D&D 5E Xanathar's Guide errata coming

[Dausuul]

They are only a problem DMs who dream of the OSR days and want PCs to be on a constant grind and dying regularly.

I do not dream of the OSR--I wouldn't go back to TSR-era D&D if you paid me--and I certainly do not want PCs dying regularly. And yet I regard those spells as a problem. So... no. You are wrong.

 

[Stilvan]

And too get a text fix or just 5 minute fix in my shop is 3 days. 1 hour to be told of the problem and fix it. 1/2 day for the official heat ticket number to be given to me. 10 minutes of me doing my to update the heat ticket. One day to move to test, and testing dude to look at the fix and give it a go. And one day to move to live. PS I have 7 years of coding on you.

And you even celebrate and publicly declare your underperformance. The book wasn't finished yesterday the errata has been in place for months at this point. Please continue agitating for under-delivery its quite amusing.

 

[Stilvan]

Stilvan likes to talk a big game and "fire" you if you don't agree, but he handwaves away anything that doesn't agree with his point. With you he tried to paint himself as an authority, but I am with you in understanding release cycles don't work the way of "let's just change something in production based on this email from some other company" that he espouses. Explains a lot about the defense industry if a 20 year developer doesn't get basics like that.

I'm glad you found a friend but you're not making yourself look any better.

 

[jasper]

Ok, maybe it is not a big deal to you, maybe you are one of those maniacs that destroy books for fun. But I like to keep my books untainted and in one piece. It is very traumatic to me having to mess with them. (I likely have issues with this, but that is not the point here, besides I don't have drama queen in the description for no reason)

VIVA REVOLUTION. We just over threw the queen. You are now drama hat check girl. Worst yet this is red neck theatre and the men keep their baseball caps on during the performance.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Yes. I am aware of Mearl's explanation. My point was I think Hasbro made that decision before Mearls and Mearls as a representative of the company had to give a reason to support the slow schedule production.

There's no reason to speculate about hidden motives. Everything Mearls said lines up with what we know about running sustainable profits instead of trading long-term viability for short-term gains.

Hasbro is in the business of making money and if the books made the profit margins Hasbro wanted to see (most RPG companies would be happy with the profit margins made by splatbooks but most RPG companies are not Hasbro) then I think splatbooks would be produced left and right.

This is a tautology. Yes, if splats made sustainable profits, then Hasbro would be happy with them. But they don't. Splats eventually lose money, and they intrinsically destroy the long-term viability of your product. An evergreen set of core rules combine with tentpole adventures has proven to make a lot more money and produced a growing customer base compared to what they did with 3.5 and 4e.

I recall Ryan Dancey or some former WOTC employee stating that market research for RPGs shows that the audience will support a new edition every 5-6 years and consider it money left on the table not to produce a new edition within that time frame.

Dancey was fired in 2002, and his product strategy failed. This is because he was wrong. Really, all you can learn from him is what not to do. Killing your product's long-term viability to gobble up some short-term gains produces a declining customer base and market apathy, not rivers of cash.

Given that D&D has been behind the curves as far as new editions compared to other companies such as Chaosium which has CoC on 7th edition, Shadowrun has been out less tiime than D&D and is on a 6th ed etc.

People who still run their business based on mistaken concepts of the 1990s and struggle to rise above a 5% marketshare as they churn through capital to produce constant revisions just to try and stay afloat aren't ahead of D&D. They're behind. This is like saying the Patriots are way behind the curve compared the Browns because they don't have a new starting quarterback every 6 games.

 

[OB1]

Think they went to a little too far with this errata, if it's gonna be that few uses, should have increased the healing to 2d4 or 2d6.

I've been using a house rule that the caster could cause it to heal a max of 10 times, will have to decide if I keep that or use the new rule with either 2d4 or 2d6 of healing per use.

 

[Prakriti]

Think they went to a little too far with this errata

I do find it worrying that they would issue errata like this without asking for feedback first. One of 5E's strengths was that it was rigorously play-tested for years, with plenty of community involvement. The 5E supplements (such as Xanathar's) were not nearly as rigorously play-tested, and it shows. Now they're issuing errata without getting the community involved, which is not the way to go. It just leads to more problems. You'd think they would know that, but apparently not.

 

[darjr]

What makes you think they didn’t ask for feedback?

 

[lkj]

I think it is irritating and amusing that a print book has more up to date rules than DnD Beyond

I'm sure DDB will update to the errata once the errata is officially released. I'm sure that's their agreement with WotC.

AD

 

[Prakriti]

What makes you think they didn’t ask for feedback?

I meant community feedback. Not feedback from select groups of play-testers.