D&D 5E New Errata Released For D&D PHB, OotA, Xanathar, and ToF

WOtC has published an updated Sage Advice compendium with updated errata for the D&D Player's Handbook, Out of the Abyss, and for Xanathar's Guide and Tome of Foes.

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/PH-Errata.pdf PHB

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/OotA-Errata.pdf OOtA

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/XGtE-Errata.pdf Xanathar

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/MTF-Errata.pdf ToF

 

[Paul Farquhar]

All that needs to be acknowledged in that regard is that prior to the errata, sans hidden rules (common sense), only small creatures were prevented by RAW from wielding heavy weapons.

No, my point is all creatures who are not PCs are RAW prohibited (by virtue of it never having been enabled in the first place) from using any weapons unless the stat block or the DM says otherwise.

 

[clearstream]

No, my point is all creatures who are not PCs are RAW prohibited (by virtue of it never having been enabled in the first place) from using any weapons unless the stat block or the DM says otherwise.

I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing. So long as a PC can be made tiny by magic, that is all that is needed for the argument.

Your point is far more general, as it would apply to all creature sizes and all weapon properties.

 

[Envisioner]

This is a strange argument to bring at this point. I am exactly speaking from a perspective of the rules lawyer. I am pointing out that the simulationist argument relies on an unwritten consensus about what is being simulated. That makes it subjective. Objectively, the original RAW entails only that small creatures cannot use heavy weapons.

Really? You think that the rules need to explicitly say "this is meant to simulate realistic physics whenever it does not specifically indicate that magic or the like causes unrealistic occurrences"? Most people are just fine with that being an "unwritten consensus". Objective vs. subjective doesn't need to be an absolute binary; things can be subjectively agreed to be mostly objective more or less, and people who aren't rules lawyers (or actual lawyers) tend to be fine with that.

The value of the heavy weapon example is how it stands in contrast to the healing spirit example. We agree only by common sense that tiny creatures shouldn't ever have been allowed to use heavy weapons. So the errata seems fine. But not all players agree that healing spirit should be 1+mod uses. So the errata seems... not fine?

It's a lot harder to make the "common sense" argument about spells, since they explicitly work by magic and not by physics. I mean, I'm fine with "a pixie" having the ability to use a Heavy weapon, specifically because she's got magic and she can sprinkle pixie dust onto an 80-pound mattock so that her 8-ounce self can lift it. But that's due to her being a pixie, not due to her being a Tiny creature. Obviously, most Tiny creatures have to obey physics, even if several specific ones don't.

I state the above in detail so that others joining the thread at this point might avoid misapprehending what is contended.

That is certainly a good policy, I'll give you credit on that one, even if my overall contention is that you're being a trifle ridiculous in your pickiness.

 

[Envisioner]

1) At some time after release, an errata is published to D&Dm saying that tue creatures cannot use heavy weapons. Should the heavy weapon constraint also apply to smue creatures even though they are not specified?

The size categories in standard D&D are explictly presented as being a continuum - all creatures effectively have a Size stat, and Tiny creatures have Size 1, Small have Size 2, Medium have Size 3. If D&Dm came out and said that all creatures with a Size stat of 2 are now considered Smue instead of Small, and all creatures with Tiny size are now Tue instead of Tiny, then nothing would change because of these different namings. If, on the other hand, the point of the change was to do away with the implied Size numbers, and Smue and Tue were just arbitrary categories like Elf and Orc, and you now had human-made weapons which explicitly couldn't be used by Orcs and you wanted to argue about whether they were also intended to not be used by Elves...is that where you're going with this? I'm confused. It seems like you want to come up with an underlying rule which doesn't depend on having a reality that it illustrates, but if that is indeed your goal, the only question I can ask is "why on Earth would you ever want that?".

 

[Chaosmancer]

No, my point is all creatures who are not PCs are RAW prohibited (by virtue of it never having been enabled in the first place) from using any weapons unless the stat block or the DM says otherwise.

What purpose does this assertion serve both in the context of the discussion about how we wish to view errata when RAI was fully understood, and in the running of the game itself?

Maybe I skimmed it, but I don't see why you feel a need to put forth such a claim

 

[clearstream]

The size categories in standard D&D are explictly presented as being a continuum - all creatures effectively have a Size stat, and Tiny creatures have Size 1, Small have Size 2, Medium have Size 3. If D&Dm came out and said that all creatures with a Size stat of 2 are now considered Smue instead of Small, and all creatures with Tiny size are now Tue instead of Tiny, then nothing would change because of these different namings. If, on the other hand, the point of the change was to do away with the implied Size numbers, and Smue and Tue were just arbitrary categories like Elf and Orc, and you now had human-made weapons which explicitly couldn't be used by Orcs and you wanted to argue about whether they were also intended to not be used by Elves...is that where you're going with this? I'm confused. It seems like you want to come up with an underlying rule which doesn't depend on having a reality that it illustrates, but if that is indeed your goal, the only question I can ask is "why on Earth would you ever want that?".

I think what you are saying here is that there is a pattern of ascending numbers for sizes and it is in obedience of that pattern that we set the RAI (and more recently, the errata).

So the question would be, why not go the other way? Why not say that seeing as 3 is also right next to 2, we should expect to see an errata bringing medium creatures into the family of non-heavy weapon users? I don't think this can really be about the scale or the numbers. It's more about bigness. Heaviness associates in our minds with bigness, so if a small thing can't use a heavy thing, then an even smaller thing certainly should not be able to. We bring that into the game as a consequence of what we see in rl: the simulationist argument that you earlier raised. And yet, the game is not rl and has some profound points of difference from rl.

The underlying rule that I am looking for is what separates the cases?

It's a lot harder to make the "common sense" argument about spells, since they explicitly work by magic and not by physics. I mean, I'm fine with "a pixie" having the ability to use a Heavy weapon, specifically because she's got magic and she can sprinkle pixie dust onto an 80-pound mattock so that her 8-ounce self can lift it. But that's due to her being a pixie, not due to her being a Tiny creature. Obviously, most Tiny creatures have to obey physics, even if several specific ones don't.

That might be it, but perhaps something else is going on. I think actually that most people see it as common sense to change healing spirit. The difference is that where the change to tiny is very narrow and chimes well with common sense, it is hard to apply a common sense intuition to the number of heals a spell should afford. Is 1+mod right, maybe 1+mod*2 would be better? How about 4? It feels pretty arbitrary.

Maybe the cases separate not on if a change is justified, but on how whether there is any friction with intuitions? That would be to say that it is okay for errata to change RAW (assuming you accept my argument that stripped of common sense the tiny change really is a change to RAW) so long as the change is utterly uncontentious. So a justified rule change in errata is one where both the motive for the change, and the change itself, chime with almost everyone's common sense.

This would be to say that errata should be utterly conservative in its rule changes. It should not have touched healing spirit unless a design had been found that perfectly chimed with intuitions. On the other hand, it was okay to fix tiny because motive and design chimed with everyone's intuitions.

 

[clearstream]

So to be clear, I am proposing that the kind of rule changes errata can make are exactly as follows

1. That the rule should be changed should be a matter of common sense*
2. The mechanical revision to the rule should be a matter of common sense

That is, errata should take an utterly conservative approach to changing rules. Many of the rule "fixes" found in Sage Advice, and almost everything in Unearthed Arcana, would fail this test.

Changing the heavy weapon constraint to also apply to tiny creatures is an example of a change that passes the test, and it does so because it fits both 1. and 2. above. Implicit in what I am saying is that contrary to the feelings of some posters (that I empathise with) it is in fact okay for errata to change rules.

*Taking common sense here to mean - matches the intuitions of nearly everyone, probably because it appeals to some highly consistent referents, found in our shared experience.

 

[Envisioner]

So the question would be, why not go the other way? Why not say that seeing as 3 is also right next to 2, we should expect to see an errata bringing medium creatures into the family of non-heavy weapon users? I don't think this can really be about the scale or the numbers. It's more about bigness. Heaviness associates in our minds with bigness, so if a small thing can't use a heavy thing, then an even smaller thing certainly should not be able to.

The first part of this sounded like a ridiculous question that nobody should have ever thought to ask, but then in the last part you quite effectively answer yourself.

That might be it, but perhaps something else is going on. I think actually that most people see it as common sense to change healing spirit.

I have no idea off the top of my head what Healing Spirit actually does, beyond that it's obviously a healing spell. So I don't think the fix can possibly be common-sensical, unless it's something like "every person who walks into the box gets healed", and then somebody's reaction is to constantly step in and out of the box over and over to try and get more healing than they're supposed to.

Common sense says that sort of thing probably shouldn't work, but other than that, the effects of spells are usually going to have to be spelled out, and there won't be a lot of realistically reasonable assumptions we can make about them. Indeed, often the common-sense answer is explicitly contradicted by the spell text, such as with Vicious Mockery saying that the victim doesn't actually need to be able to understand your words, in order to take psychic damage and suffer disadvantage because you made fun of them. Common sense would suggest that shouldn't work, and thus the spell had to explicitly overrule common sense, probably for game balance reasons.

(Which is kinda too bad, because if not for that being done, it would have made languages more mechanically relevant, and would have meant that this extremely useful spell is limited by its inapplicability to mindless monsters, which would have made it a less obvious choice to give every bard this super-useful spell as one of their known cantrips.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What purpose does this assertion serve both in the context of the discussion about how we wish to view errata when RAI was fully understood, and in the running of the game itself?

Maybe I skimmed it, but I don't see why you feel a need to put forth such a claim

It's merely and observation. So far as RAW is concerned there is no distinction between an orc and a wolf. The DM can give an orc different weapons and armour, they can give a wolf different weapons and armour. There is no "must have hands in order to use weapons" rule or "must have a body in order to wear armour". Such things depend entirely on the DM applying some degree of common sense. RAW simply does not work.

 

[clearstream]

It's merely and observation. So far as RAW is concerned there is no distinction between an orc and a wolf. The DM can give an orc different weapons and armour, they can give a wolf different weapons and armour. There is no "must have hands in order to use weapons" rule or "must have a body in order to wear armour". Such things depend entirely on the DM applying some degree of common sense. RAW simply does not work.

It doesn't strike you that this reasoning could equally apply to creature sizes? That is to say, on the same grounds that I might suppose that if small creatures can't use heavy weapons, even smaller creatures also can't (common sense) I might also suppose that an orc can pick up a dropped pike, and if it does that pike retains, and the orc can use, its reach property (also common sense)?

I point that out not to dispute the question of if orcs can use pikes, but to question if we can be safe in making appeals to common sense?

On the evidence so far, you have resisted the orc gaining the benefit of reach with a pike. This would also mean that a tiny MM creature that picked up a heavy weapon would disapply that property. Or, contrary to common sense, they cannot pick it up or if they can they cannot wield it.