New Season 7 Death Curse rules posted

jprepo1 said:

The admins said it was about a year, so thats what I'm going off of

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Well, the D&D team has said they have the storylines for the next two hardcovers already laid out, so I suspect the season will end in the spring when the new hardcover adventure comes out.

Data for the win!

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Pauper

Nagol said:

The really affected players have a single low level character that was previously revived by Revivify

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You have to be tier 2 to cast revivify, so those characters aren't going to be instantly dead once they start the new season -- even a level 5 wizard with 10 Con has 22 hit points.

Also, note that revivify isn't currently on the list of spells that automatically fail due to the Death Curse (that's just raise dead, resurrection, and true resurrection); so it's possible there will be clarification that characters brought back by revivify aren't actually considered to have died, despite the spell's text ("You touch a creature that has died within the last minute.")

The second worst group are new players with one or two Level 3 and below characters for whom D&D just became a perma-death game. Even if a particular adventure offers a "you can get revived despite the rules saying you can't" ability, the hp loss will kill them in a few days anyway.

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Well, if you're that low-level, you can take advantage of the rule that allows you to play a pre-gen for the rest of the adventure, then apply your rewards earned by the pre-gen to a new character and very likely return to the game at 2nd level.

I get that you're not a fan of the rule, but that doesn't automatically mean it's a bad rule. It could use some more clarification, though:

- The phrase about "this reduction [to hp max] can't be increased or restored" seems sloppy. I get that it means that the Necromancy Wizard's class ability that prevents his hp max from being reduced doesn't apply to the Death Curse, and that a spell like Restoration wouldn't restore the character's hp max, but would it also prevent an Aid spell, even though Aid is an increase to the character's hp max and not technically a removal of the hp max reduction of the Death Curse?
- Previously noted absence of revivify from the 'spells that automatically fail' list; intentional?
- If you're running a DDAL adventure, and one of the players has a character who died in a previous Season 5-7 DDAL adventure (and thus was affected by the Death Curse when he died), do you have that player roll for Soul Devouring for his other character, even though that character didn't participate in the current adventure?

My understanding, before I even started writing my first post, is that the AL admins have already gotten a ton of feedback (probably including all the points above) and are already working on revisions -- so I won't worry about the answers to the above until I see those revisions.

Again, you're welcome to dislike the rule -- just don't assume that because you dislike it that it therefore must be a bad rule.

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Pauper

I appreciate the revision(s) already made to the document, and I'll probably run 2 tracks this season- One for new, Season 7 characters & Mods, and one that runs older Season 1-4 make-up adventures.

Yeah, our FLGS is starting Season 3 for the late-night AL adventuring crowd, even while gearing up for Tomb of Annihilation during the Wednesday night 'don't call it Encounters anymore' sessions. Ends up working out perfectly!

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Pauper

Pauper said:

You have to be tier 2 to cast revivify, so those characters aren't going to be instantly dead once they start the new season -- even a level 5 wizard with 10 Con has 22 hit points.

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Or have had access to Downtime, a magic item, or ally in the adventure you fell.

Also, note that revivify isn't currently on the list of spells that automatically fail due to the Death Curse (that's just raise dead, resurrection, and true resurrection); so it's possible there will be clarification that characters brought back by revivify aren't actually considered to have died, despite the spell's text ("You touch a creature that has died within the last minute.")

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Actually, that section is referring to longer downtime style recovery spells. The section under soul-devouring "The soul of any humanoid that dies while subject to the curse is trapped until freed or consumed" would apply to Revivify. especially since Revivify calls out "You touch a creature that has died within the last minute".

Well, if you're that low-level, you can take advantage of the rule that allows you to play a pre-gen for the rest of the adventure, then apply your rewards earned by the pre-gen to a new character and very likely return to the game at 2nd level.

I get that you're not a fan of the rule, but that doesn't automatically mean it's a bad rule. It could use some more clarification, though:

- The phrase about "this reduction [to hp max] can't be increased or restored" seems sloppy. I get that it means that the Necromancy Wizard's class ability that prevents his hp max from being reduced doesn't apply to the Death Curse, and that a spell like Restoration wouldn't restore the character's hp max, but would it also prevent an Aid spell, even though Aid is an increase to the character's hp max and not technically a removal of the hp max reduction of the Death Curse?
- Previously noted absence of revivify from the 'spells that automatically fail' list; intentional?
- If you're running a DDAL adventure, and one of the players has a character who died in a previous Season 5-7 DDAL adventure (and thus was affected by the Death Curse when he died), do you have that player roll for Soul Devouring for his other character, even though that character didn't participate in the current adventure?

My understanding, before I even started writing my first post, is that the AL admins have already gotten a ton of feedback (probably including all the points above) and are already working on revisions -- so I won't worry about the answers to the above until I see those revisions.

Again, you're welcome to dislike the rule -- just don't assume that because you dislike it that it therefore must be a bad rule.

--
Pauper

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I don't assume a rule is either good or bad until I examine its overall effect. I have no doubt the debate is somewhat premature because the rule is likely to change. The rule presented, much like last season's "the PC will remain trapped Bwaa Ha Ha!" rule will dissuade me from joining AL.

Nagol said:

The section under soul-devouring "The soul of any humanoid that dies while subject to the curse is trapped until freed or consumed" would apply to Revivify. especially since Revivify calls out "You touch a creature that has died within the last minute".

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I'd agree with you, except that revivify isn't listed among the spells that are listed as automatically failing -- I'm assuming that list comes directly from the Tomb of Annihilation hardcover. This is even more significant because the AL clarification notes that reincarnation, which is also not listed in the original rule, also won't work. If revivify was meant not to be an exception, it should be included along with reincarnation as spells that fail to return the soul to life.

This may be because of confusion between the 5e and 3.5e versions of the spell -- the 3.5 version needed to be cast within a round of the target 'dying', and was specifically defined as reconnecting the soul with the body before it had the opportunity to depart. If this is still the underlying reasoning behind how the revivify spell works, then it could reasonably be a work-around to Acererak's Death Curse.

We'll need to wait for clarification to know for sure, though.

Edit: Apparently there's been an update on Facebook that revivify not being on the list of non-functioning rez spells was an oversight and it will be included in a later revision. So we have that answer, at least.

Would also appreciate feedback from any admins following this thread on when the revised rules are available.

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Pauper

Looks like they went up.

Link?

Maybe I just missed something but I am curious why the exemption cutoff is with Season 4 adventures? Since the official timeline for the Realms advances with each Season equal to time passing here in the real world, wouldn't anything from Season 6 and before happen before Season 7 and ToA and the Curse start? Or does ToA contain a timeline showing the Curse starting to go into effect months or years before the start of the actual adventure?

Nagol said:

Actually, I expect you aren't one of the most affected. You can have a character do a T3 and exempt all your characters from the curse. The really affected players have a single low level character that was previously revived by Revivify and will be permanently at zero hp once the season starts (assuming they don't know about the rule when they sit down at the table and have their characters collapse). The second worst group are new players with one or two Level 3 and below characters for whom D&D just became a perma-death game. Even if a particular adventure offers a "you can get revived despite the rules saying you can't" ability, the hp loss will kill them in a few days anyway.

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Yep, this.

Who this punishes the most is the newer players--it either pointlessly limits the mods they can play in, or it gives them a perma-death slap to the face. The smart fix would be to keep the faction-based (and no strings-attached) ressurections for Tier 1 players. By the time you're Tier 2 you'll have enough experience to make the call to proceed with the potential downsides, create another character to keep playing in Tier 1, or try another system altogether.

If Pauper wants to play perma-death rules, more power to them. That's what homebrew groups are for...or wait, maybe Pauper is too much of

Pauper said:

a poor, poor snowflake

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to create their own adventures? Does the snowflake Pauper need to be bottle fed their adventure modules? Awww. Don't worry someday you'll wear big-kid pants too.

Pretty disgusting to refer to new players as snowflakes, Pauper. You must be real L33T, huh?