Source
r/AdventurersLeague•
Adaptation01

Why does AL hate brand new groups and players now?

Incoming Wall of text.

So I just started a group in a slighter larger town in an area surrounded by small towns and a couple weeks ago the core players of the group hit T2 for the first time. so they were a group of 5 level 5 characters and I put them in an APL 6 AL mod, Mayhem in the Earthspur mines. Two of them got turned to stone by the BBEG in the encounter. Now as brand new level 5's under the new system, they no longer get faction charity. If they spend zero gold through the first 4 levels, they would each have been sitting at 300 gold (Please correct me if I'm wrong). They would also have zero treasure points to purchase scrolls. So now unless the party spends 3/5 of all of the money they have made up to that point on greater restorations they would have lost 2/5 of their adventuring party. Now what happens if something like that happens again the next adventure, they still haven't made more money yet what if someone dies? The cleric would have exactly enough for 1 revivify. He could use a scroll but now clerics are forced to spend their treasure points on scrolls just to keep their party members alive or the party has to have a fund of scrolls in case of death. How does this facilitate fun and story for new players if they now have a much greater chance of just flat out losing their characters with not enough resources to get them back?

/rant

Posted Jul 27, 2018, 11:43 AM UTC

1667
BokuMS•

Everybody is getting screwed basically except for the obsessive optimizers. Casual experiences are no longer allowed, everything needs to be planned out.

21
LtPowers•

Why do you say that? Can't we just adventure as we've been adventuring and get treasure that sounds interesting when we encounter it?

5
BokuMS•

You might be able to theoretically play dumb and ignore that everything is streamlined, but I honestly can't do that. I will know when I'll be able to get what because when I hear 4+9 I know it is 13 and I can't pretend to not know that.

5
LtPowers•

I'm sorry, I'm not following you. Can you explain with an example?

3
BokuMS•

For example, currently I don't know when a magic item shows up and whether I'll be able to get it. Now I'll know when I'll have to choose a new item and know I'll be able to get it. I'll know that I will be wasting treasure points if I don't have this decision ready, which I simply cannot feign ignorance of because I know my character will be delayed down the line.

Do you get it now?

5
dalilewok•

To my understanding theses rules don’t go into effect until the end of August when the new season comes out. Also these rules aren’t “finalized” just yet. When the death curse and season 7 came out there where a lot of complaints and things were eventually fixed or changed.

12
Adaptation01OP•

here's hoping...

9
CritHitLights•

¯\(ツ)/¯ https://i.imgur.com/Ev0TACw.jpg

6
_-Eagle-_•

Trying to argue with Travis is like trying to argue with a wall.

He should never have been given the authority he has.

14
jfuller82•

You realize that Travis only has but so much authority. He isnt an actual direct employee of WotC. Your ire should be direct to Chris Lindsay since he makes the rules.

4
CKBear•

Travis is a prick and should be fired.

1
wordsampersand•

Outside of his particular style of Facebook posting, are you familiar with all of the other stuff he does for AL? What does he do?

0
hybridfive•

He authors modules. Not just for AL, but this is the AL list. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/16706424.Travis_Woodall

IMO the secret mission rules create a benefit to modules he's written. His modules have an above average amount of secret missions.

4
BokuMS•

No better. https://imgur.com/a/cvOoDRh

2
bravo2056•

It's actually Mike Mearls who created this

3
BokuMS•

I didn't claim anything to the contrary, but seeing that even an AL admin isn't open for receiving criticism is a problem.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

0
swp68•

That's a good point: Why do they KEEP coming out with things that their player-base HATES?! Why don't they care about the player-base or what it wants/likes/needs?! It's THEIR game, but they'd all be flipping burgers if it weren't for the players PLAYING it! Just another sign of the times I guess where the rich step on the commoners and then complain they didn't say "Thank you sir, may I have another?". Maybe Pathfinder 2.0 will hit it off...

1
kyrinthic•

Because ultimately, they are an extension of wizards of the coast, and wizards requires them to use the stuff they print, even when its garbage. But we don't get the name of the wotc person pushing the agenda, just the AL people forced to present it, so they get all the heat.

1
SHavens•

There's going in debt, but that means they won't have the level of magic gear they really need for higher tier stuff. Going into an adventure undergeared is a disaster waiting to happen. Which could lead to a full wipe, or going into yet more debt. So the cycle never ends.

Don't they also only get a treasure point once every 2 hours? So if they somehow need true resurrection that alone is 24 hours of playtime to pay off.

6
Adaptation01OP•

Exactly the issue I'm having, Treasure points boiled down are now a finite resource. One that you need to help you stay alive (items) and one that you spend when you screw up (scrolls). New players who are bound to "screw up" because they are new will be forever hamstrung until they learn. Which likely won't be fun to them.

5
SHavens•

Yeah, it really only seems to be for people who like to use optimized builds where every little thing is accounted for. They'll do better against hard stuff because of their experience and how their character plays, but that discourages variety and trying weird things. Everyone I know who has gotten those flying shoes loves them and uses them all the time, but probably wouldn't pick them if they had to choose them over something more generally useful.

This reminds me of game designers wanting to keep players from breaking the game by removing freedom. The ones who were going to try to break it will find something they overlooked, and the regular players who don't care about that all suffer for it.

4
RollPersuasion•

Going into an adventure undergeared is a disaster waiting to happen.

I thought 5e was balanced for players to technically never need magic items?

3
SHavens•

Not from what I've seen. Higher CR creatures get a lot of resistances/immunities to damage. Some classes would be essentially useless in some fights without access to magic gear. Then there's things like puddings, and without money they could wreck people without magic gear since they corrode regular armor and weapons. I have a paladin without magic weapons or armor, and he feels severely underpowered compared to everyone else. Without his flying boots he probably would have died a couple times.

They also tried to make it so people don't need healers on their team, but without money for potions, that's a lot less true.

If players are smart, and really work together, they could do it though.

5
RollPersuasion•

In the rare case something has a resistance or immunity, most classes have options to obtain magic attacks with spell attacks, Shillelagh, and the like.

If everyone has magic weapons, resistances and immunities are pointless and might as well not exist.

I run a low magic weapon/armor campaign. The only time they've had an issue was against a golem and they had to come up with creative ways to kill it which I liked a lot more than just "well we all have magic weapons, so it doesn't matter".

1
kyrinthic•

While true to an extent, there are certain assumptions about gear that the system still makes. Mainly that you will acquire some form of magic damage by around Tier 2. Most classes that do not use weapons to make attacks get a class feature to get around magic resistance around that level for that reason.

They also assume that you will have access to some amount of magic items. It isn't like older systems where you are expected X boosts to certain stats by level Y, but there is an assumption that the players will have options, and have made choices to build around enemy resists or the like.

1
AlwaysliveMtgo•

yay wealth inequality.....the game.

2
jfuller82•

They never would have gotten faction charity under the old rules either. That only applies to characters under level 5.

5
Adaptation01OP•

That's what I was saying, at level 5 they no longer have access to faction charity, sorry if I wasn't clear.

3
jfuller82•

Ah now I see what you meant. Well in any case, there is guidance on going into TP debt to buy scrolls if needed for a situation like you've described.

4
Adaptation01OP•

That doesn't feel good either though. Good news guys, those cool items you wanted, nahh you have to spend your future points to keep playing.

4
AmbulatoryApesuit•

Indentured servitude as a game mechanic.

12
Why_T•

Think of it as owing the church of Helm for their gratitude. It could create a nice bit of story for your character.

1
echofoxtrothotel•

Why do they have zero treasure points in this scenario?

3
Adaptation01OP•

Because you can't spend your T1 points on T2 scrolls per the rules.

edit and it was their first ever T2 mod as a group

2
echofoxtrothotel•

Oh. Your phrasing was just bad. It's not that they'd have zero points, it's that they'd have zero points available for that tier of purchase.

However, you may want to read the rules again for more clarity. None of that matters for resurrections. Welcome to debt.

Dead Character Pays for Raise Dead. Dead characters that can’t afford the treasure point cost of a spell scroll may incur a treasure checkpoint debt as needed to purchase one. This debt must be satisfied before treasure checkpoints can be used for anything else. Dead characters ignore availability restrictions on whatever spell scroll is needed to return them to life. For example, a disintegrated 5th-level character may spend twelve treasure checkpoints to purchase a spell scroll of true resurrection, even though it’s normally available only to tier 3 and 4 characters.

3
Adaptation01OP•

Hmm, that makes things SLIGHTLY better, but I still think there is a happy medium to be had with reasonable amounts of gold people can amass over an adventuring career.

2
echofoxtrothotel•

I'm with you on the gold. My favorite character is a wizard so spell copying is going to be rough. I'd be okay if they made a tweak of you can spend gold + regular DT or no gold and double DT or something similar. I get the idea is to limit wizards from knowing all spells and just trading with every other player they encounter but that's kind of their thing.

5
Taurondir•

OK, no offense here, but the whole point of GM's is to control encounters. There is no reason for one GM to turn multiple people to stone in one encounter in the same way there is no reason to wipe the entire party just because a GM randomly rolls an encounter and you end up fighting a Dragon "well, I ROLLED it, now deal with it", and even IF it happens, the encounter could be resolved with bribes, reasoning with it, hiding from it, etc etc, if you have a GM that simply makes it fly overhead doing Breath Weapon fly-by's then I don't know what to tell you.

The fact that your GM decided to go for a second "stoning" makes no sense. If BBEG's everywhere were being played purely to "kill", then every James Bond movie would be EXTREMELY short. Also, there is zero reason why a GM can't simply let you drag a player to town, and because your party did something good for someone in town, just have a Cleric pop down, and because you "conveniently" found a 100 GP gem on the BBEG's, burn the gem off and get a Greater Restoration, as long as say, you also do a side quest for the Cleric.

We are not playing Diablo 3 HardCore Mode. There should never be anything written in stone in such a way that the game just turns into a bunch of numbers. The point of a human GM is flexibility, if it ONLY becomes "your dice rolls against the GM dice rolls" it's time to just go back to computer games.

The only time a heavy rule enforcement should be in place is convention events, to keep all tables playing the same thing better balanced. At all other times, by talking to the GM at the end of an adventure, you should be able to work deals out for situations like the one above, without going broke.

​

1