Lost Mines of Phandelver certificates

Mull Ponders · May 23, 2017

I know back in Tyranny of Dragons there were certs for the magic items in Lost Mines of Phandelver. Would it be possible to get the PDF for them posted, perhaps in the DMs Guild?

rooneg · May 23, 2017

Nope. WotC has shown no interest in making certificates for older DDAL/DDEX adventures (prior to season 5) available, and they've essentially stopped producing them entirely for hardcovers. The only way to get legit certificates for older stuff like LMoP is to get them from a store that still has them lying around.

Yes, this is absurdly dumb. In a sane world each HC would have a set of certs available for download from DM's Guild, but we apparently don't live in that world.

Pauper · May 23, 2017

The campaign has changed over the few years of its operation to make certs an optional rather than a required thing -- you don't need a cert to show you have a magic item, nor do you need one to trade an item.

People do seem to like certs, but they're not in any way necessary for the campaign to run.

--
Pauper

rooneg · May 23, 2017

Pauper said:
People do seem to like certs, but they're not in any way necessary for the campaign to run.

This is certainly true, but LMoP is actually one of the edge cases where they'd be really nice to have, since there are a bunch of items from that adventure that lack defined rarities in the book. That means if you don't have the cert they can't be traded at all.

It also costs downtime days to trade uncerted items to Fai Chen, which is annoying, but that's not nearly as big a deal as "no, you can't ever trade that staff of defense because we never wrote down its rarity".

Caliban · May 23, 2017

Well - two items. The Staff of Defense and the Spider Staff. Their rarity is not given in the module. Both are rare, but since they aren't DMG items, they can't be traded without a cert that confirms their rarity.

rooneg · May 23, 2017

Caliban said:
Well - two items. The Staff of Defense and the Spider Staff. Their rarity is not given in the module. Both are rare, but since they aren't DMG items, they can't be traded without a cert that confirms their rarity.

Also Lightbringer (the +1 Mace with extra abilities) and Hew (the +1 Battleaxe that does max damage vs plants). Those are Uncommon on the certs, but Unique without them, because they have abilities not listed on the "quirks" tables in the DMG.

Terran589 · May 24, 2017

Couldn't their rarity be proven by simply scanning the cert with a printer and then posting it someplace people can reference it?

rczarnec · May 24, 2017

Terran589 said:
Couldn't their rarity be proven by simply scanning the cert with a printer and then posting it someplace people can reference it?

The item still cannot be traded without a cert.

rooneg · May 24, 2017

Terran589 said:
Couldn't their rarity be proven by simply scanning the cert with a printer and then posting it someplace people can reference it?

Not according to the AL rules. You need an official certificate in your hand for it to count, just knowing that the certs exist and define the rarity is not the same thing.

Yes, this is an absurd situation that could easily be fixed in any number of ways, but for whatever reason WotC chooses not to do so.

Caliban · May 24, 2017

rooneg said:
Also Lightbringer (the +1 Mace with extra abilities) and Hew (the +1 Battleaxe that does max damage vs plants). Those are Uncommon on the certs, but Unique without them, because they have abilities not listed on the "quirks" tables in the DMG.

Ah yes. Forgot about those two items.