Big Al

I discovered the Adventurers' League soon after I moved to Montreal and instantly developped an intense fascination for it. After playing in it for a few months, I can say that the fascination has gradually morphed into a quietly bubbling cauldron of boredom and respect. Obviously, any entity that commands such conflicted feelings about itself deserves examination, if only to be used as inspiration for creating a memorable random encounter later on.

Which is exactly what we'll do.

So without further ado, let's take an incomplete, biased look at what makes AL great, why it sucks, and devise a functional stat block for it.

What is excellent about AL ?

It is easy to find. A quick Dungeons and Dragons google search will lead you to it eventually. When I moved to Montreal and wondered how I was gonna track down that elusive beast, the Regular Gaming Group, it took me all of half an hour of probing the interwebs to discover the league and subscribing to my first game.

It is reassuring. I've met many new players in AL that had never played any kind of roleplaying game before, and didn't know anyone to introduce them to the hobby. Yet here they were ! I think for this only, AL deserves some heartfelt praise. Rpgs have always been kind of niche, and although in the last few years visibility and public image has grown considerably better through media coverage, popular web series and web comics, and a general shift in the perceived sexiness of geek culture, finding a (good) place to actually start can still be a harrowing task. AL has a streamlined process to getting ready for and starting a game that takes away some of the more esoteric aspects of getting started and helped the community grow.It is available. More so than most players with professional lives and families. There are games most nights, in most North American cities at least, and since you can take your character from one table to the next, you don't have to commit to one group or one night of the week. You can stop playing for a month or six and pick your character sheet up again and start playing as if nothing had happened.

It is balanced. Bit of a love/hate relationship with this one, but then that's the whole point of this little article, so whatever. I personally tend to think that balance and fairness in rpgs get in the way of creativity and immersion, but have learnt to recognise and respect the satisfaction that comes with a character sheet that makes your character meaningful within the system. It's reassuring in a good way, letting players enjoy the game knowing that they can't fail due to their own creative or interpretative qualities. No one plays to get judged, after all.

I haven't encountered yet a race/class/feat combination in 5e that was so powerful it overshadowed all the others, the modules generally offer encounters of appropriate challenge and offer some reasonable options to adjust to the party level, and the rewards are distributed equally to all present adventurers. Essentially this means that you can't make a truly mechanically terrible choice while creating your character, that shy players get an equal chance to shine and get rewards, and that you can more or less trust the dice to give a clean failure-to-success ratio.

What's so horrible about AL then ?

It uses the word « legal » a lot. It really does.

It is rigid. AL doesn't play well for characters who want to drive the action themselves. Modules are generally more about reacting to situations than creating them. Which makes the game « safe » in the sense that you can't get lost, but can be boring, cause you can't go wherever you want to. You can't keep anything you find unless specifically specified in the Treasure sidebar. You can't take the powerful artifact for yourself cause then your character would become hunted by all the factions and become « unplayable » (but who doesn't want to play the idiot who stole the powerful artifact and is hunted by all the factions?). There are some unexplainable limitations in character creation (kobold characters can only be faction members of the Emerlad Enclave ? Seriously ?). PHB +1 is good for balance, but can seem contrived when it prevents someone from building a flavorful build that doesn't break the game.

More insidiously, one of the strengths of AL as stated previously, its flexibility when it comes to switching groups, creates a pressure on the gameplay that can limit your options both as a player and a DM. If you don't finish a module in one sitting, you're back to organising a group of people to meet again or never finishing the scenario (since you can't play a module twice with the same character). So time becomes an issue. And the modules usually have enough material in them to start with to make them last way longer than the 2 or 4 hours they advertise, so that means less time for exploring and roleplaying, and more rushing it.

Now, I have nothing against clear goals and a predetermined set of obstacles to victory. Railroading is a tool to build fun just like any other. And there are ways around the extensive railroading that occurs in most AL modules that should have its own article sometime. But over time, one might feel like a little more freedom could be welcome. I know I do.

It is self-centered. That is essentially what AL is, after all : a massive effort to get more people to play DnD 5e, buying as much WotC stuff on the way as possible. It gives intangible rewards to DMs to motivate them to get people to play their game rather than any other. It's a rather brilliant marketing scheme. Blaming it for that is just silly. But it does dissociate its purpose from one I hold dear, which is getting people to play not only more, but in more ways. AL is good at getting people to play a roleplaying game. It's not in its nature to open up doors to other roleplaying experiences. That's something that AL players should, I think, bring to the table themselves, especialy regarding new players, who might not know that there is more to RPGs than d20s and beholders.

It is incoherent. It is perfectly legal to play in Chult on Monday, in Phlan on Tuesday, back to Chult on Wednesday, and in the frozen wastes of the North on Thursday. Gods know where you might be next weekend. Equipment you pick during an adventure will simply vanish at the end of the session if not specifically written in the Treasure sidebar. Befriend an NPC at one table, she might not remember you if you meet her again at another DM's table.

It is not concerned with the fluff. Consider the DM rewards : they apply to DMs who DM a lot or post on social media. You get no mechanical incentive to strive for immersion and atmosphere. A lot of tables I've played, DMs didn't ask for anyone's descriptions or backstory, just class, level, passive perception.

That should do it. We have an incomplete, biased look at AL, now lets delve into the crunch.

Big Al

Huge Construct, LN

AC : 14 (12 for a Very Weak Party, 13 for a Weak Party, 15 for a Strong Party, 16 for a Very Strong Party)

Hit Points : 80 (60 for a Very Weak Party, 70 for a Weak Party, 100 for a Strong Party, 120 for a Very Strong Party)

Speed : 30ft

Str 14 Dex 6 Con 18 Int 16 Wis 10 Cha 20

Saving throws:

Damage Immunities : Poison, Psychic.

Condition Immunities : Blinded, Charmed, Deafened, Exhaustion, Frightened, Paralysed, Petrified, Poison.
Senses : Big Al can only « see » in their entirety things that are in direct contact with itself, and is otherwise blind. It can hear normally, but everything sounds like far away whispers to him, even if shouted right in his ear.
Languages : Common, Undercommon. Big Al likes consensus, not specifics. His favorite topics are what is legal and what isn't, and he tends to punctuate conversations by statements of « Epic, man, epic... ».

 Actions:

Attack (Melee): +5 to hit (+4 for Very Weak or Weak parties, +6 for Strong, +7 for Very Strong), 1d6+2 (add another d6 per Tier above the first, so 2d6+2 at Tier 2, etc.)

Special:

Big Al is easy to find : You can always find someone who knows where to find Big Al if you start looking, no matter where you are in the multiverse. It'll turn out to be quite nearby, too. This has numerous implications – if your party of adventurers can't make use of something that can always be found nearby, by anyone, anywhere, anytime, there is no hope for them.

Big Al is reassuring: All creatures in a 60ft radius around Big Al have advantage on saving throws against fear effects. The only people not affected seem to be soldiers toward the end of their carreer and other veteran adventurers, who think that Big Al is just a liiiittle too nice to be true and didn't live this long by not being afraid all the time, anyway. Anyone with the Mercenary Veteran background also feels naturally inclined to criticize Big Al Incessantly.

Balance : If you fight Big Al, he will automatically match his CR to your APL by adjusting his HP and attacks as shown above. Fair is fair.

Incoherence : Anything Big Al gives you disappears at the end of the current adventure. He won't remember you next time you meet him.

Secret agenda : Big Al is always at the service of the wizard who created it and tries to further this person's goals. He never helps adventurers, but always tries to get adventurers to help him. He'll motivate them by handing out any equipment that could convince a party of adventurers to go on a level-appropriate quest for him. These rewards all disappear at the end of the adventure. Treasure found and experience made during the quest remain as normal. Principled construct : Big Al always keeps his word and always does things by the book, if there is a book on the subject that it's aware of. It talks a lot about how things should be done. It's always polite and courteous. It dislikes divergent opinions intensely. It'll casually tell people « You can't do that. » It's also a bit of a racist, stating that of course, goblins can't be swashbucklers.

Too big to care : If Big Al is targeted by the Vicious Mockery cantrip, whoever cast the spell is immediately affected by three simultaneous Vicious Mockery cantrips himself.