4e errata is ridiculous.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 6:14 pm

yes I am aware this has been discussed, but I recently to checked the errata. for the phb alone there are 22 pages of changes. each race now functions differently with stat bonuses and several have new racial powers.

but the big thing I notice is that the errata completely changes how the game is supposed to function. outside of rules clarifications, there are tons and tons of powers within the phb alone that have large rules changes made to them. I counted the number of powers that were altered in such a way that you couldn't use the game rules as-written to play the game and got bored after 65. that's fucking ridiculous.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 7:15 pm

Wait changes to the races? Care to outline them for the lazy ones of us who can't be bothered to look it up?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 7:28 pm

'Errata' that just adds game content without nixing out old content (like the racial stat and powers change) isn't a big deal. It works exactly the same way as as releasing sourcebooks except that they're free. I would compile all of the stuff into a big release like a player's handbook or new monster manual or whatever rather than just leaving it on the Internet to add legitimacy... but it's really not a big deal.

The errata that's potential harmful to the game in of itself is stuff that changes or deletes old material. THAT is a problem.

But anyway, here's the old topic in case you care:

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52578& ... sc&start=0

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 7:46 pm

Pretty much. The fuck should I buy your books if you change every other word? Fuck you, I want my $29.99 back.

souran · Post by **souran** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 3:52 am

I hate when people bitch about too much errata.

You guys are seriously being very stupid.

3E would only errata some designers broken ass rulebook when they fired that designer. This meant that seriously broken shit lingered in the game for fucking ever.

4E treats the powers like magic cards and erratas them all the time to get closer to author intent and or to make sure that seriously broken shit doesn't become an ingrained part of the game.

The errata fix is not always a lot better than the original text but at least it shows an understand that something is fucking wrong.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 3:55 am

the sheer quantity of errata shows that the designers had no fucking clue on how the game worked when they first released it

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 3:57 am

Souran, a rulebook is big and heavy and hard to look through. Adding 30 pages of errata to it makes it bigger and heavier and MUCH harder to look through. It also demonstrates how poor of a design the game has.

That's why we don't like it. If you like big, heavy books that are hard to look for, then congratu-fucking-lations. But most people don't. And that's why we're not stupid. Please masturbate to 4e somewhere else.

souran · Post by **souran** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:07 am

Psychic Robot wrote:the sheer quantity of errata shows that the designers had no fucking clue on how the game worked when they first released it

So the sheer quantity of errata means that magic cards are badly designed and the designers don't know their own game and NOT that the complex interaction of hundreds of published cards means that its unlikely that designers will catch all the possible abusive combinations?

Bitching about errata is stupid because the alternative is to leave shit broken. Which is obviously worse.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:15 am

Lokathor wrote:Wait changes to the races? Care to outline them for the lazy ones of us who can't be bothered to look it up?

I'm curious about this, too.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:16 am

Bitching about errata is stupid because the alternative is to leave shit broken. Which is obviously worse.

This would be true if the errata actually fixed things. A lot of it is pretty random and totally not necessary to avoid breaking the game. And some of it tries to fix broken things and fails (see: Skill Challenges)

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:17 am

souran wrote:
Psychic Robot wrote:the sheer quantity of errata shows that the designers had no fucking clue on how the game worked when they first released it

So the sheer quantity of errata means that magic cards are badly designed and the designers don't know their own game and NOT that the complex interaction of hundreds of published cards means that its unlikely that designers will catch all the possible abusive combinations?

Bitching about errata is stupid because the alternative is to leave shit broken. Which is obviously worse.

Those are equivalencies. Not catching abusive combinations = Not knowing your game.

Let me preface this by saying CCGs are not TTRPGs. And smart people would not try to equate them. Now go ahead and read on.

Now, in addition, check the number of magic cards that are in a standard deck, and the number of them that will be errata'd. When you're playing a deck, you use that minimal errata. Now check the amount of errata in the goddamn 4e player's handbook. When you're playing D&D, you will be sifting through that. Every. Time. Sometimes you'll be reading the errata of errata or checking if they errata'd the errata that you're looking at. And most of the time, it's not even because of abuse, it's just because of the "LOLOL LET'S MAKE ERRATA!!" behavior of 4e designers.

And yes, in an RPG, you can leave shit broken. Because an RPG is a group of people having fun together, and they can say "hey, let's not all be ass holes and play OP characters." You may notice that such a reason is why you don't see Clericzilla/Batman/The Word/etc. in a lot of D&D parties.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:40 am

souran wrote:So the sheer quantity of errata means that magic cards are badly designed and the designers don't know their own game and NOT that the complex interaction of hundreds of published cards means that its unlikely that designers will catch all the possible abusive combinations?

MTG is dissimilar. The vast, vast majority of that errata is retemplating, and won't ever come into play except if the card is reprinted.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:51 am

souran wrote:
4E treats the powers like magic cards and erratas them all the time to get closer to author intent and or to make sure that seriously broken shit doesn't become an ingrained part of the game.

Bitching about errata is stupid because the alternative is to leave shit broken. Which is obviously worse.

They changed the damage die on Turn Undead from a d10 to a d8.

Discuss how broken Turn Undead is with a d10, and how author intent was misconstrued when they said "d10", but intended d8.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 5:12 am

souran wrote:Bitching about errata is stupid because the alternative is to leave shit broken. Which is obviously worse.

Uh, no it's not. For several reasons.

1.) A lot of the stuff that was errata'd near the start of the edition became just plain obsoleted due to power creep. A degree of power creep is necessary for a product to last more than a couple of years and oftentimes something's that overpowered on its own will stop being overpowered as the game goes through its paces. Lead the Attack is a good example. At the beginning of the edition it was one of the best powers ever but nowadays it really isn't anything special. Ardents and Psions can match that trick and more often and no one is clamoring to nerf those guys. Righteous Wrath of Tempus is another one. A guaranteed critical is very powerful for a Channel Divinity and was when it first came out. But STR-based battle clerics also have a channel divinity that lets them grant rerolls to themselves or a friend and of course there's Healer's Mercy.

2.) Even if something is broken that doesn't mean that it will come up in normal play. Blade Cascade and Orb of Imposition needed a nerf because I have seen people use those things. But seriously, Demigods? That Arcane Power epic destiny that let you use a Ritual as a standard action? Violet Solitaires? Give me a fucking break.

3.) A lot of the stuff that's 'broken' is anything but. It's just mildly overpowered shit. An extra 6 DPR? Are you fucking joking? Swordslinger was bitching in the previous thread I liked in my first post about how busted Agile Armor is and I posted a counter-analysis. A lot of stuff is like that. Seriously, how overpowered was the 'controller' WIS-cleric that they had to print out a bunch of puzzling nerfs? Why did they split Weapon and Implement Focus? What was the point of nerfing Melee Training? Etc..

Look, the bottom line is that errata is not free. For whatever reason as long as you have an offline edition a proportion of the playerbase will not get the word. When I went to my D&D club last semester most of the people didn't use laptops. A lot of them had only the 4E PHB and literally wrote their characters on loose leaf notebook paper. Telling them that they needed to read an 80+ (at the time) page worth of errata before they started playing would've made me as popular as a can of bacon bits at the Three Little Pigs' place. Not only that but a lot of people, including me, eventually reach a point of 'fuck it' with the errata onslaught and go from keeping up with it to not keeping up with it at all.

It's unconscionable to ask people to keep up with more than a handful of pages of errata.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 5:42 am

So the sheer quantity of errata means that magic cards are badly designed and the designers don't know their own game and NOT that the complex interaction of hundreds of published cards means that its unlikely that designers will catch all the possible abusive combinations?

Bitching about errata is stupid because the alternative is to leave shit broken. Which is obviously worse.

this was the first book fuckstain. this shit was broken before a million other rules interactions. if the designers couldn't see that handing out a +9 bonus on attack rolls at will was a fucking stupid idea, then they shouldn't be designing the game

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 7:49 am

souran wrote:4E treats the powers like magic cards and erratas them all the time to get closer to author intent and or to make sure that seriously broken shit doesn't become an ingrained part of the game.

Whaaaat? Have you actually played MtG? They don't do that - they sometimes adjust the wording on older cards to use keywords that were created since then, and some formats have specific cards banned. But they don't do things like "Lightning Bolt now does 4 damage and costs RR".

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:08 am

I quit years ago so maybe they really are just super ban happy these days but back in my day Wizards definitely wasn't above changing the wording on cards citing balance reasons. A classic example would be Abeyance. As originally printed you could draw a card and tell your opponent to sit and spin for a turn because strictly speaking Abeyance wouldn't even let them tap their lands. You could do this for two mana and one of 'em wasn't even colored. So, yeah, they ruled on that one and changed the text to reflect designer intent awful fast. It was a good change, but there's been other changes over the years that frankly seem pretty inexplicable if you're not really thinking in terms of weird stack interactions that can potentially ruin your opponent's day.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:11 am

souran wrote:
4E treats the powers like magic cards and erratas them all the time to get closer to author intent and or to make sure that seriously broken shit doesn't become an ingrained part of the game.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember even a single example of an actual thing that a Magic card does being errata'ed. Even most ridiculously overpowered cards only got banned or restricted in most formats. All the errate is just bringing the text in accordance with new templates.

koz · Post by **koz** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:13 am

FatR wrote:
souran wrote:
4E treats the powers like magic cards and erratas them all the time to get closer to author intent and or to make sure that seriously broken shit doesn't become an ingrained part of the game.
Off the top of my head, I can't remember even a single example of an actual thing that a Magic card does being errata'ed. Even most ridiculously overpowered cards only got banned or restricted in most formats. All the errate is just bringing the text in accordance with new templates.

This is almost true. Power-level errata did exist for a while, before they changed that policy to make all cards as close to printed intent as possible. At the same time, a few rare cases of errata that does change functionality exist - Impulse being a case in point.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 5:06 pm

Have you actually played MtG? They don't do that - they sometimes adjust the wording on older cards to use keywords that were created since then, and some formats have specific cards banned. But they don't do things like "Lightning Bolt now does 4 damage and costs RR".

That's orc-hating racist bullshit right there, and my alpha Oriflamme would like to have a fucking word the designers who errata'ed it to cost more and then went on to printed Glorious Anthem, which is strictly better for a lower cost than the errata'ed and reprinted version, and in yet in line with the cost and power on the first printing version.

See also, Orcish Artilerry, alpha. Time Vault (everything) And Fog unlimited to revised (non-damaging creature combat effects).

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:05 pm

My mistake, I didn't know about those. I do note they've stopped doing that, perhaps because it was annoying - so why should it be brought back for 4E?

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:38 pm

FatR wrote: Off the top of my head, I can't remember even a single example of an actual thing that a Magic card does being errata'ed. Even most ridiculously overpowered cards only got banned or restricted in most formats. All the errate is just bringing the text in accordance with new templates.

I can't either. Though I can say that due to rules changes, certain cards were made obsolete. For instance, the removal of mana burn turns Power Surge into a completely useless card and Citadel of Pain into a near useless card.

But actual card errata is generally just for clarification, not any actual balance changes. MtG handles all balance changes by restrictions/bans, not by nerfing cards.

koz · Post by **koz** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:37 pm

That being said, though, those rules changes aren't errata in the conventional sense. Additionally, there are cards which improved as a result of the rules changes - Braid of Fire is the most obvious one to do with mana burn.

At the same time, the reason these are easier than the kind of errata 4E engages in is for two reasons:

1) They're simple. It's easy to explain to someone 'mana burn doesn't exist anymore' than just about any bit of errata in 4E I've seen.

2) They're consistent and have obvious visible effects based on game logic. Here 4E falls down horribly, as the changes are random, sporadic and seem to lack any sort of basic logic to them as far as the rest of the rules go. They're 'spot-fixes' rather than rules changes.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:44 pm

Mana Burn went away?? Why?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:49 pm

I referenced a legit power level errata already. Implying that power level errata never actually happened is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. They were using power level errata until '06 or '07 or so. They printed articles about power level errata and then they further explained why they moved away from using power level errata. For most of Magic's history power level errata was a thing that happened. It's trivially easy to google, so you may as well get in line behind ice9 to drop the subject.

Of course, we can still still argue about whether power errata was a good idea or not. But, before we do, I'd like to point out a couple reasons why Magic isn't necessarily that apt of a critical comparison for D&D due to having a different business model and players with different sets of assumptions. For one thing, Magic isn't nearly as static a game. They're shilling multiple sets a year and as far as Standard goes they have multiple knobs they can screw around with for the purpose of game balance, and one of those knobs is the fact that they can just choose to let a problem go away. They never nerfed Lightning Bolt, for example but they did stop printing it and introduced Shock and Volcanic Hammer in various blocks; in those formats, burn oriented decks really do functionally play as if lightning bolt's cost and damage was changed. It's a side benefit of building a business model that actually thrives on change for change's sake. Change is super common in Magic, it's just not seen as a bad thing. D&D, meanwhile, is taken to task when monks manage to suck ass for an entire edition.