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Mar 21, 2010 -- 10:57PM, Lord_Darwath wrote:

There's just one thing I have to ask on this subject.  I've read things on this forum that seemed to indicate that certain powers or feats from PHB1 got changed by errata because of the way they stacked with powers or feats released in later books.  If I understand that correctly... why?  Why change the original material to make it work with new material?  To me it seems more logical to change the new material.  The older material should have 'seniority' and the new material altered as needed to make it backward compatable.

I mean, if as a DM I hit upon some really cool adventure idea, but realize it conflicts with the current story arc, I don't just tell my players, "forget what you know about your arch-nemisis, that's not the guy any more, it's this other fiend."  If I did, my players would rightfully acuse me of crappy campaign design.  So why should a player have to put up with downloading the latest character builder to discover that his existing fighter's feat X no longer works the same way because it might create an unbalanced combo if someone with new class B takes it along side new power Y?

this was more specifically to create a more preferential stacking order to things. The big change was to the newer material and ultimately even if you throw out the newer material the change to the older material was a gain for characters that those feat applied to.

In a nutshell they sorted the issue out by making flat or near-persistent +hit bonuses not stack, and more conditional bonuses stack. Even if you play with just the PHB1 it still makes those feats much more appealing since you can benefit from more than one of them.

Mar 21, 2010 -- 3:52PM, pianopraze wrote:

I have shelled out OVER 300$ in  4.0 books.

     Sounds to me like you love the many diverse options WotC is  cranking out.  You'd probably be complaining if we only had a half-dozen  or so books instead of the variety we do now, yet you're not willing to  pay the piper for getting so much content so fast in accepting that  it's impossible to foresee all of the ever-increasing combinations  possible in such a broad ruleset.

Mar 21, 2010 -- 4:49PM, pianopraze wrote:

Take your car company example. Those cars are built and real world tested for a long time so they don't have hundreds of little recalls.

     Yeah, why can't WotC's rules be as safe and predictable as a Toyota?

     You're right, car companies don't have hundreds of little recalls.  Does that mean they don't have cause for hundreds of little recalls?  Not remotely.  Every car on the road has problems that it ought to be recalled for.  Might you happen to have seen Fight Club?

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The     rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone     trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of     vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of     failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C.     A times B times C equals X. If X is   less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

     That formula isn't just a movie invention.  Real car companies have been caught making that same judgment call time and again for things much more severe than a creaky window or a wobbly cup-holder.  This is all just to say that even car companies which hold millions of people's lives in their hands don't provide the level of regulation and reliabiliy you're demanding from a game of make-believe.

     Still, I'll run with the example.

If I bought a car and it kept having to go into the shop because  of problems/recalls I would not buy that brand of car again.

     Your car is not a roleplaying game.  It's a closed system.  Everything in that car is meant to work with everything else in that car, and not with anything outside of that car.  The manufacturer officially disavows all responsibility the moment you loosen a single bolt.  In order for your car to be comparable to a roleplaying game, it would have to constantly automatically gain new parts, pieces, and options every single month.  Every month a big crate shows up at your door with a note that says 'We just came out with a new pickup, and even though you're driving a hatchback we thought you might want to use the new parts that go into it.'  Further, not only are you allowed to switch in that pickup's V8 in place of your economy car's V4, you're encouraged to, and the parts are all modular to allow this.

     Now you're telling me that a company with dozens of diverse, wildly different vehicles on the market would be absolutely able to make sure that every single part is compatible with every single other part in every one of the millions of possible combinations?  Yeah, right.  Left up to the auto manufacturers, I can guarantee you two things: You'd see a maximum of two new cars per decade, and at least half of the parts combinations would catastrophically fail, only to be addressed by arbitrated settlement rather than anything even resembling a recall.

My points are valid and I am attempting to give Wizards a voice outside of this small community. Wizards is pissing off MANY REAL WORLD PLAYERS who will never come to this forum because they are busy with their lives and play D&D once a week or once a month.

     Do you have any idea how ridiculously fine the line is between this 'small community' and everyone who uses the DDI tools?  Don't give me that 'I'm too busy to be invested in the game' crap and try to pretend we're some kind of disconnected trogs because we frequent the forums.  I only run the game one day a week too.  I have a life, I have a girlfriend, I have other hobbies.  All you're doing is trying to justify your ignorance about the game by suggesting that you live a richer, fuller life than those of us who actually take the time to know what we're talking about.

     OP, your spending habits show that you clearly love the huge variety of options in the game and are happy with the rate at which they're coming out (else you would be buying them more slowly).  Unless you're willing to pay a lot more for the dozens upon dozens of playtesters that would be necessary for you to get the perfection you're demanding on the timetable you love, your little rant amounts to nothing more than empty whining.  It's hard to choose which benefits to give up in order to justify reaping other benefits, but it's so much easier to demand that everyone else just work harder and do it better without any kind of compensation or consideration of the realities, isn't it?

     This is the WotC model.  Lots of content, a brisk schedule of release, a very dynamic ruleset.  In exchange, we suffer the horrible burden of a relatively attentive, adequately-balanced, and moderately timely system of errata.  If you'd rather get solid content up front and wait months and months to see further output from the developers, I suggest you find a more stagnant roleplaying game to throw your money at (and be ready to be disappointed when it proves to have balance flaws which will never, ever be addressed).

Mar 22, 2010 -- 4:53AM, Vorpal_Bunny wrote:

I feel the OP's pain, it is pretty annoying playing in a once a month game and having your powers change from one month to the next.  This has actually happened a couple times in my game already.  I do not like having these changes forced on me by the character builder  espcially when some of them are pretty severe.

The alternative would be a power by power check box to not apply the errata and then in the case of multiple erratum on the same power more check boxes.  This simply does not work well and as a Software developer I would not want to code that into the character builder

Well, there is another alternative.  Stop playing eladrin fey stepping dual wielding frost wepaons with the wintertouched and lasting frost feats characters and you won't have to worry about your powers changing from one month to the next.