D&D 5E Would a repeat of the large errata from the previous edition put you off of Next?

[n00bdragon]

I think part of it stems from failed expectations. When 4e hit the public. We had been told "the math was fixed". 4e fans bombarded the messageboards with "the math is fixed". But they had to fix it again. At least three times in various ways (I say at least three because I know of three separate fixes to the math, there may have been more but I ultimately don't care because the edition had already lost me as a player).

For what it's worth, I think there's been too much errata ever since 3e came out and that, of course, includes 4e. I can understand fixes in text for typos that change the meaning of information. Unearthed Arcana had a fair amount of that in its tables. MegaTraveller had a lot as well. But when you're rejiggering powers, spells, and rules, what a lot of errata tells me is that the game is over-designed. It doesn't have the tolerance it should have. It should be OK if there's a little slip in the gears. And that's why I consider constant errata as a negative for the system.

So, the evidence that earlier editions of D&D are not "over-designed" and have built in tolerance can be seen where exactly? The fact that they were sparsely amended? Really? There's absolutely nothing wrong or broken or ambiguous or contradictory in 1e and 2e at all? You're going to take a lack of corrections to mean they obviously got it perfect the first time? That's like shooting wildly at a wall and painting a bulls-eye wherever you hit.

 

[Hussar]

But, Bill91, too much compared to what? TSR published little or no errata (even just fixing typos would have been an improvement) and certainly never made any freely available in any format. The fifth module in the Dragonlance series was essentially one long errata document and that's about the only errata document I can recall TSR ever producing.

No, wait, I lied, I do recall one for the Monsterous Manual (or perhaps it was for the loose leaf version of the 2e Monster Manual) in Dragon. But, that's it.

Are you going to try to tell me that the errata document, done to the same standard as 3e or 4e would be shorter than that 3e or 4e one? I certainly don't think so. Not when you have 17 page ADDICT documents trying to explain 1e initiative rules.

So they failed to fix the math perfectly. Good grief, one of the fixes was a feat that gave a maximum +3 hit bonus spread over 30 levels. That's a pretty solid math right there when you can fix it with so little. Sure, the monster math needed tweaking. But, again, it's not like the game was unplayable with old monster math. It was just slow. It worked. And virtually all the fixes were done within 2 years of release. The 4e PHB hasn't seen any new changes in a couple of years now has it? At least, nothing serious.

There's a lot of hyperbole in this thread and it's certainly not one sided.

 

[billd91]

So, the evidence that earlier editions of D&D are not "over-designed" and have built in tolerance can be seen where exactly? The fact that they were sparsely amended? Really? There's absolutely nothing wrong or broken or ambiguous or contradictory in 1e and 2e at all? You're going to take a lack of corrections to mean they obviously got it perfect the first time? That's like shooting wildly at a wall and painting a bulls-eye wherever you hit.

Totally misunderstanding the point. 1e and 2e had more tolerance because they didn't "break" without constant errata. If there were some power imbalances, that wasn't a big deal. The game wasn't designed to provide a narrow spectrum, mathematically-defined, "sweet spot".

 

[Hussar]

Totally misunderstanding the point. 1e and 2e had more tolerance because they didn't "break" without constant errata. If there were some power imbalances, that wasn't a big deal. The game wasn't designed to provide a narrow spectrum, mathematically-defined, "sweet spot".

Really? This is where you want to go? That 1e and 2e were better designed, better balanced games than 3e or 4e?

Good grief, I can break 2e at 1st level with a decent strength roll. A 2e fighter can kill TROLLS in a single round of damage. By himself. Never mind all the ridiculously broken other things there were. Let me introduce you to the Faiths and Avatars book for Forgotten Realms - where I can create a cleric who can cast all Magic User spells as Cleric spells in addition to having virtually all cleric spells.

1e and 2e were so horribly broken that it took virtually every DM a binder full of house rules just to reign in the stuff that that particular DM had seen, never mind what all DM's had seen. There's a reason that virtually no AD&D table played the game even remotely the same and it's not because the mechanics were well designed.

The sign of a well designed game is when looking at two tables, there isn't an enormous variation in the rules that can't be explained by setting details.

 

[Mistwell]

What I don't understand is why WOTC is getting slammed for 'large errata' when Paizo are doing the same thing, in the same context of the title of this thread?

Because the question was not asked about Paizo errata? I think raising the issue of whether people are complaining about a different company's errata, which was not raised as part of the topic, is a stretch.

That, and nobody is "slamming" WOTC. The question asked was basically, "Relative to past editions from WOTC, how much errata do you think 5e should maintain, and in what format?" It's not slamming the company to say "I'd like X amount, which is less than the Y amount we had with edition Z".

 

[Hussar]

Because the question was not asked about Paizo errata? I think raising the issue of whether people are complaining about a different company's errata, which was not raised as part of the topic, is a stretch.

That, and nobody is "slamming" WOTC. The question asked was basically, "Relative to past editions from WOTC, how much errata do you think 5e should maintain, and in what format?" It's not slamming the company to say "I'd like X amount, which is less than the Y amount we had with edition Z".

I'd point out two things though Mistwell.

1. Paizo was held up, more than once in this thread, as the "good" way of doing errata. More than a few posters have said that Paizo is doing it right. If Paizo is doing effectively the same thing as WOTC, then doesn't that mean that WOTC is doing it right too?

2. The two options, as far as D&D goes, are 3e/4e levels of errata (which aren't really all that different) or AD&D levels of errata - which is basically little to none. Bill91 above claimed that the reason that AD&D has so little errata is due to the tolerances built into the system. IOW, earlier D&D is apparently more robust than later D&D and doesn't need to have errata.

There's a number of problems with that. For one, it's a bit cart before the horse. We don't actually know how much errata 1e or 2e needed since so little was actually produced. Unless you take the position that editing was better under TSR than under WOTC, I don't think that's terribly supportable. The sheer number of simple typos and whatnot under TSR is pretty large, never minding actually making changes to the mechanics themselves.

IOW a straight up, pure errata with no mechanical changes document for AD&D (either 1e or 2e) would likely be somewhere in the neighbourhood of the same length as the entire 3e or 4e errata documents. And, again, as a prime example, I point to the ADDICT document which needs 17 pages to explain 1e initiative rules. Granted, you can certainly cut that down, but, it's still going to require several pages of explanation to fix 1e initiative rules.

So, while you can take this as a simple question, I think you lose a lot of nuance.

 

[Stormonu]

Funnily enough, I'm one of the few who doesn't use errata. Though like everyone else, I'd like a rulebook as clean and with as few errors from the get-go, I don't go consult the errata. As primarily a DM, any problems I run into with the game I'll find a way to deal with it. Often, when I have bothered to glance at errata I feel like either something didn't need to be fixed or I could have come up with a rule as good or better - so I don't bother with it at all.

Again, my hope would be for there be to as few issues from the get go, but I generally trust that having a living, breathing, thinking game master is worth a good 10-20 pages of errata any day.

And as an aside, before the days of the internet, I believe it was possible to get rule fixes for the AD&D by sending a SASE (Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope) to TSR for a list of the latest errata. In some cases, it was just stealth updated in later printings.

 

[Mistwell]

I'd point out two things though Mistwell.

1. Paizo was held up, more than once in this thread, as the "good" way of doing errata. More than a few posters have said that Paizo is doing it right. If Paizo is doing effectively the same thing as WOTC, then doesn't that mean that WOTC is doing it right too?

Are the same people who say they like Paizo's errata really representative of the people who say WOTC's been doing too much errata lately? I don't think they are, and I didn't see it as a reply to those particular people who said that, but as a defense in general of WOTC and complaint about people who like Pathfinder.

2. The two options, as far as D&D goes, are 3e/4e levels of errata (which aren't really all that different) or AD&D levels of errata - which is basically little to none. Bill91 above claimed that the reason that AD&D has so little errata is due to the tolerances built into the system. IOW, earlier D&D is apparently more robust than later D&D and doesn't need to have errata.

There are no "two options" given in the thread. For example, I've said "1-3% of the page count of the book it's errata-ing", or simply "small enough to be able to slip into the back cover without harming the spine". That's neither "no errata", nor "3e/4e levels of errata".

Here, this is a picture of a guy's 4e collection, and the binder on the left is labelled, "yes that binder is full (almost) of errata".

That's too much guys. And if Pathfinder has that much errata, then that's too much also. Errata should never accumulate into a tome-sized binder for a game.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Wow! That's some thread...

I assume customers will see a lot of errata for 5e as well, and not for typos only. The reason is simple: the game will be extended by additional rules modules each of which - in the best of all worlds - can be used in any single game. This opens up dozens of variations. Now could the desginers foresee a rules module which will be published in four years? I don't think so.

So they either limit themselves when designing the new module that it falls completely within the border defined by the core rules or they try something new and risk producing incongruencies, which make rules changing errata necessary.

Playtesting such an addition to hammer out each and every problem is next to impossible: the number of possible variations of the modules prohibits it.

And if you want 5e to have a long run, maybe even be an evergreen version, it becomes more pronounced. Many gamers will start craving for some "interesting" addition, so you will have to get more experimental. While the "Manual of Halfling Gardening" might be quite safe to design, the sales will probably not suffice.

Another question ist the errata threshold: do you fix/change each and every little thing (typos, I'm looking at you)? If not, how do you decide what to fix? Do you appoint a bug manager who does nothing but evaluate bug report and applications for changes? Bug fixing by committee?

The 4e "solution" with the CB and the online compendium was conceptually cool. Each single item could be changed and auto-feeded to the gamers (with DDI, though). If they would have added the possiblitiy compare different versions of the texts, maybe even "save" the version for me that I like best, I would have been a happy camper.

 

[sunshadow21]

What I don't understand is why WOTC is getting slammed for 'large errata' when Paizo are doing the same thing, in the same context of the title of this thread? Paizo's customer service is fine, I've bought their products and will continue to do so, but the errata is still there. There are problems with the way WOTC has handled D&D, but errata is not one of them.

Errata is a big part of it actually, or at least the expectation that something has to be so finely tuned that even the smallest error needs to be corrected immediately to avoid severe problems. Paizo may make the same amount as WotC in the end, but how they get there is completely different. They tend to make lots of small tweaks that can be measured more accurately, letting the changes build up over time. WotC has an annoying habit of simply throwing out the entire system and trying to completely rewrite it again and again and again. This isn't just true of 4E, it was already very evident in 3.5. Completely rewriting polymorph 3 times rather than trying to isolate the actual problem and deal with it while leaving the rest alone was completely silly, and that's how WotC tends to approach errata and rules changes in general. Paizo adapted a fair number of things initially, but since then has been more incremental in their overall approach, making it easier to adjust and adapt.

As for Paizo having the advantage of a well tested rule set, that is precisely part of my point. They didn't throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak, but rather found ways to tweak and improve on the existing baseline within measurable bounds, making their job a lot easier, both in satisfying their customers and in being able to effectively measure changes. They didn't change everything they could possibly change just for the sake of change, making further changes and future expectations much more realistic to accomplish. Even with the new classes and archetypes and whatnot, they made it very clear early on that the new options were not automatic assumptions in any world; they also frontloaded most of the player options upfront precisely in order to get that part out of the way for a year or two so that further changes could be made with a fair bit of data on hand. I have no doubt that when Pathfinder 2.0 comes out, they will find ways to incorporate what they have learned about the new base classes and archetypes into the existing core rather than try to dramatically rewrite much of anything from scratch, just like they have started to incorporate material from later core books into Golarion as they get more data on what works and what doesn't. And at least so far, price has not been a major issue with the constant updating of pdfs for free after initial purchase. Initially WotC did this as well with 3rd edition being in many cases simply universally accepted houserules. The release of 3rd edition didn't cause the same amount of split that 4E did because even if details were different, even most of those were at least familiar in concept to existing mechanics and popular house rules. Even 3.5 didn't attempt to reinvent the basic wheel for the most part; it was the cumulative number of small changes that set apart 3.5, not any one big change. Both did really well because the bumps that were there, for the most part, were well documented, and easy enough to work around or simply ignore that it didn't bother most people enough to stop playing the game overall. With 4E they didn't bother to establish a baseline to make changes from, and that makes making any kind of effective errata or rule changes next to impossible without creating a lot of additional problems; that's something they have to avoid with Next. It's what drove a lot of people away from both later 3.5 (where the splat books just plain started getting ridiculous) and 4E.

I guess at the end of the day, I personally find Paizo's approach much less of a headache than wondering how WotC is going to stick their foot in their mouth for the umpteenth time next. I'm not anti-WotC, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering with paying attention to Next at all, but I do need to see them learn from their past mistakes before I give them the same benefit of the doubt that I give Paizo, which has earned it over time. If they can do that, than how often and what form the errata takes isn't going to matter; if they can't, it's going to be another nail in the coffin, just as it was for 4E. Essentials proved to me that is was possible, now they just need to keep building on that.

To be fair, the problem isn't entirely WotC itself; both their fanbase and their distribution model has changed, with both becoming more reliant on official errata that keeps up with the speed of the internet. The internet will always break things much faster than WotC can keep up, and demand fixes at an equal speed while doing so, something that no company could keep up with. Their decision to largely abandon books and printed magazines for an almost entirely digital format put them in a tight spot that they have worked with as well as can be expected. I will never try to argue that another company in that same spot could exceed what WotC has done. Paizo definitely has an easier road here, sticking with pdfs and maintaining for the most part the same, far more reasonable expectations of corrections and changes that come with a book format; while the SRD may be the most used tool at the actual table, pdfs and physical books still remain vitally important, making expectations based on those mediums much easier to maintain. Their strength is in learning from others mistakes, something that I will freely admit that they have a much easier time at doing than WotC right now, but as Paizo continues to grow, and WotC faces an uphill battle to sustain their new edition while also maintaining 4E as a semi-active system, at least on DDI, that will change, and the true test will be to see if WotC can learn and adapt to the changing conditions as quickly as Paizo has and probably will for the immediate future.