Season 8 Changes (Adventurers League)

[MiraMels]

What's problematic about a Mithral Splintmail +1?

Per DMG it's effectively an uneccessary expensive plate armor without stealth penalty. So what? Doesn't reduce the the armor proficiency needed to use it and does not even reduce the weight (as if that ever were an issue).

It's not a disruptive item at all, but it is technically not an item that is supposed to exist. Mithral armor and +X armor are separate items, so i reckon this is just housekeeping.

 

[Oofta]

I could be remembering incorrectly (posting from work, don't have time to research), but I think there was mention of some mods possibly giving out bonus gold as well as unlocking magic items?

Unlock items, yes. You will be able to purchase special items if you have enough treasure tokens. No mention of gold that I can find other than what you get for leveling.

 

[Pauper]

So we've gone from 'D&D as a system doesn't presume you'll ever have magic weapons; the combat system is balanced that way via bounded accuracy' to 'we assume every character will have a +1 weapon of their choice before reaching 5th level'? I guess third-edition thinking never really dies.

We're also deciding that a fairly straightforward 'if you find a magic item in an adventure, one character can have it' system needs to be scrapped in favor of a more brain-bending 'if you find a magic item in an adventure, everyone gets to unlock the item for purchase, which you can do later if you don't have enough karma points saved to do it now'? The AL's logging requirements, lax as they were, were still one of the great advantages over the Pathfinder Society system, especially when explaining it to new players. Now, that benefit is lost.

I suppose the changes aren't all bad -- housekeeping to eliminate stuff like Hazirawn (which, while amusing for some, caused more headaches for others than the effort was really worth) is long overdue. But attempts to clean up downtime activities appear to just create odd inconsistencies: for example, the 'copying spells' downtime activity now must be done in the presence of a DM, while trading magic items (which has conditions that players might not be able to adjudicate, like whether a magic item has an "unusual property") doesn't. And the rules on spellcasting services need to be seriously cleaned up -- the text introducing the table seems to suggest that any spell can be purchased as a divine spell (The text should say, "Characters acquire the services of NPC spellcasters by purchasing divine spell scrolls from the below list, which the spellcaster then casts free of charge on the purchasing character." And the 'dead character pays for Raise Dead' example is particularly brain-melting: a disintegrated character can purchase a scroll of True Resurrection and have it cast on his behalf?

I'm guessing the admins are happy, even excited about these changes, or they wouldn't be happening. But for me, it's too much, and most of these changes seem too arbitrary to be more useful than the rules they're replacing. Fortunately, I'll be able to play AL at GenCon under Season 7 rules; after that, it'll be a long, involved conversation with myself as to whether or not I want to update my stable of AL characters for the new rules, or decide that, if the admins are that enamored of the Pathfinder Society rules structure, why I wouldn't just choose to play that instead.

--
Pauper

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I’m still parsing through the changes. I’ll be waiting until we’re finished with the hardcover module my AL-ish group is playing through to implement them.

The new XP system will make for a smoother leveling experience – currently, since our group only runs for two hours a session, sometimes they get a pittance, other times they get all the XP.

The treasure check points are going to take some work to implement in my group. And I’m not entirely sure on them, to be honest. Like I said, we’re AL-ish, so I suppose I don’t need to use them if I really don’t want to. I’m not a big fan of the magic item economy, nor suddenly someone showing up with a magic item out of the blue. But in the AL at large, where it’s more episodic, that won’t be as much of a problem.

 

[Jester David]

So we've gone from 'D&D as a system doesn't presume you'll ever have magic weapons; the combat system is balanced that way via bounded accuracy' to 'we assume every character will have a +1 weapon of their choice before reaching 5th level'? I guess third-edition thinking never really dies.

We're also deciding that a fairly straightforward 'if you find a magic item in an adventure, one character can have it' system needs to be scrapped in favor of a more brain-bending 'if you find a magic item in an adventure, everyone gets to unlock the item for purchase, which you can do later if you don't have enough karma points saved to do it now'? The AL's logging requirements, lax as they were, were still one of the great advantages over the Pathfinder Society system, especially when explaining it to new players. Now, that benefit is lost.

I suppose the changes aren't all bad -- housekeeping to eliminate stuff like Hazirawn (which, while amusing for some, caused more headaches for others than the effort was really worth) is long overdue. But attempts to clean up downtime activities appear to just create odd inconsistencies: for example, the 'copying spells' downtime activity now must be done in the presence of a DM, while trading magic items (which has conditions that players might not be able to adjudicate, like whether a magic item has an "unusual property") doesn't. And the rules on spellcasting services need to be seriously cleaned up -- the text introducing the table seems to suggest that any spell can be purchased as a divine spell (The text should say, "Characters acquire the services of NPC spellcasters by purchasing divine spell scrolls from the below list, which the spellcaster then casts free of charge on the purchasing character." And the 'dead character pays for Raise Dead' example is particularly brain-melting: a disintegrated character can purchase a scroll of True Resurrection and have it cast on his behalf?

I'm guessing the admins are happy, even excited about these changes, or they wouldn't be happening. But for me, it's too much, and most of these changes seem too arbitrary to be more useful than the rules they're replacing. Fortunately, I'll be able to play AL at GenCon under Season 7 rules; after that, it'll be a long, involved conversation with myself as to whether or not I want to update my stable of AL characters for the new rules, or decide that, if the admins are that enamored of the Pathfinder Society rules structure, why I wouldn't just choose to play that instead.

--
Pauper

It’s for Adventurer’s League not D&D in general. Likely less than 5% of campaigns will use these rules.
There are tens of millions of D&D players and only two thousand game stores that run AL.

 

[Oofta]

Good grief. There's some discussion about gold over in twitter. https://twitter.com/skerrit7h3green/status/1022875706827657216?s=21

TLDR: want gold? Spend treasure points to buy armor. Sell the armor.

 

[nswanson27]

The biggest thing I wanted changed was the magic item trading rules. How was not seen as something that needed addressing?

 

[Mirtek]

So we've gone from 'D&D as a system doesn't presume you'll ever have magic weapons; the combat system is balanced that way via bounded accuracy' to 'we assume every character will have a +1 weapon of their choice before reaching 5th level'? I guess third-edition thinking never really dies.

Didn't AL already go there with the option to purchase from your faction? Alas, too late for me ...

after that, it'll be a long, involved conversation with myself as to whether or not I want to update my stable of AL characters for the new rules, or decide that, if the admins are that enamored of the Pathfinder Society rules structure, why I wouldn't just choose to play that instead.

It's easier than you think. For me it was when those stupid Ravenloft session rules were announced. I first tried my best to argue against those, but once it became clear that the admins are too enamored with this crap, I had this conversation with myself, decided that I would have none of that and have stopped playing D&D.

 

[CapnZapp]

Part of the problem was inconsistency. Some PCs ended up with legendary items at level 6, but were always broke, others didn't get much magic but had more gold than they could spend by level 4 so would do things like buy 50 healing potions.

Home campaigns can handle this kind of stuff, more of an issue for AL.

And the root cause was of course that gold was worthless - they removed the ability to buy magic items but kept the same gold gains as in previous editions (give or take).

The cheap nasty solution is to remove gold; the much better solution should have been to add an utility-based magic item economy.

 

[Caliban]

Good grief. There's some discussion about gold over in twitter. https://twitter.com/skerrit7h3green/status/1022875706827657216?s=21

TLDR: want gold? Spend treasure points to buy armor. Sell the armor.

Bwahahah!