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## "[The Sage] Smokes Crack"

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Cielingcat
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### "[The Sage] Smokes Crack"

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Post by Cielingcat » Sat Apr 04, 2009 6:34 am

Can anyone give me some examples of times when the FAQ's official rulings have contradicted actual rules, or themselves? It would be much appreciated.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:05 am

Like what? For 3rd Edition or 4th Edition or 2nd Edition or what?

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:10 am

I can only think of a few edge cases:
Dragon Compendium: the Dvati each get an allotment of actions, but if one casts a spell, they both must spend the relevant action.
Sage: Herp de derp derp, they have one pool of actions between them, so you use your whole turn by moving each of them 30 feet. That's what I call worthy of +1 LA!
Core rulebooks: yeah if you lose the prereqs for a PrCl, like a Dragon Disciple actually reaching 10th level (no we don't know why you took that class), then.... *chirp chirp*
Sage: Oh yeah, you totally lose the PrCl then. A Dragon Disciple, at 10th level, becomes a Divide by Zero and the Universe is destroyed (I added this part).
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Cielingcat
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Post by Cielingcat » Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:15 am

> Lago PARANOIA wrote:Like what? For 3rd Edition or 4th Edition or 2nd Edition or what?

3rd edition, sorry. Forgot that there would likely be a continuation of contradictory rulings in 4th and beyond (when they get there, anyway).
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:55 am

The first major one was the Sorcerers and Quicken thing. The rules quite clearly and explicitly allowed Sorcerers to Quicken. Quicken reduced any casting cost of a Full Round or less to a Free Action. Sorcerer metamagicking raised a casting time of a Standard Action to a FRA. No effect on things that were already Frees.
So the rules were that if you applied the Sorcerer modifier first, it went from a Standard to a Full and then to a Free. If you applied Quicken first it went from a Standard to a Free and stayed there. The Sage was required only to tell us whether you could Quicken spells that started at a Full Round, because those would go to 2 rounds and be unquickenable if the Sorcerer modifier was applied first. The Sage ruled that Sorcerers could never use Quicken, based on nothing and stuck to those guns even after the actual rules were quoted and broken down into small words. Later they made that he actual rules for 3.5. And we were sad.
Then there was the 1-2-1-2 counting method for diagonals, which The Sage introduced whole cloth into 3rd edition and applied it to running and reach. And while many people were happy at how much more "realistic" this was, the fact was that a diagonal charge into a Minotaur now provoked an attack of opportunity if you moved 2 or 4 squares, but not if you moved 3 or 5 squares. And since when you normal move you can take whatever path you want, it pretty much meant that large creatures had no meaningful threat area as long as 4 person D&D parties attacked them no more than 4 at a time. This got folded into the 3.5 rules, as part of Andy's overall program to make the PHB 100 pages longer and less clear at the same time.
But the crowning achievement was the one where he said that Monks who held things in their hands like bags or lanterns would lose an attack per turn for each held object. That... eventually got removed. But it was a serious what the fuck.
Moving into 3.5 they forgot to put saps on the Rogue Weapon list, and Andy took it upon himself to clarify sneak attack. And he got it straight wrong, like he hadn't even read Sneak Attack in years. And he introduced the "halflings can't sneak attack ogres" rule. Which was madness.
I mean, there was a whole cavalcade of rewritings of the shapechanging spells in the FAQ where the various sages kept defining and redefining what abilities transferred and what did not. I used to know those, but it was all just broken and stupid in slightly different ways. The above were the ones that really broke the game.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:58 am

Don't forget the slow neutering of the Hide skill! And how Hide in Plain Sight didn't actually do anything until they flayed that skill so badly that people were fooled into believing that HiPS suddenly did something!
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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zeruslord
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Post by zeruslord » Sat Apr 04, 2009 5:43 pm

The broken loyalty from diplomacy checks thing was introduced as a charisma chart in 3.0 and quoted as a diplomacy ruling by Skip. This then became the 3.5 rule and broke the game.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:05 pm

I am suddenly incredibly glad I don't pay attention to errata...
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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NineInchNall
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Post by NineInchNall » Sun Apr 05, 2009 4:31 am

I'm trying to think of any errata that actually represented an improvement to the game, but I'm blanking.
Time to check the pdfs again.
Let's start with the PHB. *flipflipflip*
Animal Companion: Animal companion is not treated as a magical beast. This both makes sense and means the Druid can buff his animal. As a total Druid fanboy, I give this a thumbs up. 1/1
Wild Shape: Treat wild shape as alternate form. This fails on many levels and anyone who disagrees is a bad person and should be ridiculed. 1/2
A Thousand Faces: Makes this disguise self rather than alter self. This actually improves the game by using a more open-ended yet less mechanically broken. 2/3
Special Mount: This is an actual erratum rather than a rules change. Therefore it wins. 3/4
Rogue Profs: Actual erratum. 4/5
Listen: Actual erratum. 5/6
Run: Meh. Actual erratum. 6/7
Overrun: The fail begins in earnest as we make mounted combat pointless and nonsensical. 6/8
Soft Cover Actual erratum. 7/9 (Not the boobs.)
Attacking on a Charge: Charging is bad! Melee people should suck! 7/10.
Overrun: Continue the fail. 7/11
Animal Shapes: Alternate form rules are worse than regular polymorph. Fail. 7/12.
Baleful Polymorph Reiterates alternate form rules. Which fail. So this fails. 7/13
Blasphemy: Actual erratum with no fix for this totally fucktarded spell. 7/14
Chaos Hammer: Improves clarity. 8/15
Darkvision: Did they even proofread the PHB at all? 9/16
Area Dispel: Erratum. 10/17
Divine Favor: This spell is not the fucking problem. You didn't need to nerf it. 10/18
Glibness: It's an actual erratum, but it's so pointless as to make me cry. I'll err on the side of forgiveness. 11/19
Polymorph any Object: Gah. PAO is totally broketacular and is totally unclear. Why the fuck ... Ah, fuck it. 12/20
Righteous Might Again, this spell isn't the problem with clerics, and the nerfing doesn't significantly help in any way. 12/21
Scrying: Actual erratum. 13/22
Shapechange: You can still mine and duplicate. Fuck off. 13/23
Spell Turning: Yeah, we understand why this is the case. Now try explaining it to your typical D&D player. You know, the one who thinks you're a rules lawyering munchkin for (knowing the actual fucking rules and) saying that disintegrate is not a targeted spell. 14/24
Stone Shape Fine. 15/25
Transport via Plants Fucking pointless. 15/26
In all honesty that's more useful material than I was expecting.
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NineInchNall
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Post by NineInchNall » Sun Apr 05, 2009 4:33 am

Oh, and an example of sage fail includes when he said that when shapechanging into the form of a riding dog, you have the HD of a riding dog.
Then he went back and corrected himself in the next issue.
True story.
So ... That man sucks diarrhea ass.
Current pet peeves:
Misuse of "per se". It means "[in] itself", not "precisely". Learn English.
Malformed singular possessives. It's almost always supposed to be 's.
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TavishArtair
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Post by TavishArtair » Sun Apr 05, 2009 5:49 am

> NineInchNall wrote:15/26
> In all honesty that's more useful material than I was expecting.

I had a PE/health teacher once, in high school. For the health side of his class, he had to educate us and have some tests. As a required class in a fairly rural town it got lousy marks. Once, while haranguing us, he pointed out, "That's 60%... that's a .600... this would be a really good batting average... but it makes a really lousy grade..."
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Psychic Robot
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Post by Psychic Robot » Sun Apr 05, 2009 5:49 am

> Overrun: The fail begins in earnest as we make mounted combat pointless and nonsensical. 6/8
> Attacking on a Charge: Charging is bad! Melee people should suck! 7/10.
> Overrun: Continue the fail. 7/11

I must know more about these nerfs. Elaborations, please?

> Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.

> Ant wrote:

> > Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?

> You do not seem to do anything.

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Starmaker
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Post by Starmaker » Sun Apr 05, 2009 5:59 am

> Psychic Robot wrote: I must know more about these nerfs. Elaborations, please?

Here.
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Psychic Robot
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Post by Psychic Robot » Sun Apr 05, 2009 2:07 pm

Well, that's bullshit. On the plus side, we've always played with the 3.0 charge rules in my group. We just didn't know it.

> Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.

> Ant wrote:

> > Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?

> You do not seem to do anything.

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Echoes
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Post by Echoes » Mon Apr 06, 2009 12:12 am

The Sage's ruling on the Southern Magician feat in Races of Faeun. The ruling makes the feat do nothing. Even the things the feat says it does, the ruling says it can't do them. Oh, wait, you can still get the divine spell effects if they differ from the arcane. Which affects all of like 1 spell ever printed.
Yes, according the Sage, Southern Magician is more useless than Radiant Fire.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Mon Apr 06, 2009 1:12 am

As long as it's more useful than Off-Hand Parry or 3.0E Eagle Claw Attack, I can't get too worked up about it.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Absentminded_Wizard
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Post by Absentminded_Wizard » Mon Apr 06, 2009 1:22 am

Skip's rulings on FR were pretty hilarious. Once he gave a core rules answer to an FR-specific question about patron deities.

> Doom314's satirical 4e power wrote:Complete AnnihilationWar-metawarrior 1
> An awesome bolt of multicolored light fires from your eyes and strikes your foe, disintegrating him into a fine dust in a nonmagical way.
> At-will: Martial, Weapon
> Standard Action Melee Weapon ("sword", range 10/20)
> Target: One Creature
> Attack: Con vs AC
> Hit: [W] + Con, and the target is slowed.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Mon Apr 06, 2009 7:26 am

> Absentminded_Wizard wrote:Skip's rulings on FR were pretty hilarious. Once he gave a core rules answer to an FR-specific question about patron deities.

Ah yes, in FR Paladins have to take a patron god and get their spells granted from them. The frickin useless Dieties & Demigods rules specify that Chaotic gods cannot grant Paladin Spells. But FR Paladins can take various Chaotic Good Gods as their patron. So someone asked the quite sensible question of what the fuck is up with the FR setting. Namely, do Paladins of the goddess of light bondage not get any spells?
And Skip came in and ruled that because in Greyhawk a Paladin did not need to take a patron to get spells at all that you shouldn't worry about it.
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NineInchNall
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Post by NineInchNall » Mon Apr 06, 2009 5:48 pm

Which is in its own way true. Specifically, why in the name of Fuck should we have to swallow all the shit that FR slings at us?
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Starmaker
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Post by Starmaker » Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:48 pm

When I started playing D&D (AD&D 1e, for the record), Baldur's Gate was big, which made lots of people familiar with the setting to some extent. It's also a ripoff of LotR, which makes it easier to relate to. The Drizzt books are still popular, at least 100 years after first printing. And Wizards themselves promote the setting whenever they can.
So everyone knows about FR, and some people actually like it or are too lazy to come up with anything better else at all, and a number of them runs/plays games in the setting. Gaming opportunities can be sparse, so when the choice is play FR or endure the rampant stupidity A_Cynic and virgileso have to put up with, I'd rather stick with the former. Especially if the opportunity to fvck the setting with full force is present (it always is).
Also, a god has to have paladin levels to grant paladin spells (MMVI p. 26)
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Roy
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Post by Roy » Mon Apr 06, 2009 10:17 pm

Lol, what?
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Absentminded_Wizard
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Post by Absentminded_Wizard » Tue Apr 07, 2009 3:11 am

Yep. Frank's post jogged my memory about the specifics of the question. D&DG says that only LG gods with paladin levels can grant paladin spells. Since FRCS was written before D&DG, they made their rules without any knowledge of the D&DG rules.
Skip was specifically asked, IIRC, how a player's paladin of the LN Helm, who couldn't possibly have paladin levels, was getting his spells. Skip answered that Paladins don't have to get their spells from a patron deity, so the player should make up another source for his power. As Frank points out, this is true in core but false in FR, where all divine casters must have a patron deity.
Of course, the correct answer is that FR has its own rules that are often different from core. This is especially true when it comes to gods. After all, in some 2e supplements, they allowed certain gods to have NG ranger/druids in violation of all core rules about multiclass alignments.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Tue Apr 07, 2009 3:40 am

> Absentminded_Wizard wrote:D&DG says that only LG gods with paladin levels can grant paladin spells.

Must suck to be one of those paladin gods.
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