Recently, I wrote about my new hobby playing Dungeons and Dragons’s Adventurers League at a local game shop. My character Qisandoral Ariestannus, the Elvish answer to Mr Spock or Sam the Eagle, started as a level 1 character back in August, and “Qi” has now reached level 5 and is now considered a “tier 2” character.¹
For the jump from level 4 to level 5, I decided to leverage the “Catching Up” downtime rule which lets you spend 20 days worth of downtime to simply go up a level. This can only be triggered at specific experience levels, but is a nice, easy way to nudge your character to the next tier if you like.
The catch is that my daughter now plays with me, and since her character is much lower level than Qi, they can’t play in the same tiered-adventure as one another.
To work around this, I revived a different character I that played privately with my kids with a few minor tweaks: Gwynen Naïlo, an elf cleric of the Nature domain. He is one level lower than my daughter’s character, but at least we can adventure together at our local game shop on AL nights. Plus, I do enjoy playing clerics almost as much as wizards.
It seems that many seasoned AL players have a roster of different characters available so that they can always have something ready regardless of what adventure tier they play that day. Eventually as Qi and Gwynen move to higher tiers, I’ll probably have another character or two waiting in the wings.
In any case, it’s nice to see Qi (and Gwynen) rack up adventures, stories, and some loot, even as I get to know other people in the local AL community more and more. I am continuously pleased to see how supportive people are, and how much they’ve helped my daughter get up to speed. 🙂
P.S. With Season 9 just around the corner, I am excited to see Qi pick up some default items for tier 2 (in particular a Wand of the War Mage +1), and maybe also keep some of the magic items he finds in the adventures. I think the season 9 rules are a welcome improvement.
¹ A point of clarification: AL has 4 tiers, that map like so:
- Tier 1 – Experience levels 1-4
- Tier 2 – Experience levels 5-10
- Tier 3 – Experience levels 11-16
- Tier 4 – Experience levels 17-20
Ref: http://dndadventurersleaguedublin.org/adventurers-league-basics/
Contrary to what I originally thought, one tier isn’t always 4 levels. :p
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields 