Boy, does 4e SUCK...!

[Unbeliever]

We make corrections and tweaks all the times when something strikes us as out of whack.  Amongst the people I've played with the longest, you don't even need to ask:  by the end of the session there will be suggestions about how to alter things or just excise them from the character.  Inevitably, in a fiddly and rich game system there are going to be options and combos that can derail a game or abandon intraparty balance.  It helps if the people involved have run games themselves; they tend to be very empathetic towards such concerns.

Let's not conflate errata with house rules, though.  House rules are an expression of the table wants.  They say "this is the kind of game we personally want to play."  Errata is purportedly a correction of an error.  Further, I know of nobody who has more than 20 pages of house rules, not to mention 100+. 

Also, house rules tend to be established before the game starts.  Springing rules changes on your game isn't good form.  It can be tolerated, but it's very much not "best practices."  This is less an issue now that the product lines are dead, but while they were alive, it was a big problem.  Essentially it says to the consumer "don't use this book till we patch it."  This approach, I think, is what is bothering me a lot. 

More to the point, though, I think errata just feels more suspect than house rules.  I mean, there seems to be an assumption in Complete4th's comments that the errata is salutary, i.e., that the new rule is better than the old rule.  But, they were designed by the same people (company, etc.), so there's no reason to believe that's the case.  You're just as likely to be improving the game as you are to have SKR trying to bury monks in a shallow grave.  The latter might even be more likely.  House rules at least take my tastes (presumably) and the group's balance points into account. 

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And, I really do think the sheer magnitude is important.  Perhaps the key thing.  It's one thing to hammer down some proud nails, like the open-ended firepower of the Planar Shepherd.  But, I don't know of anyone who has even 25 pages of house rules, let along 100+. 

That many pages seems to lead to 2 possibilities.  (1) they are essentially editing mistakes, you forget a keyword here or there, a minor typo, some corner conditions that were not anticipated (e.g., abusing line of sight teleportation to teleport a target to the moon).  That means in most cases the errata can be safely ignored, it's largely superfluous to the game.  (2) they are correcting serious rules issues, fixing balance points.  That means the errata is important, but that leaves you to question the quality control, bringing us back to SKR and monks.  If these things were really OP (or UP, but as we noted already, there's usually little game designer attention paid to that) that a simple change would fix it, then you worry how it ever got to print. 

[Complete4th]

To be honest, I didn't pay attention to the 3e errata, mostly because I didn't even know it existed for many years. And I certainly don't follow PF errata. So my opinion of errata is pretty much based on 4e's errata. 4e had the occasional unnecessary errata, like when magic missile was changed from an attack roll for moderate damage to an auto-hit for piddle damage. But for the most part, 4e errata is useful: it does things like fix typos and keyword omissions, or it nerfs OP options. It seems like a lot, but the errata that affects any given player is rarely notable. I think fans have a tendency to look at the massive errata doc, imagine it applying to just the core 3 or whatever, and think Why no quality control too much errata! But in reality the ratio of errata to words printed is small, and easy to implement even without digital aid. (Which is why I brought up house rules.) So obviously, my opinion of errata is high.

But in a general sense, I can see the concern that errata does as much harm as good, what with most fans (and some devs) having a poor grasp of balance.

I guess we just have fundamentally different views on errata. You see it as more suspect than house rules, but the only difference I see is who writes down the rule change. My 3.x house rules doc was actually 30+ pages, because there's just so much about the system that doesn't work the way we wanted it to. Some of it was stuff that didn't really need to be written down, like 'no alignment or multiclassing restrictions,' but much of it was stuff like innate bonus rules and spell tweaks.

[Bormun]

Hi Unbeliever,

I was struck by your earlier comment about concept-driven vs. Chinese Menu, and I was surprised & intrigued by you thinking that 4E was more the latter.
So, rather than argue about it, I was hoping for your advice.
I've played 4E (not much) but never 3E, but have just started Pathfinder, as in, 1st level, 1 session in!

So, yeah: I had this character concept for a "druidess" who "smites my enemies with the forces of nature - thunder, lighting, frost, maybe radiant sunlight".
In 4E, I'd know what to do:

• Realise that the druid class chassis is all about shape-shifting, and not what I want, so I'll have to re-fluff from another class
• Invoker could work, lots of thunder & lightning there.
• Sorcerer also works, Storm Sorc, there are at least 2 good paragon paths
• either way, I'll be blasting away with thunder & lightning from level 1, and they perform at top-tier, so I won't feel useless

But, turns out the DM (and old friend) uses Pathfinder instead, so hopefully this is where you come in:
The options seem to be the Druid or Sorcerer class, the former has a Weather domain, with a 'Wisdom mod+4' per day personal raincloud, which is nice, but there seems to be a huge lack of thunder, lightning, frost, and sunlight spells at low level.
Also, the char-op choice seems to be for summoning, which is easy for me to do for both Druid & Sorc (or even Wizard) but isn't at all derived from my Character Concept.

So, yeah, how would you build a 3E or Pathfinder character based on the concept of "druid blaster-with-forces-of-nature"?

[brujon]

It'd, uh, be easier if you created an specific thread for build advice, but primarily, there are several things you can do if you want a blaster druid. Energy Substitution is a nice feat to have if you're blasting, and you just kind of want metamagic feats if you're blasting, since Druids already get all of their spells, like Clerics, and you just need to apply metamagic to them to make them better. Planar Shepherd is an obvious prestige class choice, if you can grab it, because it is so powerful, especially if you can get a plane with favorable time traits. Windwalker is an OK but not great one if you don't mind losing out on Animal Companion & Wildshape, gives you Full BAB and Full Casting, some air spells... But, really? Honestly? Druid is just so solid, you don't even need to grab a prestige class. Just get some feats to spice up your spellcasting and research up on spells. You don't even NEED to do anything else.

[Bormun]

I seem to have failed to explain myself 

My interest in in the suggestion that Pathfinder is as good, if not better, than 4E (this being a 4E thread) at Concept Driven Characters.
I hope it is, and Unbeliever seems to think it is, so I hope for his advice.

My Concept is for a character who blasts foes with the forces of nature - cold, lightning, thunder/sonic, sunlight.

I don't care if it is of the Druid Class or not - whatever the class is, I'll re-fluff it and pretend to be a druid.

Your mention of Elemental Spell is very helpful. Its level increase is +1, so I guess I can convert an Orizon into a level-1 spell? Ouch 

Which base class would work best for that Concept, in your opinion?

[brujon]

Sorcerer does the blasting thing better than Druid can, but Druid does it well enough that it shouldn't matter unless you're going all-out on optimization. Druid is a tier 1 class, which means he's able to be everything at the same time. Blaster, controller, bruiser... You name it, druids can do it. Sorcerer, on the other hand, is a Tier 2 class, which means they have some of the potential of the Tier 1 class but they're not as versatile and don't have as much raw power, but are still much more powerful than most classes are. I'm not remembering most of the good prestige classes for Blasting with Sorcerers, but rest assured, they exist, and you can be a force to be reckoned with wielding the power of the elements. Just Sorcerer 20 would do.

EDIT: Also, if you're asking, yes, 3E and PF can be much better than 4E for concept driven character creation, and just because of sheer volume of available classes/prestiges/options. You can do almost anything you want with 3.5: you're not limited, it's unbounded.