I’ve been playing 5e for about a year in two separate home games, but have not played official Adventure League material yet. I’ve read through the rules and FAQs, but still have some questions since my first major experience with it will be at an upcoming convention over a 2-3 day period. I’ll need to register for sessions in advance without knowing what level my character(s) will be over time.
If time permits, my GM has offered to run a couple of modules before the convention to help get at least one character up to level 2 or so. Hopefully they’ll be a bit less squishy in the first module. But I don’t know how fast I should expect to level up during the convention.
I’ll likely have a few 1st level characters designed in case I need a second character for tier 1 sessions, but not sure how it might be handled if my main character dies midway through. I likely would not have time to level up a second character for tier 2 modules. But don’t want to lose game time (or waste registration fees) because I don’t have a tier-appropriate character ready. I also won’t know if anyone at the table will be playing a cleric (or even a healer for that matter). We could have a party of barbarians for all I know.
Can anyone recommend a strategy for registering for tier 1 versus tier 2 modules? I hope I’m just over-thinking this...but how many sessions would it likely take to get to tier 2? Should I expect to have adequate downtime days to boost a character to level 5 if needed? Is it likely for a level 3-6 level character to be able to afford resurrection? This is also in the new tomb of annihilation setting...just to add some resurrection complications...
Maybe some other people have more expertise, but my experience with tier 1 Adventurers League (which is not extensive) is that it depends on what type of module you are playing. For standard DDAL modules has been to expect about 150 xp and 2.5 downtime days per hour of play time. I've only played a few epics (DDEP) but I expect about double the experience for an epic and approximately the same downtime.
You should have plenty of downtime to skip to fifth level if you get to fourth and didn't spend any.
If your regular GM runs some AL modules for you, just remember that there's a minimum of 3 players and everyone has to be AL legal.
In Tomb of Annihilation there is no resurrection so don't worry about that. If your tier 2 character dies, you can play a surrogate that will start at fifth level.
If you're worried about a lack of healing, you could play the cleric. Your table will love you for it.
Thanks for the input! If my character doesn’t make it to 5th, could I expect a surrogate to be an option when I sit down at the table at the start of a new module?
Also, by “surrogate”, is that typically a pregen supplied by the GM, or should I build a couple of unofficial, AL compliant 5th level characters?
Additional details...I’m going to “Winter Fantasy” in Fort Wayne, IN in February and I’m currently registered for a trilogy of 2-hour modules and then a four hour epic, all at tier 1. The next day, I registered for tier 2 events. I may be able to swap these out before the event if needed.
I was just checking my logsheets and it looks like I might have been lowballing the experience because I've be playing some season 2 content lately. It looks like about 300 xp per module hour in season 7 is average (and not doubled for epics). If you're not concerned about spoilers, you can check out this spreadsheet that details XP and treasure broken out by module. It doesn't seem to contain any story spoilers just loot/XP/renown spoilers. You could plan much more accurately how much xp you will have.
The rules on surrogates are detailed in the Tomb of Annihilation Primer. The short answer is that you can only play a level 5 surrogate if your tier 2 character dies.
Thanks again! I missed (or misunderstood) that bit on surrogates initially, but reading it again, that makes sense. It essentially keeps players in the game, which is reassuring given the chunks of time which we are registered for at the Con. It also sounds like we are on the right track with XP. We can theoretically get the necessary XP in about 4 modules, but looks like it’ll help to have 500-700 XP earned beforehand just to make sure we’re ready for tier 2.
I dont like meta gaming this much, but my real-life time is also important to me. I want to make the most of this new (to me) gaming experience!
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I’ve been playing 5e for about a year in two separate home games, but have not played official Adventure League material yet. I’ve read through the rules and FAQs, but still have some questions since my first major experience with it will be at an upcoming convention over a 2-3 day period. I’ll need to register for sessions in advance without knowing what level my character(s) will be over time.
If time permits, my GM has offered to run a couple of modules before the convention to help get at least one character up to level 2 or so. Hopefully they’ll be a bit less squishy in the first module. But I don’t know how fast I should expect to level up during the convention.
I’ll likely have a few 1st level characters designed in case I need a second character for tier 1 sessions, but not sure how it might be handled if my main character dies midway through. I likely would not have time to level up a second character for tier 2 modules. But don’t want to lose game time (or waste registration fees) because I don’t have a tier-appropriate character ready. I also won’t know if anyone at the table will be playing a cleric (or even a healer for that matter). We could have a party of barbarians for all I know.
Can anyone recommend a strategy for registering for tier 1 versus tier 2 modules? I hope I’m just over-thinking this...but how many sessions would it likely take to get to tier 2? Should I expect to have adequate downtime days to boost a character to level 5 if needed? Is it likely for a level 3-6 level character to be able to afford resurrection? This is also in the new tomb of annihilation setting...just to add some resurrection complications...
Thanks in advance!
Maybe some other people have more expertise, but my experience with tier 1 Adventurers League (which is not extensive) is that it depends on what type of module you are playing. For standard DDAL modules has been to expect about 150 xp and 2.5 downtime days per hour of play time. I've only played a few epics (DDEP) but I expect about double the experience for an epic and approximately the same downtime.
You should have plenty of downtime to skip to fifth level if you get to fourth and didn't spend any.
If your regular GM runs some AL modules for you, just remember that there's a minimum of 3 players and everyone has to be AL legal.
In Tomb of Annihilation there is no resurrection so don't worry about that. If your tier 2 character dies, you can play a surrogate that will start at fifth level.
If you're worried about a lack of healing, you could play the cleric. Your table will love you for it.
Thanks for the input! If my character doesn’t make it to 5th, could I expect a surrogate to be an option when I sit down at the table at the start of a new module?
Also, by “surrogate”, is that typically a pregen supplied by the GM, or should I build a couple of unofficial, AL compliant 5th level characters?
Additional details...I’m going to “Winter Fantasy” in Fort Wayne, IN in February and I’m currently registered for a trilogy of 2-hour modules and then a four hour epic, all at tier 1. The next day, I registered for tier 2 events. I may be able to swap these out before the event if needed.
I was just checking my logsheets and it looks like I might have been lowballing the experience because I've be playing some season 2 content lately. It looks like about 300 xp per module hour in season 7 is average (and not doubled for epics). If you're not concerned about spoilers, you can check out this spreadsheet that details XP and treasure broken out by module. It doesn't seem to contain any story spoilers just loot/XP/renown spoilers. You could plan much more accurately how much xp you will have.
The rules on surrogates are detailed in the Tomb of Annihilation Primer. The short answer is that you can only play a level 5 surrogate if your tier 2 character dies.
Thanks again! I missed (or misunderstood) that bit on surrogates initially, but reading it again, that makes sense. It essentially keeps players in the game, which is reassuring given the chunks of time which we are registered for at the Con. It also sounds like we are on the right track with XP. We can theoretically get the necessary XP in about 4 modules, but looks like it’ll help to have 500-700 XP earned beforehand just to make sure we’re ready for tier 2.
I dont like meta gaming this much, but my real-life time is also important to me. I want to make the most of this new (to me) gaming experience!