Exactly what it says on the tin! I've had a great time with AL so far, and it's given me a good chance to meet new people and play around somewhat. Though a few of the rules do bug me and I'd love to see a few new features incorporated to make the AL a lot looser. In particular, I'd love for there to be a way to play homebrew content as though it were AL legal. This is an example feature because it's what I'd like to see.
When the DM is running a hardcover, you are able to be a bit flexible about how events happen because of how players actually act things out. My current Curse of Strahd campaign is 'basically a homebrew at this point' according to our DM, as we've gone so far off the rails he can only really use the book for stat blocks and all the rest has come down to off-the-cuff play. This got me thinking... As long as you were running a module as though it were built out of a kit, why couldn't you homebrew in AL?
Tier 1 Adventure Kit basically gives you an allowance of magical items and gold you can distribute just about anywhere in a world and structure the dungeons and stories all you want, and problematic magical items made up for the story can stay in the story, like the Sun Sword from CoS only staying in CoS. The limitations on how much gold you can carry in a given moment also prevents making a super easy adventure that just dumps gold down the player's throat.
I'm also of the philosophy that if someone is going to be dishonest about Adventurer's League, no amount of rules are actually going to stop them. They can just go fake a logsheet and most DMs will probably not notice or care, it's not like extensive vetting and verification is required. Therefore the rules should be there to affect what happens at the table first and foremost.
I'd also like to see an official catchup mechanic or heritage mechanic that gives DMs the ability to bring in new characters in the thick of a campaign when bringing a squishy level 1 just isn't viable. Say if you're all level 12 and someone dies, and they've got just a squishy level 1. Maybe allow someone to bring in a new character at level 10 and make them catch up, or at least the new character starts at the beginning of that tier to make it less obscene a difference at some levels.
So question is... What features would you love to see come to the AL?
I do think it would be nice to have the option to start at the higher tiers in some way. I think just starting at a higher tier but not having any money or treasure is a good enough cost to make it so that not every player will want to just jump into higher tiers.
I think I would also like to have a few less restrictions on Magical items. I think part of the reason things are the way they are now is just to make things simpler to understand and explain... the TCP system was kind of confusing and hard to keep track of. But still, it's a pain to find new treasure that works well with your character, but because you're a level short or maybe you've got other stuff already you have to just junk it. I'd prefer to at least have some kind of "bank" of saved magic items... I think there's a lot of interesting magic items that have very limited uses that would be nice to have the option to pull out on specific quests, but aren't worth taking up your permanent magic item slot.
As it is, I think it feels really gamey to play an adventure and then play an earlier one with the same character. What I would like is some sort of "calendar" of adventures, with definite time progression. If your character wants to participate in an adventure, it must have a date after the last adventure your character completed.
I recognize that this would probably require an impractical amount of bookkeeping and make it too difficult to join an adventure in places where AL is scarce. Also, dates would have to be retroactively applied to old adventures and hardcovers. Still, I think it would help give characters a more clear history. CCC adventures could probably be undated to allow for a bit more flexibility.
With that one I imagine you can have the 'calendar of events' be something the DM can figure out. Adventurer's league is for portability after all. It would be awesome to figure out, but I think if it became a main feature for the whole season it might be too restrictive.
As for the bank of magical items, I think a player bank in general would be nice to have. Something your character can draw on in downtime. Maybe in some cases they can send for some of their money because they can only carry so much at a time? It keeps things balanced.
Less restrictions on playable content. There is going to be an entire class that is unusable in any game, unless it is specifically an Eberron Campaign. That seem right to you?
Less restrictions on playable content. There is going to be an entire class that is unusable in any game, unless it is specifically an Eberron Campaign. That seem right to you?
artificer. It is not playable in forgotten realms, where most 5e content takes place. you have to be playing content specifically set in Eberron to play any artificer.
Not to mention races are also world restricted. that makes a bit more sense to me, though does still annoy me.
and subclasses that are setting specific. Strictly speaking, Order Domain clerics and Circle of Spores druids are only AL legal in games set in Ravnica.
To clarify, I am not railing against the PHB+1 system, this is content that is banned unless you are playing games in those settings.
Less restrictions on playable content. There is going to be an entire class that is unusable in any game, unless it is specifically an Eberron Campaign. That seem right to you?
Honestly, I do see the point behind it. D&D has always been divided into settings. In those settings, you find a wide range of races and classes but you don't typically find everything in the entire D&D multiverse in each setting.
Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Darksun, Spelljammer ... these are all D&D but there are elements of each that don't cross over between them.
Warforged, changelings, artificer, dragonmarks are just a few of the Eberron setting specific features.
Someone building a home game would decide what if any specific content they would allow in their game world. They might exclude elves if there aren't any. for example, or dwarves. I've played in games where wizards were so scarce they weren't available to PCs or where there was a magic "disease" that killed any full fledged caster.
WOTC built the game worlds for D&D with certain lore and content constraints and, I would think, it would be WOTC that would prevent AL from moving in a direction of mixing content from different D&D settings.
P.S. I don't think Ravnica is AL legal at all ... though I could be wrong ... I don't think there is any AL content for Ravnica. There are also completely broken items in Ravnica like the Mizzium Apparatus as well as background features with significant mechanical benefits.
Agreed, I would like to see Classes open up a little more. Races and certain backgrounds make sense to hold back. But classes are like jobs, they are pretty much universal in one way or another.
Get rid of the magic item limits and just reduce Tier 1's attunement slots to one.
I get why they have the one-magic-item rule for Tier 1 (the vast majority of AL adventures were balanced around Tier 1 not having any magical items at all)...but they let the cat out. Is that player's bag of holding really going to make them OP because they already have a +1 sword? No. It also gets rid of the whole "what do you mean, I can't put this item I just found in my bag and not use it, it'll give me no advantage at all by carrying it around" argument...which I think is silly to defend and don't even bother.
Also, i get the campaign setting limits...keeping everything pretty much limited to Moonsea (sort of) at least kind of quarantines one area lore-wise and gives the players at least a little consistency and plausibility when bouncing around from adventure to adventure.
On the bank comment and to tie into the prior paragraph, I gave my players a boat and put them all on the title (have pretty much the same group of players every week). Kinda breaks the gold-value rule but it further helps explain how they got from city to city between adventures and gives them a place to park their gear. No real in-game affect other than that though. Here's the boat if you find it interesting: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/edit/H1MAKb9HJL (open in chrome (doesn't really work in firefox))
Get rid of maximum gold per level rule, or possibly make it so you earn half normal gold instead of none whe you are past the limit. With the maximum gold per hour rule it still takes ages to get big amounts of gold.
More choices for DM awards that might be fun, but not too unbalancing. I could suggest: Gold equal to double gold the character would get when leveling up. With this you could for instance start level 1 with a scale mail, shield and weapon if you are a hexblade warlock Downtime Common magic items Non weapon skills Language skills Tool profession skills Unlocking death domain cleric, oath breaker paladin and artificier Switch a known spell for another during a long rest as a sorcerer etc instead of having to wait until level up. Suggested 1 point per spell to be changed
Being able to keep minions etc from one session to the next. Right now the rules seem a bit "fuzzy" on the topic. For example: a necromancer can attempt to take control of an undead. In case the undead fil the save and are stupid enough the undead will not get another save, and can be "kept" by the necromancer. But in AL it seems as you loose that creature at the end of the session.
Um, Death Domain Clerics are AL-legal. The only restriction is the PHB+1 rule, so if someone wanted to play as a Death Domain Cleric they couldn't combine it with, say... one of the races from Volo's.
Um, Death Domain Clerics are AL-legal. The only restriction is the PHB+1 rule, so if someone wanted to play as a Death Domain Cleric they couldn't combine it with, say... one of the races from Volo's.
Actually no. The GRAVE domain cleric from Xanathar's is AL legal.
However the DEATH domain cleric from the DMG is not AL legal. One of the main reasons for excluding the death domain cleric and oathbreaker paladin is because the class archetypes are intended to be intrinsically evil (which has its own issues in AL) and the main intent of these archetypes originally was for the creation of NPC villains for a campaign "The class options below let you create two specific villainous archetypes: the evil high priest and the evil knight or anti paladin." though the DM could allow players to use the archetypes at their discretion.
Personally, I don't see any reason to add the death domain cleric or oathbreaker as AL legal characters. They don't add much and AL doesn't need any additional excuses for inter player conflicts since role playing evil death clerics and oathbreaker paladins can be a bit over the top for the mixed groups of players you can find at a convention or local game shop.
Um, Death Domain Clerics are AL-legal. The only restriction is the PHB+1 rule, so if someone wanted to play as a Death Domain Cleric they couldn't combine it with, say... one of the races from Volo's.
Actually no. The GRAVE domain cleric from Xanathar's is AL legal.
However the DEATH domain cleric from the DMG is not AL legal. One of the main reasons for excluding the death domain cleric and oathbreaker paladin is because the class archetypes are intended to be intrinsically evil (which has its own issues in AL) and the main intent of these archetypes originally was for the creation of NPC villains for a campaign "The class options below let you create two specific villainous archetypes: the evil high priest and the evil knight or anti paladin." though the DM could allow players to use the archetypes at their discretion.
Personally, I don't see any reason to add the death domain cleric or oathbreaker as AL legal characters. They don't add much and AL doesn't need any additional excuses for inter player conflicts since role playing evil death clerics and oathbreaker paladins can be a bit over the top for the mixed groups of players you can find at a convention or local game shop.
I don't mind the magic item limit in AL but there are some bits of it that are kind of silly. In tier 1 you can choose to have a utility item like bag of holding, or that invaluable +1 weapon. The item limit as it is does away with fun RP items in favor of flat stat bumpers or action items.
What I'd like to see is this;
Tier 1: 2 magic items (1 permanent magic item from tables A, B, C, D) and 1 allowed from table F
Tier 2: 5 magic items (2 permanent items from tables A, B, C, D) and 3 from table F and/or G
Tier 3: 8 permanent magic items, only 6 can be from tables F, G, or H
Tier 4: 12 items: Only 10 items can be from tables F, G, H or I
This opens the game up for more fun items like eyes of minute seeing, driftglobes, heward's handy haversacks, mariner's armor, alchemy jug, etc. They're generally non-combat items with more roleplay uses but can still be fun to have in a player's bag of holding (if you want to waste an item slot on that nowadays) Hardly a gamebreaking compromise, WoTC.
Also as a long time AL player I would LOVE LOVE LOVE for a T3 to T4 hardcover. If you have a T4 character you're lucky to play them more than once every 3 months, or they only come out at conventions due to the lack of high level content. AL has been around long enough that there are now plenty of high level T3 and T4 characters out there, and we'd love to bring out these characters again after putting a lot of hard work into them.
Which brings me to my last wishlist item for season 10: Tier 4 CCC's! (Only a very limited amount, definite treasure restrictions)
CCC Writing has gotten leaps and bounds better over the last 2 years. I think it's time to allow the community to supplement the high level content for adventurers league.
Get rid of maximum gold per level rule, or possibly make it so you earn half normal gold instead of none whe you are past the limit. With the maximum gold per hour rule it still takes ages to get big amounts of gold.
More choices for DM awards that might be fun, but not too unbalancing. I could suggest: Gold equal to double gold the character would get when leveling up. With this you could for instance start level 1 with a scale mail, shield and weapon if you are a hexblade warlock Downtime Common magic items Non weapon skills Language skills Tool profession skills Unlocking death domain cleric, oath breaker paladin and artificier Switch a known spell for another during a long rest as a sorcerer etc instead of having to wait until level up. Suggested 1 point per spell to be changed
Being able to keep minions etc from one session to the next. Right now the rules seem a bit "fuzzy" on the topic. For example: a necromancer can attempt to take control of an undead. In case the undead fil the save and are stupid enough the undead will not get another save, and can be "kept" by the necromancer. But in AL it seems as you loose that creature at the end of the session.
Oathbreaker and Death Cleric could be unlocked in previous seasons as specific DM awards (Same with Aarokocra, or a certificate that allows you to create a goblin using any +1 book instead of just PHB)
Also prior to season 8 you could learn skills/languages by using your downtime when in a faction. I still think that WoTC pooped the bed when they did away with a lot of the faction stuff and forced players to completely change their background features to safe haven if they wanted to stay in the faction. I really wish they'd go back to the old faction rules, or at least a version close to it.
Keeping minions is generally DM dependent. I've only wandered into a couple sessions where the DM wouldn't let me have my summoned mounts, summoned familiars or undead minions in another session. (Same DM each time) All the other times it's been, "Oh, I remember you summoned your pegasus when we played in whats-his-face's game last week. You're fine." etc.
Unfortunately, I only get to play DND about twice a year at cons. What I'd like to see is?
As mentioned, an easy way to start at the bottom of a tier, except for tier 4. No one seems to run t4 stuff at the cons I go to. I've got one t3 character I'm not advancing past level 16, so he is locked. My other characters are t2. Sometimes when signing up for games I can't tell what the tier it is. The last con I ended up playing my level 16 I didn't want to advance.
I'd also like to respect archetypes at the beginning of a season. When they release some new source material, I'd like to be able to try it without leveling up.
Easing the PHB+1 rules. No real solutions, but, again, being able to use the new source material.
Exactly what it says on the tin! I've had a great time with AL so far, and it's given me a good chance to meet new people and play around somewhat. Though a few of the rules do bug me and I'd love to see a few new features incorporated to make the AL a lot looser. In particular, I'd love for there to be a way to play homebrew content as though it were AL legal. This is an example feature because it's what I'd like to see.
When the DM is running a hardcover, you are able to be a bit flexible about how events happen because of how players actually act things out. My current Curse of Strahd campaign is 'basically a homebrew at this point' according to our DM, as we've gone so far off the rails he can only really use the book for stat blocks and all the rest has come down to off-the-cuff play. This got me thinking... As long as you were running a module as though it were built out of a kit, why couldn't you homebrew in AL?
Tier 1 Adventure Kit basically gives you an allowance of magical items and gold you can distribute just about anywhere in a world and structure the dungeons and stories all you want, and problematic magical items made up for the story can stay in the story, like the Sun Sword from CoS only staying in CoS. The limitations on how much gold you can carry in a given moment also prevents making a super easy adventure that just dumps gold down the player's throat.
I'm also of the philosophy that if someone is going to be dishonest about Adventurer's League, no amount of rules are actually going to stop them. They can just go fake a logsheet and most DMs will probably not notice or care, it's not like extensive vetting and verification is required. Therefore the rules should be there to affect what happens at the table first and foremost.
I'd also like to see an official catchup mechanic or heritage mechanic that gives DMs the ability to bring in new characters in the thick of a campaign when bringing a squishy level 1 just isn't viable. Say if you're all level 12 and someone dies, and they've got just a squishy level 1. Maybe allow someone to bring in a new character at level 10 and make them catch up, or at least the new character starts at the beginning of that tier to make it less obscene a difference at some levels.
So question is... What features would you love to see come to the AL?
I do think it would be nice to have the option to start at the higher tiers in some way. I think just starting at a higher tier but not having any money or treasure is a good enough cost to make it so that not every player will want to just jump into higher tiers.
I think I would also like to have a few less restrictions on Magical items. I think part of the reason things are the way they are now is just to make things simpler to understand and explain... the TCP system was kind of confusing and hard to keep track of. But still, it's a pain to find new treasure that works well with your character, but because you're a level short or maybe you've got other stuff already you have to just junk it. I'd prefer to at least have some kind of "bank" of saved magic items... I think there's a lot of interesting magic items that have very limited uses that would be nice to have the option to pull out on specific quests, but aren't worth taking up your permanent magic item slot.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
As it is, I think it feels really gamey to play an adventure and then play an earlier one with the same character. What I would like is some sort of "calendar" of adventures, with definite time progression. If your character wants to participate in an adventure, it must have a date after the last adventure your character completed.
I recognize that this would probably require an impractical amount of bookkeeping and make it too difficult to join an adventure in places where AL is scarce. Also, dates would have to be retroactively applied to old adventures and hardcovers. Still, I think it would help give characters a more clear history. CCC adventures could probably be undated to allow for a bit more flexibility.
With that one I imagine you can have the 'calendar of events' be something the DM can figure out. Adventurer's league is for portability after all. It would be awesome to figure out, but I think if it became a main feature for the whole season it might be too restrictive.
As for the bank of magical items, I think a player bank in general would be nice to have. Something your character can draw on in downtime. Maybe in some cases they can send for some of their money because they can only carry so much at a time? It keeps things balanced.
Less restrictions on playable content. There is going to be an entire class that is unusable in any game, unless it is specifically an Eberron Campaign. That seem right to you?
Is this hyperbole or is there a specific example?
artificer. It is not playable in forgotten realms, where most 5e content takes place. you have to be playing content specifically set in Eberron to play any artificer.
Not to mention races are also world restricted. that makes a bit more sense to me, though does still annoy me.
and subclasses that are setting specific. Strictly speaking, Order Domain clerics and Circle of Spores druids are only AL legal in games set in Ravnica.
To clarify, I am not railing against the PHB+1 system, this is content that is banned unless you are playing games in those settings.
Honestly, I do see the point behind it. D&D has always been divided into settings. In those settings, you find a wide range of races and classes but you don't typically find everything in the entire D&D multiverse in each setting.
Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Darksun, Spelljammer ... these are all D&D but there are elements of each that don't cross over between them.
Warforged, changelings, artificer, dragonmarks are just a few of the Eberron setting specific features.
Someone building a home game would decide what if any specific content they would allow in their game world. They might exclude elves if there aren't any. for example, or dwarves. I've played in games where wizards were so scarce they weren't available to PCs or where there was a magic "disease" that killed any full fledged caster.
WOTC built the game worlds for D&D with certain lore and content constraints and, I would think, it would be WOTC that would prevent AL from moving in a direction of mixing content from different D&D settings.
P.S. I don't think Ravnica is AL legal at all ... though I could be wrong ... I don't think there is any AL content for Ravnica. There are also completely broken items in Ravnica like the Mizzium Apparatus as well as background features with significant mechanical benefits.
Again the races and backgrounds being restricted makes perfect sense to me. But an entire class?!
Agreed, I would like to see Classes open up a little more. Races and certain backgrounds make sense to hold back. But classes are like jobs, they are pretty much universal in one way or another.
Get rid of the magic item limits and just reduce Tier 1's attunement slots to one.
I get why they have the one-magic-item rule for Tier 1 (the vast majority of AL adventures were balanced around Tier 1 not having any magical items at all)...but they let the cat out. Is that player's bag of holding really going to make them OP because they already have a +1 sword? No. It also gets rid of the whole "what do you mean, I can't put this item I just found in my bag and not use it, it'll give me no advantage at all by carrying it around" argument...which I think is silly to defend and don't even bother.
Also, i get the campaign setting limits...keeping everything pretty much limited to Moonsea (sort of) at least kind of quarantines one area lore-wise and gives the players at least a little consistency and plausibility when bouncing around from adventure to adventure.
On the bank comment and to tie into the prior paragraph, I gave my players a boat and put them all on the title (have pretty much the same group of players every week). Kinda breaks the gold-value rule but it further helps explain how they got from city to city between adventures and gives them a place to park their gear. No real in-game affect other than that though. Here's the boat if you find it interesting: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/edit/H1MAKb9HJL (open in chrome (doesn't really work in firefox))
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
A rather comprehensive list of free WotC D&D resources
Deck of Decks
Get rid of maximum gold per level rule, or possibly make it so you earn half normal gold instead of none whe you are past the limit. With the maximum gold per hour rule it still takes ages to get big amounts of gold.
More choices for DM awards that might be fun, but not too unbalancing. I could suggest:
Gold equal to double gold the character would get when leveling up. With this you could for instance start level 1 with a scale mail, shield and weapon if you are a hexblade warlock
Downtime
Common magic items
Non weapon skills
Language skills
Tool profession skills
Unlocking death domain cleric, oath breaker paladin and artificier
Switch a known spell for another during a long rest as a sorcerer etc instead of having to wait until level up. Suggested 1 point per spell to be changed
Being able to keep minions etc from one session to the next. Right now the rules seem a bit "fuzzy" on the topic. For example: a necromancer can attempt to take control of an undead. In case the undead fil the save and are stupid enough the undead will not get another save, and can be "kept" by the necromancer. But in AL it seems as you loose that creature at the end of the session.
Um, Death Domain Clerics are AL-legal. The only restriction is the PHB+1 rule, so if someone wanted to play as a Death Domain Cleric they couldn't combine it with, say... one of the races from Volo's.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Actually no. The GRAVE domain cleric from Xanathar's is AL legal.
However the DEATH domain cleric from the DMG is not AL legal. One of the main reasons for excluding the death domain cleric and oathbreaker paladin is because the class archetypes are intended to be intrinsically evil (which has its own issues in AL) and the main intent of these archetypes originally was for the creation of NPC villains for a campaign "The class options below let you create two specific villainous archetypes: the evil high priest and the evil knight or anti paladin." though the DM could allow players to use the archetypes at their discretion.
Personally, I don't see any reason to add the death domain cleric or oathbreaker as AL legal characters. They don't add much and AL doesn't need any additional excuses for inter player conflicts since role playing evil death clerics and oathbreaker paladins can be a bit over the top for the mixed groups of players you can find at a convention or local game shop.
Agree with David...look at the book death domain is in, and then look at what qualifies as your +1
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
A rather comprehensive list of free WotC D&D resources
Deck of Decks
Ohhh oops lol thanks for clarifying.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
I don't mind the magic item limit in AL but there are some bits of it that are kind of silly. In tier 1 you can choose to have a utility item like bag of holding, or that invaluable +1 weapon. The item limit as it is does away with fun RP items in favor of flat stat bumpers or action items.
What I'd like to see is this;
Tier 1: 2 magic items (1 permanent magic item from tables A, B, C, D) and 1 allowed from table F
Tier 2: 5 magic items (2 permanent items from tables A, B, C, D) and 3 from table F and/or G
Tier 3: 8 permanent magic items, only 6 can be from tables F, G, or H
Tier 4: 12 items: Only 10 items can be from tables F, G, H or I
This opens the game up for more fun items like eyes of minute seeing, driftglobes, heward's handy haversacks, mariner's armor, alchemy jug, etc. They're generally non-combat items with more roleplay uses but can still be fun to have in a player's bag of holding (if you want to waste an item slot on that nowadays) Hardly a gamebreaking compromise, WoTC.
Also as a long time AL player I would LOVE LOVE LOVE for a T3 to T4 hardcover. If you have a T4 character you're lucky to play them more than once every 3 months, or they only come out at conventions due to the lack of high level content. AL has been around long enough that there are now plenty of high level T3 and T4 characters out there, and we'd love to bring out these characters again after putting a lot of hard work into them.
Which brings me to my last wishlist item for season 10: Tier 4 CCC's! (Only a very limited amount, definite treasure restrictions)
CCC Writing has gotten leaps and bounds better over the last 2 years. I think it's time to allow the community to supplement the high level content for adventurers league.
Oathbreaker and Death Cleric could be unlocked in previous seasons as specific DM awards (Same with Aarokocra, or a certificate that allows you to create a goblin using any +1 book instead of just PHB)
Also prior to season 8 you could learn skills/languages by using your downtime when in a faction. I still think that WoTC pooped the bed when they did away with a lot of the faction stuff and forced players to completely change their background features to safe haven if they wanted to stay in the faction. I really wish they'd go back to the old faction rules, or at least a version close to it.
Keeping minions is generally DM dependent. I've only wandered into a couple sessions where the DM wouldn't let me have my summoned mounts, summoned familiars or undead minions in another session. (Same DM each time) All the other times it's been, "Oh, I remember you summoned your pegasus when we played in whats-his-face's game last week. You're fine." etc.
Unfortunately, I only get to play DND about twice a year at cons. What I'd like to see is?
Just let me play a dang spore druid already. PHB+1 gets more and more restrictive with every new sourcebook