Will Constant Errata Kill the Essential Line?

[MerricB]

I am willing to bet that the essentials products mentioned above do not equal the entirety of the first core rule books. That monster vault won't have all the monsters from the MM in it. They are gateway products to get people to buy the core books.

No, they don't have everything in the core books. But - and this is a big thing- the powers they have in them aren't in the core books either! It goes both ways.

Cheers!

 

[darjr]

I also don't get the sense the the older books before the Essentials line are now defunct. I get that sense with the 3.0 to the 3.5 books. And of coarse you can continue to play 4e with out the essentials line.

 

[MerricB]

I also don't get the sense the the older books before the Essentials line are now defunct. I get that sense with the 3.0 to the 3.5 books. And of coarse you can continue to play 4e with out the essentials line.

The big thing is that the Rules Compendium should have *all* the rules you need to play D&D. After that, it's just a choice of what plug-ins: character options, monsters, etc. you use.

Cheers!

 

[Markn]

The big thing is that the Rules Compendium should have *all* the rules you need to play D&D. After that, it's just a choice of what plug-ins: character options, monsters, etc. you use.

Cheers!

Absolutely! The PH contains most of the 4e rules and it comprises a very small amount of the book. Most of it is character options - powers, feats, class features and rituals.

With the latest batch of errata they essentially tightened up the rules, which for the most part, they ignored in the past (the whole stealth thing not withstanding). Most previous errata fixes specific things - powers or items which have absolutely nothing to do with the rules.

 

[jmucchiello]

Normally having over 100 pages of errata would kill an RPG...

Out of curiosity, can someone tell me how many pages there are of 4e material? Last time I looked at the 4e errata it was 100 pages at 12 point with lots of margins and dead space. It could probably be shrunk to 40-70% of it's current size. So are we looking at a 100/1000 ratio or 33/10000 ratio. I really don't know how big 4e is at the moment.

 

[D'karr]

If the Essentials line is an evergreen product, and you will always have the same products, the line will reach a publishing point where errata will not be needed. If the product line gets reprinted every couple of years the errata should be included.

In addition, the things that have been updated the most (powers, magic items, etc.) are all in the Character Builder and get updated automatically as part of the monthly update. That right there will remove the majority of problems with updates.

The Essentials line seems like a very good approach to put the game in the hands of new people. Besides, for the price, the Essentials line provides more "playable" content than the core books.

With the starter set you can begin play immediately, and progress up to 3rd level. That is easily about 12 adventures, and the DM's kit has 2.

Somebody was speaking about the simplicity of the 4e rules and it is true. You can fit the necessary rules for 4e into a 10-12 page document, everything else is additional, but doesn't change the rules. Look at the rules provided with Keep on the Shadowfell for an example. With that you have covered the vast majority of events. The rest of the stuff is completely on the player side and is part of the character sheet, which is at the table in front of them for the game. What else do you need?

I haven't cracked a book open to "research" a rule question in over 1.5 years. With electronic tools it is even easier. BTW, the DM's screen actually has everything, "ruleswise", the DM absolutely needs to run the game.

 

[malraux]

Out of curiosity, can someone tell me how many pages there are of 4e material? Last time I looked at the 4e errata it was 100 pages at 12 point with lots of margins and dead space. It could probably be shrunk to 40-70% of it's current size. So are we looking at a 100/1000 ratio or 33/10000 ratio. I really don't know how big 4e is at the moment.

The errata also currently includes talking about why the errata was issued. Sure, the cases where the plus is wrong are simple, but a fair amount talk about why the earlier version was wrong from a balance or playability standpoint. That adds to the length of the errata document. In addition, you have stuff like "Add 'cumulatively' to the end of the third sentence in the second paragraph on page 86". The change is small, but takes a fair amount of verbiage to explain.

Anyway someone up thread mentioned it's less than a percent of all items, powers, etc, errated.

 

[doctorhook]

The errata also currently includes talking about why the errata was issued. Sure, the cases where the plus is wrong are simple, but a fair amount talk about why the earlier version was wrong from a balance or playability standpoint. That adds to the length of the errata document. In addition, you have stuff like "Add 'cumulatively' to the end of the third sentence in the second paragraph on page 86". The change is small, but takes a fair amount of verbiage to explain.

Anyway someone up thread mentioned it's less than a percent of all items, powers, etc, errated.

I, personally, love this. Understanding why a power or feat or feature needs to be changed is extremely helpful to me.

 

[Artoomis]

Considering the amount of errata (much of which are really outright changes to the rules rather than corrections)...

Well, that's why they are called Rules Updates and not errata.

 

[TerraDave]

With the last batch of errata hitting recently, it made me wonder about the viability of the printed books, especially the 'core' books being reprinted.

Is it possible that those who already own the material will be put off from buying the new books not because they already own it, but because they figure it will be errata'd quickly after purchase?

As is so often the case, the problem is the thread title.

In the 4E forum, were this was finally moved to, many people have already sworn off buying the books. Its all virtual now. So, for say Primal Power II or PHB IV, which are very much aimed at the update aware hardcore, ya all this erata may be a problem (though to be fair, later stuff is getting far fewer patches). The real problem though is the convience of DDI.

Now, back to your title. I am sure they are working real hard to keep the errata down for thos products. And, as Merric has reminded, one point of all of this is to bypass those ridled with error core books. It will only be a problem if things are really super broken in the new builds as to actually be noticable in play, or different groups are using different rules and this causes some confusion or tension (of course, back in the day, it was always like this...).

Finally, to this thread. It has been a lot of errata. About 50 pages for the first 4 books. Its not of a fractional, corner case or marginal nature. It is changing widely used skills, nerfing popular charecter options, complete rewrites of the rules for aid another, mounted combat, and flying, and this was just the last batch.

But this may the last of the big patches. With Collins gone and an ever shrinking staff, we probably won't have to worry about, or hope for, so much rules updating.