monk preview: another expertise feat - talk about stealth errata!

[KarinsDad]

On the other hand, you must take things in the Character Builder with a grain of salt because sometimes there are errors and they may not get corrected for a month or two (or possibly longer). On the other, other hand (the third hand?) those items get noted in the Character Builder FAQ.

They do? I'll have to go look.

I know of about 6 or so bugs in Character Builder that although reported, never seem to get fixed.

But, they seem to have no problem adding new functionality like putting melee and ranged basic attacks onto the power sheets (which doesn't really buy much for anyone).

The main problem I have seen is that some new feats do not modify anything. The PC acquires the new feat and the character sheet does not change. This does not happen for most feats, but its fairly annoying when it happens because the player has to pencil in the change, sometimes in several places (that is if the player notices it, not all players are math geeky enough to check all of their numbers). There are also bugs where feats from the splat books are not in the list. Problems where campaign settings change with new updates, etc.

 

[cmbarona]

Yeah, I do wish there was better houserule functionality for the Character Builder, such as a feat-building option whose math would be reflected in the program.

At the very least, I'm hoping one of the official responses is to acknowledge the +1/2/3 at 5/15/25 scaling, and allow that as an option in the Character Builder.

 

[Nail]

@ cmbarona: That (the +1/2/3 at 5/15/25 in CB) would be nifty.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think what some of you guys completely miss is that rules tweaks have a very low priority with WotC. 95% of the people playing 4e wouldn't even know what you were talking about if you started going on to them about "stealth errata" and "math bugs". They just play the game with their friends every week or two. Most of them probably rarely to never read stuff on forums at all, don't really see a few small variations in this or that number as important, etc.

They're the VAST majority of the people playing this game. All they really want is a steady diet of new material to use in their adventures and new classes, races, powers, etc to play with. THAT is priority #1 for WotC. It occupies just about 99.9% of the D&D staff there. Explaining everything they do and think to critics is pretty much down their on the list of things Mike Mearls is interested in doing 1 step up from a root canal.

Furthermore they will always prefer to update the game by putting in new material instead of issuing errata to old material. Again the VAST majority of people that play the game will never pay attention to the errata and half of them probably haven't a clue that errata even exists. If they want to get things into the hands of most players then putting it in a product, preferable one most players are likely to have access to, is in their view vastly to be preferred over sticking it in an errata.

Finally these guys are BUSY. No company gives their employees less than a full plate of stuff to work on every day and I seriously doubt WotC is some special exception. Explaining WHY a certain feat was added to the game to satisfy a few 100 power gamers probably isn't at the top of their list of fires to put out today. Nor is spending a bunch of pages of Dragon on technical discussions of the rules probably something they want to do very often. It is just going to put most of the audience to sleep because they mostly just don't care. They would REALLY rather see another article about some game setting or whatever.

Not that I think the developers don't consider the power gamers to be valuable customers. They probably see them as individually the most valuable customers. Your just outnumbered 50 to 1 by the maybe slightly less valuable casual gamer customers. Like it or not those people overall bring in the vast majority of the income and if it is a choice of pleasing them or pleasing the people in this thread, you guys will lose almost every time.

 

[Elric]

Furthermore they will always prefer to update the game by putting in new material instead of issuing errata to old material. Again the VAST majority of people that play the game will never pay attention to the errata and half of them probably haven't a clue that errata even exists. If they want to get things into the hands of most players then putting it in a product, preferable one most players are likely to have access to, is in their view vastly to be preferred over sticking it in an errata.

Given that WotC printed the updated stealth rules in the back of PH-II, this seems simply wrong. They could have easily issued errata to increase to-hit bonuses (and FRW defenses), and pointed the errata out somewhere very obvious in PH-II. Perhaps in the feats chapter. "Expertise: We were thinking of printing a feat to fix the to-hit scaling math, but decided to issue errata to the Player's Handbook instead. See the rules update on page..."

Then everyone who bought PH-II would see it, and everyone who didn't buy PH-II but checked the online errata would also have it. As it is, if you don't get PH-II you won't have the Expertise feats, and checking the online errata won't tell you anything.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ok, this is my thoughts from another post, but I figured maybe someone here can comment on it, since it pretty much got ignored on the other thread...

We have seen and herd form group who played through all three teirs of play H,P,E and never found themselves in this slump of "I can't hit" lets call them group A
We have seen and herd from groups who played to paragon and felt the defences went up to much and the game watered down...lets call them group B
We have seen and herd form groups who in epci felt the monsters got to tough. we will call them group C.
We have seen people complain (I may be bias but I give this group the least amount of slack) that right from day one 1st level the game is too hard. we will call them group D.


I have no dubt WotC has herd from all 4 of these groups, and heck they might even have people in office in diffrent groups.

So now lets say they errata +1 to NADS and Attack at 5,15,and 25th...group A will feel it is too easy, group B will feel 5 levesl are too easy, group C will think 20 levels are too easy...group D will most likely prefer this...or they might complain it is still to 'late in the game'
So put yourself in there shoes...how do you work with the most number of people...make it a choice...infact break it down to a few choices.

We right now have atleast 4 diffrent ways to boost attack (Gnome illussion feat, Fey charm feat, Dragon born arcane feat, and the expertise feats) we have a few diffrent Nads boosting feats (some to all three some to just one but more...or those epic ones) So what does that do...
It means every player now gets to decide "What do I want to focus on?" I have a PC in my tuesday night game who is a swordmage going for maxed out defences, and took toughness. He seams to hit just fine at paragon levels with out expertise, so he will save his feats for the ones he wants...on the other hand our warlord can't hit to save his life, and is very rearly hit, so expertise was a good choice for him, but the NADs uppers not so much.

people who claim they are non choices fail to realize that they are the ultimate choice. (I even have a post in the errata board to up Helfire blood to +1, +2 at 15, +3 at 25th to give another option and another choice to the group)

 

[IanB]

I already stated in my original post that you responded to that WotC has no problem discussing new products. I do not disagree with you on that.

The people here are talking about WotC discussing stealth game design and philosophy changes, not future monk features.

So, I think your example does not disprove my point in any way, rather it supports my POV.

Care to try again with an example about core game mechanic changes where WotC came out and talked about why they changed them? The only one I can think of is the Skill Challenge errata that really didn't fix the problem.

Late 3.5e, polymorph change (the same people were in charge then, so it should count.)

 

[KarinsDad]

Late 3.5e, polymorph change (the same people were in charge then, so it should count.)

You do realize that you had to go back over 3 years for that one, right?

Design & Development: The Polymorph Problem

 

[LuckyAdrastus]

Along with:

"Weakest NAD Expertise"
Benefit: Your character gets +1 to a third ability score on levels 4, 8, 14, 18, 24, and 28. This bonus can only be applied to an ability score if a different ability score that modifies the same non-AC defense has not been modified. For example, the PC could not add +1 to Wisdom with this feat if +1 was already added to Charisma. If you are level 4 or higher, gain an additional feat.

Actually, the Playtest Monk gets this as a class feature. For reals. It's called "Mental Equilibrium" which gives +1/+2/+3 Fort at 1st/11th/21st levels. It's part of the "Centered Breath" build the playtest provides, which is a Dex/Wis build (i.e. had Fort as the Weakest FRW).

Double stealth errata yo!

Excuse me if this was already noted later in the thread (I just started reading from the 1st page).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Actual, the Playtest Monk actually gets this as a class feature. For reals. It's called "Mental Equilibrium" which gives +1/+2/+3 Fort at 1st/11th/21st levels. It's part of the "Centered Breath" build the playtest provides, which is a Dex/Wis build (i.e. had Fort as the Weakest FRW).

Double stealth errata yo!

or...maybe someone looked at the monk in 3.5, saw the good saves across the board, and said "How do we do that in 4th" then came upp with a unque feature for the monk...my bet is that the Str build has it for ref...