The days of world-changing errata seem to be coming to an end. When the Essentials line was announced, we were told that we'd have a few months of drastic rules updates to clean up the game for the new books, and a much lower rate of changes, afterwards. Having read the September advance, I was hoping that this month would bring us one last glorious round of fixes, addressing major stuff like the psionic power point system.
Well, I was wrong. The latest document only includes a handful of changes of note, plus a bunch of typos, and I'm inclined to think that this is the kind of revisions we should expect in the future. That is, apart from the stuff that is directly being rewritten on the Essentials books.
Anyways, here are the two relevant fixes:
- Shaman spirit companions can no longer be dismissed and conjured again with a single minor action. Placing spirits on the battlefield isn't completely trivial anymore, and should be a bit more interesting from now on.
- The rogue Cunning Sneak class feature now works with any kind of movement, not just move actions. Move-related attacks should now be much more useful for stealthy rogues.
And that's it. I'd still like to see an official document with the changes to classic monster stats, but they may be waiting for the release of Monster Vault, for that.
Posts
Any word on the DDI Tools update yet?
ReplyDeleteWonder if this leads any cred to the "Stealth-4.5E" argument (i.e. "They're not putting out big non-Essentials updates because they're moving on to Essentials-only")..?
ReplyDeleteThe Character Builder and Compendium updates aren't up yet. There is no set date for them, either - after last month's delay, we were told they would be ready for 'early October'. By all reasonable accounts, this should mean sometime this week, but I'm not sure if they'll make it. I'll keep my fingers crossed, as I'm really looking forward to building stuff with Psionic Power, Dark Sun, and Essentials.
ReplyDeleteAs for the 4.5 theories... honestly, I'm certain some people will think this lack of errata means 4E is doomed. For that matter, the same would have happened if we had got too much errata, or no errata, or just the right amount of errata... people loves conspirations ;)
My take on it is: the old material isn't going anywhere, and will still get support - though probably less so than the newer, shinier Essentials builds. Also, this new support will be in the form of magic items with rarities, powers with fluffy descriptions, feats classified by categories and not by tiers, and new class builds with their own advancement tables. That is, pretty much the same stuff as always, under the new format and with a few minor tweaks. Unfortunately, some people seems to just hate that presentation, and will disregard that material as Essentials junk, or something.
Update on the DDI update: It will be ready for October, 12. It will include Compendium and Character Builder (Monster Builder is left for later). There is some kind of web-based new DDI tool which will be presented then, too... for more information, check out this thread:
ReplyDeletehttp://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/26004389/Upcoming_October_Update