Elemental Evil characters not allowed in Season 3?

[kalani]

Sorry but you're adding several pieces of information that simply isn't in the document.

Sword Coast Adendum: Everyone, regardless of level or story origin, gets a chance to rebuild their character. Effectively this means nothing changes for characters under 5th level, but those over 5th get one chance to include Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide options with their characters if they so desire. Use the rules in Part 1 of the D&D Adventurers League Player's Guide for this rebuild, ignoring the level limit. You may use this rebuild opportunity even if you do not choose any options from the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide.

Emphasis mine.

The free rebuild does nothing for characters 4th level or lower, as such characters already have an unlimited number of character rebuilds (which supersedes the free rebuild). This has been clarified by the admins to mean that, characters which were 4th level or lower as of Nov 3rd, do not get a floating rebuild after reaching 5th level. Only those characters which were already 5th level+ gain said rebuild.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Do you regularly play AL? Are you actually unable to play a combination you wanted for your next character? Or is this a theoretical complaint?

I don't play AL BECUSE of the random restriction... I played LFR for the entire 4e life of the program, and I did RPGA before that...

 

[Jester David]

I don't play AL BECUSE of the random restriction... I played LFR for the entire 4e life of the program, and I did RPGA before that...

So you seriously haven't touched organised play for 14 months because of a restriction that just began to affect you, and then only really with new characters?

 

[Mirtek]

and I did RPGA before that...

You mean when the ban list used to be longer than the entire AL player guide?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So you seriously haven't touched organised play for 14 months because of a restriction that just began to affect you, and then only really with new characters?

I don't understand your question...

I played LFR from beginning to end, and I played in a bout a dozen RPGA events, now [MENTION=40810]Mirtek[/MENTION] says the ban list was huge fro that, but the RPGA guy I ran under never said a word about a ban list so I don't know...


I played back in Jan for 2 weeks, then the guy running the group told us someone had to redraw there Asamiar cleric because you needed to buy a cert off ebay for like $100 bucks to play one (note that it can't be a balance issue) and that killed that group. When I went to go back last month there was a jerk there... now my best friend just drew up the Genesi fighter going for purple dragon knight...she is not on the message boards so this was the first I heard that she can't play it...and the reason is BS

 

[kalani]

As a former RPGA DM, I find that hard to believe (unless the DM was shirking their RPGA responsibilities). I have played both Living Greyhawk and LFR in my time (although I dropped out of LG early due to the fact that I lived in Australia, and so was relegated to a backwater province of no importance).

LFR had an extensive banlist that was frequently updated. As with AL expecting players to be familiar with the players guide (and at least aware of the AL FAQ), players in LFR were expected to be familiar with the LFR ban-list. It was not the responsibility of DMs to hand-hold players, it was the players responsibility to know the rules by which LFR was played (including the rules pertaining to banned character options and combinations).

This was quite annoying actually, as the banlist was updated with every new product release, and sometimes between releases (as newly discovered combinations caused problems). Magic items and other character options were also frequently updated with frequent errata.

Players complained extensively about the frequent banlist updates; DMs complained about their inability to address problematic and broken combinations until a new update occured; casual gamers complained about the hostility of powergamers, and the increasing difficulty of adventures; mod designers complained about how difficult it was to design adventures which challenged power gamers; the list went on.

The Story Origin mechanic is an attempt to proactively prevent such problems without the added issues associated with reactive banlists.

 

[Jester David]

I don't understand your question...

I played LFR from beginning to end, and I played in a bout a dozen RPGA events, now [MENTION=40810]Mirtek[/MENTION] says the ban list was huge fro that, but the RPGA guy I ran under never said a word about a ban list so I don't know...

You said "you don't play because of the restriction". Not "you stopped playing". And so I asked.

I never played any LFR but I played a lot of Living Greyhawk and remember there was a loooong long list of banned content, open content, and the infamous not-open-not-closed content that required a cert to unlock. That was annoying and it was a pain having to hunt for pre-reqs

I played back in Jan for 2 weeks, then the guy running the group told us someone had to redraw there Asamiar cleric because you needed to buy a cert off ebay for like $100 bucks to play one (note that it can't be a balance issue) and that killed that group. When I went to go back last month there was a jerk there... now my best friend just drew up the Genesi fighter going for purple dragon knight...she is not on the message boards so this was the first I heard that she can't play it...and the reason is BS

So the guy running the group is a "jerk" for wanting to follow the rules? For wanting to enforce the limitation on the aasimar to requiring the reward cert people won or earned (or, yes, paid for) rather than devaluing it and letting someone play an illegal character that can't be used elsewhere?
Would he also be a jerk if he didn't let you fudge a roll? Or not let you roll for ability scores?

Is the aasimar banned for balance reasons? No. But it's limited for flavour and as a reward, like magic items. Pathfinder Society does this all the time, with different races being restricted. Maybe they'll do the same for other races, letting you get a cert that allows you to play races in different story origins.

She may not be on this message board, but the news on SCAG was also posted on the AL website, tweeted, and on Facebook. And I imagine the people running the events will also be made aware so they can educate at game tables. There's an expectation that if you're playing in OP you read the Player's Guides for the campaign and check the rules.

The story origins have been in the Player's Guides for a while. It was pretty apparent from the beginning that you would not likely be able to freely mix-and-match books. That SCAG is open to all story origins and not just Rage of Demons is actually more liberal a ruling than I was expecting. I thought the book would be limited to one story origin.

 

[sigfile]

I played and ran a lot of LFR. The "everything goes!" approach seemed nice at the outset. By the end, keeping up with errata list and various interaction clarifications was exhausting; my poor swordmage (I had him mapped through high paragon) changed directions enough times to make my head spin. I loathed having to tell players when mechanics changed, frequently invalidating unbroken characters because of the potential for abuse in certain builds.

Here we are a year in, and the character restrictions basically amount to "no UA options" and "PHB + (SCAG or choice of other significant character option source)" (and even these may be circumvented via certificates).

I'm with the admins, here. I'd much rather see elements introduced slowly and in a controlled way than have to deal with monthly errata that shatters existing characters down the road.

 

[Mirtek]

LFR had an extensive banlist that was frequently updated.[...]This was quite annoying actually, as the banlist was updated with every new product release, and sometimes between releases (as newly discovered combinations caused problems). Magic items and other character options were also frequently updated with frequent errata.

Sorry, but what are you talking about? I remember nothing of this in LFR, it was the one and only "everything goes" campaign WotC OP ever run.

I just downloaded the latest LFR campaign guide and there's one short table of player ressources on page four whose default answer is "all" in the majority of cases. Only a very, very small set of options is banned basically everything from every player book except for dragonmarks and dark sun specific stuff is allowed (and even a few tibits from non-player books like the MM and MotP is in). Dragon even got a carte blanche allowance that everything but unearthed arcana immediately became allowed the moment the article was put online.

I don't recall a "ban list" (the only thing coming close maybe that you could not have two versions of the same item enhancement) nor frequent updates ever in LFR. Are you sure you're not confusing it with encounters or with the general D&D errata that was released for 4e quite often (but had nothing to do with LFR specifically, since it was as unimportant to D&D as a whole as AL is now and Wotc early withdraw almost all ressources from it, stopping to supervise and pay the authors and revoking it's canon status)?

That is as opposed to the latest Living Greyhawk Campaign Guide, which can still be found in the net and contains hundreds of closed feats, PrCs, spells and domains

I played and ran a lot of LFR. The "everything goes!" approach seemed nice at the outset. By the end, keeping up with errata list and various interaction clarifications was exhausting; my poor swordmage (I had him mapped through high paragon) changed directions enough times to make my head spin. I loathed having to tell players when mechanics changed, frequently invalidating unbroken characters because of the potential for abuse in certain builds.

But that wasn't a LFR problem, that happened because the whole 4e ruleset was frquently errata'ed. Even if LFR had allowed only limited stuff, this stuff would still have been affected with every errata WotC put out

Here we are a year in, and the character restrictions basically amount to "no UA options" and "PHB + (SCAG or choice of other significant character option source)"

Well, here we are a year in, and those are the only options that exist in 5e. PHB; SCAG, EE Player's Companion there aren't any more significant options in existance in 5e as a whole for AL to chose/ban from even if they tried

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

Sorry, but what are you talking about? I remember nothing of this in LFR, it was the one and only "everything goes" campaign WotC OP ever run.

I just downloaded the latest LFR campaign guide and there's one short table of player ressources on page four whose default answer is "all" in the majority of cases. Only a very, very small set of options is banned basically everything from every player book except for dragonmarks and dark sun specific stuff is allowed (and even a few tibits from non-player books like the MM and MotP is in). Dragon even got a carte blanche allowance that everything but unearthed arcana immediately became allowed the moment the article was put online.

I don't recall a "ban list" (the only thing coming close maybe that you could not have two versions of the same item enhancement) nor frequent updates ever in LFR. Are you sure you're not confusing it with encounters or with the general D&D errata that was released for 4e quite often (but had nothing to do with LFR specifically, since it was as unimportant to D&D as a whole as AL is now and Wotc early withdraw almost all ressources from it, stopping to supervise and pay the authors and revoking it's canon status)?

That is as opposed to the latest Living Greyhawk Campaign Guide, which can still be found in the net and contains hundreds of closed feats, PrCs, spells and domains
But that wasn't a LFR problem, that happened because the whole 4e ruleset was frquently errata'ed. Even if LFR had allowed only limited stuff, this stuff would still have been affected with every errata WotC put out
Well, here we are a year in, and those are the only options that exist in 5e. PHB; SCAG, EE Player's Companion there aren't any more significant options in existance in 5e as a whole for AL to chose/ban from even if they tried

On the last copy I had of the LFRPG there are 20 items on that table....12 say ALL.....8 show some kind of restriction. And there is a small list of further restrictions right under the table as well.