You've got to be kidding me...

[Henry]

Actually, the end result of all this is that game companies, WotC included, should be courting John Cooper like Cinderella. That man's got one heck of a batting average.

 

[Lamoni]

And yet, even without errata, it does work from the moment you bring it home, I think.

I'm with BelenUmeria; I completely ignore errata unless there's some truly egregious mistake. Other than the Sword & Fist halfling outrider not having a BAB progression, I can't think of one.

I generally do the same, but it seems like the errata on complete divine certainly helped with the spell Miasma which many people decided to ban. Rather than banning something, I look to errata first. Usually it is there. As far as the MM3 goes, the only numbers I really care about are the CR compared with the stats and abilities. If the errors in the monster's stats wouldn't have increased the CR of the monster, then it is quite easily ignored because you still get the appropriate amount of experience from defeating it. I wish the errata was divided into two sections. Section one, game balance errata. Section two, all other changes. That way most people could just look at the first section and ignore the rest. As it is now, there are too many changes to sift through to find the ones that would have had an impact on the game.

 

[Vigwyn the Unruly]

Then vote with your wallet! Man, You are the person that paid the cash. If numbers being off by one point is such a concern for you, I suggest you go shopping with calculator in hand, and check the blocks out for yourself. If you find to many errors, don't buy the book.

These are not the only two options. A third one, which I am exercising, is to buy the book, and apply pressure on the company to put out even better books in the future. What's wrong with that?

I don't understand how you could of given a book that is so damaged, in your view, a good review.

Because it's not too damaged to enjoy. In my opinion, it was WotC's best book of 2004. That doesn't mean I have to roll over and just accept that people can't get stat blocks right. They can, and I expect them to when I'm giving them my cold hard cash.

 

[Vigwyn the Unruly]

Let me ask you this - if WotC hadn't released the errata (as many have noted they are one of the only companies who do) would you have ever noticed the mistakes?

I must admit that I would not have noticed most of the mistakes if it weren't for reading about them here (John Cooper and others).

Maybe they shouldn't do errata anymore - it certainly will be affecting the sales in your case it seems.

Of course they should continue to do errata when they make mistakes. But they should also focus on not making so many mistakes.

I'd just like to remind everyone here that WotC didn't really do these errata, John Cooper did. They didn't even check the errata he gave them, just sent them out as is (notice that they propagated three errors that Cooper made). They didn't do anything charitable or particularly noteworthy here. They essentially forwarded an email.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

I must admit that I would not have noticed most of the mistakes if it weren't for reading about them here (John Cooper and others).



Of course they should continue to do errata when they make mistakes. But they should also focus on not making so many mistakes.

I'd just like to remind everyone here that WotC didn't really do these errata, John Cooper did. They didn't even check the errata he gave them, just sent them out as is (notice that they propagated three errors that Cooper made). They didn't do anything charitable or particularly noteworthy here. They essentially forwarded an email.

Given your first point I don't think they should do errata.

 

[Alan Shutko]

But the editors can't and shouldn't be expected to correct the stat blocks. That would be like expecting a textbook editor to know more math than the mathematics professor who wrote it.

That's why textbooks have technical editors as well as copy editors.