New errata for core books, dated 7/2/2008

[Stalker0]

Um, yeah. 12 pages. For a product this size, the errata is positively tiny. Most comparable products of this magnitude (other gamebooks and textbooks) have as much or more, and are updated at a far slower rate.

Its not the quantity of the errata, its the quality.

Of course most books are going to full of little editing errors. Change this word here, alter that sentence there. Or it clarifies a stance most people have figured out, like, "in fact you cannot abuse feather fall in that manner" etc.

However, so far the errata of the books has been very large in magnitude. Reduce this DC by half, double this monsters hitpoints, double this monster's damage, reduce this challenge DC by 30%, etc.

Those aren't little clarifications that a person who wasn't paying attention to the errata could easily ignore and carry on his business. These are fairly significant, game changing alterations.

Now 3rd edition had a few of these as well...the most prominent in my opinion was the change on righteous might, whose bonuses got nearly cut in half. But so far, many of the 4e changes have been this significant in scope.


I will say that I do like the errata that changes how damage types are split up and compared to resistances....with one exception. This makes the tieflings fire resistance even weaker, and its already considered one of the weaker races. It would have been nice improvement to them if their resistance had been the exception to the rule,

"When dealing with damage that is part fire and part another type, the tieflings fire resistance can always be used."

 

[Mengu]

Now 3rd edition had a few of these as well...the most prominent in my opinion was the change on righteous might, whose bonuses got nearly cut in half.

Never knew this one. Our 3.5 cleric uses that spell quite a bit. I guess life goes on without errata too...

 

[Regicide]

I will say that I do like the errata that changes how damage types are split up and compared to resistances....with one exception.

I think it will make it too easy for PCs to get around monster resistance and will get changed again. As it stands, combining types has the effect of making it an entirely different type of damage. I'm not sure I like that in this system.

 

[Sanzuo]

I am much in favor of the skill challenge changes. It makes skill challenges almost palatable.

 

[fuindordm]

Ranger multiclassing is looking better.

Warrior of the Wild: the quarry now lasts until the end of your next turn.
Ranger errata: the opportunity for extra damage recharges at the start of your turn.

So, if I read this correctly, a multiclass ranger gets two chances for extra damage per encounter.

Nice!

 

[silentounce]

Its not the quantity of the errata, its the quality.

Of course most books are going to full of little editing errors. Change this word here, alter that sentence there. Or it clarifies a stance most people have figured out, like, "in fact you cannot abuse feather fall in that manner" etc.

However, so far the errata of the books has been very large in magnitude. Reduce this DC by half, double this monsters hitpoints, double this monster's damage, reduce this challenge DC by 30%, etc.

Those aren't little clarifications that a person who wasn't paying attention to the errata could easily ignore and carry on his business. These are fairly significant, game changing alterations.

Now 3rd edition had a few of these as well...the most prominent in my opinion was the change on righteous might, whose bonuses got nearly cut in half. But so far, many of the 4e changes have been this significant in scope.


I will say that I do like the errata that changes how damage types are split up and compared to resistances....with one exception. This makes the tieflings fire resistance even weaker, and its already considered one of the weaker races. It would have been nice improvement to them if their resistance had been the exception to the rule,

"When dealing with damage that is part fire and part another type, the tieflings fire resistance can always be used."

Thank you for explaining it better than I did. This was my point, but it was too late and I was too tired to explain myself in detail. These aren't just grammatical/typo errors. These are errors in core rule structure. Yes, it's wonderful they are doing this so quickly, etc. But it just adds to the feeling that this game wasn't ready to be released yet in the first place. I'm willing to bet that very little playtesting went on using the core rules as published. Yeah, they play tested all kinds of things, and I'm sure they playtested most rules. But I doubt they gave the "final" product to groups that hadn't played before to test it. That's what WE are doing now. It's their own fault for waiting until the last minute. It appears they were just playtesting a mishmash of rules willy nilly up until the end. How many statements have we seen where WotC personnel mention not being familiar with the rules because they played with so many different iterations and there were so many changes? Of course, this is fundamental to any game design, but really. Once they had a complete product, they should have done final testing for a while. I feel that they couldn't do this because of a deadline, and rather than delay the product they figured they'd just release it as is. It's things like this that cause .5 editions to be released. Yes, most of that is opinion and assumption. I don't have any more of an inside view into the process than anyone else. My I'm sticking by it.

Ranger multiclassing is looking better.

Warrior of the Wild: the quarry now lasts until the end of your next turn.
Ranger errata: the opportunity for extra damage recharges at the start of your turn.

So, if I read this correctly, a multiclass ranger gets two chances for extra damage per encounter.

Nice!

My multiclass Warlord/Ranger will love it, but I'm willing to bet this is an unintentional result and may end up with another errata. I doubt anyone even looked at how the newly errata'ed rules interacted with each other. More of the same.

 

[Jhaelen]

However, so far the errata of the books has been very large in magnitude. Reduce this DC by half, double this monsters hitpoints, double this monster's damage, reduce this challenge DC by 30%, etc.

Those aren't little clarifications that a person who wasn't paying attention to the errata could easily ignore and carry on his business. These are fairly significant, game changing alterations.

I mostly agree, except for the doubling of monster hp/damage things. These errors seem to have been caused by simple changes, e.g. turning a monster from Elite to Standard or a Soldier into a Brute.

Tiny changes can have a huge effect - it's just like the butterfly effect

I'm a bit unhappy they still didn't bother to fix the minions. At least 14 of them have issues that are plain to see, I don't even want to think about how many have issues that noone can notice because it's not possible to double-check the stats.

 

[Oompa]

So am i right to say..

If an monster deals me 10 fire, 10 psychic, 10 radiant, 10 acid and 10 thunder damage for an total of 50...

And i have 10 fire resist, 10 psychic resist, 10 radiant resist, 10 acid resist and 2 thunder resist..

I take 48 damage?

Or 8 ?

That looks an bit weird to me..

 

[scholz]

Ranger multiclassing is looking better.

Warrior of the Wild: the quarry now lasts until the end of your next turn.
Ranger errata: the opportunity for extra damage recharges at the start of your turn.
So, if I read this correctly, a multiclass ranger gets two chances for extra damage per encounter.
Nice!

I interpreted the Warrior of the Wild thing as a nerf actually. As originally written you could use the feature once per encounter, but the feature itself lasted the whole encounter.

 

[Hypersmurf]

So am i right to say..

If an monster deals me 10 fire, 10 psychic, 10 radiant, 10 acid and 10 thunder damage for an total of 50...

And i have 10 fire resist, 10 psychic resist, 10 radiant resist, 10 acid resist and 2 thunder resist..

I take 48 damage?

Or 8 ?

That looks an bit weird to me..

With the errata, a monster shouldn't be dealing 10 fire, 10 psychic, etc.

He deals 50 damage, which is fire, psychic, radiant, acid, and thunder.

Dividing damage evenly was in the pre-errata paragraph.

Before, if you were dealing 20 radiant damage and added the fire keyword, you had a radiant, fire attack which dealt 10 radiant damage and 10 fire damage. Now, if you are dealing 20 radiant damage and add the fire keyword, you have a radiant, fire attack which deals 20 damage, all of which is radiant and fire. Radiant resistance by itself won't help you, because the damage which is radiant is also fire damage, which bypasses radiant resistance. You need both radiant resistance and fire resistance.

Now, in theory, it's still possible to deal fractional damage - if you have a non-fire damage attack which deals +1d6 fire damage on a critical, for example, you could still deal 8 radiant damage + 4 fire damage, and I think in that case I'd be inclined to treat them separately for resistance purposes... so radiant resistance 5 and fire resistance 5 would leave you taking 3 radiant damage overall.

-Hyp.