Faction Guide

Factions are an important part of the D&D Adventurers League experience. Belonging to a faction sometimes means having responsibilities, but it also carries with it support and rewards for service. If you ever switch factions or leave a faction, you lose all ranks and renown with the old faction, and must start at the lowest rank with zero renown with your new faction.

It is important to note that characters made with races from Volo’s Guide to Monsters are required to have a faction. If you leave your faction, the character is no longer playable, unless of course they’re moving to another faction approved for that race.

Additional information on the specific factions can be found in the D&D Adventurers League Player’s Guide.

Faction Advancement and Benefits

As a character with membership in one of the factions es adventures, he or she earns renown for completing tasks that align with the faction’s goals. This is expressed as renown points rewarded at the end of any given adventure.

Faction Advancement

As characters earn renown and complete secret missions, they progress in the ranks of their factions, granting them greater authority and additional benefits.

Faction Advancement

Faction Benefits

Rank 1: Initiate

This is the rank a character receives when first joining a faction. It is available at character creation or any time the character wishes to join.

Participate in Faction Activities

You can participate in any activities that are considered specific to your faction.

Earn Renown

You earn renown points in your faction and advance in rank.

Faction Assignments

As an Initiate, you are eligible to take on faction assignments during adventures. These are minor side quests found in many D&D Adventurers League adventures.

Receive Your Faction’s Insignia

You receive an insignia of your faction, fashioned into a wearable or held item.

Faction Insignias

Rank 2: Agent

Agents have shown that they’re aligned with the faction’s goals, and can take on more responsibility.

Secret Missions

During certain adventures, you may be given the opportunity to undergo a secret on behalf of your faction. Completion of these missions might earn you additional benefits or enable you to advance to higher ranks within your faction.

Apprenticeship to an Adventurer Mentor

Your character can serve as an apprentice to a higher-ranking adventurer from within your faction. See the Apprentice-Mentor Benefits section, below, for more details.

Faction Training

Your character can take advantage of accelerated training programs for tool kits most often used by your faction. This training comes at a lesser cost than usual tool training, taking half as long (125 downtime days), but you must pay an additional 125 gp as a training expense for each proficiency.

Faction Training

Rank 3: Stalwart

Stalwarts are reliable faction members, entrusted with many secrets and deserving of additional support during adventures.

Faction Downtime Activity

You gain access to a faction-specific downtime activity that gives you additional benefits when you use it. If your faction has any specific downtime activities for the current storyline season, they can be found in the D&D Adventurers League Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Rank 4: Mentor

Mentors are trusted voices within their given faction. They are looked upon as champions of the faction’s beliefs, and as mentors by those of lower rank.

Become a Mentor

You can designate Agents or Stalwarts as your charge. See the Apprentice-Mentor Benefits section.

Faction Philanthropist

As a Mentor of your faction, you may choose to pay for or cast raise dead, resurrection, or true resurrection spells for a member of your faction after an adventure is completed—even if you were not adventuring together. In doing so, assuming you aren’t casting the spell yourself, you must pay the full cost of the spellcasting service plus 25 downtime days (to deliver the body and find a cleric).

Rank 5: Exemplar

Exemplars are deeply ensconced within the leadership of their faction and have a great degree of influence, guiding faction decisions.

Become a Faction Exemplar

When you play this character along with other members of your faction, you can choose one lower ranked member of your faction (Agent, at a minimum) to begin the game with Inspiration. This must be used by the end of the game session, or it is lost.

Apprenticeship

Two characters in the same faction (played by different players), may choose to enter an Apprentice-relationship. The mentor must at least be a Mentor and the apprentice must be of a lower rank, but at least an Agent.

A Mentor may only have one apprentice at a given time. Similarly, an apprentice may only have one Mentor. This relationship persists until their apprentice or mentor permanently die, the apprentice achieves the same rank as the mentor, or they decide to part ways (this is generally reserved for players that become inactive or for whatever reason have lost contact with one another).

Apprentice and Mentor Activities

Each character in the relationship gains a story award, “Faction Mentor (Apprentice Name)” or “Faction Apprentice (Mentor Name)” and is eligible to participate in specific activities.

Adventure Details

When an apprentice and mentor bond they veal the locations of magic items and faction secret missions that they have participated in to each other. There is no additional cost associated with this activity.

Item Trading

When trading magic items between the apprentice and mentor, the cost is only 10 downtime days instead of the usual 15.

Fighting Partners

By practicing fighting together before adventures, an apprentice and mentor can gain complimentary combat abilities. When both an apprentice and mentor are participating in the same adventuring group (they must be together at the same table, not just in the same Epic) the apprentice and mentor may spend 5 downtime before the start of the adventure. If they do, they gain the following benefits:

• Any saving throw made by one participant to save against an effect created by the other is made with advantage.
• Once per short rest, a participant may use the Help action to assist the other as a bonus action.
• Neither participant acts as cover against ranged attacks made by the other.

Apprentice Activities

Language and Tool Training

The apprentice may learn any language or tool proficiency that their mentor possesses for 125 downtime (no GP cost).

Word of Advice

Mentors grant their apprentice advantage on one check, save, or attack roll once during an adventure or chapter. This activity costs 5 downtime days to the apprentice, spent prior to the adventure and declared to the Dungeon Master prior to the start of the adventure.

Mentor Activities

Mentorship Renown

When a mentor takes on a new apprentice they immediately gain the benefit of a successful Secret Mission for their faction. This can only be done once per character.

Learn by Teaching

Mentors gain advantage on one check, save, or attack roll once during a module or hardcover chapter due to reflecting on their prior adventures with their apprentice. This activity costs 5 downtime days to the mentor, spent prior to the adventure and declared to the Dungeon Master prior to the start of the adventure.

Faction Pedagogue

By taking on an apprentice you become approachable to other members of your faction who ask you for advice. As you dispense this advice you become better known in your faction. You may spend 30 downtime days in exchange for 1 renown. This can only be done once per character.

Mentor’s Pride

As your apprentice grows in power their deeds reflect on you. Each time your apprentice gains a level that would put them into a higher tier (levels 5, 11, or 17), you gain 1 renown.

Harpers

The Harpers is a scattered network of spellcasters and spies who advocate equality and covertly oppose the abuse of power. The organization is benevolent, knowledgeable, and secretive. Bards and wizards of good alignments are commonly drawn to the Harpers.

Goals

• Gather information throughout Faerûn.
• Promote fairness and equality by covert means.
• Thwart tyrants and leaders, governments, and organizations that grow too powerful.
• Aid the weak, poor and oppressed.

Beliefs

One can never have too much information or arcane knowledge.

Too much power leads to corruption. The abuse of magic must be closely monitored.

No one should be powerless.

Member Traits

Harper agents are trained to act alone and rely on their own resources. When they get into scrapes, they don’t count on their fellow Harpers to rescue them. Nevertheless, Harpers are dedicated to helping one another in times of need, and friendships between Harpers are nigh unbreakable. Masterful spies and infiltrators, they use various guises and secret identities to form relationships, cultivate their information networks, and manipulate others into doing what needs to be done. Although most Harpers prefer to operate in the shadows, there are exceptions.

Ranks

• Watcher (rank 1)
• Harpshadow (rank 2)
• Brightcandle (rank 3)
• Wise Owl (rank 4)
• High Harper (rank 5)

Order of the Gauntlet

The Order of the Gauntlet is composed of faithful and vigilant seekers of justice who protect others from the depredations of evildoers. The organization is honorable, vigilant, and zealous. Clerics, monks, and paladins of good (and often lawful good) alignments are commonly drawn to the Order of the Gauntlet.

Goals

• Be armed and vigilant against evil.
• Identify evil threats such as secretive power groups and inherently evil creatures.
• Enforce justice.
• Enact retribution against evil actions—do not strike preemptively.

Beliefs

• Faith is the greatest weapon against evil—faith in one’s god, one’s friends, and one’s self.
• Battling evil is an extraordinary task that requires extraordinary strength and bravery.
• Punishing an evil act is just. Punishing an evil thought is not.

Member Traits

The Order of the Gauntlet is a dedicated, tightly knit group of like-minded individuals driven by religious zeal or a finely-honed sense of justice and honor. Friendship and camaraderie are important to members of the order, and they share a trust and a bond normally reserved for siblings. Like highly motivated soldiers, members of the Order of the Gauntlet seek to become the best at what they do and look forward to testing their mettle. There are few, if any, “lone wolves” in this organization.

Ranks

• Chevall (rank 1)
• Marcheon (rank 2)
• Whitehawk (rank 3)
• Vindicator (rank 4)
• Righteous Hand (rank 5)

Emerald Enclave

The Emerald Enclave is a widespread group of wilderness survivalists who preserve the natural order while rooting out unnatural threats. The organization is decentralized, hardy, and reclusive. Barbarians, druids, and rangers of good or neutral alignments are commonly drawn to the Emerald Enclave.

Goals

• Restore and preserve the natural order.
• Destroy all that is unnatural.
• Keep the elemental forces of the world in check.
• Keep civilization and the wilderness from destroying each other.

Beliefs

The natural order must be respected and preserved.

Forces that upset the natural order must be destroyed.

Civilization and the wilderness must learn to coexist peacefully.

Member Traits

Members of the Emerald Enclave are spread far and wide, and usually operate in isolation. They learn to depend on themselves more than others. Survival in a harsh world also demands great fortitude and mastery of certain fighting and survival skills. Members of the Enclave who dedicate themselves to helping others survive the perils of the wilderness are more social than others who are charged with defending sacred glades and preserving the natural balance.

Ranks

• Springwarden (rank 1)
• Summerstrider (rank 2)
• Autumnreaver (rank 3)
• Winstalker (rank 4)
• Master of the Wild (rank 5)

Lords' Alliance

The Lords' Alliance is a loose coalition of established political powers concerned with mutual security and prosperity. The organization is aggressive, militant, and political. Fighters and sorcerers of lawful or neutral alignments are commonly drawn to the Lords' Alliance.

Goals

• Ensure the safety and prosperity of cities and other settlements of Faerûn.
• Maintain a strong coalition against the forces of disorder.
• Proactively eliminate threats to the established powers.
• Bring honor and glory to one’s leaders and one’s homeland.

Beliefs

If civilization is to survive, all must unite against the dark forces that threaten it.

Fight for your realm. Only you can bring honor, glory, and prosperity to your lord and homeland.

Don’t wait for the enemy to come to you. The best defense is a strong offense.

Member Traits

To seek out and destroy threats to their homelands, agents of the Lords' Alliance must be highly trained at what they do. Few can match their skills in the field. They fight for the glory and the security of their people and for the lords who rule over them, and they do so with pride. However, the Lords' Alliance can only survive if its members “play nice” with one another, which requires a certain measure of diplomacy. Rogue agents within the Lords' Alliance are rare, but defections have been known to occur.

Ranks

• Cloak (rank 1)
• Redknife (rank 2)
• Stingblade (rank 3)
• Warduke (rank 4)
• Lioncrown (rank 5)

Zhentarim

The Zhentarim is an unscrupulous shadow network that seeks to expand its influence and power throughout Faerûn. The organization is ambitious, opportunistic, and meritocratic. Rogues and warlocks of neutral and/or evil alignments are commonly drawn to the Zhentarim.

Goals

• Amass wealth.
• Look for opportunities to seize power.
• Gain influence over important people and organizations.
• Dominate Faerûn.

Beliefs

The Zhentarim is your family. You watch out for it, and it watches out for you.

You are the master of your own destiny. Never be less than what you deserve to be.

Everything—and everyone—has a price.

Member Traits

A member of the Zhentarim thinks of himself or herself as a member of a large family, and relies on the Black Network for resources and security. However, members are granted enough autonomy to pursue their own interests and gain some measure of personal power or influence. The Black Network is a meritocracy. It promises “the best of the best,” although in truth, the Zhentarim is more interested in spreading its own propaganda and influence than investing in the improvement of its individual members.

Ranks

• Fang (rank 1)
• Wolf (rank 2)
• Viper (rank 3)
• Ardragon (rank 4)
• Dread Lord (rank 5)