A couple of the regular DMs running games for V.A.L.U.E. will start discussing upcoming changes for Season 5 in the coming months.
What We Will Do (in order ):
collect ideas … we are at this stage right now
have a regular DM meeting to talk about how to rephrase questions to a non/less-biased version
have a regular DM online vote with a 14 days timeframe on those questions
a reminder to vote will be send 7 days after the ability to vote went live
present the results
start the new V.A.L.U.E. Season with the new updated rules
at that point there will also be a Character Reset
This thread is for collecting ideas for upcoming changes
Nothing decided yet! … this is still an ongoing process
In this topic I’d like to collect your input on what we should be discussing from your point of view, so if there is any particular change you’d like to see to the V.A.L.U.E. rules, feel free to share that here. If there is something in the rules you’d like us to keep no matter what, please also share this.
Everyone’s input is welcome, but please keep in mind that only regular DMs will be able to vote, since they will have to feel the consequences the most.
If you want to include wishes regarding these topics: post them here, PM me, or write them in the #dm channel in RPGV’s Discord
Observation: The vast majority of our games are T2, usually aimed at lower levels (up to level 8). This makes a lot of sense, as 5-8 is considered the sweet spot where many builds come alive and where balancing is still easy to do and where battles don’t become overly complicated.
Issue: You get 2 level ups per session (unless you find something to do with your downtime days), meaning you stay in that sweet spot where most games happen for like 1-2 games.
It is even worse for T1 where as a newcomer after a single game you are thrown into T2.
While ofc you can delay leveling up characters indefinitely, the moment you commit to getting a character to level 9 or 10 because some DM decides to run a high level T2 game, you are stuck with that character at that level, as leveling down is not allowed.
The reality is that you inevitably end up with characters that are either uselessly stuck at lvl 10 or characters perpetually at lower levels amassing hundreds of downtime days.
Suggested solution(s):
Allow levelling down or free adjustment of level below your maximum achieved level for that character.
Reasoning: It would allow players to keep using a beloved character even once they have surpassed the level where most games happen, without artificially holding back levelling.
At the same time this allow DMs to be more direct with asking for specific levels of characters for their adventure to help with balancing, as it is gonna be easy for players to levelling down to that level. It makes it more likely to even find enough players for a high level T2 game for example.
I know this might break immersion, but we already allow character creation at certain levels, banking downtime days and even allowing DMs to use the rewards for DMing on any character they wish.
(Alternative) Reduce downtime days rewards to 10 per session:
Reasoning: Simply keep characters longer at the sweet spot without banking level ups. Would also means newcomers stay at T1 for one more session.
(Alternative) Keep everything as it is, but find more incentives to use downtime days:
Reasoning: If people spend their downtime days on other stuff, they level slower. Options would be other than the suggested “earning gold” (although we often have way too much gold anyways) for example the ability to buy spell scrolls or higher level potions (for gold + downtime days)
I would like to see the rules being simplified rather than more specific.
Regular point buy or standard array, not value specific
Get rid of T0 and go back to T1 being Levels 1-4 → DMs can still run games for levels 3-4 if they announce it, but it seems like T0 has completely disappeared which is sad for those people who might not mind going down but want to build their character up from level 1.
clarify wording of extra gold for creating characters at higher levels (I have been in several discussions about whether a character at level 11 gets the gold from levels 3 and 5, or just the total amount at level 11)
Get rid of clarification below, instead replace with something like: you may only take 1 magic item per adventure that was either rewarded or gifted to you on an adventure. for consumables, watch the carry limit. → Why don’t we want characters to trade magic items on an adventure, so long as it’s the same tier?
Equipment and Consumable items can be lent to other characters during the adventure but must return at the end of the session (unless it’s been consumed or lost).
Potions and Scrolls can be crafted (see Downtime Activities below).
Permanent magic items can be traded (see Downtime Activities below). You can only trade with the characters of other players. Unique magic items may not be traded.
yeah rules definitly should be simplified, right now (to me) it feels like the rules are getting so long that most people don’t read them or at the very least don’t know even the stuff important to them personally
I’d be in favor of:
switch to newest rules (aka 5.5) to make use of digital tools easier as pretty much all of the common ones default to 5.5
remove expanded ability range - I still believe it was a good thing when we came up with it, but is not really necessary anymore
come up with more downtime activities (yes I know runs contrary to “simplifying”, but downtime activities can be a separate “document”/post with the rules simply linking to it)
get rid of T0 - instead reinstate the old “create a character at any level you’ve previously reached” rule
not a fan of downleveling, but if we want to consider it I feel like it might be a good downtime activity (Retraining - by investing x (probably 10) downtime days you can unlearn a level, this includes all gains from the lost level - e.g.: a wizard loses the 2 spells learned during the last level up before performing this activity) ← this btw also is one of my major problems with downleveling: for some classes there is a ton to keep track of to do this fairly
Somebody has to come in here and clearly state the purpose for why AL has the ruleset at all. I can fathom many logical reasons for why we do the things we do, but would appreciate a listing of goals under which we find rules. I’m sure it’s not hard, but doing things without knowing the reasons is…Dadaistic.
I imagine AL wants players to treat their plentiful characters as “real” for many purposes:
people from different timezones and continents can’t know each other or twink items between each other. (also denies the dreaded powergaming attempts)
what even is downleveling? as in …in real life? how would that look like? applying burnout and missing out on years of your job as adventurer to revert your experience maybe? Leveling up seems comprehensive, leveling down is less so. In the past monsters used to downlevel PCs but AL does not do this. So to keep things “realistic” I imagine this is the way it is.
AL is a free form no-obligation system that regularly resets to preserve health. So rocking up with always the same character, like in home campaigns, is obviously not the goal here. Simply making new fantasy people for new freshly created opportunities is seemingly the way to go and that’s what the current ruleset encourages. → find a table you like? → make a character for it from scratch and participate.
downtime days, even in the wording itself, enforces the idea that your characters are real people inhabiting a fictional place who chill out while you do not adventure as them. À la “the Sims” or “Tamagochi”. So it would be weird to pronounce someone who is lvl 13 to be lvl 4 and “new” to this adventuring thing all of a sudden. At least a bit of cognitive disconnect in reasoning is present. It doesn’t naturally go down like Mary Poppins’ medicine.
Please, anyone with knowledge of it, state what the goals are to make rules for. The grand idea behind it all. It would be massively helpful. Thanks.
yes, back to basic points buy 27 please, the extended range only invited minmaxing with lvl 4 chars having 20 in their main stat
also much easier to handle with most online tools including DND Beyond
dnd beyond seems to handle this pretty nicely in my experience
okay this is the best solution I have seen so far for the issue of finding the right level players … It can even make things easier for DMs to balance if they can say “everyone please bring a lvl 7 character”
@truecrawl We are not technically affiliated with the AL anymore, so I personally don’t care what they aim for.
The valid question is though indeed: what do we aim for?
Playability/Flexibility or Realism/Immersion
The issue I have with the Realism approach is that our current rules are purposefully breaking immersion already:
You can create a character at specific levels, they get free magic items and free gold.
Not to speak of DM characters that just break any sense of realism … I could create a character at lvl 5, pump him full of my DM rewards and then add 3 levels on top … especially if you DM a lot like me lol
Nobody is keeping track of anything, there is no way to check if someone has “cheated” anyways.
Making rules on realism stricter only works if we would wanna commit on keeping track of things
Mhm, this is exactly why I called for a target statement. Currently, we are all just guessing at things. There is no page to be on, so we’re all on the same page.
Everything has down- and upsides. Going for “just do whatever you want” is cool because 1) it always works 2) frees all DMs and all players from forum rule-adherence 3) embraces the pulpfiction.
At the same time it obliterates any possibility of administration. You cannot govern that. at all.
I wouldn’t like to see 5.5 rules implemented for a simple reason: the braindead nature of the “if your ability didn’t work, you get the charge back to try again” approach so many features were treated to. It nukes the care and restraint that DnD players are supposed to have in games. Some don’t care about this, but I do. It’s just too easy to always default to the optimal solution, flowchart-like, because if it doesn’t succeed you can simply retry. always & forever without having a risk to weigh. Consequence free ability spam is bad for any game because people mentally check out.
What a great thread, fun to read everyone’s different perspective! Here’s mine as a player:
5.0 vs 5.5: many classes still missing in 5.5, and as some mentioned too in other threads, compatibility seems to be a mess. I haven’t had a chance yet to try some classes I wanted, and I’d hate to miss out because they can’t be made playable with 5.5 Oathbreaker Paladin, Death Cleric, Necromancer Wizard for example. (but I don’t know 5.5 too well so if there’s an easy way to make sure missing classes can be used, it may be fine)
Abilities: I’d be fine with standard array or point buy with standard limits. 18-14-16-6-8-6 Barbarian feels just unfair to monsters at T1
Items: I don’t know what to do with item rewards that don’t fit my character. Magic item bazaar doesn’t seem very active, and losing the downtime days are not a good tradeoff. For example, I level up after an adventure but list an item for sale, somebody buys it but then I have to level back down to account for the days? Feels weird. And I’d rather use the days for other stuff 100% of the time. I’d prefer to be able to simply sell them somehow
Leveling up, tiers, etc: since VALUE is not one big campaign but multiple (often very different) oneshots, whatever the rules end up be, I’d love it to be flexible to an extent. It’s nice to be able to jump into any tier with a viable (but not OP) character. Just don’t make too many restrictions please, so then events like my skill-monkey character dying in a combat focused one-shot won’t be a problem because it’s easy to make a new, viable one for next time.
Edit +1: allow firearms? :3 I’d spend all my starting money on them in a heartbeat.
With all that being said, I appreciate what you all do here and I love it that I have a new hobby now.
this is basically the rule now - all DMs can call for specific levels and allow for characters to be created at those levels. it’s just a different approach. Some DMs say, I want to do level 8 because I want to avoid having people who have not played before and whose characters are at level 5. and others say I want to do level 8 because that’s my adventure, so please show up with level 8. It’s just a matter of communication. The current rules work in this scenario, and I feel like changing them will make them more complicated, not more playable.
Agree with returning to the removal of expanded ability range
More downtime would be nice but we might have to structure it better so that people can use it better. Maybe different design, maybe graphic instead of a wall of text (just spitballing here)
T0, I liked it, since I used it several times, but if people want it to be gone I’d be fine with it. It was more a tryout and I see both the disadvantages (people don’t want to run it that much) and the advantages (with the minmax ability range, a experienced player at level 4 was FAR stronger than a new player at level one with a dnd beyond standard character). It would be open to removal if also the expanded ability range is discontinued.
I do not like down leveling and it caused trouble more often than not. Especially with players who didn’t understand the rules and down leveled over Tiers. We had a T2 (level 8) player once with a Staff of Power (very powerful item with the rarity “very rare”) once. They got it and then downleveled. Also there was the problem where people created characters at a higher tier as in T3 and gain the free +2 magic weapon. Then they would “down level” to T2 and suddenly were stronger than if they created a straight T2 character. If down leveling only within a Tier. No downleveling over a Tier.
More open level range is something I have to think about. No against it but we would have to make a good ruling/rules for it.
I wasn’t aware this was allowed, while still keeping a game V.A.L.U.E. legal
If that is so, then my suggestion would be to clearly state it somewhere
Another thing:
Status Quo: DMs can drop up to two max rarity levels (or more if using lower rarity). Players pick one of them.
Issue: Sometimes it is hard to guarantee that every player characters’ get something that even fits their proficiencies let alone anything that is useful. It also discourages picking items that for example only a spellcaster can attune to or that are only one specific weapon type.
Suggestion: Allow DMs to offer a bigger number of items for choice, while every player still only gets to pick one of them.
Sidenote: it would be nice to clarify the legality of dropping “Blueprints” that can be turned into specifically listed variants of Armors/Weapons like for example the Adamantine Armor - Magic Items - D&D Beyond . It makes little sense to drop a “Adamantine Chainmail” that would only work for Heavy Armor users, which is why me and other DMs have dropped a “Adamantine Armor” blueprint that can be applied to a base item of the listed types that you own (this is to make sure you do not get a Plate Armor if you do not own one)
the only way this would have worked is for closed home campaigns, or as a DM homebrew award
→ basically making such a character unplayable at other tables
yeah you were not aware of it, because this rule never existed^^
the reason for this rule was that someone dropped 13+ items in a game
and if you give everyone the “perfect item”, then this would make the “Bazaar” thread / the “exchange items with another player” downtime activity basically worthless
as mentioned we had a staff of power (VR) in a T2 game, and also making a new level 17 character … leveling them down to level 5 (or 3) and buying a full plate with the starting GP of a level 17 character
… aside from the mental-gymnastics of your hero’s journey being a progression that is going down competence-wise
we had that once … several players were upset, because [Quote] “Does that mean only the cool kids can play high level games?” [/Quote] that was the reason we got rid of this rule
):
we are at this stage right now
post them here, PM me, or write them in the #dm channel in RPGV’s Discord
Oathbreaker Paladin, Death Cleric, Necromancer Wizard for example. (but I don’t know 5.5 too well so if there’s an easy way to make sure missing classes can be used, it may be fine)
