OD&D Are there unofficial BECMI Errata?

[Jack Daniel]

The "error" I was speaking of was, in Expert book, that the spell is for Clerics of at least 10 level for foraging twelve people, but the description says that you can create food for other twelve people every cleric level after the 8, not 10. In a table in one book (Companion or Master, the one with mass battle rules), it says that the correct value is starting from 10. This error was copyed in the RC, and corrected in the unofficial errata.

That particular "mistake" may not be a mistake at all.

In the 1982 Expert Set by Cook & Marsh, clerics got access to their 5th level spells starting at the 7th experience level (same as the white box). Mentzer pushed the 5th level spells all the way up to 10th level, but didn't bother editing the text of spells like create food and raise dead. Given this information, you can either leave the text as-is for determining how effective a high-level cleric's spells ought to be (which is what I'd recommend personally), or you can change all the references within the text of 5th level spells that speak of "8th level clerics" to "11th level clerics." (But that seems like a lot of trouble, it doesn't do the balance of the cleric class any favors, and you'd also have to account for the fact that clerics originally got their 4th level spells at the 6th experience level — so lots of editing.)

Me, I just revise the clerical spell progression to sit neatly between Cook/Marsh and Mentzer and leave the spell text alone, because that seems to me the ideal solution.

 

[cavalier973]

The Rules Cyclopedia is missing a few bits of information. First is how non-magical, non-healing-skill healing takes place. The answer is all the way back in Moldvay Basic. 1d3 hit points are healed with each day of complete rest. I scribbled that into one of the blank pages in the back of my RC. The other thing I added from Moldvay was the information on traps. Any character has a 1-in-6 chance of finding a structural trap (not a small trap on a chest, that is). Dwarves have a 2-in-6 chance to do so.

The last piece of information that isn’t (as far as I can find) related in either B/X or BECMI/RC is how much player characters get for selling mundane equipment (like, pilfering the swords in the orcs’ armory and toting them back to town to sell). B2 says that the provisioner in the keep will buy such equipment for 50% of the list price.

 

[rogueattorney]

The more time you spend with the RC, the more you’ll find subtle changes and omissions from the BECM. Several of these I think were unintentional. Some of the class progression charts reflect an earlier printing of the Companion rules. The m-u version of the Wish spell seems to have been copied over from the cleric version - intentional to make cleric and m-u versions the same, or done without realizing there was a difference? And so on

You’ll also find that several sections were taken from the “Black Box” Basic set that came out the year previous that often had significantly different wordings in rules. That’s the source of - for example - the inconsistency in the movement in combat rules.

There are also several portions that came from the GAZ series of supplements. The non-weapon skills are a partial compilation of those found in the GAZs. The spell research rules are from the GAZs and are different from those found in BECM.

And then there’s some completely new sections. The Mystic pc class is an adaptation of the Mystic npc “monster” from the Master box.

So “errata” becomes a little bit of a loaded question, because there’s really no way of knowing which changes were intentional versus careless and also depends on the reader’s desire for fidelity with the BECM rules versus allowing the RC to be its own thing.

 

[Alan Shutko]

Bringing the thread back so it can show up in search. There is Aaron Oliver's unofficial errata at

Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia Errata and Companion Document Download Page

 

[Alzrius]

The Rules Cyclopedia is missing a few bits of information. First is how non-magical, non-healing-skill healing takes place. The answer is all the way back in Moldvay Basic. 1d3 hit points are healed with each day of complete rest.

The 1991 black boxed set was slightly more generous, allowing for 1d4 hit points recovered per night of rest.

 

[Alby87]

Thank you for your replies. In these years, I collected all the Dragon Magazine Sage Advice columns regarding BECMI in a nice PDF file, and noticed there are some errata there. I know the Dragon Magazine was not the "official" official TSR response to those question, but I noticed that all the print errors addressed in those articles were used as a base for a corrected Italian print: this give me an idea that they should be more official than people give credits them off.

I published them on the BECMI Facebook group, I think I need to publish on the web so I can link it here. I will do it when I have some time this day.

 

[Jahydin]

I published them on the BECMI Facebook group, I think I need to publish on the web so I can link it here. I will do it when I have some time this day.

Please do, that would be neat to see.

 

[Alby87]

https://github.com/Alby1987/d-dbecmierrata/releases/download/0.1FAQ-0.2ERRATA/Errata0.2.pdf

https://github.com/Alby1987/d-dbecmierrata/releases/download/0.1FAQ-0.2ERRATA/FAQ0.1.pdf

Here are the printable PDF for Errata and FAQs