jprepo1
Explorer
yep, which is great for established players with tons of tier 3 characters running around, but pretty crummy for newer players.
New Season 7 Death Curse rules posted
yep, which is great for established players with tons of tier 3 characters running around, but pretty crummy for newer players.
Warmaster Horus
Explorer
Normally that would be cool but my current stable of T3 PCs have all died at least once. Looks like I'll be looking for a T4 module to play first... :>
I realize I'm only cementing my reputation as the resident contrarian, but I like the rules and what they represent. Let me go through what I suspect would be a few questions regarding the rules and give my thoughts -- though, since I'm in no way connected to the AL admins, they're just my thoughts and speculations and in no way 'official'.
Why does every character in every adventure have to be affected by the Death Curse?
Because the Death Curse is what's happening now in the campaign. The idea is that the events in Chult are having world-spanning effects, but if only Season 7 characters ever encounter them, how can they be world-spanning? (I'm reminded of the hilarious line from 'To Be Or Not To Be': "He's world-famous in Poland.")
OK, smart guy, if that's true, why the opt-out option?
I like this option -- the opt-out option means that, for the character that opts out and restricts himself to Season 1-4 adventures, that character is basically saying, 'I'm adventuring during a period that pre-dates the events in Chult, thus the Death Curse isn't running during my adventures.' That's a surprisingly elegant solution, and as long as the character doesn't enter Season 5 or beyond, thus negating the point of starting in an earlier season, it makes perfect sense. (I don't know if there's anything specific in Tomb of Annihilation that co-ordinates Acererak's plan with
, but the campaign staff, by setting up the mechanic this way, is definitively saying that the latter event pre-dates the former in the campaign's timeline.
In a campaign that doesn't always seem concerned with temporal continuity, it's a nice change of pace. I will point out that there probably should be some clarification that, if a character has, to this point, only participated in adventures prior to Season 5 as determined by the character's log, the character is still eligible to opt-out of the Death Curse, and should note the same on the character's log if he does so.
Doesn't this just suck for new players?
Well, show me a new player who has a half-dozen AL characters, and I'll show you someone who probably shouldn't be considered a 'new player' anymore. Also, since most organized in-store play is likely going to focus on the current season, new players should be able to participate in Tomb of Annihilation, which is the most obvious way for the player's main character to be free of the Death Curse. (For the benefit of those who play mainly at conventions, it'd be nice to have an AL-specific way to complete Tomb and thus be free of the Death Curse, but at this point that would be a spoiler, so it doesn't surprise me that the admins aren't saying so, even if that's the plan. After all, previewing that there would be Barovia exit options prior to the full Season 4 mods being released basically just made a certain population of the playerbase obsessed with finding those exits, to the detriment of the season, IMO.)
If your FLGS is considering just now starting to run the Storm King's Thunder hard-cover, well, maybe you should reconsider that plan?
Well, then it sucks for existing players, right?
Again, I'm not sure. Let's go ahead and use me as an example, because I probably fit the profile of the kind of player who would be most heavily impacted by this ruling:
- I have 13 AL characters, 7 of whom are tier 1, 5 tier 2, and only one tier 3 (and that one just made level 11 last week).
- The AL character I'm playing most regularly is progressing through the Season 5 modules, and should complete the tier 1 set of those AL mods just before the start of GenCon. That character has also died during the tier 1 mods, and is a wizard, so starting the tier 2 mods already down 20 max hp pretty much cripples him (he's got 30 max hp at level 4, so will still be down more than half even after leveling to 5).
Am I concerned? Not really.
- The Death Curse gives an opportunity for certain spells to become significantly more effective/useful. Aid, for instance, becomes almost a must-have spell for tier 2 and higher tables. This is actually a good thing, as noted in the recent Extra Credits video "Marginal Mechanics and Red Herrings", as this is an excellent example of the Specific Case Marginal Mechanic discussed in that video. I'm not an optimizer, but I do appreciate a situation where my 'typical' tactics aren't necessarily the most effective option to bring to the table, and thus need to re-think what my best move is in this new environment. That's part of the challenge of the game!
- I also have, by my count, at least 6 characters who, as long as they don't die in-game, aren't currently under the effect of the Death Curse, in the sense that they haven't died yet and thus aren't losing max hp from the curse. Some of those characters I haven't played in quite a while, and thus it's a nice thing for me to be able to reach back and bring out those old characters to get some fresh air. Just because your 'main character' is currently losing hp from the Death Curse doesn't mean you have to keep playing him! (Note to editor: add image of LeVar Burton pointing at his own head.)
Finally, keep in mind that, once Season 7 is over, there will almost certainly be a generic downtime or other activity that characters can perform to rid themselves of the Death Curse, if it doesn't just disappear because Acererak's plan is effectively defeated -- just as Season 4's end brought us a generic 'get out of Barovia' downtime activity. If I find that the Death Curse mechanics are just too, too heinous to deal with during my regular AL play, then I can just take a few months off and come back for Season 8 once all this necromantic hoo-hah has sorted itself out.
Hold on! What about that Soul Devouring perma-death thing! You didn't talk about that!
That option is clearly getting some clarification -- what does 'at the end of each day' mean for characters who are dead and under the curse, but aren't actually participating in the current adventure, for instance? My guess would be that, since any perma-death option is seen as too, too much of a penalty for the poor snowflakes who complain about it, it's going to be nerfed into unrecognizability before it even goes live, so there's no need to worry about it now.
There's my $0.02US. Now, on to GenCon!
--
Pauper
Why does every character in every adventure have to be affected by the Death Curse?
Because the Death Curse is what's happening now in the campaign. The idea is that the events in Chult are having world-spanning effects, but if only Season 7 characters ever encounter them, how can they be world-spanning? (I'm reminded of the hilarious line from 'To Be Or Not To Be': "He's world-famous in Poland.")
OK, smart guy, if that's true, why the opt-out option?
I like this option -- the opt-out option means that, for the character that opts out and restricts himself to Season 1-4 adventures, that character is basically saying, 'I'm adventuring during a period that pre-dates the events in Chult, thus the Death Curse isn't running during my adventures.' That's a surprisingly elegant solution, and as long as the character doesn't enter Season 5 or beyond, thus negating the point of starting in an earlier season, it makes perfect sense. (I don't know if there's anything specific in Tomb of Annihilation that co-ordinates Acererak's plan with
the defeat of Vorgansherax in Phlan
In a campaign that doesn't always seem concerned with temporal continuity, it's a nice change of pace. I will point out that there probably should be some clarification that, if a character has, to this point, only participated in adventures prior to Season 5 as determined by the character's log, the character is still eligible to opt-out of the Death Curse, and should note the same on the character's log if he does so.
Doesn't this just suck for new players?
Well, show me a new player who has a half-dozen AL characters, and I'll show you someone who probably shouldn't be considered a 'new player' anymore. Also, since most organized in-store play is likely going to focus on the current season, new players should be able to participate in Tomb of Annihilation, which is the most obvious way for the player's main character to be free of the Death Curse. (For the benefit of those who play mainly at conventions, it'd be nice to have an AL-specific way to complete Tomb and thus be free of the Death Curse, but at this point that would be a spoiler, so it doesn't surprise me that the admins aren't saying so, even if that's the plan. After all, previewing that there would be Barovia exit options prior to the full Season 4 mods being released basically just made a certain population of the playerbase obsessed with finding those exits, to the detriment of the season, IMO.)
If your FLGS is considering just now starting to run the Storm King's Thunder hard-cover, well, maybe you should reconsider that plan?
Well, then it sucks for existing players, right?
Again, I'm not sure. Let's go ahead and use me as an example, because I probably fit the profile of the kind of player who would be most heavily impacted by this ruling:
- I have 13 AL characters, 7 of whom are tier 1, 5 tier 2, and only one tier 3 (and that one just made level 11 last week).
- The AL character I'm playing most regularly is progressing through the Season 5 modules, and should complete the tier 1 set of those AL mods just before the start of GenCon. That character has also died during the tier 1 mods, and is a wizard, so starting the tier 2 mods already down 20 max hp pretty much cripples him (he's got 30 max hp at level 4, so will still be down more than half even after leveling to 5).
Am I concerned? Not really.
- The Death Curse gives an opportunity for certain spells to become significantly more effective/useful. Aid, for instance, becomes almost a must-have spell for tier 2 and higher tables. This is actually a good thing, as noted in the recent Extra Credits video "Marginal Mechanics and Red Herrings", as this is an excellent example of the Specific Case Marginal Mechanic discussed in that video. I'm not an optimizer, but I do appreciate a situation where my 'typical' tactics aren't necessarily the most effective option to bring to the table, and thus need to re-think what my best move is in this new environment. That's part of the challenge of the game!
- I also have, by my count, at least 6 characters who, as long as they don't die in-game, aren't currently under the effect of the Death Curse, in the sense that they haven't died yet and thus aren't losing max hp from the curse. Some of those characters I haven't played in quite a while, and thus it's a nice thing for me to be able to reach back and bring out those old characters to get some fresh air. Just because your 'main character' is currently losing hp from the Death Curse doesn't mean you have to keep playing him! (Note to editor: add image of LeVar Burton pointing at his own head.)
Finally, keep in mind that, once Season 7 is over, there will almost certainly be a generic downtime or other activity that characters can perform to rid themselves of the Death Curse, if it doesn't just disappear because Acererak's plan is effectively defeated -- just as Season 4's end brought us a generic 'get out of Barovia' downtime activity. If I find that the Death Curse mechanics are just too, too heinous to deal with during my regular AL play, then I can just take a few months off and come back for Season 8 once all this necromantic hoo-hah has sorted itself out.
Hold on! What about that Soul Devouring perma-death thing! You didn't talk about that!
That option is clearly getting some clarification -- what does 'at the end of each day' mean for characters who are dead and under the curse, but aren't actually participating in the current adventure, for instance? My guess would be that, since any perma-death option is seen as too, too much of a penalty for the poor snowflakes who complain about it, it's going to be nerfed into unrecognizability before it even goes live, so there's no need to worry about it now.
There's my $0.02US. Now, on to GenCon!
--
Pauper
jprepo1
Explorer
While I appreciate the effort, the fact that you had to try and go into that much detail to justify the rule kind of speaks volumes by itself. Plus, a giant red flag should be that the admins, who write the Authors Only adventures, excluded their AO adventures from the rule, while not excluding CCC from it.
Actually, the season will likely end in the spring of next year, as every other odd-numbered season has to date, with the release of the next hard-cover:
Tyranny of Dragons (Season 1): August 2014 - March 2015
Rage of Demons (Season 3): August 2015 - March 2016
Storm King's Thunder (Season 5): September 2016 - April 2017
So not so bad.
--
Pauper
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.
Hmm, sounds like you have a budding career in conspiracy theorizing ahead of you!
A better explanation would be that the CCC program started during Season 5, and thus during the time frame in which the Death Curse would be active, based on the opt-out rules. Meanwhile, most of the AO modules (including the only one released, Alan Patrick's "Window to the Past") are set prior to Season 5. Since the purpose of the AO modules is to convince con organizers to invite AL admins to the con to run the mods, it makes sense to leave the decision as to whether or not to impose the Death Curse on players to the author -- heck, Mike Mearls was allowed to give out a cert authorizing playtest material in the AL at his AO, so exempting the Death Curse is a pretty minor boon by comparison.
(edit: I forgot that there's even precedent for this -- the D&D Open at Origins last year allowed characters who were 'trapped in Barovia' to participate; thus certain 'special events' can be exempted from campaign rules where it's seen as desirable, even if I don't always think that's a good idea)
--
Pauper
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