Over on Facebook, a conversation blew up when someone posted that there are apparently certs in the wild that allow players to play material from Unearthed Arcana. As UA material has been pretty definitively classified as 'not allowed in AL', I and a number of others chimed in as such.
Apparently, though, this is a thing -- Mike Mearls has been running adventures at conventions he attends, and coming up with special rewards, including the ability to playtest Unearthed Arcana material in AL games. This seems pretty problematic to me -- though I understand the desire to come up with something cool and unique to reward players who participate in Mearls's games, and I can see a benefit in knowing there are at least some players out there actively playtesting the UA material, I think it's a bad idea to simply do this on an ad-hoc basis without any sort of deliberation or group decision involved.
I can say that, if a player came up to me at a convention and claimed he could play, say, a Mystic from the psionics playtest in an AL game because Mike Mearls wrote him a cert, I'd respond that there's nothing in the ALPG or ALDMG saying that Mike Mearls can declare exceptions to the Allowed Rules for player characters and have him pull out a legal character or leave the table. Then again, I'm known to be a no-fun DM, apparently, so I'm curious what the consensus is on this point.
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Pauper
Apparently, though, this is a thing -- Mike Mearls has been running adventures at conventions he attends, and coming up with special rewards, including the ability to playtest Unearthed Arcana material in AL games. This seems pretty problematic to me -- though I understand the desire to come up with something cool and unique to reward players who participate in Mearls's games, and I can see a benefit in knowing there are at least some players out there actively playtesting the UA material, I think it's a bad idea to simply do this on an ad-hoc basis without any sort of deliberation or group decision involved.
I can say that, if a player came up to me at a convention and claimed he could play, say, a Mystic from the psionics playtest in an AL game because Mike Mearls wrote him a cert, I'd respond that there's nothing in the ALPG or ALDMG saying that Mike Mearls can declare exceptions to the Allowed Rules for player characters and have him pull out a legal character or leave the table. Then again, I'm known to be a no-fun DM, apparently, so I'm curious what the consensus is on this point.
--
Pauper