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Nov 17, 2009 -- 1:25PM, Melos wrote:

When does it take effect for LFR?  Dec. 1?

AFAIK it takes effect immediately upon release

Nov 17, 2009 -- 2:25PM, Elder_basilisk wrote:

That seems more than a bit harsh considering that probably 90% of avengers can no longer use the armor they bought and still benefit from armor of faith and a number of tempest fighters may no longer even be proficient with both ends of their urgroshes.

The whole errata is very harsh. I guess most of them would be screwed just as much with a two-week period as they're without it.

Nov 17, 2009 -- 2:25PM, Elder_basilisk wrote:

Also, the last batch of errata had a waiting period before its use became mandatory. I would expect this to be the same.

But the batch before the last batch did not and the last batch specifically stated the waiting period.

I am not saying that I am against any waiting period, just that I don't have any reason to believe that there'll be one since it was an specifically stated exception the last time. If it helps some people let them have their reprieve.

The Global Admins haven't had any opportunity to review the errata and our boss (Mr. Tulach) is out of the country for a couple of weeks.  In general, we want people to use official updates as soon as they become official, but at the same time, there are so many changes in this update that will affect character builds and magic items, I do think we will need to offer some kind of "trade-in program" for people with affected items.  Exactly what that might look like, I am really not certain. Changes to powers and feats should be able to be addressed through the rebuild rules that already exist, although we might allow a free retrain for those items, too.  

I guess what I would say is, if you can use the updates right away without needing massive guidance from the campaign staff on how to fix your character, then you probably should use them right away.  As always, the best we can do is appeal to common sense.  

In most cases, these updates will reduce the power of item or power selections you've made, and you might like to swap those selections out, but it isn't the end of the world -- so common sense would dictate that the right thing to do is start playing with the updates.  For example, if you have a bloodclaw weapon or a rod of reaving, then you should go ahead and apply those updates.  You might eventually want to go ahead and trade that out for a different item, and I would imagine that we probably will allow those kinds of swaps to be made, but your character is hardly unplayable in the interim even if you are "stuck" with the weapon.  If a power got changed and you don't like the new version, you can retrain it at your next opportunity if all else fails, so again, it isn't the end of the world for you to start using the updated version.

About the worst-case scenario I can think of would be someone playing an avenger who had made the necessary investments of feats and magic-item selections to climb the AC tree.  That character just lost at least 3 and possibly 4 points of AC due to the changes to Armor of Faith and Improved Armor of Faith.  But you were probably up 3-4 points of AC due to the difference between leather or hide armor and cloth armor anyway.  Since we haven't issued guidance on what to do with your items yet, the easiest thing to do is probably just keep playing the character, take the AC hit and keep wearing your current armor (after all, it's not illegal to take the feats and wear heavier armor, even after the update -- you just lose the Armor of Faith bonus).  Then when we have a chance to issue some guidance on whether and how you can swap things out as a result of the update, you can make a decision about which way you want to go with your character.

Now, all that being said, if a WotC rules update leaves you with an illegal character, then you can always make the minimum necessary adjustments to your character so that you have a legal character.  But being left with a less-powerful character isn't the same thing as being left with an illegal character.