Predict 4th Edition Errata, here!

[Kaelik]

Wait for the selling line for DP 2 ... "Comes with a VIABLE STR-Cleric!!!!!".

Saw the PHB3 yesterday. It has a new Divine Leader class, the Runepriest, which is a Strength-primary class.

Yeah.

Wait, they are stealing names from fucking Warhammer? How uncreative are they?

[mean_liar]

No, they're stealing from RuneQuest. Or maybe Heroes of Might and Magic V. Or maybe it's a Nazi occult thing.

[Username17]

There have been "Rune Smith Priests" as a basic Forgotten Realms Dwarf package since the early 1980s. Warhammer is copying D&D with their Dwarven Rune Priests, and not the other way around.

That being said, I think it's pretty clear that the purpose of the Rune Priest was simply to force people who wanted to play Strength Clerics to buy more books. They errataed the basic Strength Cleric out of contention and created an entirely new class that was pretty much exactly the same thing but in a new book.

Mostly it just points to a failure of their power creep model. They didn't actually leave themselves room to keep writing new material, so they are nerfing and removing material and then reprinting un-nerfed versions of the same stuff.

What strikes me is how completely unnecessary it is. The basic model allows and requires a whole new class for every supported character class. There was never a reason to try to have Razor Clerics and Laser Clerics in there at the same time to begin with. The Razor Cleric never got any Paragon classes and doesn't get full implementation at every level - you're essentially required by law to shill out for some Multiclass feats. The Tron Paladin got shafted the same way. They should have narrowed their sights, and made every class run on exactly two stats and not even pretended to have multiple incompatible potential stat arrays. Don't fuck around having Feylocks and Inferlocks, just make all Warlocks be Con/Int and put all your Feylock ideas into an Enchanter class that is Cha/Int. Those classes are shit simple to write, so just throw down 16-30 of them in the basic book and call it done.

The lack of class explosion has been seriously puzzling. Writing a 4e Class takes me like 2 or 3 days, and I can do all the concepting work while driving a car and talking to people. If I wasn't fucking around trying to make sure that 2 or 3 different stat arrays were supported, I could go even faster. It just doesn't make any sense to not have 8 new classes in every book of meaningful size.

-Username17

[ggroy]

[Shokatsuryou]

No one probably cares at this point, but the May Update has come out. It is time to check the predictions again.

Because 4th Edition errata isn't concerned with actually making options decent, just making them unusable, don't bother with trying to change the effect to something good. Just make it worthless.

This continues to be true for the most part.

White Lotus Master Riposte will have a swordmage-only requirement.

Not yet, but this does seem to be the direction they are going:

Enlarge Spell gets changed to an attack penalty.

Nope. But it was changed to only affect Wizard powers. Moreover, in only affects Wizard At-Will and Encounter powers

Son of Mercy is either losing its WIS bonus or its auto-slowing. Probably auto-slowing.

Not yet, but...

Pit Fighter's Extra Damage Action gets nerfed to only apply to the next single attack roll and/or Pit Fighter's All Bets Are off gets changed to a single attack dealing 3w +daze.

Neither. Instead, Dirty Fighting was nerfed to only affect Fighter and Pit Fighter weapon attacks.

Similarly, "Daggermaster's Precision" only affects Rogue and Daggermaster attack powers.

I suspect many other abilities will receive similar treatment in the future.

Recovery Strike/Astral Seal's healing gets changed to temporary hit points. Same thing will happen for all such powers.

They still don't touch Astra Seal directly. Instead, Healer's Lore, Healer's Implement, and Beatific Healer were all changed to only affect Healing Surges.

Spirit of Healing utility power was also knocked down to only + Wisdom modifier (not twice Wis mod).

Healing magic items were not affected by these changes.

Twin Strike gets changed so that you can only target two people with it.

No way.

There was a new power in Martial Power 2 called Throw and Stab that some rangers were actually using instead of Twin Strike. Well, Throw and Stab got this nerf instead, ensuring that no one will ever use it again.

All rangers must spam Twin Strike until the end of time, apparently.

Lasting Frost gets neemed down to, oh, 2 vulnerability. And/or a power or feat bonus.
Wintertouched gets changed to providing some bullshit status effect rather than combat advantage. Maybe a speed penalty.

Nope! No change to either feat since the last update.

All of the daily-power swap tomes (like Gossamer tomes) get errata'd to only swap out dailies for dailies instead of utilities for dailies.

Yep. All the tomes (like Gossamer tomes) got precisely this nerf.

Here are some other notable changes:

Infernal Wrath tiefling racial power was changed to deal 1d6/2d6/3d6 + int/cha fire damage against an enemy within 10 squares that hits you, as a free action. No attack roll... if you use it the damage is automatic.

All feats that previously affected Infernal Wrath were changed to fit the new version.

Displacer Armor was nerfed to only last until end of your next turn for no reason.

Bloodiron Weapon was changed like this:

replace “deal the extra critical hit damage to the target again at the start of your next turn” with “the target of the attack takes 1d10 damage per enhancement bonus of this weapon at the start of your next turn.” This update clarifies that you gain only the magic weapon’s
extra critical dice on this damage and that it does not include any bonuses or damage from the high crit weapon property.

Warlord powers War of Attrition and Quickening Order were nerfed to only add the relevant ability modifier to damage, not attack rolls. Quickening Order also changed to a power bonus.

Battlelord of Kord daily power Path of the Storm severely nerfed. Each attack must now target a different creature.

Fey Charge feat was nerfed like so:

In the first sentence of the Benefit entry, replace “use” with “expend.” This change clarifies that a character who has Fey Charge is not actually using fey step when making the charge and thus does not gain the benefit of features or feats like Eladrin Swordmage Advance or Fey Gambit. Instead, the power is treated as a resource that is traded for the ability to teleport as part of the charge.

Radiant Servant encounter power Solar Wrath dropped from 3d8 to 2d6 damage, and from close burst 8 to close burst 3.

Last but not least, Ranger level 29 daily Follow-Up Blow now only gives the extra attack once per round. The extra attack still has the -2 penalty to the attack roll.

RIP ranger/pitfighter nova ranger...

[CatharzGodfoot]

I haven't been keeping up with 4e, but this just floors me. Even if all of these changes are warranted (I have no idea whether they are), this amount of errata focused on nerfing implies a complete inability to write reasonable powers. When the scope of powers is already limited to small quantities of damage with highly formalized targeting and status effects, that kind of incompetency implies either a total lack of understanding of the rules or absolute apathy and disrespect towards customers.

[Doom]

And the worst part is, they still have lots and lots and lots to fix, just with the powers.

Certain Justice, an encounter power that pretty much dazes/weakens one monster for the encounter, could use a bit of nerfing. Warchanter's RNG smashing AP ability (gives everyone +6 to attack or the like whenever he uses an AP) is extreme...healing in general is still too stupid strong.

I'll stop listing, just still lots and lots to fix, 'nuff said.

[sake]

Wow... Displacer Armor and Pitfighter went bye-bye... if Morning Lord takes a nerf next update, there will nothing left to make an avenger worth playing

Same with Daggermaster, enlarge spell, (last month's) frost cheese nerfs and Sorcerers.

[Orca]

Al this anti-multiclassing stuff puzzles me. I mean, one of the first things one of my friends said when 3.0e came out was along the lines of "So ... I can multiclass rogue and sorcerer then backstab with a ray of frost? Cool!"

Multiclassing for flavour or for cheese (or both) was a selling point of the 3rd edition. I don't understand why they've made it so hard in 4th.

[Maxus]

Multiclassing for flavour or for cheese (or both) was a selling point of the 3rd edition. I don't understand why they've made it so hard in 4th.

3rd Edition gave us a simpler, elegant, and intuitive solution that worked wonderfully… for characters who didn’t cast spells. The system also forced the core classes to delay abilities after 1st level to avoid cherry picking, where “clever” players simply took one level of as many classes as possible (or layered single levels on to a primary class) to reap the benefits of ungodly saving throws and bizarre but ultimately frightening combinations of class abilities that—like chocolate and pickle relish—were never meant to be combined by men and women of good taste.

That's right, finding cool combos of powers means you're a MUNCHKIN who HAS NO TASTE!

You PHILISTINE, you, how DARE you sully art by suggesting such!

Edit: Or, put it this way, they really did screw everybody just to make sure they got the powergamers/optimizers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

4E worships the idea of a class being balanced by having an awesome power at one level but having mediocre powers at another one and/or having awesome class features/bad powers or great powers/bad class features.

So aside from magical items, cherry-picking powers and feats breaks the system the hardest. So 4E tries really, really hard to make multiclassing as painful as possible.

[RandomCasualty2]

Al this anti-multiclassing stuff puzzles me. I mean, one of the first things one of my friends said when 3.0e came out was along the lines of "So ... I can multiclass rogue and sorcerer then backstab with a ray of frost? Cool!"

Multiclassing for flavour or for cheese (or both) was a selling point of the 3rd edition. I don't understand why they've made it so hard in 4th.

The odd thing is that the 4E system was intrinsically more multiclass friendly (at least in theory), because everyone got the same types of abilities at the same time.

[Username17]

One of the current crop of designers, Greg Bilsland, has Twitter diarrhea. He can't stop dropping crazy. Here's how he defines himself with relation to 4e:

Greg Bilsland is a game editor at Wizards of the Coast, where he works on 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. His design credits include the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, Monster Manual 2, Divine Power, and the upcoming Monster Manual 3 and Vor Rukoth. He spends his free time playing games, writing speculative fiction, and hiking in the Pacific Northwest.

But here are some highlights:

I am so excited to run games in epic tier. PCs are only a few levels away. Finally can try out some of the high level monsters in the game.

3 years into writing the game, one of the designers hasn't run anything in the Epic Tier. And you wonder why it works so poorly.

I'm going to look into it, but probably not for a few months since I'm focused on updates appearing in Essentials.

The rules are not being reprinted, they are being "updated" in Essentials. Since they already errata fearlessly and continuously, that basically means 4.5.

All the updates you see next week will be included in RC. The July updates won't affect Rules Compendium, b/c it will focus on powers/feats.

More nerfing in the next months!

And finally: 4e Designers do not like the core concepts of 4e.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Several times, I’ve given out a ritual scroll that allows the characters to redistribute their healing surges throughout the party. Sure, it’s a little meta-gamey, but I’m not big on simulation. If it adds to the drama to keep the characters adventuring, then I’ll do what I can to keep things going.

It all makes sense now.

It all makes sense now.

[FatR]

3 years into writing the game, one of the designers hasn't run anything in the Epic Tier. And you wonder why it works so poorly.

This is not an isolated case, I believe. IIRC, James Sutter, one of Paizo's game editors, admitted in the foreword to CoT 6 that he never ran a game above level 15 and never played above level 7.

[mean_liar]

Locking the PP bonuses to their parent class is a tremendous fuck you to multiclassing.

Mostly, just a collection of mundanity-enforcing crap. What a terrible game.

[areola]

And finally: 4e Designers do not like the core concepts of 4e.

-Username17

Yea I read that. His 4 suggested fix are mostly out of game solutions that depend on the DM and player. Wonder what the Mearls and Wyatt thinks of 5-minute workday? Do they embrace it or what? From what I see, Mearls is busy playing AD&D and Wyatt playing WoW with his son.

[Josh_Kablack]

I gave up reading anything else that blog says at paragraph 2

I have no problem with players spending their daily powers in the first encounter, as long as they understand that it will be the first encounter of many

Ok sure, players are expected to use triage and have face consequences for their resource expenditure choices, and he's going to enforce a multiple encounter workday to acheive that. That's a reasonable position, although one we've debated around here heavily in the past.

But then he immediately breaks the speed limit on the expressway to crazy-town:

Daily powers are supposed to be the powers most representative of a character’s class.

Then why are you running a game style where your players only only able to use such powers every three sessions or so?

[mean_liar]

He does go on to say that he wants to make Dailies into Encounters.

[Doom]

Locking the PP bonuses to their parent class is a tremendous fuck you to multiclassing.

Mostly, just a collection of mundanity-enforcing crap. What a terrible game.

Whoa, I missed this in the patch notes. Where and what does it say? Half my players are Paragons of classes they know almost nothing about (i.e., just the one feat).

[Lago PARANOIA]

But mean_liar, multiclassing is so very had to balance. Can't you at least feel a small twinge of sympathy for Mike Mearl's herculean task?

[Josh_Kablack]

He does go on to say that he wants to make Dailies into Encounters.

Which is incompatible with the design goal stated in his first paragraph.

Dude cannot even fathom that he is working at cross-purposes to himself.

[mean_liar]

Well, that's an argument that I cannot take up in his defense, because yes. He contradicts himself with "dailies should be encounters so they're used" and "dailies must be managed and treated gravely".

But mean_liar, multiclassing is so very had to balance. Can't you at least feel a small twinge of sympathy for Mike Mearl's herculean task?

No. None at all. A tighter game made by a better man, displaying unfortunate shortcomings would be forgivable. The bulk of the powers are a crapflood of uselessness that serves more to identify the few irregular shining beacons which can beat back the system's Padded Sumo bloat rather than interesting gameplay. For a combat minigame in a combat RPG which revolves around using those powers to be so utterly forgettable save for the nails which are hammered down is inexcusable and I will eventually publish my own goddamn (broken, pointless, tiny-fist-railing-at-the-sky) game for FREE just to fuck with these worthless money sinks and their addled creators.

[areola]

With all this 4e hate, they would have been better if they developed a video game out of the rules itself. Trying to have video game rules on tabletop is just disastrous unless you are playing it solely as a boardgame.

[mean_liar]

Well, it's good to keep perspective. From the vantage point of 3e, 4e is doing poorly. However it's almost certainly outselling every other RPG on the market.

Our dislike (and that of other internet curmudgeons) is only a sign the game is poor, not that the game is doing poorly in absolute terms.