do we get?
DM: 2 treasure points
PC: That's what we got last week...

There will be the contents of the dragon's hoard, and for the rest of the players, any magic items are "unlocked" for them to get.

[CharonsHelper]

At least in PFS, characters get a monetary compensation for the loot acquired during the run. The way this is laid out, it seems that you don't get even that in AL. That's a heavy difference.

No they don't. They get the same $ as long as they complete a mission successfully. You can only use it at the time. (If you find potions/wands, you use them up that mission or they're gone.) You don't actually get the gear you find - just a bunch of gold.

The only thing that changes by mission is that items you find can always be purchased, even if they normally couldn't be (either due to Fame or it being a special item). Though - it's mostly beneficial by being able to buy partially charged wands and the occasional unique item.

Frankly - I really like the way PFS handles it. Sure - it's a bit meta, but it works well at keeping everyone pretty much in line, but still makes you feel rewarded.

[sithlordnergal]

You know, I really hope that list isn't the only stuff you can purchase with treasure points. I am quietly hoping that those are just examples of uncommon items you could buy instead of that being the whole list.

Cause if it is the whole list, it is a waste of your time and effort to adventure. You literally have no point in adventuring. Plus all the fun items you get from hardcovers or events? Gone. The only people who will have them are the people who have played the longest

[History_buff]

Tbh, Adventurer’s league has always seemed to be restrictive and not as fun, but this makes it seem miserable.

[Arkhios]

No they don't. They get the same $ as long as they complete a mission successfully. You can only use it at the time. (If you find potions/wands, you use them up that mission or they're gone.) You don't actually get the gear you find - just a bunch of gold.

The only thing that changes by mission is that items you find can always be purchased, even if they normally couldn't be (either due to Fame or it being a special item). Though - it's mostly beneficial by being able to buy partially charged wands and the occasional unique item.

Frankly - I really like the way PFS handles it. Sure - it's a bit meta, but it works well at keeping everyone pretty much in line, but still makes you feel rewarded.

I've played PFS since season 0. I don't need explanation on how it works. Admittedly, it's not precisely same value in gold as compared to the loot that was found, but the point still stands. The characters are compensated after the run even though they can't just keep whatever they found.

And the money you get? You don't have to use it immediately. In fact, you don't have to spend it at all, and can instead save any and all of it until you have enough money to purchase something you want and is allowed — with your fame or chronicle-specific rewards taken into consideration.

[ZorroGames]

D&D has done crazier things.

I just feel a bit upset that a core process/set of mechanics seems so wacky in such a Change.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Wow.

My gaming group occasionally moonlights with AL, and this is sure to end that. That is some seriously awful progression.

All weapons and armor now have static +'s and that's it? There's so few attunement items on this list that you'd have to go out of your way to actually fill all three slots on any character. If they want us playing low magic, at least start using gritty realism to go with it.

Instead of figuring out uses for gold, they've practically removed it. Now you earn so little that the people that actually needed it before can't afford anything. Sorry, casters! Don't worry fighters- you can blow all your treasure points on that full plate instead, because apparently only demigods can earn enough money to purchase a set otherwise!

It's adorable how they put potions that cost more than 500 gold in the Player's Guide. You can't realistically purchase any of that stuff until you're nearing the end. A level 17(!!!) character just barely earns enough money to buy a single invisibility potion. Just... why?

I want whoever's responsible for this in my office, now. They're fired.

[OldTrees1]

Instead of figuring out uses for gold, they've practically removed it. Now you earn so little that the people that actually needed it before can't afford anything. Sorry, casters! Don't worry fighters- you can blow all your treasure points on that full plate instead, because apparently only demigods can earn enough money to purchase a set otherwise!

It's adorable how they put potions that cost more than 500 gold in the Player's Guide. You can't realistically purchase any of that stuff until you're nearing the end. A level 17(!!!) character just barely earns enough money to buy a single invisibility potion. Just... why?

Can't you just acquire non magical Halfplate(tier 1)/Fullplate(tier 2+) every 2/3 treasure points and sell it for 375gp/750gp?

[Waterdeep Merch]

Can't you just acquire non magical Halfplate(tier 1)/Fullplate(tier 2+) every 2/3 treasure points and sell it for 375gp/750gp?
You certainly can, and it's 100% ridiculous that this method is the best way to afford healing potions. Provided, of course, that you didn't actually need those treasure points for getting your bland +gear.

Really. A greater healing potion costs either 4 treasure points or 100 gp. A superior costs 4 or 500 gp. Full plate, which costs 3 (!) treasure points, sells for 750 gp, as you noticed.

Therefore, with 6 points, you can either afford 1.5 superior healing potions via outright buying them with treasure points, or 3 of them by first buying and then selling full plate. It's even worse with the greaters, since you'd, again, only be able to get 1.5 through treasure points or 15 of them if you got them by trading and selling full plate.

This is really, really stupid. Full plate armor might as well become a traded commodity.

[pothocboots]

Can't you just acquire non magical Halfplate(tier 1)/Fullplate(tier 2+) every 2/3 treasure points and sell it for 375gp/750gp?

You could, this is even acknowledged by one of the AL admins.
https://twitter.com/skerrit7h3green/status/1022875706827657216?s=21
(Still too low on post count to do links)


But it seems the system adds too much bookkeeping to the treasure side to be worth it.

OTOH the exp system is much lighter and easier, and only loses out on lower level characters leveling faster than higher leveled characters in the same party.

[Snowbluff]

I've played PFS since season 0. I don't need explanation on how it works. Admittedly, it's not precisely same value in gold as compared to the loot that was found, but the point still stands. The characters are compensated after the run even though they can't just keep whatever they found.

And the money you get? You don't have to use it immediately. In fact, you don't have to spend it at all, and can instead save any and all of it until you have enough money to purchase something you want and is allowed — with your fame or chronicle-specific rewards taken into consideration.
Given that I think I need to put this tangent to bed.
The big difference is that in PF, magic items are needed. That's just the system math. The GP for magic items might as well be mundane items in PF. I always hated it for making something so basic to the game so rigid and pointless. It needed a magic mart, and as of my last playing it, it didn't have one.
In 5e there is 1 magic you'll need, which is a magic weapon. Otherwise getting a magic item is something nice.
This new system delays the reward, if it's viable for you to get it at all, and accomplishing really big tasks or long books no longer rewards you for all of those efforts.

You certainly can, and it's 100% ridiculous that this method is the best way to afford healing potions. Provided, of course, that you didn't actually need those treasure points for getting your bland +gear.

Really. A greater healing potion costs either 4 treasure points or 100 gp. A superior costs 4 or 500 gp. Full plate, which costs 3 (!) treasure points, sells for 750 gp, as you noticed.

Therefore, with 6 points, you can either afford 1.5 superior healing potions via outright buying them with treasure points, or 3 of them by first buying and then selling full plate. It's even worse with the greaters, since you'd, again, only be able to get 1.5 through treasure points or 15 of them if you got them by trading and selling full plate.

This is really, really stupid. Full plate armor might as well become a traded commodity.

Yeah, that's just some busted economics now. We shouldn't have to trade in points to get basic stuff.

[NaughtyTiger]

Is leveling up the expected way to get gold?

(aside from the converting treasure point to half plate, sell the half plate trick)
cuz if so, my manual of clay golem is kinda crap now (65K)

[Snowbluff]

Is leveling up the expected way to get gold?

(aside from the converting treasure point to half plate, sell the half plate trick)
cuz if so, my manual of clay golem is kinda crap now (65K)

As far as I can tell, yes. Of course, the forge cleric in my team is cackling at us, because she can dissemble items to make other items.

[DrowPiratRobrts]

Tbh, Adventurer’s league has always seemed to be restrictive and not as fun, but this makes it seem miserable.

Only having played AL twice myself, I agree. It was okay when I did it, and I'm extroverted so I enjoyed playing with strangers and getting to know their characters. But as a consistent way to play I can't imagine anything better than a story/setting made by me or one of my friends with all of us playing through it over time. We get to make up fun items and bend certain rules to make the story more fun for everyone. And no meaningless random encounters that have nothing to do with plot/character development. I can't imagine these new rules would even be enjoyable from what everyone is describing.

[Kadesh]

'Bey guys, those things you love about DnD? Can' t have those'

Adventurers League man. What utter crocks.

[GlenSmash!]

D&D has done crazier things.

Yes, but I think D&D strives for fun crazy.

I don't think these sound fun.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Doesn't any item you encounter in the course of an adventure then unlock for purchase? So instead of three members of the party dickering over who gets Item X, they can all get one if they want?

[Pex]

Every now and then I need a reminder as to why I don't participate in Organized Play. Thank you.

[Snowbluff]

Playing AL now, in Season 7, isn't really any different from playing DND 5e normally. If you don't want to AL but all you do is play hardcovers anyway, there isn't really any reason not to play AL outside of the fact these Season 8 rules will wreck you. :smalltongue:

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Playing AL now, in Season 7, isn't really any different from playing DND 5e normally. If you don't want to AL but all you do is play hardcovers anyway, there isn't really any reason not to play AL outside of the fact these Season 8 rules will wreck you. :smalltongue:

I don't love the PHB+1 restriction.

[Snowbluff]

I don't love the PHB+1 restriction.

Fair but there are only a couple of uses for breaking that rule. Personally I would like it opened up simply due to how small SCAG (only good for rogues and bladesingers) and Volo's (Yuan Ti and Goblins) are.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Fair but there are only a couple of uses for breaking that rule. Personally I would like it opened up simply due to how small SCAG (only good for rogues and bladesingers) and Volo's (Yuan Ti and Goblins) are.

I think SCAG is good for a lot more classes - booming blade and green-flame blade are pretty important for melee-oriented casters that don't have access to shillelagh. But yeah, I have a hard time with choosing SCAG as your only book, or Volo's.

And, frankly, playtesting UA stuff is better done under AL rules than at a lot of house tables, since the rules and challenges are more standardized. So I'd like to see some UA stuff in AL as well if there were a way to make it work.

[Snowbluff]

I think SCAG is good for a lot more classes - booming blade and green-flame blade are pretty important for melee-oriented casters that don't have access to shillelagh. But yeah, I have a hard time with choosing SCAG as your only book, or Volo's.

And, frankly, playtesting UA stuff is better done under AL rules than at a lot of house tables, since the rules and challenges are more standardized. So I'd like to see some UA stuff in AL as well if there were a way to make it work.

Well of the classes that can use the Blade cantrips and the ones that want to be in melee but also can't have extra attack, you get Rogue and Cleric. Rogues are quite good with it, and Clerics have to dip for the spells (which maybe worth it, I have a Tempest Cleric with a storm sorcerer dip for the cantrips which lets him use the far superior sorc items).

You are right about the playtest, but that might be an unattainable goal. Characters are built over a very long time, so having someone enter with new material may mean starting back at level 1 again at a table.
Still, I personally would like some leeway in the PHB+1 rule to allow some UA material however.

This is all beside the point. I'm looking for other AL players to try and keep these new rules from going through. :smalltongue:

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I wish you all the luck in the world. I don't play AL, so I don't have much of an opinion. It just seems like it's being misrepresented a bit, and I'm hopeful for a clarification from WotC and to see how it plays out in practice.

[HolyDraconus]

I wish you all the luck in the world. I don't play AL, so I don't have much of an opinion. It just seems like it's being misrepresented a bit, and I'm hopeful for a clarification from WotC and to see how it plays out in practice.

They clarified. This is it. It was opened up for debate months ago, and it was pushed back then, and AL admins said then they would review it and go back to revise it, since it supposedly wasn't set in stone then. Fast forward, it's the same damn thing, but they added a list of problem items. According to a few admins, this was what the playerbase wanted. Everyone at my flgs canceled upcoming preorders upon that being stated on fb. The whole thing is dumb, to us, and as of August 29th, two stores that I personally go to is dropping AL support. They want to cater to video gamers and "everyone gets a star" players? They can do so without us.

[Tanarii]

and as of August 29th, two stores that I personally go to is dropping AL support.
I've been talking to the three stores I run my campaign in as an alternative to AL, and there is no way in heck they're going to do that. They get way too many bennies from WotC for being "AL stores", and they are college adjacent in a major U.S. Metropolis. They'd be slitting their own throats.

Even though every single person I've talked to, admins, DMs and players, seem to absolutely hate the rules changes. It's not some vocal minority against them.

[Eriol]

In AL, from levels 1-7, with almost all of 1-5 being LMoP, I've made ~2800g. NEARLY ALL OF THAT HAS BEEN SPENT ON SPELL COPYING. Under the new rules, I'd get 3x75 (225g), and 3x150 (450g) for a grand total of 675g. So I'd have less than a QUARTER of the gold, and given that virtually all of it has been spent on spells, I'd have many MANY fewer options as a wizard. Sure a number were rituals, and a number not, so I haven't even cast all of those, but damnit, that's WHY Wizards don't suck! Their utility is from the LARGE number of rituals they have! If I don't have the money, I can't copy the spells.

This is a ****ing DISASTER for Wizards. Bad for others for the reasons mentioned above (buying rezzes anyone? Give up your magic items!), but a complete disaster for Wizards.

[MaxWilson]

Characters are built over a very long time, so having someone enter with new material may mean starting back at level 1 again at a table.

AL doesn't do one-shots? Huh. You'd think that would be an ideal format for playing with strangers and introducing new, casual players to D&D. Take an adventure, attach a bunch of pregenerated characters to it and some metagame rules inspired by e.g. Betrayal at House on the Hill ("right after you steal the MacGuffin, one of the PCs reveals himself to be a traitor and steals it! Now there are two teams, that PC vs. everyone else, and whoever gets the MacGuffin back to home base first wins!"), run scenario with strangers repeatedly.

There's even an opportunity for WotC to sell lots of swag, because every pregenerated character that you make can be sold with a miniature and a pack of spell cards and ability cards, which are optional but make it easier for new players to play. Want to play Morden the 7th level wizard? He comes with a pack of 11 spell cards, color-coded for your convenience and each with a little list at the bottom of which of Morden's spells can be cast with it.

Just like How to Host a Murder, each one-shot could be an evening's entertainment in the box, retailing for $29.99. And if you don't want to pay the money you can just print off the adventure PDF and run it straight.

New players who enjoyed the adventure can come back for more adventures, and maybe eventually for a whole series of adventures where you get to play the same character repeatedly (if it survives). We call many adventures with the same player characters a "campaign," but each adventure should still be fun and complete in and of itself.

Anyway, it just seems odd that AL doesn't do one-shots. They should.

[ZorroGames]

Modules are frequently essentially one shot adventures if you do not play them consecutively.

I just found the private tables not appealing. AL has its murder hoboes but at least the DMs strive to be balanced. The private games were even more skewed.

My wife would come back if it was more roleplay, exploration, and social along with the “skirmish war game” AL turns into.

Might have to go back to making my on world...

[Snowbluff]

AL doesn't do one-shots? Huh. You'd think that would be an ideal format for playing with strangers and introducing new, casual players to D&D. Take an adventure, attach a bunch of pregenerated characters to it and some metagame rules inspired by e.g. Betrayal at House on the Hill ("right after you steal the MacGuffin, one of the PCs reveals himself to be a traitor and steals it! Now there are two teams, that PC vs. everyone else, and whoever gets the MacGuffin back to home base first wins!"), run scenario with strangers repeatedly.

There's even an opportunity for WotC to sell lots of swag, because every pregenerated character that you make can be sold with a miniature and a pack of spell cards and ability cards, which are optional but make it easier for new players to play. Want to play Morden the 7th level wizard? He comes with a pack of 11 spell cards, color-coded for your convenience and each with a little list at the bottom of which of Morden's spells can be cast with it.

Just like How to Host a Murder, each one-shot could be an evening's entertainment in the box, retailing for $29.99. And if you don't want to pay the money you can just print off the adventure PDF and run it straight.

New players who enjoyed the adventure can come back for more adventures, and maybe eventually for a whole series of adventures where you get to play the same character repeatedly (if it survives). We call many adventures with the same player characters a "campaign," but each adventure should still be fun and complete in and of itself.

Anyway, it just seems odd that AL doesn't do one-shots. They should.
Well, I don't know if they do the pregen + module combination. I'm not a new player and the people I know had no problems learning playing normally, so it's never on my mind. My group and I usually just stick to hard covers over playing modules because the stories are better connected and the rewards are more interesting, varied, and generous enough to be handed out evenly to the team.

However, Pregens would be very unhelpful for playtesting material. If everyone is just using the same prebuilt character then all of the combinations with the new material, and so you would have to make a new character which would be at level one, which would limit the amount of classes it would be played opposite to.

Probably the best solution would be like adding temp characters you can build for a session of a certain level for playtest purposes. Maybe even make it like a player or DM quest during a playtest period. "Double all XP earned by this character and apply it to a regular one when the character is retired at the end of the playtest" or something.

[ATHATH]

Wow, I just read this passage:



Brutal.
That sounds like something straight out of a terrible DM horror story.


With the start of season 8, the D&D Adventurers League (DDAL) will be undergoing a sweeping overhaul of many of our rulesets and here we focus on how we can make our system of rewards fit more styles of play and give players more choices.
P L A Y E R C H O I C E

[Foxhound438]

Those items were never available for keeping, right from the start. Your character was effectively retired till they were handed in, due to every faction chasing you.


what are they gonna do? I have a BLACKRAZORTM.

[Longcat]

I really like TP as it promotes loot fairness. Currently, people fight over loot, even items they can't use, in order to trade them for good gear. Which, quite frankly, is rather unfun. I'm also not sad to see overpowered items like Hazirawn gone.

With TP, you now have a baseline list that includes +X items, including caster items like Wand of the War Wizard and Rod of the Pact Keeper. This ensures that everyone can get appropriate items for their fighting style. In addition, everything (barring overpowered items) you find in the adventure is available for the entire group now, so no more fighting over who gets loot, which is important when you are playing with a rotating set of random people.

That said, I am rather unhappy about the mundane items/gold rule, and I hope they will reconsider. It severely limits healing potions and scroll scribing.

[Knaight]

Patrolling other comments has led me to a conclusion:
AL Adventurers are paid by the hour workers now.
There are no rewards for what they do for doing it.
"Hello, sirs! Please help us with this quest! If you do, you will get no gold I will give you a smile!"
Then the adventurers will sit around for 4 hours talking about builds and never help.
The reward for playing an adventure is getting to play the adventure. If gathering together with all the prep needed to play a game and then talking builds anyways is consistently more fun for the players than actually playing the adventure that sounds like an adventure design problem (or a system design problem, but we can rule that out in this case).


Wow, I just read this passage:

Brutal.
There are structures where this could work well - the whole Conanesque sword and sorcery, fortunes gained and lost, adventures set months or years apart style would fit this just fine (the gold would then be a flexible per session budget spent on whatever, with some variance). That said it clashes badly with a lot of stylistic assumptions in D&D, including some that are pretty core to how the game got designed in the first place.

[Rogerdodger557]

what are they gonna do? I have a BLACKRAZORTM.

The have archmages, and White Plume Mountain is only tier 2. Good luck with that.

[Tanarii]

but damnit, that's WHY Wizards don't suck! Their utility is from the LARGE number of rituals they have! If I don't have the money, I can't copy the spells.
Wizards are balanced almost zero found spells. Seriously. Look at the rate of expected found scrolls on the treasure tables, then figure the chance of finding a random wizard spell list spell on them. You might find 3-4 for an entire level 20 career.

[Snowbluff]

Wizards are balanced almost zero found spells. Seriously. Look at the rate of expected found scrolls on the treasure tables, then figure the chance of finding a random wizard spell list spell on them. You might find 3-4 for an entire level 20 career.

Point of order, the chances of finding another whole SPELLBOOK to copy are very high. I have a level 12 wizard and he has several spellbooks waiting to be copied into his one. Enemy casters do carry these around as written in many modules and hardcovers, and they are valid treasure for wizards.

I really like TP as it promotes loot fairness. Currently, people fight over loot, even items they can't use, in order to trade them for good gear. Which, quite frankly, is rather unfun. I'm also not sad to see overpowered items like Hazirawn gone.

With TP, you now have a baseline list that includes +X items, including caster items like Wand of the War Wizard and Rod of the Pact Keeper. This ensures that everyone can get appropriate items for their fighting style. In addition, everything (barring overpowered items) you find in the adventure is available for the entire group now, so no more fighting over who gets loot, which is important when you are playing with a rotating set of random people.

That said, I am rather unhappy about the mundane items/gold rule, and I hope they will reconsider. It severely limits healing potions and scroll scribing.
Yeah, no none of this is right.
First of all, Haz is banned for being an intelligent item. It's also unrelated to the useless treasure system. Furthermore, more powerful items are in seasonal loot, so you are lying to us if you think the game is somehow more "balanced" this way.
Secondly, cool items are cool. Random items are being removed which outright removes items from the game. A lot of classes simply do not have interesting options for fixed drops or season treasure purchases.
Thirdly, +X items are the problematic items as they are the ones that break the system math.

The reward for playing an adventure is getting to play the adventure. If gathering together with all the prep needed to play a game and then talking builds anyways is consistently more fun for the players than actually playing the adventure that sounds like an adventure design problem (or a system design problem, but we can rule that out in this case).

I would like a tier agnostic version of TP to be put on top of the old reward systems, as this would let 2 people pick up the same item, and could replace the costly faction system for obtaining generic items, but having only X items a character life is quite poor when your revivals count into putting your character in debt against him having his rewards.

It's a game. Playing through the story is only a portion of the enjoyment. Getting cool stuff at the end is a significantly large portion of the enjoyment and also 100% of the reason to play AL, because you can take these rewards to other tables. Otherwise you can just play off the grid and get better rewards, which actually creates a more insular experience. That is to say, the issue is that they are killing this community.

[unusualsuspect]

I have not yet played AL, though I may someday be interested. I speak from theory and inquiry, not knowledge or experience. Keep that in mind.

So we know that these rules are in effect, and that essentially the only way to earn more than pitiful amounts money involves trading in Treasure Point purchases for gold (750 for 3, 375 for 2, using plate/halfplate).

We also know that once you unlock a treasure by finding it, you can ALSO purchase it for Treasure Points (so long as it isn't on the banned list?) like you can from the Default list.

I absolutely understand the issue with "gamist" mechanisms like that, which is far more focused on the mechanical balance than the in-game effect (Echoes of what I've heard from 4th edition generally, really).

That said, IS it more mechanically balanced? Has anyone run the numbers, between expected Treasure Points, total gold earned at each level, and magic item? If we grin and bare the TP/gp conversion (and we'll have to to play AL, per the Admin tweet conversation - it's not a loophole if it is intended, I guess), what does that ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE for ACTUAL CHARACTERS?

There's a lot of "The Sky is Falling" posts, and not a lot of in-depth analysis on what actually changed for the character in practice (because in practice, if you need spending money to copy the enemy wizard's spellbook, you're going to sell your TP for gp). That's far more interesting to me, in analyzing a rule designed for play as balanced as possible (and probably to avoid party members stealing/beaugarding magical treasure).

[Tanarii]

Point of order, the chances of finding another whole SPELLBOOK to copy are very highDMG treasure tables dont have any spellbooks in them. Nor is it indicated they should be available as a bonus treasure when you fight enemy wizards.


Enemy casters do carry these around as written in many modules and hardcovers, and they are valid treasure for wizards.Yes yes, I'm well aware AL adventures dont match the DMG guidelines.

[Beleriphon]

Isn't Season 8 the Dragon Heist one?

Aren't those rules to countract the fact there will be much more downtime and less straight up "we go and fight X thing for loot and XPs" adventures?

Its also to counteract that heist is for 500,0000 GP at the end of the hardback.

[Snowbluff]

I have not yet played AL, though I may someday be interested. I speak from theory and inquiry, not knowledge or experience. Keep that in mind.

So we know that these rules are in effect, and that essentially the only way to earn more than pitiful amounts money involves trading in Treasure Point purchases for gold (750 for 3, 375 for 2, using plate/halfplate).

We also know that once you unlock a treasure by finding it, you can ALSO purchase it for Treasure Points (so long as it isn't on the banned list?) like you can from the Default list.

I absolutely understand the issue with "gamist" mechanisms like that, which is far more focused on the mechanical balance than the in-game effect (Echoes of what I've heard from 4th edition generally, really).

That said, IS it more mechanically balanced? Has anyone run the numbers, between expected Treasure Points, total gold earned at each level, and magic item? If we grin and bare the TP/gp conversion (and we'll have to to play AL, per the Admin tweet conversation - it's not a loophole if it is intended, I guess), what does that ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE for ACTUAL CHARACTERS?

There's a lot of "The Sky is Falling" posts, and not a lot of in-depth analysis on what actually changed for the character in practice (because in practice, if you need spending money to copy the enemy wizard's spellbook, you're going to sell your TP for gp). That's far more interesting to me, in analyzing a rule designed for play as balanced as possible (and probably to avoid party members stealing/beaugarding magical treasure).
Selling TP for GP is a fundamentally poor piece of writing in the system. There is no way this was intended, and it impinges being able to obtain magic items. I will point out that Greg is not the person who wrote these rules; he is analyzing them as another player effectively. The rules were a decision from WotC. The AL admins are working to improve conditions about providing further rewards and ways to get around revival costs.

As I've said earlier, a lot of items are not available in general because as far as I can tell, rolling for treasure is being abolished (possibly replaced with specific items, the substance of which remains to be seen). Even if you unlock items, they are still pretty hefty in terms of cost. Since you can't afford any items because your TP is tier specific, actually getting a magic item is a freaking ordeal that takes many hours of play after you've encountered the item. It may be an improvement for module play (where there is usually one item per module), but for hardcovers it's a robbery (where treasure tends to be given in large chunks and everyone is likely to get something).

I will point out that players keep an active tally of permanent magic items. If one guy has the more items than the others, he doesn't get the item from the module unless everyone with less items passes on it. There are cases where I've seen people troll item pick ups because two people can't take the same item (I have stories about this involving a mod writer and a holy avenger IIRC), which this would alleviate if you can pick it up later with TP. This is the one of two good points (the other being obscure +X generic weapons being available for certain playstyles) I have towards TP, which is why I would like it as a small bonus on top of normal rewards and as a replacement for the DM magic item rewards for DMing 24 hours every season.

Furthermore, copying spells from a spellbook and casting spells with components are class features. People shouldn't have to pay out of pocket from a very limited resource to use the most basic abilities of their class. One of my fellow gamers had this to say to me and Mark when we told him about the GP changes.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjISzj1U8AAaUGa.jpg
Which is funny because I recently killed his friend and he saved his life after the fight.


I'll got a tally of total gp you do gain sometime, but there is the pretty large gap in gains for newer compared to the older ones. Most of my characters have several thousand gold, which is useful for some services and components but not a whole lot under the system. However, I also have DM rewards for GP that outstrip a lot of rewards my players gain. Furthermore, I do know a high level wizards where all of his most impressive feats do require a sizable chunk of change.


DMG treasure tables dont have any spellbooks in them. Nor is it indicated they should be available as a bonus treasure when you fight enemy wizards.

Yes yes, I'm well aware AL adventures dont match the DMG guidelines.

This is not just AL adventures, but all modules and hardcovers. These are materials in the game already. You don't tell you player he can't pick up a dagger from an assassin, so I don't reckon you wouldn't be able to pick up spellbooks from an enemy who has wizard levels or casting.

Edit:
Good news everyone! New subclasses for the season! (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/92mlqr/new_subclass_made_al_legal_to_supplement_the/)
https://i.redd.it/hjzq00j3bpc11.jpg

[Tanarii]

This is not just AL adventures, but all modules and hardcovers. These are materials in the game already. You don't tell you player he can't pick up a dagger from an assassin, so I don't reckon you wouldn't be able to pick up spellbooks from an enemy who has wizard levels or casting.Good point on the hardcovers.

But enemy wizards having spellbooks on them is a fairly huge assumption. That's an adventuring lifestyle (hobo) thing.

Spell books are definitely valuable treasure. Not just to wizards in the party, the party should be able to sell them. Which of course makes it kind of silly they aren't on the DMG tables. But IMO it does mean a DM including them should count their value against the treasure found. They're on par with taking a magic dagger off an assassin, not just a 1gp standard dagger.

[Snowbluff]

Good point on the hardcovers.

But enemy wizards having spellbooks on them is a fairly huge assumption. That's an adventuring lifestyle (hobo) thing.

Spell books are definitely valuable treasure. Not just to wizards in the party, the party should be able to sell them. Which of course makes it kind of silly they aren't on the DMG tables. But IMO it does mean a DM including them should count their value against the treasure found. They're on par with taking a magic dagger off an assassin, not just a 1gp standard dagger.

Most wizards are adventuring hobos. :p

Anyway, the equivalent to a +1 dagger is an ioun stone. A Spellbook is only useful to a wizard, so judging its value will be incredibly difficult, and we need to remember that wizards already put their own gold for scribing in the first place. If I were a DM and it was material I wrote, I might strike a deal with the wizard with like a small gp cost per spell level for spells scribed from a looted spellbook. :p

[Tanarii]

Most wizards are adventuring hobos. :pThats a huge assumption when it comes to NPC wizards.


A Spellbook is only useful to a wizard, so judging its value will be incredibly difficult, and we need to remember that wizards already put their own gold for scribing in the first place. If I were a DM and it was material I wrote, I might strike a deal with the wizard with like a small gp cost per spell level for spells scribed from a looted spellbook. :pTrue it's hard to judge value. But it's effectively a reusable refuse once scribed. It has to be equal in value to a scroll for each spell in the book. That's worth hundreds to thousands of gold, depending on the spells in it.

[sithlordnergal]

You know what really bugs me about this form? The limited magic items they offer you as standard rewards, and the fct that DMs don't get to choose items from adventures they run. First off, the items in the two lists are utter garbage if you aren't a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard.

I mean really, what do Fighters or Paladins get from the list? Sure you can get the standard +1 weapons and armor, and a bag of holding could be useful...but compare that to things like rod of the pact keeper, which boosts warlock spell attack and dcs, wand of the warmage, staff of the magi. The casters get all these cool things! And we heavy armor using tanks get...+1-3 weapons and armor, a spellguard shield, and a lovely bag of holding. Cause let's face it, a cloak of invisibility and cloak of the elvenkind are not useful for a guy in big heavy platearmor.

And how about Druids, Monks, Clerics, or Rangers? They get even fewer useful items on that list.

And yet, they could have done sooo much better. Instead of making a limited list of items to choose from, they have a chart in the Player's Guide that shows what treasure table each tier can choose from. They already have a system set up where players could gain treasure points, look at the treasure tables in the DMG, and choose an item of their own.

[MaxWilson]

Cause let's face it, a cloak of invisibility and cloak of the elvenkind are not useful for a guy in big heavy platearmor.

Actually a cloak of invisibility is great for the guy in plate armor. Advantage on all my attacks* and disadvantage to all my attackers*, for two hours a day? Yes, please.

*Barring blindsight/truesight/etc.

[ZorroGames]

Well, after some offline discussion with a person I can say several things :

How it plays out in practice may surprise the white room theorists.

{Scrubbed}

This is not an Apocalypse, just a game. Not everybody plays the Free Parking space by the rules in Monopoly and the world is not ending.

[Tanarii]

As someone that played in AL extensively, and ran occasionally, it's of interest to me.

As someone who runs an open table campaign in three game stores explicitly advertised as an alternative* to AL, but doesn't currently play or run AL ... it definitely affects me. Indirectly, but it affects me.

There's several posters on these boards in that position. I don't think any of us really want to trash talk AL to any great extent. But we're certainly going to comment on any rules changes we think will increase or decrease player demand for our campaigns, and why.

Of course, any mention of AL will bring out hard core haters. But personally I like official play, as a whole.

*Not superior. Just different.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

You know what really bugs me about this form? The limited magic items they offer you as standard rewards, and the fct that DMs don't get to choose items from adventures they run. First off, the items in the two lists are utter garbage if you aren't a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard.


My understanding is that the list expands based on items that you encounter during the adventures. The listed stuff is the stuff that is available no matter what.

[ATHATH]

I feel like a hybrid system would be best here.

Take the 7th season system. On top of the current rolling for magic items/keeping gold that you find system, give everyone X amount of treasure points per level. They can spend these treasure points to get copies of magic items that they find in their adventures (note that they'll still be able to keep the magic items that they find; the copies are just in case you lose out on the roll for the item to some other player) or "buy" magic items with their TP from a select list. Maybe make spending TP also cost some gold and/or require you to sacrifice a magic item of a lower rarity or something so that things don't get TOO Monty Haul. If you want, you can switch over to the XP checkpoint system (provided that it's tied to progression in the adventure, not total playtime (as otherwise, the speedrunning of adventures so that you could have more loot than you normally would at your level would be encouraged)), since that doesn't seem so bad.

Boom. No needing to track what magic items you've "seen" so far (although that part can be left in if people are okay with the added complexity), no gold issues for Wizards, less fighting over magic items, and less need for trading (if the "default item list" is good). Also, if the "default item list" is good, then Joe Schmoe that hasn't cherry-picked which adventures he goes through won't fall too far behind compared to Jerry Powergamer (again, this only happens if the items on the "default item list" are pretty solid/good compared to the items that you find in adventures; maybe make the items found in adventures more specialized/"gimmicky" than the items on the "default item list"?).

Heck, why not make the "default item list" (bar a few "problem items" like the Amulet of Health) the entire PHB or something? That might be a bad idea, but it'd mostly eliminate the gap between Joe and Jerry, provided that Joe knows what items he wants (but doesn't cherry-pick adventures like Jerry does).

As for the "the heist will give players too much gold!" problem... Why not just have the factions take a (large) cut of the gold, or have the gold need to be used for something? Treat the gold like we've been treating Blackrazor and co.- if you don't hand them/the gold over, you have to retire your character until you do. Maybe in addition to keeping a small cut of the amount of gold that they steal, a future adventure will be made harder/easier and/or extra XP checkpoints will be received depending on the total amount of gold that is stolen.

I posted this on reddit as well; specifically, here (https://old.reddit.com/r/AdventurersLeague/comments/92rdu2/my_alternative_to_the_new_season_8_al_rules/?st=jk66xdl2&sh=4e51ee4b). Please feed me upvotes.

[HolyDraconus]

I feel like a hybrid system would be best here.

Take the 7th season system. On top of the current rolling for magic items/keeping gold that you find system, give everyone X amount of treasure points per level. They can spend these treasure points to get copies of magic items that they find in their adventures (note that they'll still be able to keep the magic items that they find; the copies are just in case you lose out on the roll for the item to some other player) or "buy" magic items with their TP from a select list. Maybe make spending TP also cost some gold and/or require you to sacrifice a magic item of a lower rarity or something so that things don't get TOO Monty Haul. If you want, you can switch over to the XP checkpoint system, since that doesn't seem so bad.

Boom. No needing to track what magic items you've "seen" so far (although that part can be left in if people are okay with the added complexity), no gold issues for Wizards, less fighting over magic items, and less need for trading (if the "default item list" is good). Also, if the "default item list" is good, then Joe Schmoe that hasn't cherry-picked which adventures he goes through won't fall too far behind compared to Jerry Powergamer (again, this only happens if the items on the "default item list" are pretty solid/good compared to the items that you find in adventures; maybe make the items found in adventures more specialized/"gimmicky" than the items on the "default item list"?).

Heck, why not make the "default item list" (bar a few "problem items" like the Amulet of Health) the entire PHB or something? That might be a bad idea, but it'd mostly eliminate the gap between Joe and Jerry, provided that Joe knows what items he wants (but doesn't cherry-pick adventures like Jerry does).

As for the "the heist will give players too much gold!" problem... Why not just have the factions take a (large) cut of the gold, or have the gold need to be used for something? Treat the gold like we've been treating Blackrazor and co.- if you don't hand them/the gold over, you have to retire your character until you do. Maybe in addition to keeping a small cut of the amount of gold that they steal, a future adventure will be made harder/easier and/or extra XP checkpoints will be received depending on the total amount of gold that is stolen.

I posted this on reddit as well; specifically, here (https://old.reddit.com/r/AdventurersLeague/comments/92rdu2/my_alternative_to_the_new_season_8_al_rules/?st=jk66xdl2&sh=4e51ee4b). Please feed me upvotes.

Except that factions are gone now unless you pick the background for it, and it made this current Red War stupid, and good old mm said this was mainly his idea.

[Naanomi]

I only do AL for cons, so this doesn’t effect me much but...

1) as much as it hits wizards, seems even worse for tomelocks
2) wait, factions are more or less gone? Where does that leave Volo race restrictions?

[Thrudd]

My understanding is that the list expands based on items that you encounter during the adventures. The listed stuff is the stuff that is available no matter what.

That's right, that's how I understand it. When an item is found by the players as loot, it becomes available (unlocked) to purchase with the treasure points you earn.
The treasure points are not awarded in lieu of gold (since gold couldn't be used to buy magic items anyway, nor derived from selling them). They are awarded in lieu of the items that would normally be found in the course of adventuring.

It's basically letting the players decide what their characters find on the adventure - they can choose anything they've come across in the course of play (in that specific session/adventure) plus all the stuff on the general and season specific lists. And even if the adventure doesn't even have any loot, they can still get some magic items. The people thinking the list is too limited should remember that this list isn't replacing the entire DMG. It's adding on to the relatively small list of loot that would have been found on every adventure. Healing and other common potions are always available for GP, as well as spell scrolls up to 5th level. Of course, potions and scrolls (and magic ammunition) found during the adventure can be kept without spending treasure points, because they are consumables.

The GP available is much more restricted now, and that will have an impact - since now you will have to choose to forgo magic items (by spending treasure points on mundane armor and reselling it) if you want to get extra gold. Certainly this is going to put more stress on wizards - they may need to be more selective about which spells they scribe. There may be less healing potions going around in the parties, (at least in the first couple tiers) and fewer characters raised from dead. I'm not sure those are bad things, necessarily.

They have also designed it so characters won't have plate armor (unless their class starts with it) until tier 2. I'm not sure if this is a big deal, either, but will be contrary to some folks' expectations.

The effect this change has, overall, is to lower the amounts of gold available, and increase the number of magic items available.

[sithlordnergal]

My understanding is that the list expands based on items that you encounter during the adventures. The listed stuff is the stuff that is available no matter what.

Yeah, players are able to gain extra stuff. However, here's what it says for DMs like me "DMs don’t earn magic item unlocks or other special rewards provided by an adventure" Pg. 4 right under the Dungeon Master Rewards section of the AL DMG 8.0. Meaning DMs are stuck with just that table and the checkpoints they earn from running. Again, a table filled with items that really only benefit Wizards, Warlocks, and Sorcerers. And sure, the Cloak of Invisibility is fine-ish...But you only get it at Tier 4, when most things don't care about invisibility anyway. So us non-wizards get screwed right over.

[Snowbluff]

Thats a huge assumption when it comes to NPC wizards.

True it's hard to judge value. But it's effectively a reusable refuse once scribed. It has to be equal in value to a scroll for each spell in the book. That's worth hundreds to thousands of gold, depending on the spells in it.
This is absolutely wrong to a horrific degree. It's not nearly anything as good as finding a scroll. A scroll can still be used to cast spells, so it is FAR more valuable than a simple copy of spell. Is your intent to rip off wizards?

You know what really bugs me about this form? The limited magic items they offer you as standard rewards, and the fct that DMs don't get to choose items from adventures they run. First off, the items in the two lists are utter garbage if you aren't a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard.

I mean really, what do Fighters or Paladins get from the list? Sure you can get the standard +1 weapons and armor, and a bag of holding could be useful...but compare that to things like rod of the pact keeper, which boosts warlock spell attack and dcs, wand of the warmage, staff of the magi. The casters get all these cool things! And we heavy armor using tanks get...+1-3 weapons and armor, a spellguard shield, and a lovely bag of holding. Cause let's face it, a cloak of invisibility and cloak of the elvenkind are not useful for a guy in big heavy platearmor.

And how about Druids, Monks, Clerics, or Rangers? They get even fewer useful items on that list.

And yet, they could have done sooo much better. Instead of making a limited list of items to choose from, they have a chart in the Player's Guide that shows what treasure table each tier can choose from. They already have a system set up where players could gain treasure points, look at the treasure tables in the DMG, and choose an item of their own.
I am all the way behind this. Every class should at least have a unique option for attunement. Where are the bardic instruments, the Holy Avengers, the Talsimans of Pure Good? In general Arcane caster items are already better than most, but it's worse when the other classes can't even have access to their own items.

Actually a cloak of invisibility is great for the guy in plate armor. Advantage on all my attacks* and disadvantage to all my attackers*, for two hours a day? Yes, please.

*Barring blindsight/truesight/etc.
Blindinsight is the bane of my existence. It's so hard to work around. :smalltongue:

Well, after some offline discussion with a person I can say several things :

How it plays out in practice may surprise the white room theorists.

{Scrubbed}

This is not an Apocalypse, just a game. Not everybody plays the Free Parking space by the rules in Monopoly and the world is not ending.
I'm waiting it out.

Also I am of the opinion that people here just to bash AL aren't necessarily being productive. I want this to be productive thread.

As someone that played in AL extensively, and ran occasionally, it's of interest to me.

As someone who runs an open table campaign in three game stores explicitly advertised as an alternative* to AL, but doesn't currently play or run AL ... it definitely affects me. Indirectly, but it affects me.

There's several posters on these boards in that position. I don't think any of us really want to trash talk AL to any great extent. But we're certainly going to comment on any rules changes we think will increase or decrease player demand for our campaigns, and why.

Of course, any mention of AL will bring out hard core haters. But personally I like official play, as a whole.

*Not superior. Just different.
This is also important. I know of at least one other organized play system that uses GP to sell and buy magic items, which is actually a rule that makes sense. Like I said, I'm waiting this out at least until I finish this hardcover, but I reckon a lot of people will check other systems or just plainly check out.


My understanding is that the list expands based on items that you encounter during the adventures. The listed stuff is the stuff that is available no matter what.
The problem is that these modules and other options will also have likely not considered all of the classes.

I feel like a hybrid system would be best here.

Take the 7th season system. On top of the current rolling for magic items/keeping gold that you find system, give everyone X amount of treasure points per level. They can spend these treasure points to get copies of magic items that they find in their adventures (note that they'll still be able to keep the magic items that they find; the copies are just in case you lose out on the roll for the item to some other player) or "buy" magic items with their TP from a select list. Maybe make spending TP also cost some gold and/or require you to sacrifice a magic item of a lower rarity or something so that things don't get TOO Monty Haul. If you want, you can switch over to the XP checkpoint system, since that doesn't seem so bad.

Boom. No needing to track what magic items you've "seen" so far (although that part can be left in if people are okay with the added complexity), no gold issues for Wizards, less fighting over magic items, and less need for trading (if the "default item list" is good). Also, if the "default item list" is good, then Joe Schmoe that hasn't cherry-picked which adventures he goes through won't fall too far behind compared to Jerry Powergamer (again, this only happens if the items on the "default item list" are pretty solid/good compared to the items that you find in adventures; maybe make the items found in adventures more specialized/"gimmicky" than the items on the "default item list"?).

Heck, why not make the "default item list" (bar a few "problem items" like the Amulet of Health) the entire PHB or something? That might be a bad idea, but it'd mostly eliminate the gap between Joe and Jerry, provided that Joe knows what items he wants (but doesn't cherry-pick adventures like Jerry does).

As for the "the heist will give players too much gold!" problem... Why not just have the factions take a (large) cut of the gold, or have the gold need to be used for something? Treat the gold like we've been treating Blackrazor and co.- if you don't hand them/the gold over, you have to retire your character until you do. Maybe in addition to keeping a small cut of the amount of gold that they steal, a future adventure will be made harder/easier and/or extra XP checkpoints will be received depending on the total amount of gold that is stolen.

I posted this on reddit as well; specifically, here (https://old.reddit.com/r/AdventurersLeague/comments/92rdu2/my_alternative_to_the_new_season_8_al_rules/?st=jk66xdl2&sh=4e51ee4b). Please feed me upvotes.
I agree that adding some treasure point system to give some leeway on situations of two people wanting the same item or having a good list of items people can just buy would be much better if added on top of rolls.

However, I would be careful with the costs of each item. The Factions did give items but they were so expensive in terms of gold and downtime I never even attempted it even when I had a character with secret missions done.

I wouldn't consider a lot of items to even be problematic ones. The real problematic list has a lot of VERY GOOD examples of items that have caused issues outside of being "OP", like T1 legendaries and Intelligent items that required weirdly specific plans to even get. A lot of items are simply balanced by being barred by attunement.

On the other hand I would wonder if a straight up magic mart would be super good either. Doing adventures and finding something unique is cool. I don't know, maybe they could make up legendaries not on the DMG tables like the very ones they are removing to give more interesting rewards. :smalltongue:


I only do AL for cons, so this doesn’t effect me much but...

1) as much as it hits wizards, seems even worse for tomelocks
2) wait, factions are more or less gone? Where does that leave Volo race restrictions?
Oh god the poor tomelocks. Life was hard enough. T^T

Oh right factions are like dead for some reason and I haven't even had time to try and decipher that mess.

[Thrudd]

Yeah, players are able to gain extra stuff. However, here's what it says for DMs like me "DMs don’t earn magic item unlocks or other special rewards provided by an adventure" Pg. 4 right under the Dungeon Master Rewards section of the AL DMG 8.0. Meaning DMs are stuck with just that table and the checkpoints they earn from running. Again, a table filled with items that really only benefit Wizards, Warlocks, and Sorcerers. And sure, the Cloak of Invisibility is fine-ish...But you only get it at Tier 4, when most things don't care about invisibility anyway. So us non-wizards get screwed right over.

They are still going to have DM quests as the way for DMs to get magic items for their characters, it mentions that in the 8.0 DMG, too. As of season 7, there's no general AL option for purchasing magic items - it is only in the course of adventures that specifically say so, and tell you what is available, that magic items can be purchased. Nothing has changed for season 8 in that regard - you still either have to play or complete GM quests to get magic items for your characters.

[furby076]

If balanced right, and that's some hard math, TP is actually a good system. This was done in WoW by guilds to help manage treasure that dropped. Now in that system it was a consistant party of 20-40, and it was a bidding system. Here it's different, you earn TP and can buy stuff. THat's cool! VOrpoal sword drop and both melee PCs are drooling with both players about to fight over it? No problem, both can have it if they have TP for it at some points.

XP milestones may not be bad. Just a different way to level up.

However, where they lost me, is no gold treasure? Consumables being ridiculously expensive? And due to this, buying life restoration is prohibitively expensive?

Hopefully they will tweak the rules fast.

GL all. Glad I play at a homebrew game with friends.We may fight over loot, but at least we get loot...and gold

[Oerlaf]

You certainly can, and it's 100% ridiculous that this method is the best way to afford healing potions. Provided, of course, that you didn't actually need those treasure points for getting your bland +gear.

Really. A greater healing potion costs either 4 treasure points or 100 gp. A superior costs 4 or 500 gp. Full plate, which costs 3 (!) treasure points, sells for 750 gp, as you noticed.

Therefore, with 6 points, you can either afford 1.5 superior healing potions via outright buying them with treasure points, or 3 of them by first buying and then selling full plate. It's even worse with the greaters, since you'd, again, only be able to get 1.5 through treasure points or 15 of them if you got them by trading and selling full plate.

This is really, really stupid. Full plate armor might as well become a traded commodity.

If you are a life cleric, you can craft a spell scroll of cure wounds for 25 gp and 1 dt. 15 spell scrolls for half-plate (not counting dt expenses).

1d8+6 hp vs 2d4+2 hp

[Knaight]

It's a game. Playing through the story is only a portion of the enjoyment. Getting cool stuff at the end is a significantly large portion of the enjoyment and also 100% of the reason to play AL, because you can take these rewards to other tables. Otherwise you can just play off the grid and get better rewards, which actually creates a more insular experience. That is to say, the issue is that they are killing this community.

The game side also gets played when you spend time actually playing it - at the very least you'll have a few attribute checks and a combat in basically every session. As for playing off the grid and getting better rewards the point of AL is mostly that it's there. You don't have to organize your own group, which playing off the grid entails.

That said I don 't think we're capable of seeing eye to eye on this one - the whole idea of switching to a different game because your character gets better loot in it is just bizarre to me.

[HolyDraconus]

2) wait, factions are more or less gone? Where does that leave Volo race restrictions?

They are gone as well. No factions, no restrictions to them. Bar the LE character, that one must pick a faction apparently. So they must have the faction agent background.

[Ganymede]

Meh... these rules look like an elegant if gamist way to standardize character advancement across adventures and DMs.

[Naanomi]

They are gone as well. No factions, no restrictions to them. Bar the LE character, that one must pick a faction apparently. So they must have the faction agent background.
Where does that leave existing LE characters?

[Keravath]

Some comments:
1) The rules only apply to AL play. Using XP for home play or hardcovers or even AL modules run at home doesn't break anything. The changes might or might not affect how many folks enjoy AL.

2) Advancement - using checkpoints instead of XP - I don't see any issues with it. AL modules already give out a pretty fixed amount of XP that depends on the intended party level for the module. e.g. APL 2 module typically rewards 450 to 600xp. The DM adjusts the difficulty to the party depending on their levels (1-4 for tier 1) and number (3-7 for an AL module). However, MOST AL modules rely on killing monsters to generate the XP. A party of 7 playing through a module even at strong or very strong may not encounter enough creatures to max XP. Some players adopt the position of killing everything in order to max XP. Fights often become the focus AL and plans that come up with creative ways to defeat or avoid obstacles can often receive little or no XP depending on the DM. Roleplay or using the other abilities of your character to deal with an encounter takes a back seat. In some cases, some players will even object to any time spent roleplaying since it is time that they aren't earning XP. Switching to the checkpoint approach for advancement lets each individual group play the module how they want to play it and spend the time as they see fit. They receive the rewards as long as, in the DM's opinion, the actions they take are advancing the plot and working to achieve the goals of the module. The system is also easy to retrofit to existing characters.

3) Treasure points and gold - these systems are a different story from XP and there are a number of flaws that have been pointed out.

Pros-
- the system allows all folks to have potential access to an item that drops in a module. This addresses a common issue. In AL, the character with the least magic items gets first choice of whether they want a specific magic item. If there are more than one player who wants the item and they have the same number of magic items they can roll for it. This means that sometimes a character who can't even use an item ends up with it because they want it to trade for something else. They just want an uncommon/rare/very rare trade bait item to get something they want. This can get very frustrating for a character that could really use the item that drops. (e.g. a Staff of Power drops which the wizard would love but the fighter takes it because they have fewer magic items so they can trade it for something they'd find more useful).
- people can build their characters with the reasonable expectation that they will be able to obtain magic items that suit their playstyle and character.

Cons-
- how do you deal with existing characters? This has not been explained as far as I can tell. With the new system, the number of treasure points you receive is controlled by the number of checkpoints. If you have an existing level 8 character with zero or one magic items then they are behind the curve. The magic item may or may not be useful to the character but they still might be able to trade it (though access to trading with WOTC through Fai Chen is not available to everyone).

However, more significant, is that the character will ALWAYS be behind the magic item curve since they do not have the amount of magic items that they are supposed to have for their level unless a system is implemented to credit existing characters with insufficient magic items with treasure points as compensation. Otherwise they will never catch up and will always be at a magic item deficit compared to other characters.

- gold cost of spell scrolls and spell services. As an example, I just played a tier 1 module with an intellect devourer. It attacked a level 4 bard and reduced his intelligence to zero before we could kill it. Restoring the intelligence, requires greater restoration (a 5th level spell) . This requires 450gp. At 75gp/level - there is no first level character that would be able to pay for this. In our case we took the 385gp from the adventure, combined with 50gp from the character (all he had) and an additional 15gp from the party to pay for the greater restoration so he could continue to play the character. All the players decided to forego their gp rewards from the module to help out another player (this was just a typical AL group and this action is completely optional). Under the new system this is impossible and that specific module has a decent chance of permanently removing a character from AL play. The severe lack of gp will extend this issue into tier 2 for higher level spell casting services.

Wizards and spell scrolls have already been mentioned.

[Mikal]

Thats a huge assumption when it comes to NPC wizards.

True it's hard to judge value. But it's effectively a reusable refuse once scribed. It has to be equal in value to a scroll for each spell in the book. That's worth hundreds to thousands of gold, depending on the spells in it.

Almost as large an assumption that enemy wizards won’t have their spellbooks (or at least a traveling spell book) on hand when killed.

[Darkbru]

Yeah Hardcovers are sounding pretty worthless. Before you were rewarded amply for putting in hours to finish one. Now you might have 1 or 2 hours and maybe some gold.

Story wise keeping the YP items didn't make sense. However, there are a lot of other items that were attainable in game. AL was pretty lose in the last few seasons so this is a huge step back.


We knew they were considering the XGtE rules, but this is a pretty bad. A lot of content is looking pretty dead now.

In the mean time, this is the new gold star sticker chart (TM). In comic sans. (http://www.dmsguild.com/product/245187/Xanathars-Guide-to-Everything-Logsheet)
https://www.dmsguild.com/images/8957/245187.png

Thank you so much for highlighting this! I paid the maker of the sheets and plan on printing one copy for each of my players. I think I’ll hand them out with crayons to everyone on the first session of season 8 so they can draw a stick figure of their mighty adventurers and make smiley faces in the boxes after they complete an hour of play time. I’ll also have to pick up gold stars for the treasure points they acquire.

[Thrudd]

Some comments:
1) The rules only apply to AL play. Using XP for home play or hardcovers or even AL modules run at home doesn't break anything. The changes might or might not affect how many folks enjoy AL.

2) Advancement - using checkpoints instead of XP - I don't see any issues with it. AL modules already give out a pretty fixed amount of XP that depends on the intended party level for the module. e.g. APL 2 module typically rewards 450 to 600xp. The DM adjusts the difficulty to the party depending on their levels (1-4 for tier 1) and number (3-7 for an AL module). However, MOST AL modules rely on killing monsters to generate the XP. A party of 7 playing through a module even at strong or very strong may not encounter enough creatures to max XP. Some players adopt the position of killing everything in order to max XP. Fights often become the focus AL and plans that come up with creative ways to defeat or avoid obstacles can often receive little or no XP depending on the DM. Roleplay or using the other abilities of your character to deal with an encounter takes a back seat. In some cases, some players will even object to any time spent roleplaying since it is time that they aren't earning XP. Switching to the checkpoint approach for advancement lets each individual group play the module how they want to play it and spend the time as they see fit. They receive the rewards as long as, in the DM's opinion, the actions they take are advancing the plot and working to achieve the goals of the module. The system is also easy to retrofit to existing characters.

3) Treasure points and gold - these systems are a different story from XP and there are a number of flaws that have been pointed out.

Pros-
- the system allows all folks to have potential access to an item that drops in a module. This addresses a common issue. In AL, the character with the least magic items gets first choice of whether they want a specific magic item. If there are more than one player who wants the item and they have the same number of magic items they can roll for it. This means that sometimes a character who can't even use an item ends up with it because they want it to trade for something else. They just want an uncommon/rare/very rare trade bait item to get something they want. This can get very frustrating for a character that could really use the item that drops. (e.g. a Staff of Power drops which the wizard would love but the fighter takes it because they have fewer magic items so they can trade it for something they'd find more useful).
- people can build their characters with the reasonable expectation that they will be able to obtain magic items that suit their playstyle and character.

Cons-
- how do you deal with existing characters? This has not been explained as far as I can tell. With the new system, the number of treasure points you receive is controlled by the number of checkpoints. If you have an existing level 8 character with zero or one magic items then they are behind the curve. The magic item may or may not be useful to the character but they still might be able to trade it (though access to trading with WOTC through Fai Chen is not available to everyone).

However, more significant, is that the character will ALWAYS be behind the magic item curve since they do not have the amount of magic items that they are supposed to have for their level unless a system is implemented to credit existing characters with insufficient magic items with treasure points as compensation. Otherwise they will never catch up and will always be at a magic item deficit compared to other characters.

- gold cost of spell scrolls and spell services. As an example, I just played a tier 1 module with an intellect devourer. It attacked a level 4 bard and reduced his intelligence to zero before we could kill it. Restoring the intelligence, requires greater restoration (a 5th level spell) . This requires 450gp. At 75gp/level - there is no first level character that would be able to pay for this. In our case we took the 385gp from the adventure, combined with 50gp from the character (all he had) and an additional 15gp from the party to pay for the greater restoration so he could continue to play the character. All the players decided to forego their gp rewards from the module to help out another player (this was just a typical AL group and this action is completely optional). Under the new system this is impossible and that specific module has a decent chance of permanently removing a character from AL play. The severe lack of gp will extend this issue into tier 2 for higher level spell casting services.

Wizards and spell scrolls have already been mentioned.

Those are good points, and if those things are intended, it seems like this set of rules may be setting different expectations purposefully. Like "the reasonable expectation" that they will get magic items to suit their character- maybe that isn't meant to be an expectation. They apparently should have no expectation of getting any specific items at all, outside those generic ones on the list (honestly I'm not sure why anyone would have had that expectation up to this point, since only items dropped in adventures were available). However, as far as I know, people can still trade items of like rarity, as long you are the right tier for it(determined by the table it's found on in the DMG). So on the whole, your choice of items is far more customizable to your character than before.

As for being behind the magic item power curve, the max number of permanent items per character is and has been three. Existing characters keep whatever they have already. It doesn't take long to catch up to three items. What they left out, but would make sense ,would be to give newly converted upper level characters the treasure points they would have earned, and then deduct the cost of the magic items they hold from the balance. Any remaining points could be spent on stuff from the open list, or saved for a bigger item.

If spellcasting service prices aren't an oversight, then they seem to be placing a more lethal expectation for the lower tiers, more permanent consequences. It may encourage smarter play, more consideration before combat, non-combat options pursued- which goes along with their rationale for changing XP to checkpoints.

[ATHATH]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/202069390454161409/473218112297107456/SimpleSolution.PNG

[Mikal]

A simpler solution is to drop AL like the hot garbage it is

[Lolzyking]

A simpler solution is to drop AL like the hot garbage it is
the problem is finding a legitimate replacement for it at the game store level for organized play with a tier system that allows 4-5 dms and a large group of players to mix and match together.

[Naanomi]

the problem is finding a legitimate replacement for it at the game store level for organized play with a tier system that allows 4-5 dms and a large group of players to mix and match together.
And for convention play

[TheUser]

What do I do with all my old DM xp/gold? Do I just get to build better/richer characters now? Or is my invested time botched?

[Kadesh]

the problem is finding a legitimate replacement for it at the game store level for organized play with a tier system that allows 4-5 dms and a large group of players to mix and match together.

That sounds absolutely horrific, not going to lie.

[Thrudd]

What do I do with all my old DM xp/gold? Do I just get to build better/richer characters now? Or is my invested time botched?

It says that existing characters keep all their items and gold, I'm sure that would apply to DM rewards, too. The XP would get converted into checkpoints and treasure points. Hypothetically, you will be able to build exactly the same character as before, except now you will get to buy some extra magic items from the list with those treasure points in addition to whatever you earned with DM quests.

[Darkbru]

What do I do with all my old DM xp/gold? Do I just get to build better/richer characters now? Or is my invested time botched?

I’m sinking all my dm rewards into characters now before the changes are officially in place. Even if it’s a bunch of level 3 characters or one level 10. Just getting it made now.

[LtPowers]

2) wait, factions are more or less gone? Where does that leave Volo race restrictions?

Those were removed a week or two ago. Now we know why.


Powers &8^]

[LtPowers]

Under the new system this is impossible and that specific module has a decent chance of permanently removing a character from AL play. The severe lack of gp will extend this issue into tier 2 for higher level spell casting services.

Apparently the intended solution is for a character to acquire an appropriate spell scroll (greater restoration in this case) with Treasure Checkpoints. He can go into TCP debt if needed. The purchase of the scroll comes with an NPC to cast it, as well.


Powers &8^]

[Keravath]

Those are good points, and if those things are intended, it seems like this set of rules may be setting different expectations purposefully. Like "the reasonable expectation" that they will get magic items to suit their character- maybe that isn't meant to be an expectation. They apparently should have no expectation of getting any specific items at all, outside those generic ones on the list (honestly I'm not sure why anyone would have had that expectation up to this point, since only items dropped in adventures were available). However, as far as I know, people can still trade items of like rarity, as long you are the right tier for it(determined by the table it's found on in the DMG). So on the whole, your choice of items is far more customizable to your character than before.

As for being behind the magic item power curve, the max number of permanent items per character is and has been three. Existing characters keep whatever they have already. It doesn't take long to catch up to three items. What they left out, but would make sense ,would be to give newly converted upper level characters the treasure points they would have earned, and then deduct the cost of the magic items they hold from the balance. Any remaining points could be spent on stuff from the open list, or saved for a bigger item.

If spellcasting service prices aren't an oversight, then they seem to be placing a more lethal expectation for the lower tiers, more permanent consequences. It may encourage smarter play, more consideration before combat, non-combat options pursued- which goes along with their rationale for changing XP to checkpoints.

I'd just like to add that the bolded statement "the max number of permanent items per character is and has been three" isn't correct as far as I know. There is a limit of three ATTUNED magic items in use at one time but no limit on the total number of non-attuned or stored magic items (there are a sizable number of items that do not require attunement [e.g. circlet of blasting, armor +1 to +3, shield +1 to +3, weapon +1 to +3] ... in addition, a character can have any number of magic items that they are not using because they aren't attuned to them).

I think this puts existing characters that have a none or a limited number of magic items in the middle tiers at a disadvantage. The only really fair way to address it would be to calculate the total treasure points the character would have earned and then subtract the treasure point value of items they possess from their adventures. If they have treasure points left over then they can spend them. (for example, I have a level 7 that was relatively unlucky and they only have one item ... I also have another level 7 with 3 or 4 just due to luck and the modules they have played).

Finally, tier 1 is where all new players begin. I think making it more deadly than it already is would be a bad idea from a player retention standpoint. Furthermore, in the example I used, there was no way we could play it safer since none of us were expecting one of the bad guys to be controlled by an intellect devourer ... most of us, even as players never mind characters, didn't even recognize it and had no way to judge how dangerous it was so there was no way through play strategy to optimize our handling of the situation. Making spell casting service unattainably expensive for tier 1 modules that might require those services is just bad design.

[CircuitEngie]

I’m sinking all my dm rewards into characters now before the changes are officially in place. Even if it’s a bunch of level 3 characters or one level 10. Just getting it made now.

We are waiting for the release of the plan for converting existing DM credit to the new system, as well as the release of the DM Quests. There is still a lot of time before these changes go into effect, so there is no need to panic quite yet.

[PeteNutButter]

I’m sinking all my dm rewards into characters now before the changes are officially in place. Even if it’s a bunch of level 3 characters or one level 10. Just getting it made now.


We are waiting for the release of the plan for converting existing DM credit to the new system, as well as the release of the DM Quests. There is still a lot of time before these changes go into effect, so there is no need to panic quite yet.

I'm confident they are smart enough not to make it punishing or else everyone's DM rewards will all be applied at date [x - 1] where x is the date the changes take effect.

[Keravath]

Apparently the intended solution is for a character to acquire an appropriate spell scroll (greater restoration in this case) with Treasure Checkpoints. He can go into TCP debt if needed. The purchase of the scroll comes with an NPC to cast it, as well.


Powers &8^]

I found a reference to this in the section on dead characters (in the ALDMG guide) and a 12 treasure point cost for true resurrection permitting such a character to use treasure point debt. In addition, a level 4 or 5 spell scroll is listed on the treasure table as 4 treasure points (which would cover greater restoration and raise dead). However, there is no indication that a character would be allowed to go into treasure point debt to purchase these.

Here is a breakdown of the new xp and reward system.

Leveling from 1-20 requires

- At levels 1—4, reaching 4 checkpoints is sufficient to advance to the next level.
- At level 5 or higher, reaching 8 checkpoints is needed to advance to the next level.
- treasure points are earned at the rate of 1/2hours of play in tier1,2 and 1/1 hour in tier3,4

2 - 4 cp, 2 tp, 75gp ... 4cp, 2tp, 75gp
3 - 4 cp, 2 tp, 75gp ... 8cp, 4tp, 150gp
4 - 4 cp, 2tp, 75gp ... 12cp, 6tp, 225gp
(at level 4 you only need 4 check points to reach the next level)
5 - 4 cp, 2tp, 150gp ... 16 cp, 8tp, 375gp
---- tier 2 play
6 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 24, 12, 525
7 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 32, 16, 675
8 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 40, 20, 825
9 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 48, 24, 975
10 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 56, 28, 1125
11 - 8 cp, 4tp, 550gp ... 64, 32, 1675
---- tier 3 play
12 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 72, 40, 2225
13 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 80, 48, 2775
14 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 88, 56, 3225
15 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 96, 64, 3875
16 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 104, 72, 4325
17 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 112, 80, 4975
---- tier 4 play
18 - 8 cp, 8tp, 5500gp ... 120, 88, 10475
19 - 8 cp, 8tp, 5500gp ... 128, 96, 15975
20 - 8 cp, 8tp, 5500gp ... 136, 104, 21475

Observations:

Spell casting services:
- characters can NEVER acquire enough gold to purchase a true resurrection.
- characters will need ALL of their gold to purchase a resurrection spell and this is only possible starting at level 14.
- characters can't even afford a raise dead until 10th level.
- a remove curse costs more than a tier 1 character earns in an entire level.

(All of these assume that the character doesn't spend any gold on any mundane items - armor (400gp for a breastplate or 750gp for half plate! [or 2 treasure points])).

If these stand then it seems pretty clear that the intention is to use treasure points for spellcasting services with the new rules. However, if this is the case it should have been stated up front.

Here are the treasure points earned by tier.

Tier 1: 8 treasure points
Tier 2: 24 treasure points
Tier 3: 48 treasure points
Tier 4: 24 treasure points

A true resurrection costs 12 treasure points or 50,000gp. A level 19 or 20 character who has spent their treasure points will permanently die if killed since they can't afford a true resurrection spell and a level 20 only receives advancement checkpoints and 5500gp for post level 20 play ... not treasure points. They will never have enough treasure points to buy a true resurrection even if they are allowed treasure point debt.

A level 5 entering tier 2 has only 8 treasure points. This enough for one magic item. A single +1 shield or a +1 weapon or slippers of spiderclimbing. On the other hand, many level 5 characters today typically have more than one item ... especially if they play level 4 to 5 since the xp requirement for 4->5 is 1.5x the total xp required for 1-4 together. Odds of acquiring an item in AL now vary between 1/3 to 1/7 depending on the number of players and how many magic items each has ... as a result, a character playing 1->5 in AL today likely has far more magic items.

This may not be a bad change but it is different and creates a situation in which fortunate existing characters could have far more magic items and unfortunate ones may have significantly less or none.

An existing level 7 character without any magic items loses out on 16 treasure points which is at least the equivalent of 2 uncommon items and possibly more.

You can still spend downtime to "catch-up" advance 4->5, 10->11 and 16->17 but the rules don't say anything about treasure points that would have been earned for those transitions.

The existing tables of magic item treasure point value are woefully incomplete.

Do characters retroactively earn the ability to purchase magic items that dropped in modules they have already played? Does this mean that a character can then never buy an item that was in a module they already played if it is not applied retroactively either because the item is either found in a small number of modules or because it is an uncommon that is only found in tier 1 modules?

---------------------

TL;DR

I am unimpressed by how many aspects of the new treasure point system appear to have not been thought about or considered in its design. There appears to have been little or no thought given to how to retroactively apply the new treasure system to existing characters without penalizing those with few magic items.

I am looking forward to see how it is finally implemented but the treasure system as currently described has a lot of shortcomings.

[Naanomi]

Zealot barbarians presumably don’t need to pay that ressurection cost?

[TheUser]

So spend all my DM rewards creating OP tier 1 chars in full plate or OP tier 2 chars with more than 2 items?

[Thrudd]

I'd just like to add that the bolded statement "the max number of permanent items per character is and has been three" isn't correct as far as I know. There is a limit of three ATTUNED magic items in use at one time but no limit on the total number of non-attuned or stored magic items (there are a sizable number of items that do not require attunement [e.g. circlet of blasting, armor +1 to +3, shield +1 to +3, weapon +1 to +3] ... in addition, a character can have any number of magic items that they are not using because they aren't attuned to them).

I think this puts existing characters that have a none or a limited number of magic items in the middle tiers at a disadvantage. The only really fair way to address it would be to calculate the total treasure points the character would have earned and then subtract the treasure point value of items they possess from their adventures. If they have treasure points left over then they can spend them. (for example, I have a level 7 that was relatively unlucky and they only have one item ... I also have another level 7 with 3 or 4 just due to luck and the modules they have played).

Finally, tier 1 is where all new players begin. I think making it more deadly than it already is would be a bad idea from a player retention standpoint. Furthermore, in the example I used, there was no way we could play it safer since none of us were expecting one of the bad guys to be controlled by an intellect devourer ... most of us, even as players never mind characters, didn't even recognize it and had no way to judge how dangerous it was so there was no way through play strategy to optimize our handling of the situation. Making spell casting service unattainably expensive for tier 1 modules that might require those services is just bad design.

Yes, I was confused about those attuned and those possessed. I guess I need to get it straight if I am going to start in AL. There doesn't seem to be any way to catch up on total number of magic items - though I don't know if it's really a big deal, since everyone is fairly limited to how many items they can actually use. I suppose it's one of those things that will just make the long-time players stand out more. But really, how different will it be? The magic item rewards are preset by the adventure, so it isn't like you've had Monty Haul DM's out there giving stuff away.

Well, losing Tier 1 characters should cause the least amount of player frustration - people can't be all that attached to the them yet. Just make another character and try again, a lvl 1 character takes almost no time to create. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they introduce a new way to get raised for free at the low tiers, or seriously adjust the spell casting services costs, because I'm sure people will complain about it.

[Angelalex242]

I'm going to miss Harziwan, as my main has the thing.

Funnily enough, it's my LG Paladin that has Harziwan.

I did the math retroactively. While Harziwan has no stats listed, the DMG lists the max stat as 20.

My paladin laughs at DC 15 charisma saves, obviously. So he just overwhelms the poor sword with force of personality. He's also got the Lucky feat and Black Dragon Mask in case of mishaps. :P

[Snowbluff]

@ATHATH
Yes, I was speaking with my buddy Cinderwell on the subject. Given that factions did give some of these items innately, but the invest in terms of renown, secret missions, downtime, and gold to purchase an item was SO HIGH that it was utterly unfeasible leads me to believe that replacing factions with treasure points is the best option. Like I said, I am of the opinion treasure points act as an additions.




Thank you so much for highlighting this! I paid the maker of the sheets and plan on printing one copy for each of my players. I think I’ll hand them out with crayons to everyone on the first session of season 8 so they can draw a stick figure of their mighty adventurers and make smiley faces in the boxes after they complete an hour of play time. I’ll also have to pick up gold stars for the treasure points they acquire.
I think I might up ending up using it as well. You're welcome, but if you see Cinderwell on reddit or twitter give him thanks for pointing me to it. :p


Those are good points, and if those things are intended, it seems like this set of rules may be setting different expectations purposefully. Like "the reasonable expectation" that they will get magic items to suit their character- maybe that isn't meant to be an expectation. They apparently should have no expectation of getting any specific items at all, outside those generic ones on the list (honestly I'm not sure why anyone would have had that expectation up to this point, since only items dropped in adventures were available). However, as far as I know, people can still trade items of like rarity, as long you are the right tier for it(determined by the table it's found on in the DMG). So on the whole, your choice of items is far more customizable to your character than before. There is literally no aspect of this that is more customizable.



If spellcasting service prices aren't an oversight, then they seem to be placing a more lethal expectation for the lower tiers, more permanent consequences. It may encourage smarter play, more consideration before combat, non-combat options pursued- which goes along with their rationale for changing XP to checkpoints.
Some of these mods are written to OTKO you for doing innocuous things. I was level1 in AL at one time and I lookedat a snake statue funny and took 3 times my max HP in psychic damage.

I found a reference to this in the section on dead characters (in the ALDMG guide) and a 12 treasure point cost for true resurrection permitting such a character to use treasure point debt. In addition, a level 4 or 5 spell scroll is listed on the treasure table as 4 treasure points (which would cover greater restoration and raise dead). However, there is no indication that a character would be allowed to go into treasure point debt to purchase these.

Here is a breakdown of the new xp and reward system.

Leveling from 1-20 requires

- At levels 1—4, reaching 4 checkpoints is sufficient to advance to the next level.
- At level 5 or higher, reaching 8 checkpoints is needed to advance to the next level.
- treasure points are earned at the rate of 1/2hours of play in tier1,2 and 1/1 hour in tier3,4

2 - 4 cp, 2 tp, 75gp ... 4cp, 2tp, 75gp
3 - 4 cp, 2 tp, 75gp ... 8cp, 4tp, 150gp
4 - 4 cp, 2tp, 75gp ... 12cp, 6tp, 225gp
(at level 4 you only need 4 check points to reach the next level)
5 - 4 cp, 2tp, 150gp ... 16 cp, 8tp, 375gp
---- tier 2 play
6 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 24, 12, 525
7 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 32, 16, 675
8 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 40, 20, 825
9 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 48, 24, 975
10 - 8 cp, 4tp, 150gp ... 56, 28, 1125
11 - 8 cp, 4tp, 550gp ... 64, 32, 1675
---- tier 3 play
12 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 72, 40, 2225
13 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 80, 48, 2775
14 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 88, 56, 3225
15 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 96, 64, 3875
16 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 104, 72, 4325
17 - 8 cp, 8tp, 550gp ... 112, 80, 4975
---- tier 4 play
18 - 8 cp, 8tp, 5500gp ... 120, 88, 10475
19 - 8 cp, 8tp, 5500gp ... 128, 96, 15975
20 - 8 cp, 8tp, 5500gp ... 136, 104, 21475

Observations:

Spell casting services:
- characters can NEVER acquire enough gold to purchase a true resurrection.
- characters will need ALL of their gold to purchase a resurrection spell and this is only possible starting at level 14.
- characters can't even afford a raise dead until 10th level.
- a remove curse costs more than a tier 1 character earns in an entire level.

(All of these assume that the character doesn't spend any gold on any mundane items - armor (400gp for a breastplate or 750gp for half plate! [or 2 treasure points])).

If these stand then it seems pretty clear that the intention is to use treasure points for spellcasting services with the new rules. However, if this is the case it should have been stated up front.

Here are the treasure points earned by tier.

Tier 1: 8 treasure points
Tier 2: 24 treasure points
Tier 3: 48 treasure points
Tier 4: 24 treasure points

A true resurrection costs 12 treasure points or 50,000gp. A level 19 or 20 character who has spent their treasure points will permanently die if killed since they can't afford a true resurrection spell and a level 20 only receives advancement checkpoints and 5500gp for post level 20 play ... not treasure points. They will never have enough treasure points to buy a true resurrection even if they are allowed treasure point debt.

A level 5 entering tier 2 has only 8 treasure points. This enough for one magic item. A single +1 shield or a +1 weapon or slippers of spiderclimbing. On the other hand, many level 5 characters today typically have more than one item ... especially if they play level 4 to 5 since the xp requirement for 4->5 is 1.5x the total xp required for 1-4 together. Odds of acquiring an item in AL now vary between 1/3 to 1/7 depending on the number of players and how many magic items each has ... as a result, a character playing 1->5 in AL today likely has far more magic items.

This may not be a bad change but it is different and creates a situation in which fortunate existing characters could have far more magic items and unfortunate ones may have significantly less or none.

An existing level 7 character without any magic items loses out on 16 treasure points which is at least the equivalent of 2 uncommon items and possibly more.

You can still spend downtime to "catch-up" advance 4->5, 10->11 and 16->17 but the rules don't say anything about treasure points that would have been earned for those transitions.

The existing tables of magic item treasure point value are woefully incomplete.

Do characters retroactively earn the ability to purchase magic items that dropped in modules they have already played? Does this mean that a character can then never buy an item that was in a module they already played if it is not applied retroactively either because the item is either found in a small number of modules or because it is an uncommon that is only found in tier 1 modules?

---------------------

TL;DR

I am unimpressed by how many aspects of the new treasure point system appear to have not been thought about or considered in its design. There appears to have been little or no thought given to how to retroactively apply the new treasure system to existing characters without penalizing those with few magic items.

I am looking forward to see how it is finally implemented but the treasure system as currently described has a lot of shortcomings.
An excellent analysis. Thank you for the effort. Catching up is of particular worry to me, as I like to catch up a lot.

I will point out that the magic item point costs are NOT "woefully incomplete." As described by page 3 of this document, the ALPG for season 8, (https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/ALPGv80.pdf) there is a point cost assigned to EVERY ITEM ON THE DMG's magic item tables, Tables A thought I. This represent as vast majority of the items in the game outside of story specific or unique items. You should amend your statement on the matter.

Furthermore, by examining this table it is important to understand that most items are Tier 3 at most, meaning that T3 points are basically T4 points outside of purchasing items from the evergreen or season table.


I'm going to miss Harziwan, as my main has the thing.

Funnily enough, it's my LG Paladin that has Harziwan.

I did the math retroactively. While Harziwan has no stats listed, the DMG lists the max stat as 20.

My paladin laughs at DC 15 charisma saves, obviously. So he just overwhelms the poor sword with force of personality. He's also got the Lucky feat and Black Dragon Mask in case of mishaps. :P
The official ruling for AL as I understand is that you can't use Haz's attunement powers unless you have no arcane casters in your presence, or if you do you have to kill them. So he's like a +1 GS with +1d6 necro damage 99 times out of 100.

[Thrudd]

There is literally no aspect of this that is more customizable.

Some of these mods are written to OTKO you for doing innocuous things. I was level1 in AL at one time and I lookedat a snake statue funny and took 3 times my max HP in psychic damage.


I may not understand how magic items get awarded to players currently. It's my understanding that players get only what is listed in each module as loot. Sometimes a module or DM reward lets the DM give out something extra of their choice. In no case I've seen does the player really get to choose what they get. Are there a lot of modules where the players get to buy any magic items of their choice? I thought if you wanted a specific piece of gear you need to play a module where it appears and hope nobody else wants it at the end. Now you can get any gear that is dropped in the session, even if another player wanted it, too. And you can make sure your character has a +x weapon and armor of your choice, even if you never see them dropped. A wizard wants a spell that hasn't shown up in a drop or in another player's spell book? They can use treasure points to get it. Do I not understand it correctly?

[Snowbluff]

I may not understand how magic items get awarded to players currently. It's my understanding that players get only what is listed in each module as loot. Sometimes a module or DM reward lets the DM give out something extra of their choice. In no case I've seen does the player really get to choose what they get. Are there a lot of modules where the players get to buy any magic items of their choice? I thought if you wanted a specific piece of gear you need to play a module where it appears and hope nobody else wants it at the end. Now you can get any gear that is dropped in the session, even if another player wanted it, too. And you can make sure your character has a +x weapon and armor of your choice, even if you never see them dropped. A wizard wants a spell that hasn't shown up in a drop or in another player's spell book? They can use treasure points to get it. Do I not understand it correctly?

How it works not:
You find an item you pick it up.Sometime there is an extra item roll if you're in a hardcover.
Or you buy it through your faction (which includes some +x or wondrous items).

How it will work:
You find the same item you then dd it to your unlocks.
Or you buy from an evergreen (+x) or season (wondrous) items list.

^ these two things are the same except for some items will be missing.

It ight be an artifact of how I play (with a lot of hardcovers and players dividing roles between themselves), but I haven't had players genuinely come to conflict over an item.

[Rogerdodger557]

I only do AL for cons, so this doesn’t effect me much but...

1) as much as it hits wizards, seems even worse for tomelocks
2) wait, factions are more or less gone? Where does that leave Volo race restrictions?

They already released a document stating that the races in Volo's are no longer faction restricted.

[Rogerdodger557]

@ATHATH



The official ruling for AL as I understand is that you can't use Haz's attunement powers unless you have no arcane casters in your presence, or if you do you have to kill them. So he's like a +1 GS with +1d6 necro damage 99 times out of 100.

Yeah, no. My party had a Barbarian/Wizard attune to Haz, with no issue. It's really a DM discretion kind of thing, since there are no official rules on that.

[Snowbluff]

Yeah, no. My party had a Barbarian/Wizard attune to Haz, with no issue. It's really a DM discretion kind of thing, since there are no official rules on that.

Provided by this document. (https://dndadventurersleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/DDAL-FAQ-v3.0.pdf)

As clarified by Steve Winter (HotDQ author), this item was misprinted in the adventure.
When unattuned, this item deals an extra 1d6 necrotic damage on a hit. All other magical properties require Hazirawn to be attuned to the character.
Sentience.
Hazirawn is a sentient magic item, therefore if the wielder is not acting in accordance with the swords motivations (neutral evil alignment), it may suppress any of its attuned properties at will.
Hazirawn seeks to destroy users of arcane magic at every opportunity.
As Hazirawnlacks mental ability scores, DMs should not perform contests of wills when resolving
this conflict, nor should they create ability scores for
the weapon.
Tradeability.
Hazirawn isn’t tradeable.

[Rogerdodger557]

Provided by this document. (https://dndadventurersleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/DDAL-FAQ-v3.0.pdf)


As clarified by Steve Winter (HotDQ author), this item was misprinted in the adventure.
When unattuned, this item deals an extra 1d6 necrotic damage on a hit. All other magical properties require Hazirawn to be attuned to the character.
Sentience.
Hazirawn is a sentient magic item, therefore if the wielder is not acting in accordance with the swords motivations (neutral evil alignment), it may suppress any of its attuned properties at will.
Hazirawn seeks to destroy users of arcane magic at every opportunity.
As Hazirawn lacks mental ability scores, DMs should not perform contests of wills when resolving
this conflict, nor should they create ability scores for
the weapon.
Tradeability.
Hazirawn isn’t tradeable.

It may do that. Doesn't have to do that. Like I said, DM discretion.

[Snowbluff]

It may do that. Doesn't have to do that. Like I said, DM discretion.

You missed the part about it wanting to destroy arcane casters at every opportunity.
It should never attune with you. That's not DM discretion, your existence is contrary to it's wants. :smalltongue:

[KorvinStarmast]

You missed the part about it wanting to destroy arcane casters at every opportunity.
It should never attune with you. That's not DM discretion, your existence is contrary to it's wants. :smalltongue:So when does Season 8 Start? September? I have an idea on what to do with my season 7 Gloom Stalker, but I need to be thinking ahead a little bit.

[Naanomi]

I guess Hexblade is really where it is at; since finding rituals for your tome will eat up treasure points; and finding cash to summon you familiar will also be challenging

How does the lack of coin effect downtime? Obviously training for skills isn’t feasible; but even living expenses will become prohibitive... murder hobos indeed

[Rogerdodger557]

So when does Season 8 Start? September? I have an idea on what to do with my season 7 Gloom Stalker, but I need to be thinking ahead a little bit.

The new rules go into effect August 30th.

[Knaight]

the problem is finding a legitimate replacement for it at the game store level for organized play with a tier system that allows 4-5 dms and a large group of players to mix and match together.
This part is pretty intractable - sure, it can be handled by each store individually, but that substantially shrinks the network and adds a decent workload to the store, which means it likely won't happen.

That said, the new system potentially frees up DMs a fair bit - if it's hours played instead of combat XP, and it's level based treasure points instead of gained in adventures then a DM could run their own stuff instead of AL modules and it wouldn't screw up the games of other AL DMs. There's no risk of the economy getting thrown out of whack in those other games. Said DMs are still more restricted than I'd want to be, but then the idea of sharing a player pool with 3-4 other GMs all running what is to some extent a single campaign together sounds miserable (sharing a player pool in the sense of us all doing our own thing with no shared characters and players joining up to whatever sounds interesting on the other hand would be downright nice, what with the logistical load being displaced). It's potentially a lot better for its (admittedly weird) niche than the season 7 rules.


And for convention play
Independent one shots hold up just fine for convention play. AL is totally redundant there.

[Tanarii]

Independent one shots hold up just fine for convention play. AL is totally redundant there.
Playing a premade is fun. But it lacks the investment of bringing the character you've been playing with from convention to convention.

[Naanomi]

After actually looking through the rule sheet... questions:

1) What happens to an existing Evil character with a background other than Faction Agent?
2) What happens to characters of different backgrounds who become Evil in game (for example: during Curse of Strahd)?
3) Do I have to choose the ‘faction agent’ Background as written to be Evil, or am I allowed to customize it?
4) The guidance for the Inheritor Background seems to have disappeared... what are the rules for this now, and how does it interact with treasure points/money?
5) How does the Zealot ability interact with ressurection?


Commentary:
1) All characters, Elven noble or goblin urchin, have Modest lifestyles at level 1? And lizardman archdruid hermits living in the swamp are living (and paying for) Aristocratic lifestyles at 17+?
1a) How does this work with Waterdavian Nobles?

2) Absolute bans on non-magic equipment looting cuts out a few Druid armor options; and makes necromancy hard (can’t keep bodies to use between adventures.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Taking some time to run the math, I still don't really like it. But it does function, for the most part. It's unnecessarily punishing to anyone that gets unlucky more than once; dying in an adventure isn't so funny when you're about to go into debt and thus can't afford anything for several levels, especially with the new premium on getting magic items making saving enough to buy one in the first place such an ordeal.

We are talking about 5e, though. The system can function on low to no magic items. It just sucks because getting cool loot is fun, and half the fun of going on random adventures is finding fun treasure that you can take with you and use in the next place you go. Now you get to see them put a new piece of treasure in a store window, and you stand outside drooling while eyeballing it until you save up enough Geoffrey Bucks to buy it. That's just... bleh.

I get that they're trying to hew to this idea that Magic Marts don't exist in 5e, but AL exists on a world where there have always been Magic Marts. And this is a Magic Mart, even if it's done in some bizarre meta fashion. Why not just give players plenty of gold and allow them to use that gold to purchase magic items? You could keep the adventure 'unlocks', but now gold can be used for its normal purpose, too, and doesn't require some ridiculous wealth bureaucracy to manage.

I also think money and XP relegated via time is just wonky feeling. I'm already imagining players watching the clock like it's grade school, celebrating when the hour hits because they just got their level up or can finally afford another suit of plate armor that they can sell to some insane degenerate waving a sign who "Will Buy Plate 4 $$$".

The weirdest part is that this new era of the pauper PC would have been perfect in a setting like Dark Sun. I think a game where money and resources are rare could be a ton of fun. It's just not a good fit for Faerun, and really not a good fit for a game that was much more open-handed before.

[Snowbluff]

I also think money and XP relegated via time is just wonky feeling. I'm already imagining players watching the clock like it's grade school, celebrating when the hour hits because they just got their level up or can finally afford another suit of plate armor that they can sell to some insane degenerate waving a sign who "Will Buy Plate 4 $$$". My table has been joking about speed running 4 hour modules in 2 hours to get 4 hours of checkpoints. XD


The weirdest part is that this new era of the pauper PC would have been perfect in a setting like Dark Sun. I think a game where money and resources are rare could be a ton of fun. It's just not a good fit for Faerun, and really not a good fit for a game that was much more open-handed before.

Yeah, Faerun is weirdly filled with magic. It's super strange. :smalltongue:

[Angelalex242]

The official ruling for AL as I understand is that you can't use Haz's attunement powers unless you have no arcane casters in your presence, or if you do you have to kill them. So he's like a +1 GS with +1d6 necro damage 99 times out of 100.



I've never had a GM actually enforce that rule, so I've been using it at full power. Presumably, there's a bunch of 'personality conflict's going on in the background when arcane casters are in my party. But the sword's flinging DC 15 saves at my +16 charisma save, so...


Kill that wizard!

No.

Kill that Sorcerer!

No.

...Goddamn it.


Cheer up, we're fighting Thayans soon, you can gleefully kill them all.

[sambojin]

Oh goody. Moon Druids got even better. No/low armour costs, rarely die, free magic weapons at lvl6, usually low level encounters where wildshape is still great, plenty of low/no-cost magic. Can even res people at lvl9, removing one of the big costs of adventuring for a party (OK, they end up as a different race, but good. It's fun to be annoying and helpful at the same time).

The whole Life Cleric/Moon Druid combo for Best Berries (4HP packets of deliciousness) also removes the problems of limited healing potions. Or Healing Spirit, which is nicely OP even without the combo.

Gold? Who needs it? Druids don't.

(not to mention that you can auto-level by just messing about as a badger in the forest or something for a few hours, instead of actually adventuring. WS gives you plenty of useless things to do as a Moon Druid :) )

[OldTrees1]

(not to mention that you can auto-level by just messing about as a badger in the forest or something for a few hours, instead of actually adventuring. WS gives you plenty of useless things to do as a Moon Druid :) )

Doesn't actually work. In Season 8 you only get rewards if you spend hours progressing towards the Hardcover goals, completing the Season 1-7 module, or completing goals in the Season 8 modules.


Although this does raise an issue for Hardcover games. If the party is progressing towards the goals but takes longer to complete the goals than Season 8 has them level, what to do? We will be going through PotA and ToA. I think we will be fine in the former. PotA seems to give too little xp per tier of content and then uses optional quests in the back to catch the party up. So the new advancement rules are unlikely to have us level too fast. ToA on the other hand...