Will Favoured Soul be required to choose a God in AL?

skerritthegreen · Aug 2, 2017

Pauper said:
Based on Kalani's question, is the DM's Guild considered a 'rules source' for AL-legal rules items published there? (So, the Mystic that is eventually going to be published to the DM's Guild would require any mystic character to take DM's Guild as its '+1' until such time as it's re-published in another legal rules source?)

Distribution of, or rules associated with, the Mystic, have not been worked out and the Admins have nothing we can share on this topic at this point.

Pauper · Aug 2, 2017

skerritthegreen said:
Distribution of, or rules associated with, the Mystic, have not been worked out and the Admins have nothing we can share on this topic at this point.

Thanks for the info, but I'm a bit confused by this, from the Mystic download available on the DM's Guild:

"Once the classes have robust sets of features and options that are hitting the approval levels we aim for, we will make those classes available for playtesting in the D&D Adventurers League."

Based on that text, a number of folks have argued that the Mystic (and Artificer, which is also available) is or will be AL-legal via the DM's Guild. As far as I'm aware, no announcement has been made by the admins stating that these classes are currently legal, but that seems to be the way things are headed.

I'll be keeping an eye on this topic as it progresses.

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Pauper

skerritthegreen · Aug 2, 2017

It will be available in via the DMsGuild, yes, but how you get to play it remains to be seen. Will everyone just be able to download and go? Will it have restricts like the Volo's races where there are faction requirements? Will it only be legal through a certificate like the Death Domain? Will it only be legal through a DM reward like the aarakocra? Will it be legal to play, but not level or keep long term, like a one-shot throw away? Can you rebuild into a Mystic? Will the Mystic be legal day one of its posting or will it be legal at the start of the next season? All of these questions (and several more) remain to be answered by the Admins before anyone actually makes a Mystic that is AL Legal.

Pauper · Aug 3, 2017

All good questions, though I'm afraid the players in my area will simply respond saying, "Mearls said the class is AL-legal for playtesting, so I'm playing it."

Looking forward to the admins' guidance on this one.

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Pauper

skerritthegreen · Aug 3, 2017

Pauper said:
All good questions, though I'm afraid the players in my area will simply respond saying, "Mearls said the class is AL-legal for playtesting, so I'm playing it."

Sure, just like you don't have to run a table for those who have illegal characters.

Pauper · Aug 3, 2017

skerritthegreen said:
Sure, just like you don't have to run a table for those who have illegal characters.

Seems a little harsh for those players who don't have illegal characters...

Apologies for harping on this point, but the Mystic in particular has a sordid history of legality in AL, and with Mike Mearls now officially a member of the WotC AL team, his announcements related to the Mystic and AL will be considered to have a certain amount of authority, particularly in the absence of any other official information. As Travis Woodall noted on Facebook at the time that linked post was written, "We are beholden to Wizards, not the other way around. When Wizards says jump, we gotta jump." And where D&D is concerned, Mike Mearls is pretty much 'Wizards'.

As noted above, I'll be keeping an eye open.

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Pauper

skerritthegreen · Aug 3, 2017

Pauper said:
Apologies for harping on this point, but the Mystic in particular has a sordid history of legality in AL, and with Mike Mearls now officially a member of the WotC AL team, his announcements related to the Mystic and AL will be considered to have a certain amount of authority, particularly in the absence of any other official information. As Travis Woodall noted on Facebook at the time that linked post was written, "We are beholden to Wizards, not the other way around. When Wizards says jump, we gotta jump." And where D&D is concerned, Mike Mearls is pretty much 'Wizards'.

You have a few mistakes in this, so lets address them:

Pauper said:
with Mike Mearls now officially a member of the WotC AL team

That's not true. MM is the D&D Boss, but the AL team myself, Claire Hoffman, Robert Adducci, Travis Woodall, Bill Benham, Alan Patrick, Sam Simpson and Chris Lindsay. Mike isn't on that team. Now, Chris is the team lead and Mike is his boss, but Mike isn't actually on that team. He makes no day to day decisions for it.

Pauper said:
his announcements related to the Mystic and AL will be considered to have a certain amount of authority, particularly in the absence of any other official information.

Well sure, but you will note that MM's announcement specifically has no details. It doesn't say how you play it. It doesn't say when it becomes legal. Etc... He did that on purpose because he still needed to work out with us how it would be implemented. I can say that you can fly, but that doesn't mean you should jump off a roof before I buy you a plane ticket. Some players have a tendency to read an announcement and fill in the details they want before the whole story is announced.

Pauper said:
As Travis Woodall noted on Facebook at the time that linked post was written, "We are beholden to Wizards, not the other way around. When Wizards says jump, we gotta jump." And where D&D is concerned, Mike Mearls is pretty much 'Wizards'.

That is effectively true. The admins were not ready to implement playtest material, but Mike had some ideas (and now that he's explained them, I totally get them), and so we do it. Of course how we will do it remains to be seen.

Enevhar Aldarion · Aug 3, 2017

The current version of the Mystic on DMs guild is not even the one that will be AL-legal for playtesting. That will be the next version of the class.

From the May 25 Unearthed Arcana article:

"Starting today, we are adding both the mystic and artificer to the DM’s Guild. They are both resources you can use to create your own material to share and sell on the Guild. We are also going to release additional surveys to delve deeper into the classes and identify headaches. Between watching the design work done on the DM’s Guild and monitoring feedback data, we’ll continue to revise these two classes.

Once the classes have robust sets of features and options that are hitting the approval levels we aim for, we will make those classes available for playtesting in the D&D Adventurers League. This step indicates that the new class is slated for official release as part of a D&D product. This step’s goal is to put the classes through the same rigorous testing and DM feedback that the core fifth edition classes received during their open playtests"

And the link to the article to remind people:

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/unearthed-arcana-update

Pauper · Aug 4, 2017

skerritthegreen said:
That's not true. MM is the D&D Boss, but the AL team myself, Claire Hoffman, Robert Adducci, Travis Woodall, Bill Benham, Alan Patrick, Sam Simpson and Chris Lindsay. Mike isn't on that team.

I want to believe you, but I'm curious why, if Mike isn't on the team, that he's listed as being on the team on a lot of recent AL publications, including the AL Content Catalog (published March 2017), as well as every AL module published since Season 5:

Chelimber's Descent Title Page said:
D&D Adventurers League Wizards Team: Adam Lee, Chris Lindsay, Mike Mearls, Matt Sernett

I can accept that he doesn't have day-to-day responsibilities, but why credit him as being on the team when he isn't?

Well sure, but you will note that MM's announcement specifically has no details. It doesn't say how you play it. It doesn't say when it becomes legal. Etc... He did that on purpose because he still needed to work out with us how it would be implemented. I can say that you can fly, but that doesn't mean you should jump off a roof before I buy you a plane ticket. Some players have a tendency to read an announcement and fill in the details they want before the whole story is announced.

I'll agree with you that some players do take announcements and run with them with their own details -- which is why, for the most part, the AL Admins have (rightly) taken the position that you'll make an announcement when you have the details in place, and until that time, there's not much to say. It'd be nice if Mike showed the same sense of restraint.

That is effectively true. The admins were not ready to implement playtest material, but Mike had some ideas (and now that he's explained them, I totally get them), and so we do it. Of course how we will do it remains to be seen.

I get that you can't share those ideas, but I think the concerns that were expressed at the time the Mystic playtest cert went live are still valid and germane -- it certainly seems attractive to use the AL as a giant playtest group, but without some kind of firewall to separate (expectedly) broken playtest material from the campaign as a whole, that process is going to harm the AL even as it helps WotC publish material slightly more frequently. I don't see it as a good trade-off.

I'll try to stay open-minded, and I'm hoping the playtest process proves to be more thoughtful than it currently appears.

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Pauper

Pauper · Aug 4, 2017

Enevhar Aldarion said:
The current version of the Mystic on DMs guild is not even the one that will be AL-legal for playtesting. That will be the next version of the class.

As long as any version prior to the final version is released to the AL, it's allowing unfinished, 'beta' material into the official AL campaign. The danger of harming the campaign via poorly balanced material is precisely the reason why the AL doesn't currently allow anything that isn't officially released to be used, so *any* playtest version of the Mystic (or any other material, for that matter) is hazardous, for that reason.

At the moment, we're on the verge of establishing a new rule: Playtest material is bad, unless Mike Mearls really wants people to play it, then it's OK.

--
Pauper

Will Favoured Soul be required to choose a God in AL?

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