As you note just below, you already have that option with the existing DM awards. The new DM Quests are just icing on an already hearty cake.
That's pretty good. Why would you need to start with a magic item, given that 5E doesn't presume that any character will ever get a magic item? Again, it just sounds to me like people are asking for a license to be munchkins.
Pauper - your logic is flawed. The beta version of the system was meant to work with no magic items. There isn't a single hardcover that makes that assumption. HoDQ had massive flaws because it was released before the MM in presenting monsters with resistance to non-magical weapons in a module where it was unlikely the players could run into one unless there was a generous DM (1 was an optional encounter, the second is hidden in a way that is doesn't make logical sense to look). OOA would be outright impossible without magic items and CoS is a TPK 95% of the time against Straud without magic items. The system can be modified to not need magic items but that isn't where it is out of the box (as acknowledged by Crawford).
Wait, why would you need to create an entirely new Tier 3 character to play with your friends? Couldn't you just, y'know, convince someone to take the DM role from time to time (not so coincidentally earning even more DM Quest XP), and level up your existing character that way?
"From time to time" is the problem here. To build a level 8 or 9 character organically, it takes many months. Most people game bi-weekly or weekly. In a 30 week season, that leaves 4-6 weeks to build one organically if you game weekly or not at all for bi-weekly. I do have characters from prior seasons but seasons like this one present unique opportunities based on the setting.
Basically what we're doing is creating a two-pronged system for playing AL material -- the traditional way and the munchkin way, the latter of which lets you begin with exactly the classes and magic items you want to break your table. It's a horrible idea, just when it seemed as though the campaign staff had a handle on how to keep min-maxers from overwhelming the campaign.
DM generated characters are nowhere as powerful as organic characters. Tier 2 characters are wandering around with very rare items, legendary items, divine blessings, etc. CoS has an opportunity for characters to spend time with Mordenkainen and access every spell known in the PHB. A DM generated tier 2 character jumping into a Con at level 8 or 9 will have 2 or 3 possible magic items. One is from the cert - and is certainly not game breaking. The other 2 are, at best, rare. They can be somewhat tailored to a character but characters with 5 items including legendary and very rare are out there. Characters with 3 including very rare and legendary are pretty common. The DM character can be in the same adventures but wouldn't hog the spotlight. Picture a wizard - you would only have the starting and per level spells - none discovered. You can't just buy them - they have to be encountered. A fighter with 3 items would likely be a +2 weapon (rare), +1 armor (uncommon), and a figurine. Compare that to the paladin with a sunblade, +2 shield, +2 dwarven plate, and the amulet from CoS - a pretty realistic scenario for a 4-5 person party running CoS. That's 1 legendary item, 2 very rare, and a rare. The same is true from OoA. If they just ran DDAL modules - you end up with extremely customized characters because they trade certs or just know which modules to play.
I think you underestimate how well-structured the campaign already is: Suits of the Mists was just released this week, so my group will be starting it next week. By the time we finish it (we run a bi-weekly game), DDAL 4-2 through 4-5 will be released, which gives us enough material** to run through May with the release of DDAL 4-6 through 4-8 (even if we level out of tier 1 and can't actually play 4-6, we can move along to 4-7 and still have enough content to keep us busy until the next set of modules drop on June 1), and we can schedule one 'special session' over the Fourth of July weekend to keep up with the module release schedule so that we can finish DDAL 4-14 on the last week of July, just in time to be ready for the new season.
** - Some of this is an accident of the calendar -- since April has five Fridays, we'll actually get in three sessions, and since 4-2 and 4-3 are two-hour mods, we'll likely finish them both in one session.
The final DDAL modules aren't released until July 1 and are 3 modules (2 - 2 hour and 1 4 hour). The season ends the beginning of August with the Season 5 launch happening at GenCon the first week of August. The means for a DM to qualify, they have to be on schedule on all the modules, not take time to run the hardback, and run the modules in the final 4 weeks. You pretty much have to DM outside of a weekly schedule to make it. If you DM at a con, it would help since you would be able to get the modules done early but the odds of you being in the area to participate are pretty slim (unless you fly out there). We'll see at GenCon this year as to how many DM's did it. I am guessing maybe 20-30 people nationwide. The big problem is a lot of store are running the hardback in store. That will take you a minimum of 3 months, probably more. Home games have the same scenario - many would rather run more of the hardbacks than the modules as it lets a more cohesive storyline be run (seriously - would you rather deal with NPCs build out of 2 and 4 hour modules or face off against Strahd and Baba Yaga?)
Players who finish the season will be level 10 and likely have at least two magic items, given the number of mods being run. A DM who runs all those mods will finish with 35,000XP, two scrolls or potions, and a rare magic item just from the DM Quests, plus over 10,000 XP from actually running the modules. So you've got basically a level 10 character as well! Except that, instead of having to have played your character, running the risk of spending your gold getting raised or otherwise finding out your character has weak spots you need to shore up, your guy can spring fully formed from your forehead, ready to abuse tier 2 tables (and very soon, tier 3 tables!) at your leisure!
As I said before, a DM generated character is average but not amazing for Tier 2 tables of characters at the same level. As for Tier 3 - no chance at all, even a little bit, that a level 11 or 12 DM generated character could survive with most of the Tier 3 tables I've run and participated in conventions. I ran through assault on mydramria with a group of 15th level characters and it was a TPK with every member of that party having legendary items and crazy builds. The Tier 3 adventures and epics are amazingly hard and assume level 13ish characters with really impressive magic.
I might see the argument in favor of having DM characters stay equivalent to PCs if there are flavorful story awards in Season 4 that allow players to develop their PCs in interesting ways and thus let those characters have wrinkles DM characters don't have. As it stands, though, characters built with DM XP are strictly superior to characters built through normal play; the drawback used to be that a DM character had to play (and thus expose herself to the same possible setbacks a PC has to deal with) to 'keep up' with other PCs. Absent that restriction, I think you'll find all the 'best' characters are DM characters now. And I don't think that's good for the game.
Setbacks and death in AL are pretty minor. A friend of mine described most AL as D&D on "Easy Mode" - if your DMs aren't really strong, it absolutely is easy mode. Levels 1-4 raise dead is free. Levels 5-10 it costs 1,250 gp. By the time you are level 8 or 9 - unless you are a wizard, you have nothing left to spend gold on. The Tier 3 table I described earlier had opportunities to spend gold to invest in armies to help with the module and every character maxxed the contributions and still had 5k-10k gold left. Very few other long term set-backs are even possible in AL. CoS is the first module with side-effects possible that are lasting (something I really am happy to see).
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Pauper
