The absolute No No is fudging dice Rolls and manipulating stat blocks. That kind of bad play comes at home gams, not an AL table. The improvising is meant for coming up with DCs that aren’t listed, trying to adapt to player considerations if they’re reasonable and still geared towards ending the adventure, and tweaking encounters to match the number of players.
The problem with tweaking encounters is the guidelines of a “very weak” to “very strong” are ultimately up to the DMs subjective ratings. And many, many DMs have a poor concept of balance / optimization. The reality is the encounter guidelines in xanathars / dmg take into account players with magic items of certain rarities. In fact, since season 8 the player magic item count follows the suggest guidelines for magic items pretty close. So there is no reason for a DM to adjust the encounters when the writers should Ben doing so. Who cares if a pc has a staff off the magi. It’s not like you’re goin g modify the encounter to negate that... oh wait you are that’s bad dm 101. Also, the dice do fall where they fall so be it.
They actually do not take into the account of magic items. It has been said time and time again that CR and encounters are suited towards partys with no magic items. It is then up to the DM to decide how many magic items they want to give out in their home tables, and then can only give out magic items in AL games if the story introduces them, or using some of the rules for downtime to gain a magic item.
I'd also add that with season 8 evergreen unlocks the magic item balance is completely broken when you hit tier 3. By level 12.5 a martial character can have a cloak of invisibility while a (wizard/sorc/warlock) can have a Staff of the Magi. Both of these items effectively tip character balance substantially. My level 12 bard/warlock now has a Staff of the Magi and can fire off level 7 fireballs (along with several at-will spells) and a wide range of other effects. Throw several tier 3 players with these items into a tier 3 AL module and the party can be effectively "very strong" even if based on character level and player count they would be less. An actual "strong" or higher party can be beyond very strong if enough players have these items.
However, that is just an example in which an AL DM may have to modify the module a bit in order to make it a sufficient challenge for the specific group of characters playing the module.
Each group of characters in AL is unique and when you end up faced with some odd combinations of characters they can sometimes be either weaker or stronger than the numbers might indicate.
Examples: 6 melee characters (2 GWM barbarians, paladin, 2x fighter, monk) and a bard vs a dragon and minions. If the bard didn't have wall of force it would be a TPK since the party had little healing and very little ability to attack at range. The wall of force kept the dragon contained while the melee dealt with the minions ... then we had to find someway to get the dragon within melee range and keep it there. If the bard had not been in the party, then even if rated very strong, which they were, they would have had very little chance of dealing with the dragon. An AL DM can't just read the numbers and throw a TPK at the players because the characters that everyone is running aren't a good fit with the challenge. Similarly, sometimes you get character combinations that work particularly well together so that even a somewhat weaker party can make things too easy. The very weak to very strong ratings are guidelines which the DM uses to adjust intial conditions and then modifies as needed to adjust to actual game play.
You guys are proving the point that the guidelines are way too vague. So you determine the party is very strong how do you adjust the encounter? With it so open eneded it opens the door for poor DMs to easily tpk. So far the only good experiences Ive had in AL have come from hardcovers because those are tailored around specific levels and usually attract a core group of players. But individual modules are a total crapshoot in difficulty. My first one we were an APL 1 party and fought four boars, a great boar, and got ambushed by two gnolls mid fight. We barely survived. Later we fought a gnolls warlord and full gnolls. One pc died, everyone else dropped, and I only survived due to DM fiat of bringing in outside NPCs to save us. When I learned all of this was within the very poor guidelines for encounters I couldn’t believe AL had lasted this long.
Take a system like pathfinder, which has far more variation in character strength than 5e, they follow a clearly laid out challenge system that works wonders for organized play. With season 8+ that is entirely reasonable considering magic items are monitored now.
The absolute No No is fudging dice Rolls and manipulating stat blocks. That kind of bad play comes at home gams, not an AL table. The improvising is meant for coming up with DCs that aren’t listed, trying to adapt to player considerations if they’re reasonable and still geared towards ending the adventure, and tweaking encounters to match the number of players.
The problem with tweaking encounters is the guidelines of a “very weak” to “very strong” are ultimately up to the DMs subjective ratings. And many, many DMs have a poor concept of balance / optimization. The reality is the encounter guidelines in xanathars / dmg take into account players with magic items of certain rarities. In fact, since season 8 the player magic item count follows the suggest guidelines for magic items pretty close. So there is no reason for a DM to adjust the encounters when the writers should Ben doing so. Who cares if a pc has a staff off the magi. It’s not like you’re goin g modify the encounter to negate that... oh wait you are that’s bad dm 101. Also, the dice do fall where they fall so be it.
Where does it say you can't fudge dice rolls? If it ain't RAW it ain't the law. And you're objectively wrong in your second paragraph - there are clear guidelines for calculating party strength.
You guys are proving the point that the guidelines are way too vague. So you determine the party is very strong how do you adjust the encounter? With it so open eneded it opens the door for poor DMs to easily tpk. So far the only good experiences Ive had in AL have come from hardcovers because those are tailored around specific levels and usually attract a core group of players. But individual modules are a total crapshoot in difficulty. My first one we were an APL 1 party and fought four boars, a great boar, and got ambushed by two gnolls mid fight. We barely survived. Later we fought a gnolls warlord and full gnolls. One pc died, everyone else dropped, and I only survived due to DM fiat of bringing in outside NPCs to save us. When I learned all of this was within the very poor guidelines for encounters I couldn’t believe AL had lasted this long.
They show you how to adjust the encounter lol "Very Strong add another gnoll" or whatever the case is. It's not like they create that formula just to say "Hey now you know this, do whatever you want." No, it's if your party is very strong do this, if they're strong do this, if they're weak, do this, if they're very weak do this. No matter what your party's composition is, in respect to levels, the AL adventure tells you how to do it, so I would still love to hear a good argument for how changing AL adventures according to the guidelines set in the adventure itself is subjective to the DM.
You can adjust an encounter’s difficulty by adding or removing thematically appropriate monsters, but can’t create new monsters or modify them in such a way that potentially modifies their challenge rating (aside from changing their hit points within the range afforded by their hit dice).
Man, reading some of these threads makes me wonder if anyone actually has fun at AL games, or if they just spend half the evening trying to legislate what constitutes a 'legal' session.
Sounds like trying to run a D&D game at a condo association board meeting.
Man, reading some of these threads makes me wonder if anyone actually has fun at AL games, or if they just spend half the evening trying to legislate what constitutes a 'legal' session.
Sounds like trying to run a D&D game at a condo association board meeting.
Hmmm. I'd suggest playing a few sessions before coming to a conclusion.
Most of the discussion here is simply about what a DM can do to balance a module for a set of random characters which may or may not be optimized and can be anywhere in the allowable tier for the module. The same tier 2 module could be played by a group of three level 5's or a group of 7 level 10's. The DM MUST be able to adjust the encounters quite a bit in order for the two parties described to both have fun playing the module. The DMs goal (as in any D&D game) is for both the DM and the players to have fun.
However, there is also the concept that players at different tables, in different states or countries who sit down to play the same module will have more or less the same experience. As a result, the DM can make lots of adjustments but they can't do whatever they like. They can add more thematically appropriate monsters to an encounter but they aren't supposed to bump the bad guy's AC to 22 and give him 8th level spells and some extra abilities since it won't be the same encounter anymore.
It is also important to keep in mind that the players typically don't know (or care) what changes a DM is making to create a fun experience for their party. The only way they might know is if they played the same module with a different DM using a different character and they did something differently. There is no condo board meeting for AL D&D games, any more than there is for any other D&D game at someone's house. The DM runs the game, the DM makes the decisions, the rules we are discussing here are the guidelines to the DMs in terms of the scale of the changes they should consider making to accommodate a widely varying player base. That's it. I've never played or run an AL game where the players got into an argument about AL legal adjustments to the module. Just like any other players, AL players are having fun playing, and unless the DM introduces homebrewed rules (which are not allowed for AL play), no one typically has any issue with the adjustments a DM has to make to the module to balance it for the specific group of players at their table.
Since you posted this in the Adventurer's League forum, I am assuming you are not simply playing a home game with a private group.
The example provided earlier is something that is, point blank, not a legal thing to do in AL. To answer your original question, there is zero room for homebrew & modifications to an AL game.
Having been running AL games for a few seasons now and doing the things I mentioned above without having the D&D police kick down the door at my LGS and arrest me.....I'm going to go with "it's fine."
Again, the main goal of AL is to give the community a shared sense of story. As long as the XP and loot remains consistent, and the major story beats are followed, there is nothing wrong with altering parts of the adventure on what is nearly a cosmetic level. At the end of the day, the log sheets are going to basically be the same as any other game.
You're not following the rules of AL then. The goal of AL is not the shared sense of story; that's just the goal of D&D, and all RPGs in general. The goal of AL is for all AL games to be following the same actual rules, regardless of DM/players/location; for an individual to be able to have the same gameplay experience at any AL table around the world.
If you want to use modifications/homebrew, that's fine, but you are no longer playing in accordance with the rules OR spirit of Adventurer's League. You are playing a private game. If your LGS is hosting these games, they are not hosting Adventurer's League; they are hosting a private league.
That's wrong and if you read the blurb in the front of like every adventurer's league module, it opens says as long as you keep the basic story beats the same, you can make alterations and swap out monsters to make the experience better for your party. Hell, it gives you suggestions on how to do this in every module. There are a few things you aren't supposed to alter, but adding NPCs or changing encounters? Perfectly fine. Encouraged, even. The DM is not a machine that runs programs based on punch cards.
Since you posted this in the Adventurer's League forum, I am assuming you are not simply playing a home game with a private group.
The example provided earlier is something that is, point blank, not a legal thing to do in AL. To answer your original question, there is zero room for homebrew & modifications to an AL game.
Having been running AL games for a few seasons now and doing the things I mentioned above without having the D&D police kick down the door at my LGS and arrest me.....I'm going to go with "it's fine."
Again, the main goal of AL is to give the community a shared sense of story. As long as the XP and loot remains consistent, and the major story beats are followed, there is nothing wrong with altering parts of the adventure on what is nearly a cosmetic level. At the end of the day, the log sheets are going to basically be the same as any other game.
You're not following the rules of AL then. The goal of AL is not the shared sense of story; that's just the goal of D&D, and all RPGs in general. The goal of AL is for all AL games to be following the same actual rules, regardless of DM/players/location; for an individual to be able to have the same gameplay experience at any AL table around the world.
If you want to use modifications/homebrew, that's fine, but you are no longer playing in accordance with the rules OR spirit of Adventurer's League. You are playing a private game. If your LGS is hosting these games, they are not hosting Adventurer's League; they are hosting a private league.
That's wrong and if you read the blurb in the front of like every adventurer's league module, it opens says as long as you keep the basic story beats the same, you can make alterations and swap out monsters to make the experience better for your party. Hell, it gives you suggestions on how to do this in every module. There are a few things you aren't supposed to alter, but adding NPCs or changing encounters? Perfectly fine. Encouraged, even. The DM is not a machine that runs programs based on punch cards.
I'd just like to point out that you are discussing different aspects of the game and both are correct.
1) As Sigred said - AL does NOT allow house rules. "The goal of AL is for all AL games to be following the same actual rules", "for an individual to be able to have the same gameplay experience at any AL table ". These statements are absolutely correct. A DM can not change the RULES used to run an AL game. They can't introduce their favorite critical hit and miss tables, they can't house rule than the bonus action attack from PAM doesn't work with a staff or spear because it doesn't make sense to them, they can't house rule that casters can cast leveled spells as both an action and a bonus action in the same round. These are house rules and AL doesn't allow these.
However
2) As Verenti said, the DM can and does change the encounters in any module to accommodate the group of players. They can make them harder or easier, they can swap in thematically appropriate monsters, they can change their hit points, there is a great deal the DM can do since their goal it to create a fun and enjoyable play experience for everyone. However, changing the encounters to make for a better play experience is NOT changing the RULES. The DM can make a wide range of changes to make the game more fun for the players but changing the rules of play is not one of them.
In case anyone is interested - here is the information from the AL season 10 DMG. The first part discusses the running of AL modules while the second discusses the rules to be used.
1) The DM has a lot of leeway to adjust the content of a module to accommodate the particular group of players. They can adjust and improvise, add or remove, but they can not change creature stat blocks in a way that changes their CR.
2) The DM can NOT change the rules of the game. Rules remain the same at each table though if there is any ambiguity (and there are quite a few places with ambiguity - just look at the lighting rules), the DM makes a ruling for that game just as the DM would make in any game. In addition, the DM is free to ignore any outside material including the sage advice compendium when making that ruling. The DM needs to consider only the published books when making a ruling. However, the DM can not introduce any house rules.
"YOU’RE THE DUNGEON MASTER! You have the most important role. You guide the narrative and bring the words on the pages of the adventure to life. While guiding the players, it is also your responsibility to make everyone feel welcomed at the table creating a fun and fair environment. Here are some things to keep in mind: YOU ARE EMPOWERED Make decisions about how the group interacts with the adventure; adjust or improvise but maintain the adventure’s spirit. The setting, general story, and prominent NPCs of the adventure should remain largely the same; if an adventure introduces other players’ characters to Cassyt, the plucky acolyte of Kelemvor that resides in Phlan, your players should as well. Less important details, such as the time of year or the weather can be tailored to your group. CHALLENGE YOUR PLAYERS Gauge the experience level of your players, as well as what they enjoy in a game and attempt to deliver what they’re after; everyone should be able to shine. You can adjust an encounter’s difficulty by adding or removing thematically appropriate monsters, but can’t create new monsters or modify them in such a way that potentially modifies their challenge rating (aside from changing their hit points within the range afforded by their hit dice). Be careful of going too far, however. The intent is to have a collaborative and challenging story-telling experience; it’s not to do everything you can to kill your players’ characters. Similarly, destroying equipment generally shouldn’t happen unless an encounter specifically directs you to. In fact, unless they have conditions detailing their destruction (such as an ioun stone), permanent magic items can’t be destroyed. KEEP THE GAME MOVING If the game gets bogged down, provide hints and clues to your players facing puzzles or engaging in combat and roleplay interactions that get frustrating. This gives players “little victories” for making good choices based on clues received. When playing within a given time constraint, such as at a convention, it is important to gauge the pacing of your game. It’s okay to make adjustments when you get bogged down to promote a play experience that feels complete.
RUNNING THE GAME As the DM, you are charged with not only guiding the story, but also fairly adjudicating the game’s rules and rewarding your players’ characters for their accomplishments.
THE RULES OF THE GAME Adventurers League play uses fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons. You can issue rulings to your table when the rules of the game are ambiguous or vague, but you must otherwise adhere to the rules as they are provided in the core rulebooks, and can’t change them or make up your own; “house-rules” aren’t permitted for use. You must always use the most current incarnation of a rule. Further, the options and variant rules listed below are available for your use; others aren’t permitted without specific campaign documentation: • Variant: Playing on a Grid • Variant: Skills with Different Abilities While they aren’t official rules that must be followed, the Sage Advice column, tweets from the D&D Team on Twitter, or even discussions with other DMs on your favorite social media platform can provide good insight on how others adjudicated a particular issue. The rules as written in the rulebooks, however, always take precedence."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
They actually do not take into the account of magic items. It has been said time and time again that CR and encounters are suited towards partys with no magic items. It is then up to the DM to decide how many magic items they want to give out in their home tables, and then can only give out magic items in AL games if the story introduces them, or using some of the rules for downtime to gain a magic item.
Published Subclasses
I'd also add that with season 8 evergreen unlocks the magic item balance is completely broken when you hit tier 3. By level 12.5 a martial character can have a cloak of invisibility while a (wizard/sorc/warlock) can have a Staff of the Magi. Both of these items effectively tip character balance substantially. My level 12 bard/warlock now has a Staff of the Magi and can fire off level 7 fireballs (along with several at-will spells) and a wide range of other effects. Throw several tier 3 players with these items into a tier 3 AL module and the party can be effectively "very strong" even if based on character level and player count they would be less. An actual "strong" or higher party can be beyond very strong if enough players have these items.
However, that is just an example in which an AL DM may have to modify the module a bit in order to make it a sufficient challenge for the specific group of characters playing the module.
Each group of characters in AL is unique and when you end up faced with some odd combinations of characters they can sometimes be either weaker or stronger than the numbers might indicate.
Examples: 6 melee characters (2 GWM barbarians, paladin, 2x fighter, monk) and a bard vs a dragon and minions. If the bard didn't have wall of force it would be a TPK since the party had little healing and very little ability to attack at range. The wall of force kept the dragon contained while the melee dealt with the minions ... then we had to find someway to get the dragon within melee range and keep it there. If the bard had not been in the party, then even if rated very strong, which they were, they would have had very little chance of dealing with the dragon. An AL DM can't just read the numbers and throw a TPK at the players because the characters that everyone is running aren't a good fit with the challenge. Similarly, sometimes you get character combinations that work particularly well together so that even a somewhat weaker party can make things too easy. The very weak to very strong ratings are guidelines which the DM uses to adjust intial conditions and then modifies as needed to adjust to actual game play.
You guys are proving the point that the guidelines are way too vague. So you determine the party is very strong how do you adjust the encounter? With it so open eneded it opens the door for poor DMs to easily tpk. So far the only good experiences Ive had in AL have come from hardcovers because those are tailored around specific levels and usually attract a core group of players. But individual modules are a total crapshoot in difficulty. My first one we were an APL 1 party and fought four boars, a great boar, and got ambushed by two gnolls mid fight. We barely survived. Later we fought a gnolls warlord and full gnolls. One pc died, everyone else dropped, and I only survived due to DM fiat of bringing in outside NPCs to save us. When I learned all of this was within the very poor guidelines for encounters I couldn’t believe AL had lasted this long.
Take a system like pathfinder, which has far more variation in character strength than 5e, they follow a clearly laid out challenge system that works wonders for organized play. With season 8+ that is entirely reasonable considering magic items are monitored now.
Where does it say you can't fudge dice rolls? If it ain't RAW it ain't the law. And you're objectively wrong in your second paragraph - there are clear guidelines for calculating party strength.
They show you how to adjust the encounter lol "Very Strong add another gnoll" or whatever the case is. It's not like they create that formula just to say "Hey now you know this, do whatever you want." No, it's if your party is very strong do this, if they're strong do this, if they're weak, do this, if they're very weak do this. No matter what your party's composition is, in respect to levels, the AL adventure tells you how to do it, so I would still love to hear a good argument for how changing AL adventures according to the guidelines set in the adventure itself is subjective to the DM.
Published Subclasses
For now DM Guide says:
Man, reading some of these threads makes me wonder if anyone actually has fun at AL games, or if they just spend half the evening trying to legislate what constitutes a 'legal' session.
Sounds like trying to run a D&D game at a condo association board meeting.
Hmmm. I'd suggest playing a few sessions before coming to a conclusion.
Most of the discussion here is simply about what a DM can do to balance a module for a set of random characters which may or may not be optimized and can be anywhere in the allowable tier for the module. The same tier 2 module could be played by a group of three level 5's or a group of 7 level 10's. The DM MUST be able to adjust the encounters quite a bit in order for the two parties described to both have fun playing the module. The DMs goal (as in any D&D game) is for both the DM and the players to have fun.
However, there is also the concept that players at different tables, in different states or countries who sit down to play the same module will have more or less the same experience. As a result, the DM can make lots of adjustments but they can't do whatever they like. They can add more thematically appropriate monsters to an encounter but they aren't supposed to bump the bad guy's AC to 22 and give him 8th level spells and some extra abilities since it won't be the same encounter anymore.
It is also important to keep in mind that the players typically don't know (or care) what changes a DM is making to create a fun experience for their party. The only way they might know is if they played the same module with a different DM using a different character and they did something differently. There is no condo board meeting for AL D&D games, any more than there is for any other D&D game at someone's house. The DM runs the game, the DM makes the decisions, the rules we are discussing here are the guidelines to the DMs in terms of the scale of the changes they should consider making to accommodate a widely varying player base. That's it. I've never played or run an AL game where the players got into an argument about AL legal adjustments to the module. Just like any other players, AL players are having fun playing, and unless the DM introduces homebrewed rules (which are not allowed for AL play), no one typically has any issue with the adjustments a DM has to make to the module to balance it for the specific group of players at their table.
That's wrong and if you read the blurb in the front of like every adventurer's league module, it opens says as long as you keep the basic story beats the same, you can make alterations and swap out monsters to make the experience better for your party. Hell, it gives you suggestions on how to do this in every module. There are a few things you aren't supposed to alter, but adding NPCs or changing encounters? Perfectly fine. Encouraged, even. The DM is not a machine that runs programs based on punch cards.
I'd just like to point out that you are discussing different aspects of the game and both are correct.
1) As Sigred said - AL does NOT allow house rules. "The goal of AL is for all AL games to be following the same actual rules", "for an individual to be able to have the same gameplay experience at any AL table ". These statements are absolutely correct. A DM can not change the RULES used to run an AL game. They can't introduce their favorite critical hit and miss tables, they can't house rule than the bonus action attack from PAM doesn't work with a staff or spear because it doesn't make sense to them, they can't house rule that casters can cast leveled spells as both an action and a bonus action in the same round. These are house rules and AL doesn't allow these.
However
2) As Verenti said, the DM can and does change the encounters in any module to accommodate the group of players. They can make them harder or easier, they can swap in thematically appropriate monsters, they can change their hit points, there is a great deal the DM can do since their goal it to create a fun and enjoyable play experience for everyone. However, changing the encounters to make for a better play experience is NOT changing the RULES. The DM can make a wide range of changes to make the game more fun for the players but changing the rules of play is not one of them.
In case anyone is interested - here is the information from the AL season 10 DMG. The first part discusses the running of AL modules while the second discusses the rules to be used.
1) The DM has a lot of leeway to adjust the content of a module to accommodate the particular group of players. They can adjust and improvise, add or remove, but they can not change creature stat blocks in a way that changes their CR.
2) The DM can NOT change the rules of the game. Rules remain the same at each table though if there is any ambiguity (and there are quite a few places with ambiguity - just look at the lighting rules), the DM makes a ruling for that game just as the DM would make in any game. In addition, the DM is free to ignore any outside material including the sage advice compendium when making that ruling. The DM needs to consider only the published books when making a ruling. However, the DM can not introduce any house rules.
"YOU’RE THE DUNGEON MASTER!
You have the most important role. You guide the narrative and bring the words on the pages of the adventure to life. While guiding the players, it is also your responsibility to make everyone feel welcomed at the table creating a fun and fair environment. Here are some things to keep in mind:
YOU ARE EMPOWERED
Make decisions about how the group interacts with the adventure; adjust or improvise but maintain the adventure’s spirit. The setting, general story, and prominent NPCs of the adventure should remain largely the same; if an adventure introduces other players’ characters to Cassyt, the plucky acolyte of Kelemvor that resides in Phlan, your players should as well. Less important details, such as the time of year or the weather can be tailored to your group.
CHALLENGE YOUR PLAYERS
Gauge the experience level of your players, as well as what they enjoy in a game and attempt to deliver what they’re after; everyone should be able to shine.
You can adjust an encounter’s difficulty by adding or removing thematically appropriate monsters, but can’t create new monsters or modify them in such a way that potentially modifies their challenge rating (aside from changing their hit points within the range afforded by their hit dice).
Be careful of going too far, however. The intent is to have a collaborative and challenging story-telling experience; it’s not to do everything you can to kill your players’ characters. Similarly, destroying equipment generally shouldn’t happen unless an encounter specifically directs you to. In fact, unless they have conditions detailing their destruction (such as an ioun stone), permanent magic items can’t be destroyed.
KEEP THE GAME MOVING
If the game gets bogged down, provide hints and clues to your players facing puzzles or engaging in combat and roleplay interactions that get frustrating. This gives players “little victories” for making good choices based on clues received. When playing within a given time constraint, such as at a convention, it is important to gauge the pacing of your game. It’s okay to make adjustments when you get bogged down to promote a play experience that feels complete.
RUNNING THE GAME
As the DM, you are charged with not only guiding the story, but also fairly adjudicating the game’s rules and rewarding your players’ characters for their accomplishments.
THE RULES OF THE GAME
Adventurers League play uses fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons. You can issue rulings to your table when the rules of the game are ambiguous or vague, but you must otherwise adhere to the rules as they are provided in the core rulebooks, and can’t change them or make up your own; “house-rules” aren’t permitted for use. You must always use the most current incarnation of a rule.
Further, the options and variant rules listed below are available for your use; others aren’t permitted without specific campaign documentation:
• Variant: Playing on a Grid
• Variant: Skills with Different Abilities
While they aren’t official rules that must be followed, the Sage Advice column, tweets from the D&D Team on Twitter, or even discussions with other DMs on your favorite social media platform can provide good insight on how others adjudicated a particular issue. The rules as written in the rulebooks, however, always take precedence."