Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2E Errata

The Pathfinder 2 developers were in a Twitch stream, where they confirmed some errata for the core rules. Thanks to @Markh3rd for the scoop!

• Humans are supposed to have one more language (Common + Bonus + INT).
• Your proficiency in simple weapons is also what your proficiency in unarmed should be, including the wizard. Monk is an exception as they are better at unarmed.
• Ki spells cue off Wisdom for the monk.
• Sorcerer is missing a 17th level Resolve class feature, just the same as the wizard's (includes master will save, critical success, etc.).
• Wizards don't get a 1st level class feat by default. This was a mistake. They only get one for being a universalist.
• The adventurer's pack is only 1 bulk.
• Heroic Recovery takes you to 0 hit points, not 1.

Link to the stream: Twitch

The developers said they will be releasing official critical errata soon as well as monster creation rules (so we will have them before the GameMastery Guide comes out).

 

[R_Chance]

My stance is not alien to how the world works. I work in manufacturing and if the company I work for sells a customer a product that doesnt work as was promised, we fix it or replace it at the companies cost. They dont haphazardly add on some ancillary component to fix the issue. If I go to a restaurant and my order is wrong it gets sent back and I get the correct order.

The TTRPG industry is giving you 3 options, use your book as is, print out the errata and implement it into your game, or re-purchase the book when the new printing comes out. This business model is pretty foreign to how the rest of the world works, one they get away with because most people just accept it as to be expected. Ive often wondered if it was done purposely to sell more product.

The RPG industry is more akin to programming than manufacturing. Patches are a thing in any complex software product (games or otherwise). And at hundreds of pages / thousands of lines RPG books are complex products. The easy problems are found in alpha or beta testing, but some always seem to sneak through. Software does have an advantage over RPGs though. The patch gets downloaded and applied. Done. An RPG book being a manufactured object... well you can print out the errata, write it into the margins yourself, or wait until the next printing. Given the possibility of yet more errata cropping up, waiting is not always the best option I appreciate the attitude of you (and your company) but the situations in a small industry with relatively low profit levels and a product that can't be easily "fixed" (no recalls) is not typical of manufacturing.

 

[R_J_K75]

The RPG industry is more akin to programming than manufacturing. Patches are a thing in any complex software product (games or otherwise). And at hundreds of pages / thousands of lines RPG books are complex products. The easy problems are found in alpha or beta testing, but some always seem to sneak through. Software does have an advantage over RPGs though. The patch gets downloaded and applied. Done. An RPG book being a manufactured object... well you can print out the errata, write it into the margins yourself, or wait until the next printing. Given the possibility of yet more errata cropping up, waiting is not always the best option I appreciate the attitude of you (and your company) but the situations in a small industry with relatively low profit levels and a product that can't be easily "fixed" (no recalls) is not typical of manufacturing.

This make sense when put into this perspective, Im not asking for perfection but errata annoys me.

 

[Staffan]

My stance is not alien to how the world works. I work in manufacturing and if the company I work for sells a customer a product that doesnt work as was promised, we fix it or replace it at the companies cost. They dont haphazardly add on some ancillary component to fix the issue. If I go to a restaurant and my order is wrong it gets sent back and I get the correct order.

Quite often, they do. For a board game example, Starfarers of Catan feature plastic rocket-ships which serve as both one of the game's randomizers, and as something to which you affix booster rockets and cannons to display your in-game progress. However, these are made out of fairly brittle plastic, so when you affixed booster rockets the sockets tended to break. As a fix, Mayfair sent me add-on rings of more durable plastic, which worked out a lot better.

And to take another example from the software industry - these days, games get patched to fix bugs. But back in the days before the Internet or before using the Internet to distribute games? Good luck getting bugs fixed in your games. Professional software sometimes sent out disks with patches and/or new versions, but otherwise you were SOL.

And in fiction books you also have typos all the time. For example, the e-book version of Good Omens had a whole bunch of typos that had been created when the book was first OCR:ed, and they didn't notice them until the marketing push around the TV series.

And for other things, if there are safety issues or issues compromising the actual function of your product, the manufacturer will probably have things recalled/fixed. If not, well...

 

[kunadam]

My stance is not alien to how the world works. ... This business model is pretty foreign to how the rest of the world works, one they get away with because most people just accept it as to be expected.

Different industries work differently.
In certain cars some component break/have problems more often than others. You cannot bring it back as their wear is normal, but just more often than in other cars.
In scientific publications one cannot really issue an errata, albeit papers usually have typos, bad grammar, whatever, but publishers think it would degrade their creditability if there would be an update to papers.
In software, we actually expect patches to come out. That is their errata, so to speak.

 

[Mercador]

It seems fast, isn't it? Any ideas how it sells?

 

[Kaodi]

In 2nd year I had a copy of one of the premiere entry level International Relations textbooks and on the very first page there was a sentence that was complete gobbledygook - part of the sentence had clearly been left out. On the first page. Bantha poodoo happens.

 

[CapnZapp]

The RPG industry is more akin to programming than manufacturing. Patches are a thing in any complex software product (games or otherwise). And at hundreds of pages / thousands of lines RPG books are complex products. The easy problems are found in alpha or beta testing, but some always seem to sneak through. Software does have an advantage over RPGs though.

I absolutely agree to this, and the comparisons to publishing or manufacturing are misguided at best.

That said, the biggest advantage of programming over ttrpgs (for customers) is that the pressure to actually fix bugs are much greater.

First: you can often conclusively state there's a bug in a computer program. In ttrpgs it's much more of a subjective call.

Second: many bugs must be fixed or you simply cannot proceed using a program or subroutine. This is the diametric opposite to ttrpgs.

Third: computer games in our online age give unprecedented feedback. A Blizzard dev, say, have cold hard proof if a Diablo or Warcraft item or class feature isn't as popular as expected.

In comparison the feedback to WotC is very very limited. And the need to improve upon weak areas always remains a subjective matter open for discussion. They claiming the Beastmaster Ranger is popular and in no need of revision tells me everything I need to know about that - had they had real telemetry, and felt any real pressure at all, I'm convinced that subclass would have been patched years ago.

So there are similarities, but the comparison only goes so far.

 

[CapnZapp]

Different industries work differently.
In certain cars some component break/have problems more often than others. You cannot bring it back as their wear is normal, but just more often than in other cars.

The car industry is not really a good example unless you have actual insight.

I'm sure the QA for even the sloppiest manufacturer is MILES ahead of the most perfectionist book or RPG publisher...

 

[Lylandra]

Nah, I'd say the programming comparison is fine and as close as you can get. We're talking about a ruleset that "computers" (us players) can use to play their game. But unlike real computers, you can neither run thousands of sims to test your rules for balance issues, bugs or inconsistencies (AI isn't there yet), nor can you rely on thousands of players who'd report said bugs to you in a couple of days or who can provide enough data to show you that something isn't popular or balanced.

Regarding the WoW example: Yes, they're usually fast on fixing bugs. But the one I found and one that annoyed me really much still hasn't been fixed after 3 expansions. Whereas in the TTRPG industry, getting into dialogue with the devs is much more easier.

 

[stadi]

@R_J_K75 ist right, this shouldn't happen today. Why not realease the PDF a couple of months early, let people take a look at it, and print the book with the errata? Pinnacle did this for their SWADE and it kinda worked. Not everything was fixed before the printing but most of it did.

Everything that comes later (bugfixes) are something else, that is to be expected.