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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7960176" data-attributes="member: 71699">It can be kind of hard to explain. Essentially, think about what we project onto rules... and then think about how the rule could look if we can set that aside or at least concede other projections equal validity.In the case at hand, we project "common sense" onto a RAW that perfectly clearly constrained small creatures and did not constrain tiny creatures. Small creatures are not also tiny, so there are no mechanical issues with this rule. We happen to all agree that the RAW does not match the RAI... but this is really because the RAI is post-projection. The original RAW is unproblematic. The problem was that we had expectations that we projected onto it.Sometimes RAW is problematic. Say if the Heavy weapon RAW had failed to list any creature sizes? We'd have no idea how to apply it because to assume it meant all creatures would be to assume that Heavy weapons couldn't be used at all. That would be an example of RAW that is problematic even before we project anything onto it.So here, the errata changes the RAW to something we all felt it must have intended anyway. But that is only a matter of features of the worlds we had in mind that we projected onto it to yield a RAI. What has happened is that the RAW was changed by the errata. It now has quite a different meaning, prior to projecting anything on it. Whatever we think about tiny characters - say they are in our world magically condensed giant versions of creatures - the RAW now stops them using Heavy weapons. (Prior to house-ruling, which in our world in which all tiny creatures are tiny-giants might mean reverting it to its original text.)I am not saying that this change is good or bad, I am saying that it rules out a really convincing argument that errata cannot change RAW. We might say that it should only do so in cases where the RAI is a matter of common-sense, but I don't think there are clear boundaries... only normal concepts of what that might be which, like many normal concepts, don't apply in all times and places, for all people. So it is not always clear when a change to RAW, that actually changes the game effect of the mechanic, is a correction to RAI.I raise this to justify instead attacking this from a different angle: that we might not want to assume the RAI was clear to the designer in the first place, if it was not expressed in the RAW. Healing Spirit is an example of that IMO. It is distinct from the Heavy weapons errata because I don't think the change represents a normal view of what the RAW intended, because many players have chimed in to say they expected something different.</blockquote>

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