CRB Typos and Such


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I don't suppose anyone thinks it's likely (or even possible) that Paizo may end up doing a discounted price (if not a free copy) of a second printing of this CRB for those who bought the 2e book right at the start?

I'm honestly just shocked at the massive amount of typos and misstated things across the CRB. That plus some lingering feelings of Bait&Switch(*) regarding the playtest has left with with kind of a bitter taste in my mouth.

*I feel like the Playtest was sold as being a Beta; a mostly finished product that they wanted some input on. In reality, considering the amount of things that were changed, some later some right away, the playtest was much more like an Alpha/Early-Access version.

Where I'm sitting right now is that I dropped the $40 on the playtest in support of 2e, and now have that book which isn't useful in any fashion. I've now dropped another $60 on the 2e CRB which has arrived really as an unfinished product full of mistakes. And I'm gonna have to shell out more for an eventual second printing that just might be the final, finished, proper project.

I really liked 1e, and I'm really quite excited to get into 2e. I expect that it is going to become the new law of the land at my table going forward. I just can't help like feel like I've been burned pretty hard for being an early adopter here, when I really should have just waited.

Anyone else feel similarly? Not really sure what I expect of posting this, maybe just looking for some camaraderie in this.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Caveat emptor.

It behooves a purchaser to do at least some investigation as to what they are buying, especially in the "unfinished" category of products.

I don't mean to kick you when you're (feeling) down, but Paizo has done playtests for the last decade plus, and it doesn't take much research to find out that it's not a "please double-check our work" but a "we think this is okay on paper but need thousands of players to try this out and tell us what needs changes". The odds of a playtest book having any value outside of the playtest were always 0%, and virtually every oldster on this forum would have told you that.

As for discounted second printing, the book industry doesn't work that way. Textbook type books are much harder to proofread than fiction type novels where grammar checkers and spellcheckers are highly useful. It was - again - inevitable that dozens of typos would make it through. None of these (so far) appear to be game-breaking. Finally... Paizo makes the rules available for free, so access to errata is unprecedented.

I know this isn't what you're hoping to hear, but honestly, I'm trying to adjust your viewpoint to somewhere you can see you shouldn't feel bad. Much better than shared misery, yes?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

I am interested by your view on the playtest merely because there were people who shared your view but took it as a negative - “oh nothing we say is going to make a difference “ - and what people said did


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Hi,

Very understandable that you feel that way. These are expensive books, and they aren't what you thought you were purchasing. Nothing anyone can say will change that. I'm sorry buddy. That's crap.

In hopes that you can make more educated decisions, or at least have a better idea of what you are paying for in future, I want to address some of your thoughts, or at least those I see as misconceptions that have created this unhappy situation.

1) You definitely won't get a discount on a 2nd printing.
2) Partly because no-one in Paizo would agree that the 1st printing is an "unfinished product full of mistakes". I'd agree with them by the way. This is an enormous tome. I'm very sorry if you thought it would be close to have no typos or misprints, but I will warn you that that will never be the case with a huge book of this density. It's very much a finished product, in my opinion, and it is scatter with some annoying mistake I wish it didn't have, but compared to size of the book that's not surprising to me.
3) I'm sketchy on them selling the playtest rules as a physical product, but to be honest 40 dollars probably just covers the cost of physically making that book. The book was for people running lots of playtests who like having a physical document, and don't want to print and bind loads of a4 pages themselves. But I do agree there should have been a clear warning that that was the case when making that purchase.

I hope I'm offering some sympathy here, I really mean it. This is a really s%#&ty situation for you, with no real recourse. Sadly it seems to be a case of misaligned expectations.

Paizo playtests will often never look like the finished product. I personally would never spend money on a playtest anything.

Large rulebooks will ALWAYS have typoes. Luckily Paizo do errata, and are active enough in the community. Also, to be a bit real, the book is pretty light on serious misprints so far. A simple print out of the official errata when it comes, or for now probably a small page of acknowledged problems will cover nearly everything from the 600+ page monster.

So far the most commonly awkward misprints are:
=-=ANCESTRY=-=
HUMAN: Also gain one regional language or common language before additional languages from Intelligence.

DRUID: Has 5 cantrip spell slots, not 4.

WIZARD: Wizards do not all gain a class feat at level 1, only universalists do.

Everything else is relatively minor from what I've seen.


5 people marked this as a favorite.

If you buy the PDF, it will automatically be errataed with every new printing. And it's only $15!

(Because, honestly, the 2nd printing's not going to be perfect, either. P1e has errata documents all the way up to the 6th printing.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Errors in printed material is expected, as is the errata to fix found errors. I'm fine with this, as long as they are able to put out an errata soon and not wait until the 2nd printing. Does anyone know when the 2nd printing of PF1 CRB came out/how long after?

The PF2 CRB does contain a lot of errors, which is always disappointing. It's amazing how many errors don't get caught in premiere printed materials.

Has anyone with Paizo stated anything concerning an errata? It would be nice if they could start one immediately.

On buying the Playtest- people knew they were purchasing a playtest and that the rules in that book were going to be changing. No reason at all to complain about the rules not be useful now.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

As the person running that main typo/etc list (and therefore who's more or less kept track of all of them in my head at one point or another), I can honestly say that I am still extremely happy with my purchase of two CRBs (one as a gift for someone else).

I've been reflecting on this topic a lot as the list has grown, and as much as I meant to create it as "here's all the things like this in one central place rather than scattered through who-knows-how-many forum threads" and nothing more, I can see how some people would open the list, look at the length, go "woah", and stop there. To those people I would say: It's not nearly as bad as it looks. The vast majority are just typos, nothing even remotely game breaking. It's fine.

As vagrant-poet mentioned, the actual more character-changing oversights are a far, far smaller list, and can basically be read at a glance. If anything, let's be excited that maybe with this list we can help vastly minimize the chances of the book needing 6 printings, to Joana's point.

Like I say in the opening post of that main typo thread, I can only imagine how many things like this the editors caught before publication that we'll never know about. This isn't like making most other books. This is publishing a nearly 650 page outline of how to play a tabletop RPG, constantly making sure everything makes sense, every spell and every ability is balanced, every single mention of a particular mechanic or spell is cohesive throughout the whole book, and just generally every single thing about this book could last for potentially decades of play. That sounds like so mindbogglingly much, I cannot even comprehend how much work and brainspace that takes, and yet it's not only here, but it is also easily my favorite system I've played so far.

Plus, we can trust that the devs are on it. That quick list of a half dozen or so errata that we've gotten so far as a preview is already great. We know more is on the way.

At the end of the day, I'm a data guy (sometimes a very silly amount of data, but that's half the fun, lol). Given how complex and stressful creating and publishing a book like this must be, I'm not worrying at all. Someone show me a comparative analysis of the number of typos/etc that other relatively recent systems have had in their main launch book or two, and show me that the numbers for this system are noticeably far higher, then I'd be more concerned. Until then (and frankly, even after that), I'm enjoying the hell out of playing this system with my group, and I'm busy convincing everyone I possibly can to give it a shot, because I'm that excited for it.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Second Edition / General Discussion / CRB Typos and Such All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.