How important is stat accuracy to you?

[delericho]

I prefer the stat blocks to be accurate, but am generally not overly bothered by this. If nothing else, I think it's important to recognise that no product will ever be 100% error-free. However, there are three circumstances where errors do bother me:

1) Where the error is going to have a significant impact on play. If, for example, a stat block were to include a +10 damage bonus from Power Attack but omit the attack roll penalty, that would be a problem.

2) Where the product is aimed at new players/DMs. I maintain that such products are less forgiving of errors, since there is a greater danger of confusing newbies.

3) Where the percentage of erroneous stat blocks is excessive. If more than 75% of the stat blocks in a product are inaccurate, this speaks of sloppiness on the parts of the producers. Either they haven't understood the rules properly, or they haven't invested the time and effort in proper editing, or they just don't care. In any of the three cases, this is a problem.

As a result, while I do check John Cooper's reviews of products, it's mostly out of interest. The only product really fails for me is "Scourge of the Howling Horde", which fails both criteria #2 and #3 above (and has a number of other problems as well).

 

[caudor]

I have a deep seated dislike for Errata. I typically ignore Errata unless it is something major.

two examples (both psionic)

1) Energy Missile DC scaling. My group recognized this as an obvious mistake and House Ruled it to work like it should... before and without the need for Errata (but effectively, we accepted the errata here). This isn't so much errata as it is intuitive.

2) Astral Constructs. Errata posted in Complete Psi states that one can only have 1 Astral Construct in creation at a time... with a lameass PrC that allows up to two. Not quite intuitive... in fact its somewhat of a "WTF?!" ruling. Naturally, we ignore this.



Serpent Kingdoms: 3.5
Unapproachable East: 3.0
Underdark: 3.5
Arms & Equipment Guide: 3.0
Book of Vile Darkness: 3.0 (Exalted is 3.5)

I'm a little unsure about the FR books. The other two I know for sure.

Thanks Drowbane

 

[Crothian]

Do accurate stats play a big part in your game? Also, do you download the official Wizards errata? I know a lot of DMs that don't bother. What are your thoughts?

I would prefer accuracy to inaccuracy. But it is rarely worth my time to find errata and make the fixes myself.

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

I'm a hardcore stat block stickler. In my own products I try to make sure that every stat block is 100% by-the-book accurate. I think I owe it to my customers to give them the best possible product I can, and seeing that stat blocks are an important part of the game, they should be right, in my opinion.

As a customer, I hate it when I buy a product that's riddled with stat errors, just as I hate it when a product is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. To me they amount to the same thing - a lack of editing.

BD

 

[Maggan]

Minor inaccuracies don't affect my game. And I usually ignore errata.

If a major problem surfaces at our table, we go "wow" and work around it, and then fix it either by banning the rule or tweaking it.

/M

 

[hong]

I don't tend to bother.

Minor stat problems aren't that big a deal. When things frustrate me is when the monster doesn't seem to "work" very well. Certain demons seem to have this problem.

Ditto. Statblock errors aren't as important as when the basic design of the monster is fundamentally flawed.

 

[Alzrius]

I much prefer that stat blocks be accurate, and find it disheartening when I can go through a book and just start tallying errors in various things like average hit points, number of feats, initiative bonus, etc. Dissecting skill points takes more work, but is more likely to reveal errors.

Even if they don't make much of an in-game difference, stat errors annoy me to death, and I always download errata.

 

[Thomas Percy]

As The Forge Studios editor I do what I can to be acurate,
but as the DM
I prefer the monster what is efficient in combat and its stats include a lot of mistakes, than a monster inefective in combat but statted perfectly.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Do accurate stats play a big part in your game?

Not at all. My players are fortunate if they can get their OWN freakin stats correct. They certainly aren't going to be demanding statblocks of critters and NPC's to doublecheck the work of the game authors or my own to make sure that they weren't cheated by one of them having a skill point or feat more or less.

Also, do you download the official Wizards errata?

Was a time that I did so, but only for purposes of online debate. I personally don't care. I can't think of an instance yet where the OFFICIAL errata was a whit more useful than anything I could or DID come up with on my own on the fly.

What are your thoughts?

That people who NEED accurate stats need a life away from gaming. But that's just me being snide.

 

[Mercule]

When I'm DMing, I don't care if I'm a bit off here or there. Most of my NPCs have skads of skill points left unspent.

As a consumer, correctness is very important to me. If I allow, say, five degrees of error during a game, every degree off is less wiggle room I have in play. It's also more math I have to do myself. As others have said, I do value cool ideas more -- but only so far as they are executed halfway well.

To be totally honest, statistical accuracy is one of the big reasons I rarely even look at third party books. The earliest 3.0 third party books, which seemed to be mostly critter books, screwed this up so badly that it stopped being worth my time to even consider anything not WotC.

They had some pretty neat ideas, but it seemed like statistical considerations were half-baked. All the odd stat modifiers, mathematical errors, and arbitrary BAB and save totals just toasted me. Really, if I can thumb through the 3.0 PHB and notice, without it being pointed out, that all the BAB and saves follow a mathematic progression, shouldn't someone trying to pass themselves off as a pro at least dig deep enough to figure that out? Anyway, that's a huge rant, but bad math bugs me, too.