constant errata
So much hyperbole coming in the way against people who don't like to play a game with constantly evolving rules.
First off, the idea that errata are driven by the community is FALSE. Yes, people complain or bring up broken combos or builds, but they often say that explicitly (DMs will never accept this and don't be surprised if they house rule it). The reason I say it's false is that, three years into the game, many eggregiously broken things haven't been fixed, which could be fixed by a ONE-LINE rule update, such as Expertise fixes, WHICH ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE GAME IS IN FAVOUR OF!!! This is not hyperbole, it's true. The math of the game is broken, everybody knows it, they could fix it with ONE LINE of a rule update, instead they force us to take feats to fix their broken game, feats that could better be spent on more flavourful options to give colour and charm to your character.
I don't grab the most borked / broken builds into any game. I've never even contemplated playing a catch-22 WLMR build, or even use frostcheese. I pick and chose fun and unique options that people on the boards haven't thought of, for my own characters, and for those of my friends who I help tweak, yes, in the case of rogues I up their dex to 20, because that's a no-brainer. I also suggest they save a feat by grabbing Gritty Sargent for rapier. I do not understand how that is "begging to be nerf-baited".
After suggesting our warlock dump Str so he could, you know, actually hit stuff instead of being split between 3 attack stats, he realized I was right and re-specced it a bit. My friend who played the druid, I just sent him the link to the druid guide and offered the tip that he should look at the better rated powers and options, I don't suggest "hey you gotta play Pun Pun". He mostly ignored me because he doesn't really care because he's leaving town soon and is too busy banging art-scene chicks in his spare time. Win for him, I guess. I'd rather he took 5 minutes to look over some options instead of grimace every time he misses because his toon is so badly built. But ohh well, no big deal, my character can more than make up the difference. I would rather he would contribute more, because then I wouldn't feel so much more powerful. I don't see it as a competition between characters, but against the enemies. Regardless, if you go to combat, do you really want to be teamed with other soldiers who can't keep up? That's not really elitist, it's wolf-pack mentality, which is different. How can the DM gauge the party's effectiveness when there is such disparity? If I'd been there when he was rolling his character, I would have suggested some items like Claw Cloves that anyone spending 5 minutes reading the guide would have known about.
Man, the only vitriol I see is directed towards people who have fair criticisms of 4e but who play it anyway, and have already spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME arguing about silly rules updates.
If Wotc wanted a good product, they would LISTEN to the forums, fix everything, and move on. Everything would be released in beta format or to select experts from the forums in PDF format for private evals under NDA (PDfs will end up on torrent sites, eventually, regardless). This would catch a LOT of the most egregious things before they go to print.
And I don't understand people who think we should playtest hardcopy books after they're printed....have you no care for the environment, at all? I believe Wotc should only be allowed to publish PDFs, because they are essentially publishing used-bookstore fodder.
1/2 the players in my group sold their 4e books, because having books with tons of errata in them is worse than useless, it is a waste of time, frustrating, and downright insulting. Most of the time Wotc in their nerf-happy zeal completely kills powers or feats for no good reason.
Cavalier mounts, I'm looking at you. I paid good money for my D&D insider account for two and a half years, and when that article came out I was super happy. Six months later, the power was still not in the builder, and they stealth errata'ed it. We all know the story. Having a summoned mount is a fun, flavourful reason to multiclass into Paladin, and is not a broken combo. It's powerful, yes, but not supremely so, and I was finally glad to be playing a paladin hybrid and have a darn good reason for it. When that errata came in, I was so disgusted, I dropped the character on principle and remade him into a ranger | warlord. A class where both halves are actually useful.
And no, I never said I don't want other classes to be bumped, in fact I've always been in favor of Warlocks getting fixed. Which they only went halfway for, THREE YEARS LATER!!! Jeez, you guys are arguing for the utility of errata to fix game balance, so am I. I just don't think "balanced" and "everything's equally lame and thus balanced" are equivalent propositions. I would have loved for the Warlock class to have been fixed before the guy playing it quit 4e, never to return. It was fun playing with him, he was my 2nd DM when I was 13 years old.
FYI, for half the heroic tier, I played a brokenly suboptimal paladin | ranger because I liked the flavour of it. I remade him as a pure PHB-1 ranger and it was capaple of 3x as much damage, but when I saw my party had no leader in paragon decided to hybrid into one, for extra healing and positioning powers. And no, I will not be happy if any of my powers or feats get errata'ed, because I don't expect them to. Nobody on the forums said that Disruptive Strike was broken, or Tactical Orders, or Combat Challenge. Why the hate? I am ony playing by the rules, and haven't ever brought in an exploit character capable of infinite damage loops or bloodclaw weapons or frost weapons.
Some of you in this thread must be in great shape jumping to premature conclusions about us the way you have. Errata are disruptive. Whether they are disruptive in a good way or a bad way depends on you, but they are, definitely, disruptive. No question.
In my 20 years of playing AD&D, the DM in that game has house ruled a couple spells, but the same players have played variations of the same game over and over and over, good and evil campaigns, every class and kit and build you can think of...and haven't looked at any official errata, once. Say what you wish about 2e, stability is a GOOD THING.
4e is the ferrari that needs repair every 100km and gets constant recalls to the manufacturer. 2e is the old clunker, that might be bad on gas, but it gets you where you need to go, and your mechanic doesn't need a 10,000 dollar piece of digital equipment to fix the engine on it.
Pathfinder is somewhere in between, a happy medium if you will. And no, I don't own Paizo stock nor even own any of the books. 4e has ruined my gaming budget and as I said, after this campaign is done, I'm donating my books to the local gaming store and good riddance. As it is, they are completely worthless.
