Today is the day! The new Storm King’s Thunder D&D Adventurers League Player’s Guide and Dungeon Master’s Guide is released into the wild.

Both of these guides hold some major changes for the League as summarized below. Please be aware that these changes are not effective until the start of the next season, August 26th, 2016.

New updates from August 19th are in red.



D&D Adventurers League Player’s Guide V5.1



D&D Adventurers League Dungeons Master’s Guide V2.1

Blank character sheet for Storm King’s Thunder

#DMQuests for Storm King’s Thunder

Summary of Changes:

1) To enable an easier adoption of the D&D Adventurers League we’re drastically shortening the ALPG, the current document is 8 pages. The ALDMG is also trimmed and comes out at 9 pages. Some info has moved to the ALDMG from the PG. Some of the other needed info (like Faction Downtime will be separate documents or online)

2) We’re eliminating the concept of Story Origins since that concept never really saw fruition. However, we’re still keeping the PH+1 book concept. (see #7 for more information)

3) Trading of magic items will no longer be tied to certs, anyone can trade their items with a log entry. Same rarity still required. Each character involved in the trade must spend 15 downtime days.

4) Restrictions on monster sources for class features and spells has been removed. ie: any normally eligible monster from the Monster Manual can be used for animal companions, spells, and other class features. (remember that some spells and effects do require DM adjudication!)

5) DMs can now add thematically appropriate monsters to encounters in order to adjust the difficulty. We expect this to primarily be used in the hardcover adventures.

6) Disintegration stinks, we get it. The faction leaders have added resurrection and true resurrection to the spellcasting services list. Be advised that there are steep gold piece and downtime requirements for these spells!

7) Backgrounds are NOT part of the “PHB + 1” rule. This means that you can use the PHB and one additional rulebook (see “Steps 1 & 2: Choosing a Race and Class” in the Adventurers League Player’s Guide) for your character options, but your background can be chosen from a third D&D Adventurers League-approved source, such as Curse of Strahd, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and so on. You can also customize your background as per the rules in the Player’s Handbook!

updated on August 19th, 2016