Search results

I could be snarky and say that WotC abandoned any pretense for QA when they announced 5E in the first place**, but I'll satisfy myself by merely clarifying my point: The idea that 'WotC should philosophically test their material against all other material for balance, therefore they do' is not...

"It also is a strong choice if you use the multi classing rules and you might be playing a fighter or some other character who's not a magic user who decides to become a wizard and weave that magic in with their martial abilities." So the Wizard actually gets zero archetypes in XGtE... -- Pauper

Congratulations, then! The designers have explicitly stated, on multiple occasions, that all 'secondary' D&D books will only require the PH, DMG, and MM to be playable -- the next hardcover adventure will not require Xanathar's Guide for play, and thus isn't guaranteed to be tested against...

I do follow Crawford on Twitter, and he's generally big on stating how DMs are the 'gateway' between the rules in the book and the game at the table -- he even put an explanation into the Sage Advice Compendium about how allowing the DM to be the 'filter' makes the designers' jobs easier as they...

I believe you've been given that info, Skerrit, but I'm curious -- if this is truly a core design philosophy, why isn't it recommended for non-AL play as well? Is it because AL DMs aren't given the authority to forbid combinations they view as degenerate or 'broken' by fiat? -- Pauper

Yeah, the two things aren't even in the same category in a mechanical sense. Backgrounds are almost wholly inconsequential mechanically in Adventurer's League: probably the most consequential one is the Acolyte background, and even that background's effectiveness is highly dependent on season...

Another reason to allow a global Life domain option: the Life domain is the only domain detailed in the Player's Basic Rules. As such, a player who hasn't (yet) spent any money on the game can still make an AL-legal cleric of any deity. -- Pauper

Let me say that while I might not be wholly on-board with the concept, I appreciate the roll-out of this AL feature much more than the recent Mike Mearls 'I'll make you a certed thing for AL' debacle. In this case, we have an announcement, backed up by admins, with associated info for how to use...

I doubt the adventures will cause your players to leave solely based on their quality, but if you've got existing issues with your players, it's possible something in them might make things worse. For example, while many will cite portability and replayability as key features of Adventurers...

I'll disagree with you about Chelimber's Descent, but if you know your group is more into killing the monsters and taking their stuff, then sure, you'd be better off swapping that out for a more traditional module -- traps and puzzles aren't necessarily appreciated by all groups. But given that...

For me, it's not even the likely brokenness of the sub-class/race option that rankles (though I agree with KahlessNestor that the sub-class/race option almost certainly will be broken, simply because there's no obvious playtesting being done here). There's nothing to prevent Mike Mearls from...

Edit: Missed that the OP was running an 'AL style' game without being 'AL legal'. -- Pauper

Wait, what? Hazirawn not being removed from the campaign was the tip of the iceberg that convinced AL admins that they had to...make the campaign overpowered by removing Blackrazor? The handling of Blackrazor is an outlier, when Wave, Whelm, the Ring of Winter, Bookmark... Guess I've been too...

I'd argue that you're exaggerating to help make your point. Case in point: I'll agree that Hazirawn wasn't handled well, but at least part of that problem is that Hazirawn was written before the rules for intelligent magic items were even finalized -- the big problem with Hazirawn isn't so...

Let's contrast this Mearls gimmick with the Tortle Package, just to give you a clearer idea of my issue with the former: The Tortle Package, from all indications, is a pretty slapdash piece of work. (Really, guys? The question of 'what happens when a tortle wielding a shield withdraws into its...

It's not envy, it's an understanding that maintaining an Organized Play campaign isn't like running your own home game. In a home game, you can go ahead and throw whatever you want into the game and if things blow up, you can just start the game over. That's not really an option with OP -- if...

It's not -- Mearls posited the option as an explicit ExtraLife activity, so anything he'd raise would presumably be donated to charity. I disagree with that argument on principle, but it doesn't apply here, as the money raised by WotC isn't being spent on the campaign. It's in effect just a...

*sigh* Here we go again. That link above goes to a special cert Mearls put together for his DDAO module he ran at Winter Fantasy 2016 that allowed the bearer to play a Mystic (the psionic playtest character class) legally in Adventurers League. Based on the conversation in that thread, and that...

Changes from Season 5 to Season 7 DM Quests: (Note: some of these changes may have occurred in the Season 6 DM Quests, but I don't still have my copy of that quest card to verify.) Initiate - must run 2 hours of Adventurer's League content to gain the reward in the DM's packet. (Previously...

Apparently there's some delay over determining the mechanism by which the charity will receive the proceeds from the Package, so the release of the Package has been delayed until Tuesday, September 19. Further delays are possible. -- Pauper