I have just booked to play some games at an AL conference. While I have played a reasonable amount of D&D this will be my first experiance of AL. Spaces filled pretty quickly but I managed to book into 2 tier 2 games (the second of which is an epic) and one tier 2 game. As I have plenty on not AL D&D I will probably not play AL regularly but might try to book again at next years conferance.

I do however have a few questions:

• How do tier 1 games work for balance the difference between a character at level 1 and a character at level 4 is huge. A level 1 wizard / sorcerer is likely to be instakilled by aa shatter spell or a charge by a giant boar but not allowing attacks like that would mean their is no challenge for level 3 and 4 characters.
• The AL rules state "If a rule has been reprinted in a newer resource, you must always use the latest printing" but the list of allowed books does not include MotM. I I want to play a race that has been revised in MotM should I use the MotM version or the legacy version?
• How many AL players at a conferance like this are likely to be optimizers? Are most likely to experianced AL players with characters that have already advanced a level or two or players new to D&D?. One option I am thinking is to create a moon druid as my tier 1 character, which would mean I might be able to keep up with level 3 & 4 characters in the epic (as I would be level 2) but would completely dominate combat if everyone else is level 1 or 2 using pre-gen characters.
• For the tier 2 game I would be seriously short of cash, can that issue be resolved early in the game.  For example a level 5 barbarian (that started at level 1) would normally wear half plate by level 5, but even if I selling all their starting equipment would not provide enough gold to buy scale mail (and you can't get round this by getting magic armor as your one magic item) . Would there be a way to at least get scale mail before combat started?
• Are there any functions that AL parties are every commonly short of (e.g healers or melee characters), if so I will probably try to create characters that will fill that gap.

• AL adventures always have some guidance for the DM to adjust each of their encounters/challenges based on the party's APL (average party level), so a group of characters of levels 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 will face off against challenges balanced for 2nd level (average 2.2). That said, yes, the difference is huge between 1 and 4, and same as most adventures out there, everything is pretty lethal for Level 1s.
• For now, safest is to use the old version until the Admins have updated the Player's Guide (you can always re-build your character between sessions later to update that). I've seen some contradicting statements in the D&D Discord about that recently, so I'm not sure.
• Depends on the particular event, I guess? I've been in plenty of Epics, though all of them online in a Discord server, and what I've seen so far is, in groups of 7 people, usually 1~2 are strong optimized characters, and 1~2 might be people completely new and somewhat unsure of what to do in their turns (specially in Tier 1), the rest falling somewhere in the middle.
• Unless some of your group companions have some extra magic items or mundane gear lying around (which is not common, since the magic item limit is still pretty low at Tier 2), no. Try to loot mundane gear from your enemies after your first encounter, if that comes up.
• Not really a single one I could name. I've been in sessions where we severly lacked damage (which usually is the focus of most players) while having like 3 full-time healers/supporters, and the last Epic I've played yesterday had almost NO stealthies in 11 tables full of people (so 77 player characters), so my table was the only one that dared face the stealth-based challenges along the way because we had a Druid with Pass Without Trace (and if we didn't do them, we would get automatic penalties across all tables). So building characters that can fill (at least partially) two roles is good. That said, that isn't usually a big problem.

Hope that helps. May I ask what particular event you're going to participate in? :)

Thanks for all that.

Yes level 1 is pretty lethal normally I guess if the AL party has levels 4.4.4,3,3,1  so challenges are based on a level 3 party the level one character hides at a safe distance at hte first sign of combat!

OK so legacy races are still allowed, it is a couple of months before the conferance so I will check for updates before then.

For level 1/2 I might go druid level one and be ready to level into either moon or another subclass after I get a feel of the other players in the first game.  For level 5 I'll probably pick something not dependent on equipment they can't get from the start

Not sure if posting the event details here would class as advertising so I will DM you.

Thanks for that link Sillvva!

So, there's the precedent for using the MotM version, that explains why I saw a Centaur on that last Epic 🤔. That ruling by Chris Tulach pretty much covers it until they update the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide PDF text.

Quote from coelhogerge >>

Thanks for that link Sillvva!

So, there's the precedent for using the MotM version, that explains why I saw a Centaur on that last Epic 🤔. That ruling by Chris Tulach pretty much covers it until they update the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide PDF text.

<deleted incorrect info> ... Centaur is AL legal

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To the OP: AL is generally pretty fun, your groups will typically be a collection of random people playing all sorts of characters. People will vary from rules experts to complete novices. Builds will vary from optimized to far from optimized often due to not knowing the game that well or having a character concept that they really want to play. 

Examples:

- I once played with someone whose character was an undead wizard with 8 con (undead was achieved through some season 7 module or a cert). Interesting character in some ways but really a glass cannon.

- A true skill expert character - knowledge cleric/rogue/bard (I think there were a couple of other classes - the goal was to become proficient in every skill with expertise in as many as possible) ... I think the plan was at least knowledge cleric 1/scout rogue 6/lore bard 10? something like that expertise in 10 skills and proficient in most of the rest + jack of all trades for outliers).

- fighter with 13 strength or rogue with 13 dex - high charisma or some other stats due to role play reasons.

On the other hand, more optimized characters like spear+shield PAM paladin, Sorcerer X/hexblade warlock 2, fighter or ranger XBE+SS, Fighter/barbarian GWM are also not uncommon.

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When you first play AL, you need to start a level 1 character for tier 1 or you can start a level 5 character for tier 2 for the standard Forgotten Realms campaign.The rules covering character creation are in the ALPG that is linked from the DDAL website.

Other than that, you need to play adventures to advance. (Other campaigns - eg Eberron or Mist Hunters - have somewhat different rules - Eberron has pre-gens for starting at level 5 or level 11 while Mist Hunters I think lets you create a character of the correct level to play the module - but characters from these campaigns can't be played in the FR campaign).

One 3xtra question, I am considering a druid and am wondering what I will be allowed to wildshape into? Is it assumed I have seen every beast native to Faerun, only creatures I have seen in sessions orsomething in-between.

Quote from Jegpeg >>

One 3xtra question, I am considering a druid and am wondering what I will be allowed to wildshape into? Is it assumed I have seen every beast native to Faerun, only creatures I have seen in sessions orsomething in-between.

 
Depends mostly on your DM with that one, I believe.

Most of them are fine with eveything, and it's even safer if you incorporate Chult into your background in character introduction (if you're going dinosaurs, or Icewind Dale if you're going mammoth, etc.) You can always write down the beasts you find in your adventures going forward to be on the safe side.