Update Madness!

[MrMyth]

Basically, 4E is one big open playtest. Didn't get enough before it was released, well its gotten tons now. People point that out as best practice for PF or the new goodmen game, but we are the pioneers. Of course we pay for the privilege.

Not sure how accurate this is. Pretty much every edition - indeed, every RPG - I've played has merited similar levels of errata. They just don't usually get it, and players have to deal with the problems left behind. I can understand not wanting to keep up with the tweaking of powers throughout the edition, but I'm not sure if it points to flawed initial design... or simply the inevitability that imperfect products will always slip through the cracks.

That said, for those who don't want to deal with it... it's definitely possible to ignore it. Or just accept it when you notice it, but don't go out of your way to keep up with it. If you don't use the CB, it won't come up in your game unless you want it to. If you do, the CB provides the new version for you directly. Find whatever approach works best for you - the vast majority of updates are minor updates to feats/powers/etc, and relatively easy to do without if desired.

 

[TerraDave]

@Mr Myth: every edition has had some issues that were clear "out of the box". For 3E take the ranger, please (bah-da-bump).

4E was not playtested that long, especially given the radical nature of its changes, and while there was preveiwing (and WotC, you are still welcome) it was pretty much sprung on the public.

And for a game striving to set a new standard in balance and playability, and killing every sacred cow along the way, 4E had quite a few out of the box issues. Strong clerics, paladins, warlocks...rituals (for many players)...damage of higher level monsters (I think orblock took a little longer). I mean, how long was it before the stealth skill was errated or they said minions were not worth a quarter of XP? Like a month?

I think it really did need at least another 6 months. And probably not even bother including epic in the core. But I guess that is easy to say now.

 

[Dannager]

Option 1: Use the online tools, don't worry about updates because they're handled for you.

Option 2: Don't use any updates, and use physical books for everything.

Option 3: Use whatever updates you want to, and spend the time picking and choosing them.

This is fairly straightforward. For most people, option 1 is the best option. The tools make everything easier regardless of updates, and you know that you're getting the most refined version of the rules.

Welcome to the world of living game systems. Everything will be like this from now on. There's no going back.

 

[timbannock]

Not sure if this helps, but I'm DMing 4e, and here's how it works for me and my group:

As the DM, I have the Rules Compendium, and use the DMG 1 and 2 for whatever's not in the RC in terms of building encounters, skill challenges, traps, terrain, etc.

Monsters and treasure come from DDI.

Beyond that, I don't use anything else (well, adventures obviously). I don't need to know what Bill's Level 6 Paladin Daily Attack Power does, because that's Bill's job. I'm the DM; my job is to know the monsters and traps and puzzles and storylines, and make compelling encounters (combat or non-combat) based on that.

The players, on the other hand, use DDI to build their characters. Leveling at the "expected" rate based on our # of sessions means they level once every couple months (we're a tad infrequent when it comes to getting games together). When they level, they print everything out anew, unless it's something that didn't change (which is almost never the case, as bonuses from various abilities, equipment, feats, and so on seem to influence everything eventually).

Using that system of references, we see very few updates that affect us in the midst of any single session. Some things may change a little when a character levels up or something, and occasionally I re-check the math on the monster I picked from DDI to see if they fall in line with the MM3 expected defenses/HP/damage output, but beyond that, nothing game-changing has come up. If it did, we didn't notice it, or it was such a wild corner-case that I made a judgement call at the table as the DM, the players voted on my call, and we rolled with the outcome.

I find that the only people truly "affected" by the errata are those DMs who are slavishly devoted to knowing every player power or people trying to "game" the system and building out their character for 10 or more levels ahead of time. The fact is that you don't have to do these things (though there's nothing wrong with doing them, either), and even if you do, the chances of any single piece of errata totally toppling an encounter or totally nerfing a character in a way that retraining or simple DM-Player conversation can't fix are so infinitesimally small that it's more the "worry" that sets people off about errata rather than the "reality."

 

[bganon]

The Character Builder is much of the problem, though... A good example is the recent change to "Come And Get It", the 7th Level Fighter encounter power. Our party Fighter has had the power for months and loved it. She didn't know it had been changed until a week ago in the middle of a combat halfway through the gaming session. It took her completely by surprise, and threw us all for a loop.

The same thing happened with the party wizard not too long ago with Winged Horde. More recently, he had to give up his Cannith Goggles, because they suddenly jumped up 10 Levels.

I'm honestly having difficulty understanding your problem, or understanding what you want WotC to do about it. Did they force the fighter's character sheet to change mid-battle? Did they forcibly take away the Cannith Goggles?

You are completely free to control if and when errata take effect in your game. If they're too frequent, just set your own schedule on when things can change. And if something you weren't using gets errata'd... well you weren't using it, so I don't see why you're worried about it.

What kept you from ignoring the change to CaGI? Do you never write down/print out character sheets and rely on the CB to look up powers mid-session? If you really do this, then yes, you're necessarily committed to closely following errata. But if the fighter had the old CaGI on her sheet, I don't see why you couldn't have stuck with it.

 

[Skyscraper]

In your humble opinion, I think.

Seriously, totally obsolete due to errata? Only if the table is totally anal about updates. My group is about to go back to book only, no errata, as keeping track is too much of a pain, and th changes are not that much, not really.

Yes, quite right on all accounts, except the anal part I could have added a bit of nuance there.

The thing is, we use the Character Builder which is great to build your PC, upgrade powers when you get a new item, and upgrade everything when you level up. I like the tool a lot.

So even if you don't care about most rules updates, you're still getting them through DDI.

And then there are the ones that matter, such as the Stealth rules, the rogue-can-sneak-attack-every-turn rule, updates on DCs, and the like. Those don't necessarily appear on the char sheet, but if you look the book up for them they'll lead to more headache than anything else, as opposed to using the updated versions.

 

[MrMyth]

4E was not playtested that long, especially given the radical nature of its changes, and while there was preveiwing (and WotC, you are still welcome) it was pretty much sprung on the public.

And for a game striving to set a new standard in balance and playability, and killing every sacred cow along the way, 4E had quite a few out of the box issues. Strong clerics, paladins, warlocks...rituals (for many players)...damage of higher level monsters (I think orblock took a little longer). I mean, how long was it before the stealth skill was errated or they said minions were not worth a quarter of XP? Like a month?

Here's the thing. I think 4E has had plenty of stuff I've looked askance at, and wondered how that got through testing. But... most of it has been stuff after the initial launch.

I'm not saying the initial launch was free of bugs. And maybe more testing could have caught them. But I think some will always get through any amount of testing, and any time you dive in with more experimental changes - which 4E had - there will be kinks to work out. Its simply that, usually, most games don't bother to fix them. And many of the changes are portrayed as much more significant than they actually are.

Anyway, they seem (or claim) to be much more focused on the review process these days, and that this is part of the reason for the slowdown in product releases. We'll see how that works out, I suppose.

 

[Plane Sailing]

How is the Character Builder the problem in those examples? It sounds like the problem is with the updates themselves, not how they are delivered or how often. There is choosing not to keep up with errata because it is a hassle, and there is choosing not to keep up with errata because you don't like the changes.

I can't say I agree with this. If you want to ignore updates, or just examine them every six months, you're free to do so. I only really download them every few months.

I had the check the dates of the posts, to make sure that these weren't a year old or something.

Because I think the problem that PBartender is expressing is really that in the old, offline character generator a group could decide which set of updates they wanted to embrace.

In the new online character generator world all the updates are automatically there. Every time someone levels up and prints their character sheet and cards again there could be any number of unsuspected changes (Come and get it is called out as a case in point).

I can see how this would be very frustrating. It is almost the antithesis of 'system mastery' because all the stuff you learn might have to be unlearned next month.

Personally, the next 4e campaign I run is going to be essentials only, no errata. While that is a solution which works for me, I'd be very surprised if it works for everybody.

I wonder whether the ideal situation from a customisability point of view would be for the online chargen to have the ability to select (by check box) 'errata packs' in the same way that the old offline one let you select by check box whether to include dragon issues, martial power and so forth.

Cheers

 

[Locutus Zero]

I wonder whether the ideal situation from a customisability point of view would be for the online chargen to have the ability to select (by check box) 'errata packs' in the same way that the old offline one let you select by check box whether to include dragon issues, martial power and so forth.

Did the old CB keep multiple copies of a given power? I was under the impression that if you chose to only view PHB content, it would show you the current version of each power, not the version published in PHB.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I wonder whether the ideal situation from a customisability point of view would be for the online chargen to have the ability to select (by check box) 'errata packs' in the same way that the old offline one let you select by check box whether to include dragon issues, martial power and so forth.

That would be good, but a better way would be to let you to set up a profile that was pick and choose on every power, rule, etc. Then that is the one that people would see in your campaign. That would be a nightmare if they tried to manage it from the service side, since that is basically versioning. But for individual tables, it would be fine:

"I'll take the lastest of everything, as of 6/1/2011. Wait, we don't like that version of Tide of Iron. Check an earlier one. Yeah, that's the one we want. OK, mark it in the profile."

The only reason to not let people use item by item selection on revision is that if you were forced to do it that way, it would be a user interface nightmare. So basically, it is a bit more work in the UI, and a bit of extra work in the databases to store the revisions. And then some common profiles predefined so that people can mostly ignore the option when it doesn't apply to what they want to do. A nightmare on paper or a static app, but just good design on a more dynamic app.

Heck, the same kind of UI and changes would solve all of the customization issues with wanting to exclude selected items, and would more readily facilitate house rules too. (Your house rule becomes just another revision, albeit one stored in a different place and marked a bit differently.)