Core+1

[Tony Vargas]

Core+1 is a ‘rule’, only in the sense of Adventure League and so on make it a rule. So, many home games wont follow it.

However, Core+1 seems a ‘policy’ that WotC implements for 100% of official D&D products. The implementation seems to relate to quality control and republication of content. In this sense, every home game is affected by it, whether they subscribe to it or not.

I suspect it also relates to pace of publication and controlling development effort. If you only have to make a new game element functional with the elements in it's own supplement and those in the PH, that's a /lot/ easier than trying to make it play nice with a whole installed-base of 5e canon (even at 5e's slow pace of release).

So it's up to the DM to decide: stick to Core +1 (or better yet, PH-only with feats & MCing turned off), or 'void the warranty' and take responsibility for the state of his own campaign?

And that's just yet more DM Empowerment.

 

[CapnZapp]

Not sure why that would exempt them from testing content interaction between non PHB books. If spell + feat combo is unbalanced, then unless the spell and the feat are both limited to "self", then you still get the interaction of the two of them within a party.

Hence, the need to test.

They are exempted from nothing, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The bottom line is: they're trying to squiggle out of having to playtest their material used together, as most groups do. Full stop.

 

[jasper]

I would think that, since AL is played in FR, a cleric of a monotheistic deity would be wildly out of place and pure heresy.

Plus the deity would go broke when it was his turn to buy the round of drinks with his fellow gawds.

 

[gyor]

I'll point out that PHB +1 is functionally Core +1 in practice because anything in the DMG and MM that is legal to use at all is doesn't actually count towards PHB +1 anyways. Example picking monsters for summoning spells and animal companions for rangers.

Still the PHB +1 rule makes no sense when all the post PHB player content could fit into one book with room to spare.

 

[jgsugden]

How do people want them to interact with the Core +1 / PHB +1 rule when it comes to the inevitable Psionics release?

Option 1: Psionic classes, powers/spells, items, and races are all contained in one Supplement book with no further support ever planned (as the +1 rule would prohibit us from mixing the supplements)?

Option 2: Psionics introduced in a new CORE/PHB book so that it does not count as a supplement and the Psionic classes and there is room to release supplements supporting those classes?

Option 3: Something else? What?

And, assuming we're getting an Artificer in a book sometime as a separate class, would you want that class/book to be handled similarly?

 

[Yaarel]

How do people want them to interact with the Core +1 / PHB +1 rule when it comes to the inevitable Psionics release?

Option 1: Psionic classes, powers/spells, items, and races are all contained in one Supplement book with no further support ever planned (as the +1 rule would prohibit us from mixing the supplements)?

Option 2: Psionics introduced in a new CORE/PHB book so that it does not count as a supplement and the Psionic classes and there is room to release supplements supporting those classes?

Option 3: Something else? What?

And, assuming we're getting an Artificer in a book sometime as a separate class, would you want that class/book to be handled similarly?

If Dark Sun has to rewrite all of the core rules because of the need to reflavor them for the setting, then it might be a ‘Dark Sun Players Handbook’.

So, option 2 might work.

 

[Mistwell]

They are exempted from nothing, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The bottom line is: they're trying to squiggle out of having to playtest their material used together, as most groups do. Full stop.

But their playtests DO test materials from multiple books together. Do you have contradictory evidence or were you just speculating?

 

[CapnZapp]

But their playtests DO test materials from multiple books together. Do you have contradictory evidence or were you just speculating?

Don't ask me - ask those convinced PHB+1 means each supplement is balanced only with the PHB.

 

[Mistwell]

Don't ask me - ask those convinced PHB+1 means each supplement is balanced only with the PHB.

Oh OK, fair enough.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Don't ask me - ask those convinced PHB+1 means each supplement is balanced only with the PHB.

Playtested, anyway.
I'm not sanguine with the assumption that balance is even an intended deliverable of said playtesting. Balance is something the DM can impose on his campaign, if he really wants to.