Apologies if this is already posted somewhere...could not find it.
So as the title says, for these longer hard back adventures that are going to take a LOT of sessions to complete (CoS, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, etc), how do you handle them within the AL rules structure?
Examples:
Downtime per session and leveling up/item trade. Obviously the PCs would be super high levels so you ask them not to level up except when goals are met to keep it challenging. By the time the PCs are done they will probably have 100s of hours banked. Not a big deal if the PCs know they are getting into this. However, by AL rules can you really enforce not leveling up or trading items found?
Items found during the sessions. Per AL any magic items found during the session are available to all at the table if not consumed during that session. However at least in the Witchlight campaign there are many instances of items you as the DM sort of design for your PCs. So you might make six different common magic items for the six PCs. Do all six technically have access to those now?
Any feedback is appreciated as I would want to stay within the rules but still provide a fun challenging adventure.
For the six different common items, since I worked with the player only they have access. I forget which version of the guidance allowed the DM to set limits on the level you can bring in to the hard cover. I used the suggested GP per level in the guidance. Plenty of my players take the magic items for "Trade Bait" I do enforce trading for same level items. Uncommon items for Uncommon items.
For the six different common items, since I worked with the player only they have access. I forget which version of the guidance allowed the DM to set limits on the level you can bring in to the hard cover. I used the suggested GP per level in the guidance. Plenty of my players take the magic items for "Trade Bait" I do enforce trading for same level items. Uncommon items for Uncommon items.
Thanks for the feedback.
AL requires same level or rarity.
My questions are more of the downtime during the sessions. In the middle of the adventure would you allow them to take the downtime for trades, buying goods (think healing potions/scrolls) between sessions even though they are technically stuck in another world?
Hardcovers can be run in a variety of ways. Most of the time the players prefer to play the adventure as close to the original play experience as possible, they just want to be able to play the characters in something else afterward which is why they are playing AL.
A couple of AL rules to keep in mind.
1) Players can always decline a level up when available
2) Players can choose which, if any, magic items available to them that they will bring for any given session.
With those in mind, the DM can set the following rules for playing the hardcover, assuming the players are willing to go along, which is usually the case.
1) The DM will let the players know when to level up.
By AL rules they could choose to level up every session but this makes for a very odd playing of the hardcover where the DM has to work to scale up every encounter to match the party strength. It is doable and I know folks who have run hardcovers to level 20 this way but the players don't really get the same experience of the module.
Since players can decline to level up when opportunities are available, this table rule works fine.
2) Players can agree to only bring as many copies of a magic item as have dropped in the module. Each character can log the items found, both consumable and permanent, but the players arrange so that if a +2 sword dropped then only one person will equip it for the next session. Everyone has a copy and could bring it but agree not to do so to keep the module play as close to published as possible.
I ran DoIP without this table rule and it went ok but certain encounters were pretty much trivialized when the characters had several +1 swords instead of just the one that can be found in the module.
3) If the characters trade or have Service award items. I sometimes ask them not to bring them into the adventure since they could really unbalance it and make it less fun to play. (e.g. a character with a Staff of Power from Service Awards or trading might be a problem - so hopefully the player doesn't object to being asked to leave it behind).
All these table rules can also work fine for drop in characters or folks who only play a session or two. They need to log the chapter of the hardcover being played since that character won't be able to replay that chapter but other than that, as long as the player doesn't mind the DM asking them to limit what they bring, there really isn't much of an issue.
4) Decide in advance whether the character will be allowed to bring the level 5 magic item each character receives. I will usually allow it because the hardcovers can be brutal on characters that need specific magic items. Things like +1 glaive or halberd, or a +1 bow might not even exist in the hardcover. The DM isn't allowed to add them to fit what the character's need ... so allowing the characters to find their choice of 5th level magic item in the module really helps with this aspect of play.
I ran Curse of Strahd without this to start with and it was particularly hard on bow/sharpshooter character since there weren't any magical ranged weapons in the module (so I added their choice of level 5 item to the module so they could get a magic bow). I also played an AL character in Tomb of Annihilation, but in that case, the character was X rogue/3 blade pact warlock with enhanced pact weapon so they could create their own bow. Which was a good thing, since I never found a magical bow through 12 levels of play in ToA and the DM didn't add one. This was before the level 5 magic item rules.
Other than those, the rest of running a hardcover is pretty much the same as any other AL module.
In terms of the other rewards ...
1) Characters receive 10 downtime days / session. AL specifies what these days can be spent on.
2) Gold rewards are dictated by the hardcover. There are no session minimums, so some sessions may not have any treasure. There is a AL gold table for MODULES that don't reward any treasure (season 8 AL modules were mostly written when AL had the rules that specified the gold received/adventure which was limited by tier - to make these actually worth playing there is a table specifying the gold treasure to be awarded for modules that don't award any but they don't apply to multi-session adventures like hardcovers.)
Other than that, play and logging is the same as any other AL adventure. The DM can adjust encounters, include thematically appropriate creatures to create a challenging and fun adventure for the players. "The DM is empowered." :)
P.S. There are a lot of modules and hard covers that can be complementary to build an AL campaign. In ToA for example, adventures in the jungle can be mostly random encounters but it is possible to insert AL DMsGuild adventures in Chult (Return of the Lizard King for example) or even the Hidden Shrine of Tamaochan from Tales from the Yawning Portal to add more content and/or magic items to a run through. Just make sure that the players log the sessions to the appropriate module/HC.
As another example, I am currently playing an AL SKT game where the main constraint is the DM lets us know when to level. Other than that, item duplication and trades are fine. The game is lots of fun but has a bit of a different feel to it as a result than an SKT run with limits on magic items and trades. Also, one of the quests available in SKT is actually in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen hardcover. So while we are finishing that quest we log it as HotDQ chapter 7 rather than SKT.
P.P.S. Items where the characters choose a reward do not duplicate so I would expect a situation in which the DM rewards individual magic items to each character would also not duplicate but I don't have an AL ruling I can cite for that. You could ask on the D&D Discord which is where all the current documents can be found.
Apologies if this is already posted somewhere...could not find it.
So as the title says, for these longer hard back adventures that are going to take a LOT of sessions to complete (CoS, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, etc), how do you handle them within the AL rules structure?
Examples:
Downtime per session and leveling up/item trade. Obviously the PCs would be super high levels so you ask them not to level up except when goals are met to keep it challenging. By the time the PCs are done they will probably have 100s of hours banked. Not a big deal if the PCs know they are getting into this. However, by AL rules can you really enforce not leveling up or trading items found?
Items found during the sessions. Per AL any magic items found during the session are available to all at the table if not consumed during that session. However at least in the Witchlight campaign there are many instances of items you as the DM sort of design for your PCs. So you might make six different common magic items for the six PCs. Do all six technically have access to those now?
Any feedback is appreciated as I would want to stay within the rules but still provide a fun challenging adventure.
For the six different common items, since I worked with the player only they have access. I forget which version of the guidance allowed the DM to set limits on the level you can bring in to the hard cover. I used the suggested GP per level in the guidance. Plenty of my players take the magic items for "Trade Bait" I do enforce trading for same level items. Uncommon items for Uncommon items.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
Thanks for the feedback.
AL requires same level or rarity.
My questions are more of the downtime during the sessions. In the middle of the adventure would you allow them to take the downtime for trades, buying goods (think healing potions/scrolls) between sessions even though they are technically stuck in another world?
Hardcovers can be run in a variety of ways. Most of the time the players prefer to play the adventure as close to the original play experience as possible, they just want to be able to play the characters in something else afterward which is why they are playing AL.
A couple of AL rules to keep in mind.
1) Players can always decline a level up when available
2) Players can choose which, if any, magic items available to them that they will bring for any given session.
With those in mind, the DM can set the following rules for playing the hardcover, assuming the players are willing to go along, which is usually the case.
1) The DM will let the players know when to level up.
By AL rules they could choose to level up every session but this makes for a very odd playing of the hardcover where the DM has to work to scale up every encounter to match the party strength. It is doable and I know folks who have run hardcovers to level 20 this way but the players don't really get the same experience of the module.
Since players can decline to level up when opportunities are available, this table rule works fine.
2) Players can agree to only bring as many copies of a magic item as have dropped in the module. Each character can log the items found, both consumable and permanent, but the players arrange so that if a +2 sword dropped then only one person will equip it for the next session. Everyone has a copy and could bring it but agree not to do so to keep the module play as close to published as possible.
I ran DoIP without this table rule and it went ok but certain encounters were pretty much trivialized when the characters had several +1 swords instead of just the one that can be found in the module.
3) If the characters trade or have Service award items. I sometimes ask them not to bring them into the adventure since they could really unbalance it and make it less fun to play. (e.g. a character with a Staff of Power from Service Awards or trading might be a problem - so hopefully the player doesn't object to being asked to leave it behind).
All these table rules can also work fine for drop in characters or folks who only play a session or two. They need to log the chapter of the hardcover being played since that character won't be able to replay that chapter but other than that, as long as the player doesn't mind the DM asking them to limit what they bring, there really isn't much of an issue.
4) Decide in advance whether the character will be allowed to bring the level 5 magic item each character receives. I will usually allow it because the hardcovers can be brutal on characters that need specific magic items. Things like +1 glaive or halberd, or a +1 bow might not even exist in the hardcover. The DM isn't allowed to add them to fit what the character's need ... so allowing the characters to find their choice of 5th level magic item in the module really helps with this aspect of play.
I ran Curse of Strahd without this to start with and it was particularly hard on bow/sharpshooter character since there weren't any magical ranged weapons in the module (so I added their choice of level 5 item to the module so they could get a magic bow). I also played an AL character in Tomb of Annihilation, but in that case, the character was X rogue/3 blade pact warlock with enhanced pact weapon so they could create their own bow. Which was a good thing, since I never found a magical bow through 12 levels of play in ToA and the DM didn't add one. This was before the level 5 magic item rules.
Other than those, the rest of running a hardcover is pretty much the same as any other AL module.
In terms of the other rewards ...
1) Characters receive 10 downtime days / session. AL specifies what these days can be spent on.
2) Gold rewards are dictated by the hardcover. There are no session minimums, so some sessions may not have any treasure. There is a AL gold table for MODULES that don't reward any treasure (season 8 AL modules were mostly written when AL had the rules that specified the gold received/adventure which was limited by tier - to make these actually worth playing there is a table specifying the gold treasure to be awarded for modules that don't award any but they don't apply to multi-session adventures like hardcovers.)
Other than that, play and logging is the same as any other AL adventure. The DM can adjust encounters, include thematically appropriate creatures to create a challenging and fun adventure for the players. "The DM is empowered." :)
P.S. There are a lot of modules and hard covers that can be complementary to build an AL campaign. In ToA for example, adventures in the jungle can be mostly random encounters but it is possible to insert AL DMsGuild adventures in Chult (Return of the Lizard King for example) or even the Hidden Shrine of Tamaochan from Tales from the Yawning Portal to add more content and/or magic items to a run through. Just make sure that the players log the sessions to the appropriate module/HC.
As another example, I am currently playing an AL SKT game where the main constraint is the DM lets us know when to level. Other than that, item duplication and trades are fine. The game is lots of fun but has a bit of a different feel to it as a result than an SKT run with limits on magic items and trades. Also, one of the quests available in SKT is actually in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen hardcover. So while we are finishing that quest we log it as HotDQ chapter 7 rather than SKT.
P.P.S. Items where the characters choose a reward do not duplicate so I would expect a situation in which the DM rewards individual magic items to each character would also not duplicate but I don't have an AL ruling I can cite for that. You could ask on the D&D Discord which is where all the current documents can be found.