Any good stories? Horror stories? I don't see much talk about it here, so I'm curious how much of the boardbase does it

Glad you like it! Rhyming on the spot is not my strong suit, but I'm gonna give it a shot! Might go for pointless riddles as a gimmick if I can make up good ones before hand.

I dont plan to multiclass this time around, but I do wanna try wizard (divination + paladin) just to see if I can pull it off.

How is AL with handing out magic items? How viable is trading if you get stuck with le random loot you don't need/want. And what about crafting? Ever gotten formulas as a quest reward?

Figures, but the posting for the one in the area were all saying the DM is great, so fingers crossed it's my kind of "great"

If death is just kinda waved away, what gets people to force themselves back to their 1, boredom?

Hey man yeah I definitely think it's a creative character. If I were you I'd have some Dr Seuss on hand and blatantly rip that off for fun.. as to your other questions they're a bit more complex so I'll explain them when I'm at my desktop and not on my phone

Same goes for you user I'll respond when I'm on my computer. But needless to say a lot of people only stay at higher tiers and one of the things that pushes people back is if only low level games are run and it's a choose between low game or no game. Also TYP and next season aim to make combat more deadly and so have more gravitas

>Rhyming on the spot isn't my strong suit.
Maybe he's a failed children's book author for a reason.

Haha. Exactly, turns out stabbing was his true gift to bring smiles to children.

I've been in 3 different games (2 different cities) with 4 different GMs, all were awful, the kind of "1d4+Str 40 ton boulder if you're a PC" awful. They shut down any imaginative plan or anything that wasn't outright stated with rules in the manuals or campaigns. They didn't throw a bone at gimped classes nor cared for balance. In my experience, fucking awful, I hope you'll have better luck.

Used to work at a store volunteering AL,
So many power gamers
It's unbelievable. One guy literally read only the item section of Curse of Strahd only to see were the best stuff was and how to get it. got pissy when I took everything away and put it elsewhere. Also the group as a whole got mad when I made bosses and creatures and encounters harder.

Thanks user, and I hope you found some better games since.

I admit to liking making strong builds, but by virtue of my gag reflex I avoid muchkinisim and item based builds for sure.

Never complain about a tough fight either, as long as it's interesting and not just a damage sponge or "surround and hit" levels of tactics required to beat it.

Same here but they were literally there, and I quote, to "get stuff"
Like
It's not even real

>Make stuff harder
>People complain
Oh gee I can't imagine why

Fuck the dude who looked through the campaign though

I like the Dr. Seuss idea, maybe craft "magic" items and hear with references to them. Just as jokes of course.

>Sneetch Star; makes you better than non star-ed Sneeteches. Curse! You must pay Me. McMoney McBean 10gp to remove.

Got kicked from a Strand game for supposedly reading the module. Just because I guess some bitch named Morgantha was a witch and uses Detect Good and Evil to check. Fuck me and my good intuition right? That's why I don't play in AL. My bro had a DM that gives out loot like candy though.

>53946820
To answer your question before I'm at my laptop I'll just type it now. You can check the AL player and DM guide on the mega, or for free from the WOTC site but the tldr is as such: you never find mundane items, only gp. GP is always distributed evenly at session end (even to dead characters, they just don't get XP if dead at the end.) Magic items are assigned by "count": your character has so many items. He who has the fewest items has first dibs on any new items. Mods drop massive disparity in quality for example Season 5 had an easy mod that dropped cloak of Displacement, and a super retard hard one that dropped a dagger of venom (that second mod had a good DM and TPKd us before we played it again with different character and won). Items are usually dropped by rarity: uncommon for tier 1, rare for tier 2, very rare and sometimes legendary for tiers 3 and 4. Hardcovers are different as they drop many items including legendaries for lower level characters. Also Storm Kings Thunder had almost 180 magic items in it most of which were "randomly" rolled so powergamers tavles would wind up with about 10 items each by level 11 including multiple belts of giant strength and the like. Also DMs get rewards in AL and one of them is for each 24 hours they DM they can get ANY magic item they have given out that's tier appropriate (tier 1 uncommon, etc). So if you DM. Alot like me you can make your character that is cheesy.

You can also trade items. If you're at the same table for a trade it's free, same if you go to a thing called Fai Chen's they have at cons which also lets you dump shit items to good ones. If you trade further than that it's 15 downtime per trade (plus lifestyle expenses) which doesn't sound like a lot but when you consider a 4 hour mod drops 10 downtime that means it can get expensive fast especially when downtime is also needed for things like free levelling between tiers (20 DT takes you 4-5, 100 takes you 10-11 and 200 is 16-17.)

*Strahd, fuck.

I definitely feel I'm similar to you. I like strong builds, I'm against being a dick with them and just playing to eliminate risk. If there's no risk, why bother playing?
This is of course an ever present risk of AL especially in certain areas. Due to the prevalence of cons many players wish to maximize their loot and so do shit like deliberately keep their magic item count low until its divvying time. Then they say ayy I only have one item lmao give me that +2 plate. A that guy at my local LGS did that. He was a cunt and it was just one in a long string of things that contributed to him getting his ass store-banned.

Was meant forYour DM was a faggot and you should have reported him to the store. AL doesn't ban people for just anything. Least of all just playing well. Also if I were you I'd have made a stink on the normiebook AL pages (which are 90% look at my ebin minis/blog posting bullshit) with your complaints because actual AL staff read those and could have intervened on your behalf if you make a coherent and logical argument.

I see, makes sense for this kind of play. I just want a +1 greatsword, after that I'll take what I want and trade if it looks like a good deal. I'm DMing for friends atm, but maybe I'll try AL to get out of the house when I finish College. With any luck bring more quality to the league and not one of the horror story DM' s in this thread.

I should have, but the group was also shitty edgelords and I just wanted out of the system and not waste more of my life on the bitch.

I don't know what you and your buddies play but you're totally allowed to run AL rules at home so long as you all keep log sheets

Also there's a way to "buy" items for money and downtime from your faction, but it requires a bunch of play

Agree 100% I just get bored I'd I feel untouchable or gimmicky. In my home game (on hiatus) I've been having fun as a non EB focussed warlock and trying out more invocations most pass over. Levitate + FInd Familear is great. Thanks for all the helpful info about AL, btw.

>core books +1 rule
On one hand, as someone who did PFS for a couple of years this is an absolute godsend for not having players show up with over a dozen different splatbooks (that they conveniently "forgot" if you ever audit them). On the other hand, I wish it was upped to +2 books because otherwise it means some race/class combos in the future are going to be literally impossible unless they get bundled in the same supplement.

Non EB Lock? How's that work? Do tell. Could never play a pure lock due to the turret stereotype (not that I don't use it as my primary multiclass option). And no problem about AL I play a lot and really like it I just also recognize it's shortcomings
user I want to hear this story please

>non EB focussed warlock

try to rhyme anyway. Let the failures fuel his frustrations

Is this any better than Pathfinder Society, or is it still no fun allowed?

I've had fun playing it the one time I did but the basic min/max and splatbook issues remain. Also all characters retired at 12th level due to the massive martial/caster disparity neither Paizo nor PFS did fuckall to fix. Cool for playing at level 5 or whatever if it's all you got. I prefer AL I got a level 19 I sunk 150+ hours of play into, really suffered with and committed genocide against the (((drow))) with so I think that's cooler cuz I can play her at any tier 4 table

Not him but the char I had fun with the most was a Paladin/Undying Warlock/Draconic Sorcerer, a bladelock who didn't suck ass.

First, make peace with not dealing optimal dpr. If you can do that, I went for Pact of the Undying light with tome and Book of Secrets, and a Spell focus on defence + Party Buffs.

Saved up my cash and bought ever ritual under the sun, meaning while I couldn't spit out 2d10 + 10 + hex, I was able to be helpful in every other situation from protecting camp, finding out way out of the labyrinth after our map was busted, and even putting up forbiddance right in the BBEG' s house. Find Familear to always give bro' s advantage, and duridstick + gfb + Radient Soul of I needed to still knock some heads.

Got even better with the new UA update, for some other CC options concentration free and bonus action healing. Without even talking about fun invocations for free skills, polymorph, levitate, and at will detect magic.

My best D&D experience was in AL. Played with a bunch of experienced players, and they went totally into it, with practiced personalities and voices, and the DM was one of the few that actually bothered to use immersive descriptions. He winged a lot of the material, because according to him the pack they send the stores to run is really sparse and not terribly in depth. His monsters played like thinking creatures and he made a strong effort to get the new players into it, giving them stand out RP moments to play with. It was overall a pleasant experience.

My worst D&D experience was also at AL. Played with a bunch of newbies, with only the DM having experience, but he was a 3aboo who apparently never took the time to learn the rule changes for 5e. He made his own homebrew campaign thing and ran that in place of the AL materials, and it was all clunky and required background info to RP properly; he'd constantly correct you with "that's not how my elves work" or interrupt you with some tidbit of medieval trivia like it applied to a world where people shot lightning bolts and made food out of thin air. He also used critical fumbles, which was a thoroughly unenjoyable experience, especially when I ended up throwing my axe 20 feet and when the monk's quarterstaff simply shattered. Combat was bizarre, between the fucked up rulings and the seemingly bizarre intelligence, or lack there of, of the enemies. We were always vastly outnumbered but several turns would go by with enemies simply doing nothing. I really couldn't get how he was trying to run things. Oh yeah, there were also the houserules limiting classes/races/etc. Really bullshit to walk into that with a pre-prepared character.

So really, it's up to what kind of DM you luck into.

Happy to hear your best experience was AL. mine has been too with a really dedicated DM who drove from his town just to play 8 hour sessions with us. And we ripped it up to store closing Time each time complete with pizza and Monster.
Your shit DM was a fag by the way and all that shit is completely AL illegal. In fact I suspect a bunch of the AL rules aren't there in place to limit fun, but to prevent retards like that ever, ever being permitted to DM
Sounds like a neat build but it does require that UA to he viable which is unfortunate. I'd prefer if classes had more options straight out of the PHB

Not much to expand on. Was a nature cleric, we were able to save this one orphan boy from dire wolves and looking for a place to take him and figure out wtf was this Barovia place. Everyone are cunts to us and keep their distance, except for this one old crown who comes up, offers us pies, and tovhust take the kid off our hands and to her orphan kill. Her name was Morgantha. Me being not a retard, detected enchantment magic in the pie, and correctly guessed she was a child eating hag. Confirming it IC with a detect good and evil, as was mentioned before.

DM flips shit, says no way I could have known, blah blah. Everyone else seems to agree, says there was no way I'm "That smart" to guess right, and tell me to leave. DM then says they were gonna kick me for transphobia anyway for saying "whatever dude" and I just fucking gave up. Shoulda walked away soon as it'd asked for players preferred pronouns, but I really wanted to game. Shit memories man.

The same idea could work fine for an archfey, you just focus a bit more on charming, and do the disguise self + friends trick instead of hard combat focus. It's still true that Core stuff is very EB centric if you want to be a decent combat warlock however =/ and with at least a two invocation tax + your boon invocation

That's not a warlock, that's some unholy pally/sorclock fusion, which is in theory a fix for everything wrong with bladelock

Thanks for sharing, user! It's good to get some insight from both positive and negative experiences.

Yeah, I have no illusions that AL will be totally free of all the shit I've seen before, but stories like yours and the other AL user gives me hope I'll enjoy it with a little luck and trying to bring the most out of my character.

OP here with another question. Have you ever had a trinkets be useful? They never are in my home games unless I DM. I was thinking of taking the unwritable book to tie with the failed author theme, but the dead sprite as a personal goal try and resurrect sounds like a lot more interesting outcomes could occur.

I assume it's a DM tool, but most DMs suck so nothing comes of it.

This is accurate. There's a lot of things the GM could track to make the game better and just don't
What kinds of trinkets? Do you just mean the knicknacks in the PHB? Because of those I've only ever used lantern, manacles (extremely useful) and the venerable 10-foot pole

Also OP you might get better help for this subject in /5eg/

>Unholy
I was undying light, not unholy

>people feel like they are entitled to bring up their sexuality at the table.
>The DM (she was a female) looked really uncomfortable throughout the entire thing
AFAICT, that's against the AL code of conduct.
media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/AL_PH_SKT.pdf
>Avoid excessively vulgar, sexual, or overly mature language and themes.
>The Dungeon Master has the right to ask a disruptive player to leave the table and speak with the
organizer.
Sounds you got rolled by pc culture bs.

Curse of Strahd had unique revival rules. YOu're basically trapped in a demiplane run by evil cosmic powers and they want you around just to fuck with you (and Strahd himself). Half the people in it don't even have souls, the place is just fucked up.

>Played with a bunch of newbies, with only the DM having experience, but he was a 3aboo who apparently never took the time to learn the rule changes for 5e.
Seems about right for 3.5e/PF shits. Was he aware of his severe autism and being absolutely shit at DMing?

Honestly, it's a shit show. The biggest problem is that only the "admins" are paid employees and they're caught in the same marketing doublespeak the rest of the 5e team is in. Namely, that any time they have an opinion its "do it exactly this way or quit, absolutely no houserules" but when they don't want to weigh in on a fight suddenly its "expect table variation, we all believe in DM empowerment, you dont want to go back to the heresy of the Living Greyhawk, do you citizen?"

I DMed for them for about a year and it did nothing but piss me off. They constantly shit on anyone who was trying to play out of the actual hardbacks but treated their overpriced loot-pinata "adventures" like solid gold. The thing that inspired me to finally walk was in the space of one week they told a new-ish player to tear his existing character sheet in two and start over from 0 because his lazy-assed store admin had been sitting him at a tier II table rather than try to organize a tier I, but practically on the same day defended the right of a DM to change how certain spells interacted because "we don't tell DMs what to do, and players shouldn't either."

More and more it looks like the overlords as Hasbro are getting sick of it, to the point that last year they did that whole "don't think of us as an organized play group, think of us as a lightweight publishing house. Also all Regional Coordinators are fired as of now" announcement. My only hope is that when they finally pull the plug it doesn't take the rest of the 5e team down with it.

So yeah, I have feelings about this.