Community

Nov 17, 2009 -- 3:59PM, soccerref73 wrote:

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.

People who take silly broken items like bloodclaw or pre errata veterans armor should realize that one day, it will be nerfed and shouldnt base a character around it. I did get affected by it myself, so I will suck it up. I mean people shouldnt be coddled when they use broken rules items.  It was broken, it got nerfed. You either keep using it in its nerfed state or sell it for 1/5 price like any other item.  As far as avengers go, really? They needed the nerf most of all. It wasnt right when my guardian fighter in plate and heavy shield had a lower AC than our supposed striker. The avenger is still higher, but the gap isnt nearly as wide now. I personally was satisfied by the errata. I didnt think they were going to hit things as hard as they did, but Im ok with it. Underpowered is far more preferable to overpowered. Now if they were to change grasp of the grave next, it would be complete.

Nov 17, 2009 -- 9:04PM, ARlife wrote:

People who take silly broken items like bloodclaw or pre errata veterans armor should realize that one day, it will be nerfed and shouldnt base a character around it. I did get affected by it myself, so I will suck it up. I mean people shouldnt be coddled when they use broken rules items.  It was broken, it got nerfed. You either keep using it in its nerfed state or sell it for 1/5 price like any other item.  As far as avengers go, really? They needed the nerf most of all. It wasnt right when my guardian fighter in plate and heavy shield had a lower AC than our supposed striker. The avenger is still higher, but the gap isnt nearly as wide now. I personally was satisfied by the errata. I didnt think they were going to hit things as hard as they did, but Im ok with it. Underpowered is far more preferable to overpowered. Now if they were to change grasp of the grave next, it would be complete.

I agree in a way, but a lot of things that I didn't see coming got hit with the nerfhammer.

Case in point, the rod of reaving. It says in the updates that this was specifically to whack the 'reaving/corruption' combo, but I never used that. I just used the rod as a convenient way of triggering my warlock's pact boon every now and again. Killing one minion a round with a minor action and getting your boon may be good, but it does have the opportunity cost of not cursing a more juicy target.

I'm not going to weep to much about the item, I'll just sell it and move on. But I will have to reassess my battlefield tactics somewhat. Given that it's hard enough to make warlock's effective, I don't think they were in particular need of the beating.

The errata in general I'm massively in favour of.

I am in favour of a trade-in program for people who chose an item as a bundle that has been nerfed. Bundles are a valuable resource, and I am sure a lot of people would not have picked up certain items in their current form (it also works the other way - I have overlooked certain bundle choices that I would have taken now that my cloak of distortion and rod of reaving have been whacked. Oh well.)

Nov 18, 2009 -- 5:17AM, soccerref73 wrote:

I'm a bit bemused by the idea that people who bought or chose magic items that have now been updated have been cheating and therefore somehow deserve to be punished.  Last time I checked, the definition of cheating didn't include "playing a game according to its rules."  It isn't the players' fault that some of these items were overpowered.  A lot of them showed up in adventures as treasure bundle options; in some sense, you could say that we were encouraging people to take them, since the character wealth value of a found item above your current character level is higher than the character wealth value of pretty much any other option available in the campaign.

One of the features that people like about a Living Campaign (as opposed to the D&D Campaigns model with fixed level bumps) is that your character grows and has continuity over time.  Except, of course, that the rules of the universe arbitrarily change on a sporadic and unpredictable basis.  So whose fault is it, exactly, when the designers of D&D put out a game and say "here is our game, these are the rules" and then people have the audacity to play the game according to the rules?  I would say it's nobody's fault; the designers did the best job they could at the time (and having done design, development, and editing work for published RPG products, I can assure you, there is never enough time) and they are now continuing to do the best job they can by fixing those things that they have now realized they should have done differently.  But on the spectrum of people who one could potentially "blame" for the existence of overpowered items and abilities, I would have to say that the players ought to be at the very bottom of that list, if they are even on the list at all.

I'm not saying that we will or won't allow people to swap out affected items.  It's being discussed on the Global Admin list (and to the poster who wished for us to establish a permanent, consistent policy for these situations and enshrine that policy in the CCG, I hope and believe that you are going to get your wish).  I just want to be clear that whatever we decide with regards to how to treat items, class features, feats, powers, etc. that were affected by the updates, it has nothing whatsoever to do with trying to punish or reward anybody.  It simply has to do with trying to determine what is fair in the context of the organized-play environment -- what is the right thing to do when the rules change, and people already made decisions in good faith based on the old rules, and one of the defining characteristics of the campaign is that you cannot easily revisit those sorts of decisions once you make them?  In general, players only get to voluntarily make certain types of changes to their characters, and even then are only allowed to make those certain types of changes under specific, restricted circumstances (such as gaining a level), or have to pay a cost to undo decisions (such as selling items at 20% of market price while buying them at 100%). So when a whole bunch of involuntary changes get handed down from above, I think reasonable people can disagree about what is the right way to handle that situation fairly.

I largely agree with you. But from a consumer perspective, here is where my problem lies.

I have a large number of D&D 4e books.  I bought them to use in LFR and home campaigns.  With every book release, we (the consumer) has been seeing a power increase.  There are feats, powers, and items that come out in the books that everyone knows are a step above anything similar in their class.

Now, how do we view a player who decides to purchase a superior feat, power, or item?  Do we view them as rules-cheezing cheaters who are simply trying to min-max their characters?  Or do we view them as smart consumers?  If you were a knight riding a broken down mule, and another knight came by on a warhorse - is he a rules cheezing cheater, or simply using a better tool for the job?  No smart consumer deliberately picks inferior merchandaise.  Thus we, as players, pick superior items, feats and powers for our characters. 

Now, at some point, WOTC determines by looking at an feat, item, or power (henceforth PIF)  that it is more powerful than other PIF's at the level it is being used at.  In order to maintain a game balance, they then issue errata, removing some power from the PIF.  

Really, there are two places this could be done (well, three, but I'll get to that).

1) WOTC could actually edit their material before release.  They could playtest the material.  Other companies playtest, and other companies release material that is not _expected_ to be erratted because it is "stupid broken".  By not sufficiently playtesting or editing material before release, they are failing their customers.

2) A more cynical view might be that WOTC intentionally issues high-power PIFs in order to sell more books.  A book that only gives weak choices would most probably not sell as well as a book that provides strong choices.  By allowing material to be published that is overpowered, they create a better market for their printed material.

3) So your saying, jeez joe, that's kind of harsh.  And cynical, and unprovable.  Yes.  It is.  I can accept that things get through without sufficient editing in the press to make a release date.  What then becomes important is, when you make a mistake, how do you rectify it?  Do you immediately correct the mistake so as to minimize collateral damage (players relying on material that is too powerful for its intended use), or do you let the mistake hang out there and correct it once the book sales have slowed down (thereby gaining as much profit from the "mistake" as possible)?  The fact that we are only now seeing errata on things like Rod of Reaving/Corruption, despite people having been using and talking about this for nigh on two years now, really indicates that these are not simple mistakes that are simply being corrected as soon as they are found.  It seems to indicate that the power level of PIFs at release was exactly what WOTC intended, and that in order to keep releasing future broken PIFs it is now necessary to step down the power level, so that the next wave of releases will have material which can be oohed and ahhed over as more broken than what is currently available.

Yes, I actually have a character that is strongly affected by at least three of the changes - Bloodclaw, Giant Lizard, Soldier of Faith.  I'll keep the bloodclaw, and buy a weapon for the rest of the encounter.  I'll keep the lizard, as it still doubles my speed and gives me a climb speed, and I'll retrain soldier of faith (actually haven't played with it on the character sheet yet, so it's a change I can just back out).  I'm not asking for a free anything from LFR. 

What I would like is that books WOTC releases to not need power level errata.  What I would like is some decent level of playtesting and editing.

Until I start seeing a change in the current policy of "Write It, Spellcheck It, Ship It, then Playtest It, Edit It), I'm not buying more books.  I'll have my DDI subscription, which in reality gives me everything that the books do and more (Revenant, Assassin).