|
|
 |
D&D Adventurers League Player & DM Pack |
This product is no longer available from DriveThruRPG.com |
Average Rating:3.6 / 5 |
|
Ratings |
Reviews |
Total |
|
376 |
16 |
|
|
110 |
9 |
|
|
66 |
3 |
|
|
26 |
20 |
|
|
82 |
113 |
|
|  Click to view |
|
|
 |
|
Unfinished at the time of release, full of questionable rule changes and demonstrates a significant lack of regard for community/AL admin input by WotC, as there were changes announced that met with universal backlash that were not changed between initial announcement and release. Admins have commented on social media that some of the more disputed changes are a result of Wizards handing down rulings from on high and not accepting any suggestions or changes, and that's simply not acceptable for a community-driven initiative. Wizards need to take a step back and decide just how they want to handle Adventurer's League. If they're serious about the league, they need to show it and give it some damn budget for things like polish, marketing and layout design, and actually listen to the community and the people they've hired to run it.
Not without ANY redeeming qualities, and I love AL, so I'm not going to give it a 1 star, but it's close. That said, it would be remiss of me not to mention the good with the bad. This is not a complete list, but cons far outweigh the pros if it were to be fully complete.
Pros
- Characters who are built to use unusual equipment aren't screwed because you can buy magical equipment semi-freely with treasure points (i.e. if you want a character who uses a Trident as their signature weapon, you can get a +1, 2 or 3 trident without issue)
- It's harder to powergame - a significant amount of these changes are targeted at so-called power gamers, who run specific modules with a goal to get specific items and magical effects that cannot be obtained any other way. This season changes that by effectively almost standardising rewards across adventures, although specific unlocks are still bound to specific adventures. It should be a lot less common to see people reading ahead and refusing to play adventures that they know don't have any magical loot for their character.
- Loot distribution is far fairer - As all players earn the unlock and treasure points, you don't have to deal with the envy that comes with someone getting awesome magical item x while you get nothing for another 10 sessions until you finally run the one that has something for you in it.
- DM rewards are normalised, so you don't have to work out both rewards for your players and separate DM rewards.
- Adventurer's League is still a fantastic way to promote people playing in stores and to give that feeling of existing as part of a global community of AL players
Cons
- A horrendous amount of things, mostly revolving around gold and immersion-breaking abstract systems that basically make it more and more like a video game, when video games have already for the most part moved away from this kind of token system due to it feeling deeply unsatisfying to players.
- You no longer receive gold from treasure found in adventures. Gold is already worthless in 5e for anything other than bags of holding full of healing potions, but season 8 tries to overcorrect this by making gold scarcer. This would be fine except the way they've done this makes playing earlier season content abstract and awful feeling. There is no reward or motivation for the avaricious character, and now every purchase feels wasteful. Nobody wants to spend their gold on drinks or non-essentials when the amount you earn is rigidly gated.
- The new gold system makes playing a heavy armor user or a Wizard incredibly prohibitive, as they have much higher overheads than other classes. This is somewhat a holdover from core D&D, as full plate is far too expensive already, but there's simply not enough mechanical return on the amount these characters have to invest just to realize their character fantasy of being a knight in shining armour or a super versatile wizard.
- All rewards (magic items, treasure etc.) are completely abstract, which ruins immersion. Many older adventures are completely destroyed by this. For example, you enter a dragon's lair. It's full of nothing. If you rescue the villagers, you will receive nothing but their thanks, because they cannot give you anything. This is obviously less of a problem for a noble paladin, but your avaricious rogue has little to no in-character reason to be there.
- Too often as a DM you're forced to say no to things that make total sense like "Can I take the ____" because of strange abstract rules like the above with no in-universe context.
- As previously mentioned, the season 8 guidance was unfinished and unpolished at release. I can only hope this part of the review becomes outdated. The documentation has clearly been put together through use of simple templates, and the layout of certain things like the log sheet is... really bad. There's clearly a point at which these were no longer assembled by a professional layout or graphic designer. There were also a number of extremely confusing mistakes and typos that hung around for enough time to utterly confuse people (such as the staff of the magi/staff of power mistake)
- There are far too many rules as written that require additional clarification, such as when magical items are unlocked, or completely left out, such as what happens when you play for a fraction of an hour.
- The FAQ has gotten impractically long and is no longer useful, while not answering any of the actual frequently asked questions
- There are no easily searchable web resources to answer these questions
- Too many of the rules are clarified and shared over social media instead of being made a central part of the rule documentation. The AL Facebook group is an unmanageable, unusuable joke that is unable to deal with questions and answers at the scale that is required. At least use something like Reddit that can be searched and filtered... and even then, don't, because these need to be made a part of the rules themselves or part of a searchable web FAQ, because who wants to try and dig through Facebook posts to find the answer to these questions.
I could go on for a lot longer, but this is make or break time for the Adventurer's League. If Wizards do not fix what they have done to Season 8 and soon, as well as giving it more official support and budget, I am not optimistic for the future of the league. And that makes me incredibly sad.
|
|
|
 |
|
Seriously? Experience Checkpoints are fine but treasure points? Why mention gold ingame when it is all virtual anyway?
|
|
|
 |
|
Overall, ugh.
AP vs. XP - no big deal, and I've never been a "everything is cooler with more zeroes" guy. Grade B+.
But it's all downhill from here.
Unlocking magic items - If I wanted to play a video game I would. D&D is supposed to be a different experience. And the new system is absurdly complex. Item sniping, off kilter trade economy, loot runs needed to be addressed, but this solution is clumsy. Grade: C-
New gold and mundane item rules are not fun and immersion killing. Grade F.
Execution and communication was a disjointed mess. Given the changes were teased months ago when XGE came out, the staggered release of information and many typos and errors are hard to excuse. Grade: D
|
|
|
 |
|
Almost nothing is good here.
- Checkpoints instead of exp, so we can reward those who brute force their way, instead of giving exp for social encounters and traps.
- No more item sniping? At the cost of ruining immersion by having no loot, no treasure, and no items. Somehow, defeating a younger dragon in its lair, and ridding a small cavern of kobolds result in the same thing: nothing except ACP, and gold (but only if you level up!)
- No gold? I guess we might as well remove the Wizard feature where they can copy spells. "But they can get gold with treasure points!" I guess they have to choose between spells and items.
- Factions? What happened to "We want to make factions relevant"? Why force players to choose between factions and background features? Meanwhile, I see that we still have a faction requirement for lawful evil characters. It makes me think you don't understand how lawful evil works.
Congratulations, you sanitized D&D's mechanics to balance everything out, but in turn removed majority of the flavor and satisfaction in completing quests.
|
|
|
 |
|
Loot system is too complex, shouldn't have to flip through 5 documents just to find out if I can get an item.
|
|
|
 |
|
Checkpoint system would be nice and all, since it simplifies things, but the loot is gone, treasures are gone. So it's basically a bunch of adventurers doing dangerous stuff without getting paid. Well done WOTC you managed to muck up what was already a good system. It feels so degrading as a DM when all your players ask you where is the reward and you tell them no, then you see them crestfallen and thinking about quitting AL entirely.
|
|
|
 |
|
I feel like I'm parroting a lot of the previous reviews, but that just goes to show how all the negative feedback on Season 8 has been ignored. But here I go anyway: one star, and this is why.
Experience Checkpoints – All in all, not a terrible idea. It allows players to be rewarded with experience for things that are not combat-oriented (which is a good thing). But I already think the old modules did a good job of rewarding players for this (by giving players x amount of XP for helping a certain NPC instead of fighting them, for instance).
An unfortunate side effect of this is that newbie players will come away from their first two-hour module with absolutely nothing to show for it other than abstract points, without even leveling up, something that has already turned off newbies with a potential interest in AL.
Treasure Checkpoints – I have mixed feelings on this. I think players should still feel rewarded when they finish a module and find an item, and treasure points are too abstract to provide that sense of accomplishment.
This system also pretty much guarantees that we are going to see less of the unpopular magic items. Why would you waste your points on a driftglobe or a ring of jumping when you could save up for a bag of holding instead? There could have been a compromise between the two systems – you could have allowed one person to take the item, and given everyone else in the party treasure points and the ability to purchase. This gets rid of “item sniping” by virtue of magic item count and it allows flavorful and not-so-combat-useful items to continue existing in the game.
Trading Items – If the point of this system was to make AL more accessible and easier to get into, then I can say that you failed miserably when you added the new restrictions to trading. One now needs to cross-reference the DMG (which players shouldn’t NEED to have) with the ALPG and the ALCC just to figure out if an item is tradable with another.
Problematic Items – I feel bad for a lot of people who lost some of their items. There are a few who’ve grown attached to their sentient sun swords and shield guardians and consider them companions.
Gold – The single worst change in all of Season 8. Clerics can’t cast revivify, wizards can’t copy spells, paladins and fighters can’t afford plate armor. Parties of valiant adventurers will slay dragons, venture into demilich’s lairs, and come away with… nothing… to show for their efforts but a promissory note that says you’ll get gold when you level up and The Satisfaction of a Job Well Done™.
I also have to give a special mention to how poorly these chages were implemented and rolled out. There was less than two weeks between the "final" version of the new rules and the start of Season 8, and still, there were so many typos, errors, and ambiguities in the released documents. People had to check Twitter and two closed Facebook groups for clarifications and announcements. There were even huge changes to the ALCC after the season had already started that sent a lot of people scrambling. Total mess.
|
|
|
 |
|
New rules are confusing to new players and changes to reward granting makes them feel like the adventure they played means next to nothing. They don't want to take any risks, no longer care for exploration since "if we make it to the end is basically the same anyway". Had some people leave because they felt like it's no longer a proper RPG but a crappy MMO.
|
|
|
 |
|
As much as change to experience and magic items was not that bad, the change to gold on the other hand disconnected the game from its roots. How lame it must be to be an Adventurer, risk your life and when you see a pile of gold in the woods, you cannot pick it up...
Secondly, adding new options for crafting and not solving pricing issues between ALPG and XGtE is just either pure laziness or something much worse - You do not care about the game...
|
|
|
 |
|
Disconnect between risk vs. reward
If the players discover a chest there is no reason to open it if they reap no additional rewards.
Is it a mimic? Is it trapped? Unless the core objectives are met by finding some item within a chest the once proud tradition of looting is now gone.
DM's are now forced to pit players against dragons with a hordes of gold where players risk their PC's life and limb only to have no reward and any and all magic items must be bought with "treasure points" that they may not even have enough of to acquire the item.
While I appreciate the idea of trying to normalise loot and gold the gold values are virtually destitute.
Death becomes a tremendous setback to ones own wealth with the new gold values and the idea of affording expensive component spells or even scribing high level spells into a wizard's spellbook are a pipedream. I am not sure how the developers considered this a reasonable amount of gold for players to subsist off of given the amount of wealth in previous seasons readily available.
Disconnect between the playerbase and the designers.
This is not news to anyone who has been following the few drafts of proposed changes until now. Many players were vocally protesting them and the game's developers ignored them. Unfortunately for them they are also the people who play their game and they will probably take their business elsewhere.
Disconnect between new and old season characters.
Subsequently any characters created under the new rules will be inferior to those of older seasons because older PC's will have so much more disposable income to work with.
|
|
|
 |
|
Nonsensical rule changes designed to ensure the AL experience is the same for every single player. It no longer matters what you do as long as you complete the main objective, you advance toward a new level at proportionally the same rate as everyone else. There is no incentive to pursue treasure or explore as everybody is aware there is no gold reward for any risk they incur. The magic items that arise throughout the adventure do not wind up in the players' hands and so the adventure ends with absolutely zero fanfare and sense of accomplishment. If you play enough, you get an item from either a list or one of the items you weren't able to get previously because it magically disappeared then reappears.
Delivery of the rules is rushed because what do these people care? It's not like they get paid to write this stuff up. There is little to no transparency as to why anything is done. There is no discussion. Just a claim that they are "listening" to our feedback and acknowledgement of our questions/concerns, without any sort of response. Any negative feedback is met with shifting of the blame to "decisions passed down by higher management".
|
|
|
 |
|
Banning 90% of items from wotc hardcovers in the name of balance while giving every t3 character access to staff of the magi really summarizes how dumb this whole 'balancing patch' is.
These new rules are extremely complicated for new players (i can or can't keep items? what table is the item on? does this effect persist or not?) and give AL a weird meta 'Dnd on rails' feel even more than it already had. Locking story events from hardcovers to the mod really gives the feel that nothing the players do really matters. AL at my store had ceased due to these changes.
|
|
|
 |
|
If I wanted to play an MMO style game, I would play WoW and not D&D. Honestly this is a disaster of a release and will be killing AL for a Lot of people, me included. I will be sticking around and messing around at Cons with my powered characters though.
|
|
|
 |
|
Great improvements to the rules for season 8. It's really cut down on a lot of the cheesy stuff players could do, and it's made logging, leveling, and figuring rewards a lot easier. Not to mention it encourages things in AL besides killing everything in sight.
|
|
|
 |
|
Pro's:
- Favoring the almost milestone-like system of leveling up is a great model to follow.
- Finally turning problem magic items into story awards is something members have been requesting for years now (since PotA in 2015).
- Allowing players to have the same chance to procure a magic item instead of fighting over it will abolish the magic item snipers in the community.
Con's:
- Mundane treasure should have never been placed inside the same model as advancement. This creates a huge imbalance for characters with classes that require large sums of gold to procure spells (wizards) vs anyone else who has diverse spellcasting potential. I'm sure this will kill the majority of purchases with Fai Chen at conventions (pending changes to the Fai Chen program of course). Dragon hordes and instances where characters are expected to have large sums (such as paying for spellcasting components) are gone now so sources of income to cover costs are questionable.
- The players will need to obtain multiple documents to understand/purchase any of the magic items they may come across/trade. It's more paperwork than casual players care to deal with (getting regulars to fill out the logsheet's are hard enough!)
- Converting characters to the new platform is a bit of a struggle if you have more than lets say 10ish personalities on paper. The steps for converstion of XP to points can be daunting to the point of just finding someone else's converter application (ALonlinetools.net thank you) and using that.
- Treasure points being a tier restricted resource is a bit odd. This entry could go either way, but since the players need to keep up with which tier the treasure points came from, it just creates a barrier that is difficult to work around. It makes sense to me, however explaining a point system that works on a tier structure (procure the ALPGv8.2) , that can only be used to purchase a list of treasure (grab the ALFAQ8.2) or purchase from an unlocked item (grab your adventure log/content catalog) gets very long winded. Now if you want to trade, you'll need to verify magic items. So (get your Content Catalog) find the magic item table and tier (DMG/CC) and verify it against this doc to make sure the rarity and table match. Heck, I think you see where this is going...
- So many of the rules for each adventure changed that it's difficult to understand them all at once. Every day since this came out i've found something new that will put off more of my players. First was CoS guidance for the Amber Temple being retroactive (which nuked two of my players characters because they no longer met the requirements to multi-class because of this). Another was the Tomb of Anhilliation which made the armillary stat increase obsolete (which, tbh, one of my characters got and changed how I played him up to level 20...). Third, and this one is something that people are now going homebrew after, is the SKT change. Players liked the random rolls for treasure. Yes its understandable why this needed to change (loot runs) however, this felt like real D&D to most of my playerbase.
- Factions? The background changes to factions make them pointless now. The faction agenda was never a strong selling point, but the community turned it into one. Characters were built around the ideals of factions, and portrayed their best qualities through adventuring...
- I'm sure there are more, but I'll change this review to 3 stars if they can just fix the mundane treasure. That's where this season went wrong. Getting rid of mundane treasure just robs players of the D&D experience they came here for. Casual players don't have the time for where this league is going and I can't force them to stay.
I'm still going to run games because I've met some fantastic people through this program, but these changes just break my heart when I see/hear my players sound and look so defeated when they review their characters and just can't even play them as they were developed anymore.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|