Build-wise, what's far too common in the AL?

Now that I've had some time to drop into a few AL games, my impression is... people play a bit of everything! I think these threads tend to get started due to the randomness of AL groups rather than any true deficiency in diversity. The safest character to play seems to be a party face-- if you don't have the right person for the job, convince some NPC to help you out.

NecronPariah said:

Could it be that mechanics like racial ASIs being the difference between starting with a +3 and a +2 modifier in your class's primary ability discourage diversity?

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In my opinion, the difference between a +2 to my primary stat and +3 in my primary stat in D&D5e is not that big of a deal, honestly. Certainly not as critical as it might have been in past editions. While a +3 is always going to be better, all other things being equal, i've never nixed a character concept just because of it having a +2 in it's primary stat.

If anything is artificially hampering diversity in builds, it's the (sometimes significant) power differences between the classes/subclasses themselves (altho, with a few notable exceptions, this disparity is still better IMHO in 5th than it had been in some earlier editions).

Steve_MND said:

In my opinion, the difference between a +2 to my primary stat and +3 in my primary stat in D&D5e is not that big of a deal, honestly. Certainly not as critical as it might have been in past editions. While a +3 is always going to be better, all other things being equal, i've never nixed a character concept just because of it having a +2 in it's primary stat.

If anything is artificially hampering diversity in builds, it's the (sometimes significant) power differences between the classes/subclasses themselves (altho, with a few notable exceptions, this disparity is still better IMHO in 5th than it had been in some earlier editions).

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I'd second this with the added caveat that it's heavily level dependent. So many people optimize for the lower levels because honestly you so rarely see the higher level content being offered.

I'm just going to repeat that if you want to greatly increase diversity, at least remove the AL option of being a Variant Human.