I do have to disagree with a previous poster about objecting to the system. Many DM's don't often get a chance to play. When we do, it's nice to have the option to do something other than a level 1 character - especially if there is an interesting higher level adventure.
As you note just below, you already have that option with the existing DM awards. The new DM Quests are just icing on an already hearty cake.
I added up what I've earned DMing as a lark recently and prior to the new rewards, I had earned 20K xp 500+ downtime days, and around 10K gold between summer of 2014 to February 2016 DMing virtually every week. That was good enough to let me start a tier 2 character with no magic equipment other than the current season DM cert
That's pretty good. Why would you need to start with a magic item, given that 5E doesn't presume that any character will ever get a magic item? Again, it just sounds to me like people are asking for a license to be munchkins.
Now, I can realistically work out having a level 11 or 12 character for a tier 3 adventure (there are 2 DDALs plus the latter sections of RoT, OoA, PoA, and Epics) (plus Author Only adventures) that can fit into the characters my friends are playing within 3-4 months. It's a smart idea.
Wait, why would you need to create an entirely new Tier 3 character to play with your friends? Couldn't you just, y'know, convince someone to take the DM role from time to time (not so coincidentally earning even more DM Quest XP), and level up your existing character that way?
Basically what we're doing is creating a two-pronged system for playing AL material -- the traditional way and the munchkin way, the latter of which lets you begin with exactly the classes and magic items you want to break your table. It's a horrible idea, just when it seemed as though the campaign staff had a handle on how to keep min-maxers from overwhelming the campaign.
it is unlikely more than a couple dozen DMs nationwide will hit that mark (I likely won't be one of them).
I think you underestimate how well-structured the campaign already is: Suits of the Mists was just released this week, so my group will be starting it next week. By the time we finish it (we run a bi-weekly game), DDAL 4-2 through 4-5 will be released, which gives us enough material** to run through May with the release of DDAL 4-6 through 4-8 (even if we level out of tier 1 and can't actually play 4-6, we can move along to 4-7 and still have enough content to keep us busy until the next set of modules drop on June 1), and we can schedule one 'special session' over the Fourth of July weekend to keep up with the module release schedule so that we can finish DDAL 4-14 on the last week of July, just in time to be ready for the new season.
** - Some of this is an accident of the calendar -- since April has five Fridays, we'll actually get in three sessions, and since 4-2 and 4-3 are two-hour mods, we'll likely finish them both in one session.
Players who finish the season will be level 10 and likely have at least two magic items, given the number of mods being run. A DM who runs all those mods will finish with 35,000XP, two scrolls or potions, and a rare magic item just from the DM Quests, plus over 10,000 XP from actually running the modules. So you've got basically a level 10 character as well! Except that, instead of having to have played your character, running the risk of spending your gold getting raised or otherwise finding out your character has weak spots you need to shore up, your guy can spring fully formed from your forehead, ready to abuse tier 2 tables (and very soon, tier 3 tables!) at your leisure!
I might see the argument in favor of having DM characters stay equivalent to PCs if there are flavorful story awards in Season 4 that allow players to develop their PCs in interesting ways and thus let those characters have wrinkles DM characters don't have. As it stands, though, characters built with DM XP are strictly superior to characters built through normal play; the drawback used to be that a DM character had to play (and thus expose herself to the same possible setbacks a PC has to deal with) to 'keep up' with other PCs. Absent that restriction, I think you'll find all the 'best' characters are DM characters now. And I don't think that's good for the game.
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Pauper