So I've been getting into Adventurer's League a lot lately, and I've spammed these forums a bit with threads I will admit. Each time I have a question about the broader implications of the rules so I'm not always jumping down the DM's throat with speculation because RAW confused me. This time I come to the community with a notion... it seems most people on these forums are a bit disappointed with how restrictive AL can be, how it can often feel anti-fun.
So the question I have is: How are the rules for each season of the AL determined? I Imagine some employees at WOTC are in charge of putting it all together, but is there anyway for the community to have strong input in the matter and influence it to see some new features included? I just think that the AL has so much potential because it lets people jump right into 5e and it's very accessible for people who might not have the means to host or attend home games. I'd like to see it play a little less restricted.
As far as I know, season rules are worked out between WotC and the AL Admins (I am part of neither group so take my comments with a grain of salt).
Up until season 7, everything was gold, xp and one magic item/module decided on the basis of who had the least magic items followed by rolling in the case of ties where more than one person wanted the item. It more or less paralleled how folks played D&D at home.
However, in practice the XP, gold and magic item distribution caused some problems as the popularity of D&D AL grew. The xp was a bit complicated. Gold depended a lot on which modules you played. Magic item distribution could drive metagaming and unhappy players at the end of a session when the wizard collected the gauntlets of ogre power for trading which one of the martial character would have really liked and would likely never get a chance at again since there are a limited number of modules, most drop different items, and you can't replay them. (There were other issues, folks refusing magic items until they were in tier 2 or 3 so they were automatically the lowest and would get their choice of the best items, people who serially created level 1 characters, played them until they got a magic item, then started a new one - they could trade these to whichever character they really wanted to use but in the meantime there were folks playing tier 1 who received one or no magic items.
Season 8 rules were an attempt to fix some of these and some aspects worked well. In my play experience, role playing went up and the need for scorched earth results killing everything in the module to maximize XP declined making the game more enjoyable. Gold was too limited for wizards, clerics and plate armor wearers (but more or less ok for everyone else). ACP/TCP were still a bit confusing and complicated for some.
Season 9 simplifies even more. If you play a module and want to level up, go ahead. If you play a module and want the magic item, go ahead. Gold limits were slightly relaxed. In tier 2+ a module will typically award half the gold limit for a level so you need to play two modules to maximize your gold.
Honestly, this seems to be about as straight forward, simple and accessible as the rules can get. I don't think that the AL Admins will make any major changes except perhaps requiring 2 modules of play/level in tier 2+ and possibly an additional slight increase to gold/level since it is still challenging for wizards/clerics and to a lesser extend plate armor wearers.
As a result, I am not sure I would expect much in the way of changes to the rules for season 10. Perhaps tweaks but that is it. The only reason they made changes at all was to address some issues and reduce complexity to make the game more accessible which the season 9 rules have basically done already.
Honestly, I think they should just give in and remove the gold constraints. If they want to control for gold rate, they really just need to control that on the module/hardcover side of things. It feels incredibly awkward to have monetary rewards written into adventures that mostly evaporate in the players' hands. At most, maybe they could just restrict the selling of most non-coin treasure.
My issue with the restriction is less about the gold, honestly. I just notice that a lot of variant rules like feats are restricted and it feels like it really shuts things down considering some DMs will just say 'screw it' and run feats at their table anyways. So it can be a bit touch and go there.
My issue with the restriction is less about the gold, honestly. I just notice that a lot of variant rules like feats are restricted and it feels like it really shuts things down considering some DMs will just say 'screw it' and run feats at their table anyways. So it can be a bit touch and go there.
As Variant Human is explicitly allowed and includes a Feat selection, Feats are allowed as well -- at all AL tables as far as I'm aware. They just still have to conform to the PHB+1 rule. If I'm not mistaken, all PHB "Optional" rules like Feats and Multiclassing are by default allowed.
My issue with the restriction is less about the gold, honestly. I just notice that a lot of variant rules like feats are restricted and it feels like it really shuts things down considering some DMs will just say 'screw it' and run feats at their table anyways. So it can be a bit touch and go there.
Feats aren't restricted. Feats and multiclassing have always been allowed.
Version 8.2 of the FAQ stated this explicitly:
"Advancing Your Character. Your character advances using the race and class options (including the multiclass rules, feats, spells) provided in your PHB+1"
Strangely, the bracketed section was dropped in the version 9 FAQ which I don't understand at all. Since without it, the FAQ does not include any reference to the multiclass and feat rules which are listed as "optional" in the PHB but which have always been in use for AL play as far as I know.
"Advancing Your Character. Your character advances using the options found in your PHB+1."
Something for the AL admins to sort out since without the explicit reference either here or in the allowed variant and optional rules the season 9 FAQ appears to limit the use of multiclassing and feats which I do not think was intended since they have always been allowed for AL play.
I would expect for s10, we won’t see much in the way of changes. They’ll continue to develop the seasonality angle. Maybe giving boons for certain races or backgrounds, exempting certain ones from the PHB+1 rule. Honestly, I think that’d make a good seasonality idea, to exempt a featured sourcebook from the PHB +1 rule. The renown benefits are probably the closest thing I’ve seen to a complaint about s9. “How’s that vehicle and noncombatant crew helping you?”
I think others have addressed that what you may be viewing as feat restrictions might be a simple PHB +1 conflict. So I won’t beat that horse.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So I've been getting into Adventurer's League a lot lately, and I've spammed these forums a bit with threads I will admit. Each time I have a question about the broader implications of the rules so I'm not always jumping down the DM's throat with speculation because RAW confused me. This time I come to the community with a notion... it seems most people on these forums are a bit disappointed with how restrictive AL can be, how it can often feel anti-fun.
So the question I have is: How are the rules for each season of the AL determined? I Imagine some employees at WOTC are in charge of putting it all together, but is there anyway for the community to have strong input in the matter and influence it to see some new features included? I just think that the AL has so much potential because it lets people jump right into 5e and it's very accessible for people who might not have the means to host or attend home games. I'd like to see it play a little less restricted.
As far as I know, season rules are worked out between WotC and the AL Admins (I am part of neither group so take my comments with a grain of salt).
Up until season 7, everything was gold, xp and one magic item/module decided on the basis of who had the least magic items followed by rolling in the case of ties where more than one person wanted the item. It more or less paralleled how folks played D&D at home.
However, in practice the XP, gold and magic item distribution caused some problems as the popularity of D&D AL grew. The xp was a bit complicated. Gold depended a lot on which modules you played. Magic item distribution could drive metagaming and unhappy players at the end of a session when the wizard collected the gauntlets of ogre power for trading which one of the martial character would have really liked and would likely never get a chance at again since there are a limited number of modules, most drop different items, and you can't replay them. (There were other issues, folks refusing magic items until they were in tier 2 or 3 so they were automatically the lowest and would get their choice of the best items, people who serially created level 1 characters, played them until they got a magic item, then started a new one - they could trade these to whichever character they really wanted to use but in the meantime there were folks playing tier 1 who received one or no magic items.
Season 8 rules were an attempt to fix some of these and some aspects worked well. In my play experience, role playing went up and the need for scorched earth results killing everything in the module to maximize XP declined making the game more enjoyable. Gold was too limited for wizards, clerics and plate armor wearers (but more or less ok for everyone else). ACP/TCP were still a bit confusing and complicated for some.
Season 9 simplifies even more. If you play a module and want to level up, go ahead. If you play a module and want the magic item, go ahead. Gold limits were slightly relaxed. In tier 2+ a module will typically award half the gold limit for a level so you need to play two modules to maximize your gold.
Honestly, this seems to be about as straight forward, simple and accessible as the rules can get. I don't think that the AL Admins will make any major changes except perhaps requiring 2 modules of play/level in tier 2+ and possibly an additional slight increase to gold/level since it is still challenging for wizards/clerics and to a lesser extend plate armor wearers.
As a result, I am not sure I would expect much in the way of changes to the rules for season 10. Perhaps tweaks but that is it. The only reason they made changes at all was to address some issues and reduce complexity to make the game more accessible which the season 9 rules have basically done already.
Honestly, I think they should just give in and remove the gold constraints. If they want to control for gold rate, they really just need to control that on the module/hardcover side of things. It feels incredibly awkward to have monetary rewards written into adventures that mostly evaporate in the players' hands. At most, maybe they could just restrict the selling of most non-coin treasure.
My issue with the restriction is less about the gold, honestly. I just notice that a lot of variant rules like feats are restricted and it feels like it really shuts things down considering some DMs will just say 'screw it' and run feats at their table anyways. So it can be a bit touch and go there.
As Variant Human is explicitly allowed and includes a Feat selection, Feats are allowed as well -- at all AL tables as far as I'm aware. They just still have to conform to the PHB+1 rule. If I'm not mistaken, all PHB "Optional" rules like Feats and Multiclassing are by default allowed.
Feats aren't restricted. Feats and multiclassing have always been allowed.
Version 8.2 of the FAQ stated this explicitly:
"Advancing Your Character. Your character advances using the race and class options (including the multiclass rules, feats, spells) provided in your PHB+1"
Strangely, the bracketed section was dropped in the version 9 FAQ which I don't understand at all. Since without it, the FAQ does not include any reference to the multiclass and feat rules which are listed as "optional" in the PHB but which have always been in use for AL play as far as I know.
"Advancing Your Character. Your character advances using the options found in your PHB+1."
Something for the AL admins to sort out since without the explicit reference either here or in the allowed variant and optional rules the season 9 FAQ appears to limit the use of multiclassing and feats which I do not think was intended since they have always been allowed for AL play.
I would expect for s10, we won’t see much in the way of changes. They’ll continue to develop the seasonality angle. Maybe giving boons for certain races or backgrounds, exempting certain ones from the PHB+1 rule. Honestly, I think that’d make a good seasonality idea, to exempt a featured sourcebook from the PHB +1 rule. The renown benefits are probably the closest thing I’ve seen to a complaint about s9. “How’s that vehicle and noncombatant crew helping you?”
I think others have addressed that what you may be viewing as feat restrictions might be a simple PHB +1 conflict. So I won’t beat that horse.