At 2nd level, a Wizard of the Evocation School gains the Sculpt Spells feature (PHB p 117).
Beginning at 2nd level, you can create pockets of relative safety within the effects of your evocation spells. When you cast an evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 + the spell’s level. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their saving throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save.
By RAW, it seems as if evocation wizards are unable to protect themselves against fireballs they cast in their space even if they can protect their nearby friends. These seems to go against the flavor of the spell sculpting feature.
In the Adventurers League FAQ (v8.2), it says:
Sage Advice/Twitter. Sage Advice (SA) and tweets from the Wizards of the Coast staff are a great barometer for the ‘rules-as-intended’, in any case. Whether or not your DM chooses to utilize them for rules adjudication in is at their discretion; as always, the DM remains the final arbiter of rule disputes.
That seems to allow for a little discretion on the part of an AL DM to weigh Sage Advice against the RAW.
With this tweet from Mike Mearls, along with any other evidence and logic that can be added, how should an AL DM should rule on this?
Question: An evocator wizard using Sculpt Spell can be one the creatures who automatically succeed on their saving throws?
Mike Mearls: Yes – effect applies to creatures you can see, so you can apply it to yourself.
I understand the RAW in the PHB. It's very clear. I am asking how an AL DM should resolve this RAW vs this designer tweet in light of the AL FAQ which says that such tweets help indicate designer intent. Is it clear in this case that an AL DM should rule one way or the other, or does an AL DM have enough flexibility to define the ruling how they would like?
This question about whether JC's tweets are still official may be relevant to my question.
Best Answer
There's nothing in the text that suggests that the intention was for the Evocation Wizard to be able to include himself.
As you pointed out, the Sculpt Spells feature reads (emphasis mine):
There is no ambiguity here. Both RAW and RAI, the Evocation Wizard cannot apply the feature to himself. Mearls was answering for how he would treat the feature at his table, not how it was intended to work normally (or at least, if that was his intention, he was mistaken in his interpretation of the text).