John Cooper's Revenge - MM3 errata

[Darkness]

Amazing! It finally becomes apparent that the game designers and developers at WotC are... *gasp!* Human!

Specifically, humans without appropriate software.

You can't seriously argue that it's beyond WotC's means to provide them with software that can correctly calculate stat blocks, eliminating a majority of these errors.
Building an Excel spreadsheet that correctly calculates monster stat blocks takes not even a few hours IMX - and I'm not exactly an Excel grand master. Even if basic software like that would be all they could get, which is highly unlikely, they'd still be able to eliminate a majority of these errors.

 

[Gez]

I think we are all willing to cut them some slack, but next time they could add one small step to the editing process - Run the stat blocks past John Cooper

Yes, they could hire at least this one robot in their editing department!

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I think we are all willing to cut them some slack, but next time they could add one small step to the editing process - Run the stat blocks past John Cooper

I second this. Really- why don't they just save themselves some time and hire him as an in-house editor? Anyone want to start a campaign?

 

[Ambrus]

Now if we could just get an errata for the orginal 3.5 MM with all the stat blocks fixed, that'd be great. In my experience, it has proven to be as error ridden as the MM3. :\

 

[Starman]

Now if we could just get an errata for the orginal 3.5 MM with all the stat blocks fixed, that'd be great. In my experience, it has proven to be as error ridden as the MM3. :\

I don't see Wizards getting on the ball and fixing the error problem anytime soon, but I do see a solution for us. Everyone here on the boards can pitch in some money to "hire" John Cooper to edit every D&D/d20/OGL product for us and he can put up the errata here on the boards. The funds will have to cover buying all of these books and then paying John to do this. The enormity of the task means it will have to be his full time job, but I think he's up to the task.

Starman

 

[alsih2o]

Amazing! It finally becomes apparent that the game designers and developers at WotC are... *gasp!* Human!

Of course if you would prefer that robots write your books, I'm sure that can be arranged. Just don't get too mad if they improve 4th edition by releasing it in hexadecimal.

You kow, the ceramic book publishing market is even smaller than the gamer market, and they put out dozens of error free books every year. Many with only 1 author.

The rate of error amongst some publishers work should be a point of shame. Humans, sarcastic gasp or not, put out better work with fewer erroir in nearly every other field.

And sarcasm from WOTC employees like yourself really doesn't help. In fact, I would say it hurts.

 

[Knight Otu]

The editing has been pretty subpar in several products lately. We've been told that steps have been taken to make the editing better, but as far as I know, we don't know when exactly that will be obvious (that was after the CD release, and many product released after were too far through the process to have benefitted).

That said, where humans are, errors will be made. And errors can be extremely insidious. In a book about errors made in the scientific field, I've often read how a man pursued his idea for centuries. At one point it made click and I realized it should be decades.
And there really is no field where errors don't happen. I've seen university professors ranting about the errors in some published math books. And some unnamed aviation and spaceflight agency should be able to know about different measurements in different countries, right?

You kow, the ceramic book publishing market is even smaller than the gamer market, and they put out dozens of error free books every year. Many with only 1 author.

That's a pretty big statement. I'm sure, if you go looking for them, you will find some kind of error in at least one of them. Grammar, spelling, factual error, ...

 

[alsih2o]

That's a pretty big statement. I'm sure, if you go looking for them, you will find some kind of error in at least one of them. Grammar, spelling, factual error, ...

I stand corrected, Otu. I intended to draw a correlation between the stat blocks and things like clay and glaze recipes.

The "numbers and words together making sense" part.

I find it incredibly similar, and after decades of testing I have several books in which I have found no errors within the formulas. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Knight Otu]

Well, I don't know how "technical" those recipes are, and if there are any margins in which the recipes still work as intended (I suppose there is a small margin, but I'm not the expert). I guess the more technical a book is, the more likely it is that a comparable (recipes/stat blocks/units of measurement) error creeps in. Expertise will usually prevent those errors, but not always. Apparently, the ceramic field is better at using its expertise that other fields.

 

[Abstraction]

There's errors like: this monster should have +7 to Jump, not +6. Then there's errors like: The Halfling Outrider doesn't need a BAB. I think Wizards has had a wakeup call about the grievous errors. The rest, well, it would be nice if they weren't there but I certainly doubt those errors impact anybody's game.