Why'd they errata out Water Devotion's Turn/Rebuke uses?

[RoboEmperor]

When I came across this feat in Complete Champion, I was so excited, and vowed to make every cleric I play take it at level 1. I love summons, I hate turn/rebuking undead, and it turned what I hated into fuel for what I love. For those of you who don't know the feat, it lets you 1/day summon a water elemental, scaled with your level, starting at Small size and ending at Huge size at level 16. You can summon the water elemental 1/day, +1 for every turn/rebuke attempt you sacrifice.

Then i found out the errata deleted the part where you can spend a turn/rebuke attempt to gain additional uses of the feat. Now it's worthless...

So why did they do this? >.<

And is there a way for me to get my DM, a RAW DM with sometimes RAI rulings with no homebrew/houserules, to ignore the errata?

edit3: By RAW, the Errata did not remove Water Devotion's ability to turn additional turn/rebuke attempts for more summons. It's clear that's what they were trying to do, but their incompetence at writing rules prevented them.

[Zaq]

Ask nicely?

I mean, as you've indicated, RAW is RAW. There won't be a RAW way around this particular issue. But if you ask nicely and explain why you want it, well, it wouldn't be the first time a player has asked a GM to ignore a nerf.

As to why the nerf was put in place? Your guess is as good as mine. Considering the other things you can spend TU on, there isn't a super obvious reason why this one needed shutting down. Just talk to your GM and lay out why you want the ability and what you plan to do with it. Be honest about it, since after all, you are asking for a favorable ruling to increase your power level in some way. But the errata file exists, and there isn't a RAW way to ignore it.

[Telonius]

The short answer is probably "nightsticks." I think the idea behind the feat was to give you a single elemental summons you use in an emergency. They weren't taking into account the ability for higher-level casters to get a swarm of Huge Water Elementals to do all their fighting for them. Which, yeah, is awesome, but probably not what the feat was supposed to be about.

If your DM is a stickler, your only hope is that he hasn't seen the errata. If he has, maybe beg off that you hadn't known the errata had nerfed it so hard, and ask nicely to retrain. Last-ditch: ask that he treat it like a summons spell (i.e. get one big creature or several little ones at your option). At higher levels at least you might be able to have more moving targets soaking up AoOs and hit point damage.

[Fouredged Sword]

I think a reasonable compromise to avoid the obvious nova and abuse would be to put in a "summoning a new one desummons any existing instances" and nightsticks read as "while holding a nightstick your charisma is counted as four higher when determining the number of turn undead uses you have access to."

Perhaps make it a 2 turn->1 summon conversion if you are concerned about use numbers.

The first prevents you from summoning an elemental every turn for 8-10 turns. The second stops all nightstick stacking abuse.

[noce]

A thing you could say to your master is that every Devotion feat with uses per day can be used more than once expending turn undead uses.
The sole exception is Water Devotion.

Ask politely if he could allow you more than a single use per day, maybe with more than the original single use of turn undead. I think three is more appropriate.

[Zsaber0]

Them removing that bit of the feat does nothing to change it though. Page 52 of complete champion, under the general rules for Domain feats it says "If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by permanently sacrificing daily uses of that ability." which was then errata'd to say "Replace “permanently sacrificing” with expending” in the last line of the third paragraph".

So you can still expend Turns to use it more.

[RoboEmperor]

Them removing that bit of the feat does nothing to change it though. Page 52 of complete champion, under the general rules for Domain feats it says "If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by permanently sacrificing daily uses of that ability." which was then errata'd to say "Replace “permanently sacrificing” with expending” in the last line of the third paragraph".

So you can still expend Turns to use it more.

This is why I post on these forums. This is a very strong case!

As in if it doesn't specifically say "You can't use turn/rebuke attempts for more uses", it defaults to "Expend 1 attempt for an additional use".

OMG I could kiss you!!! You literally just made my entire day.

[Zsaber0]

Glad I could help!

[Vizzerdrix]

So what is the earilest one can take this feat?

[RoboEmperor]

So what is the earilest one can take this feat?

Level 1.

Grab Extra Turning too. With 14 charisma, you can summon 9 small water elementals at level 1. : )

At least at my table retraining is allowed, so i just swap out Extra Turning for something better later, but at level 1 it's the best choice.

[Vizzerdrix]

Level 1.

Grab Extra Turning too. With 14 charisma, you can summon 9 small water elementals at level 1. : )

At least at my table retraining is allowed, so i just swap out Extra Turning for something better later, but at level 1 it's the best choice.

Ah. I confused this feat with the summon elemental reserve feat.

[Buufreak]

Another week, another 4 front pagers, eh? For simplicity next time you have bulk questions about similar issues, make one big post and ask multiple questions!

[RoboEmperor]

Another week, another 4 front pagers, eh? For simplicity next time you have bulk questions about similar issues, make one big post and ask multiple questions!

XD, I wish I could delete threads.

It was more like 1 question, and the answer to that question created a 2nd question, and the answer to that created a 3rd, etc. XD.

I doubt I'll have any more questions for a while though.

To be more specific, I was ranting about the errata (this thread), then I was proven wrong which made me make a new build revolving around this feat. Couple hours of research later, I posted an optimization question to overcome Water Mastery thinking for sure it'd succeed, but it didn't, so after researching for a couple hours again, I posted a 2nd one, which showed it worked, but there is some conflict as to whether clerics can cast the spell or not, so I posted my final fourth one.

I've exhausted every option available to clerics regarding overcoming water mastery, so there really shouldn't be any more questions.

[Troacctid]

Uh...the general rule in this case does still have to defer to the specific rule for each feat. You don't just have a blank check to spend 1 turn attempt to get another use of any domain feat. And not all domain feats even allow it in the first place.

Bottom line, the errata does, in fact, remove what it says it removes.

[Zsaber0]

Uh...the general rule in this case does still have to defer to the specific rule for each feat. You don't just have a blank check to spend 1 turn attempt to get another use of any domain feat. And not all domain feats even allow it in the first place.

Bottom line, the errata does, in fact, remove what it says it removes.

So the absence of a rule overcomes a general rule? The feat doesn't say you can't, and the general rules for all domain feats say you can. They even we so far as to change the wording of the general rules to make sure this works in the very same errata.

[Troacctid]

Each feat's specific entry details how to gain additional uses by spending turn attempts. Some only require you to expend one turn attempt, some more than one, and some don't allow it at all. Some take a swift action, some take an immediate action, some take a standard action, some take no action at all. There's no general rule that prescribes a fixed method of gaining additional uses for all of them. You have to refer to the individual feats.

If the general rule allows you to spend turn attempts to get additional uses of Water Devotion, then tell me—how many turn attempts do you have to spend per additional use?

[Zsaber0]

Ah, you got me there. Sorry someonenoone, looks like you're SoL. Just don't bring this bit up to your DM.

[RoboEmperor]

Each feat's specific entry details how to gain additional uses by spending turn attempts. Some only require you to expend one turn attempt, some more than one, and some don't allow it at all. Some take a swift action, some take an immediate action, some take a standard action, some take no action at all. There's no general rule that prescribes a fixed method of gaining additional uses for all of them. You have to refer to the individual feats.

If the general rule allows you to spend turn attempts to get additional uses of Water Devotion, then tell me—how many turn attempts do you have to spend per additional use?


Ah, you got me there. Sorry someonenoone, looks like you're SoL. Just don't bring this bit up to your DM.

Alright. Reading every single domain feat entry, they did not delete any domain feats that say 1 attempt for 1 additional use. They singled out Water Devotion.

*sigh*, time to undo everything I was excited about for the past 2 days. I was so happy because it was the first time I thought playing level 1 characters would be fun, now it's back to waiting out the grind to reach levels where your schtick comes online.

[RoboEmperor]

If retraining is allowed at the table, i guess I'll just start out with every single one of my feats as Water Devotion, and swap em all out. So....

Level 1
1 Water Devotion
H Water Devotion

Level 3
1 Water Devotion
H Energy Substitution: Fire
3 Fiery Burst

and so on.

[gogogome]

I think it's stupid they removed it. Water Elementals are unusable due to their water mastery. They probably removed it because it was too strong at level 1, nothing more, because like you said being able to summon 9 water elementals at level 1 is too strong for that level, even if they potentially do 0 damage at +0 attack because of water mastery.

[RoboEmperor]

Each feat's specific entry details how to gain additional uses by spending turn attempts. Some only require you to expend one turn attempt, some more than one, and some don't allow it at all. Some take a swift action, some take an immediate action, some take a standard action, some take no action at all. There's no general rule that prescribes a fixed method of gaining additional uses for all of them. You have to refer to the individual feats.

If the general rule allows you to spend turn attempts to get additional uses of Water Devotion, then tell me—how many turn attempts do you have to spend per additional use?

By Pure RAW not RAI, "If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by expending daily uses of that ability." means 1 for 1. This is however rule-lawyering at its highest and betrays clear RAI.

Dunno how that'll play with most DMs.

[gogogome]

By Pure RAW not RAI, "If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by expending daily uses of that ability." means 1 for 1. This is however rule-lawyering at its highest and betrays clear RAI.

Dunno how that'll play with most DMs.

Personally I'd rule it the RAW way mainly to punish WotC.

WotC's books are filled with errors, inconsistencies, and ambiguity. In addition, a lot of their errata's attempt at balance is horrendous, like having at most only 1 astral construct at a time. So it is their fault we can ignore that errata within RAW and their fault that we do ignore their RAI.


Each feat's specific entry details how to gain additional uses by spending turn attempts. Some only require you to expend one turn attempt, some more than one, and some don't allow it at all. Some take a swift action, some take an immediate action, some take a standard action, some take no action at all. There's no general rule that prescribes a fixed method of gaining additional uses for all of them. You have to refer to the individual feats.

If the general rule allows you to spend turn attempts to get additional uses of Water Devotion, then tell me—how many turn attempts do you have to spend per additional use?

One attempt for one additional use. You look at the general rule, and you look at the Water Devotion feat entry, nothing more. No comparisons to other domain feats. Expending uses for one for additional uses for other, shows its uses for uses, therefore one for one unless stated otherwise.

This is rule lawyering, I am not denying that. I am "jumping through hoops", but this behavior is no different than arguing whether the +2 synergy bonuses for diplomacy from sense motive and bluff stack or not and the like, so no one can refute my RAW based purely on RAW. Again I am saying this stuff to punish WotC for being terrible with their rule writing and their terrible attempts at balancing the game.

[magicalmagicman]

Here's a fun fact, post errata, the quote:

"If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by expending daily uses of that ability."

says, every time you expend daily turn/rebuke undead, you permanently gain additional daily uses of the ability. So by like day 10, you should be able to use a domain feat 100 times a day.

Hilarious isn't it? The Errata made it significantly more broken.

[RoboEmperor]

Here's a fun fact, post errata, the quote:

"If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by expending daily uses of that ability."

says, every time you expend daily turn/rebuke undead, you permanently gain additional daily uses of the ability. So by like day 10, you should be able to use a domain feat 100 times a day.

Hilarious isn't it? The Errata made it significantly more broken.

Makes sense. The original intent was to permanently sacrifice turn/rebuke attempts for gain additional daily uses permanently. By just changing permanently sacrifice to expend, now we have a rule saying you can gain additional daily uses permanently by expending turn/rebuke attempts instead of permanently sacrificing.

WotC sucks at writing rules. Since by RAW, the errata does not remove the feat's ability to summon additional water elementals, and the errata itself is chalk full of stupid stuff like what magicalmagicman pointed out, I am gonna plan my builds around expending additional daily turn/rebuke attempts for additional water elementals.

1. Water elementals are far from broken especially because of water mastery.
2. When you can overcome water mastery with spells, your standard actions are better spent elsewhere than casting wall of water + summoning one medium elemental.
3. By RAW, errata did nothing to the feat.
4. CC Errata is dysfunctional.

[gogogome]

Here's a fun fact, post errata, the quote:

"If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by expending daily uses of that ability."

says, every time you expend daily turn/rebuke undead, you permanently gain additional daily uses of the ability. So by like day 10, you should be able to use a domain feat 100 times a day.

Hilarious isn't it? The Errata made it significantly more broken.

If you think about it, the general rule was permanently sacrificing turn/rebuke attempts for additional daily uses, and the specific rule was expending specific number of turn/rebuke attempts for additional single use.

Now that the general rule is expending turn/rebuke attempts for additional uses, all specific rules with one for one trade are unnecessary, and the errata did nothing to change Water Devotion.

I take what I said back. This isn't rule-lawyering. This is ruling as written. It's not your fault WotC is horrible at writing their own rules, let alone correcting them.

[Troacctid]

By Pure RAW not RAI, "If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by expending daily uses of that ability." means 1 for 1. This is however rule-lawyering at its highest and betrays clear RAI.

Dunno how that'll play with most DMs.
Definitely does not mean 1 for 1. If I tell you that players can spend gold pieces to buy magic items, does that mean all magic items cost 1 gp?

[gogogome]

Definitely does not mean 1 for 1. If I tell you that players can spend gold pieces to buy magic items, does that mean all magic items cost 1 gp?

I disagree, as I said above, pre-errata there was no mention of permanently sacrificing turn/rebuke attempts in any of the feat descriptions, only expend, so one can only conclude it was for a one for one trade. Otherwise, pre-errata, by your logic there was no way for a player to permanently trade turn/rebuke attempts for additional daily uses, ever, due to a lack of rules.

Post-errata this general rule hasn't change except for changing permanently sacrifice for expend. As magicalmagicman points out, this results in a very broken rule, but if we ignore the exact wording, the general rule is expend 1 for 1 additional use.

Gold pieces have a cost, specific overrides general, so I don't think your analogy works here. My analogy would be, Great Wyrm corpses have no listed gp value, therefore its cost is negligible as per general rule.

[gogogome]

The point I was trying to make here was, that the general rule was self-sufficient before the errata. It didn't need help anywhere for additional information/clarification, and that hasn't changed post errata.

[Troacctid]

I disagree, as I said above, pre-errata there was no mention of permanently sacrificing turn/rebuke attempts in any of the feat descriptions, only expend, so one can only conclude it was for a one for one trade. Otherwise, pre-errata, by your logic there was no way for a player to permanently trade turn/rebuke attempts for additional daily uses, ever, due to a lack of rules.
I mean...yeah. Why do you think they errata'd it?


Gold pieces have a cost, specific overrides general, so I don't think your analogy works here. My analogy would be, Great Wyrm corpses have no listed gp value, therefore its cost is negligible as per general rule.
You missed the point. Saying you can exchange X's for Y's in no way implies that the exchange rate is 1:1.

[gogogome]

You missed the point. Saying you can exchange X's for Y's in no way implies that the exchange rate is 1:1.

Let's just say, for now, the Errata does not exist. It never did. And now you have a player wanting to permanently sacrifice turn/rebuke undead requests with additional daily uses. What is the exchange rate by RAW? imho trade implies 1:1 unless stated otherwise.

Currency is not trade, it's buying/selling, at least in d&d. But my point is, the permanently sacrifice rule is self-sufficient pre-errata so it should stand on its own post errata. If it did not need an exchange rate pre-errata, it does not need one post-errata. Again imho trade implies 1:1.

pre-errata, you could permanently trade 1 of your turn/rebuke attempts for 1 additional trickery domain use, or you expend 3 turn/rebuke attempts for 1 additional trickery domain use.

[sorcererlover]

Nice Trick! Maybe I'll take a dip in Cleric at level 1 just so the water elementals can keep my sorcerer useful until later levels. Undeath + Water Domain, swap out Water Domain for Water Devotion, and now I have 12 water elementals at level 1 with 18 charisma and 0 feats invested.

First off I think magicalmagicman is wrong. If you read the feat descriptions, all of them say you gain additional daily uses, so the way I interpret it is that you need a daily use to use the feat, and expending turn/rebuke attempts give you another daily use for that day only, kinda like a temporary spell slot. So the rule isn't dysfunctional. Every domain feat says "additional daily use". So "daily use" = spell slot for feats aka "feat slots".

As I understand the arguments in this thread, gogogome is saying that there are two rules, one saying you can permanently exchange turn/rebuke for additional uses, and one in the feat description saying you can expend (not permanent) turn/rebuke attempts for additional uses. He is saying the 1st rule was changed to expend, 2nd rule was removed, but because the 1st rule still exists, it still affects water devotion. WotC may have attempted to remove the ability to gain addtional water devotion uses, but because of their incompetence, they failed so their errata did nothing to water devotion.

Troacctid is saying, because the exchange rate was never defined, you could never do it, even before errata, and the errata came out to rectify this mistake.

gogogome is saying you could do it pre-errata, it was 1:1 ratio for permanently exchanging because that's what the word "trade" implies, and post errata that hasn't changed unless specified otherwise.

Personally, I dunno. D&D has lots of situations like this where the exact language is up for interpretation, like the shades spell being able to cast any conjuration spell or not, so i guess it just depends on the table, especially since a lot of tables ignore erratas seletively.

[Crake]

Nice Trick! Maybe I'll take a dip in Cleric at level 1 just so the water elementals can keep my sorcerer useful until later levels. Undeath + Water Domain, swap out Water Domain for Water Devotion, and now I have 12 water elementals at level 1 with 18 charisma and 0 feats invested.

First off I think magicalmagicman is wrong. If you read the feat descriptions, all of them say you gain additional daily uses, so the way I interpret it is that you need a daily use to use the feat, and expending turn/rebuke attempts give you another daily use for that day only, kinda like a temporary spell slot. So the rule isn't dysfunctional. Every domain feat says "additional daily use". So "daily use" = spell slot for feats aka "feat slots".

As I understand the arguments in this thread, gogogome is saying that there are two rules, one saying you can permanently exchange turn/rebuke for additional uses, and one in the feat description saying you can expend (not permanent) turn/rebuke attempts for additional uses. He is saying the 1st rule was changed to expend, 2nd rule was removed, but because the 1st rule still exists, it still affects water devotion. WotC may have attempted to remove the ability to gain addtional water devotion uses, but because of their incompetence, they failed so their errata did nothing to water devotion.

Troacctid is saying, because the exchange rate was never defined, you could never do it, even before errata, and the errata came out to rectify this mistake.

gogogome is saying you could do it pre-errata, it was 1:1 ratio for permanently exchanging because that's what the word "trade" implies, and post errata that hasn't changed unless specified otherwise.

Personally, I dunno. D&D has lots of situations like this where the exact language is up for interpretation, like the shades spell being able to cast any conjuration spell or not, so i guess it just depends on the table, especially since a lot of tables ignore erratas seletively.

I think if you're arguing semantics over some rules text which is quite clear in it's intention, the incompetence doesn't lay with the game designers.

[gogogome]

I think if you're arguing semantics over some rules text which is quite clear in it's intention, the incompetence doesn't lay with the game designers.

You have to deal with either WotC's incompetence as balancing the game, or their incompetence in writing rules, and I choose the latter.

The removal of the ability to gain additional usage kills this feat. There is not a single person in the world who would ever waste a feat that lets you create a subpar WATER ELEMENTAL that does -4 to damage a hit for only once per day. Being able to get multiple uses for 1 feat is the only thing making this feat worth a feat slot so by removing that, they are removing this fun yet not OP feat from the game.

I refuse to let WotC kill this feat like they killed Astral Construct, so if there is a RAW way to prevent WotC's incompetence from ruining this feat, I am going to enforce that ruling at all costs.

[Troacctid]

I can tell you, gogogome, if I ever played at your table, I'd for sure be taking feats like Animal Devotion and Law Devotion and abusing the Nine Hells out of your general exchange rate.

[gogogome]

I can tell you, gogogome, if I ever played at your table, I'd for sure be taking feats like Animal Devotion and Law Devotion and abusing the Nine Hells out of your general exchange rate.

Specific trumps general. Animal Devotion's exchange rate of 3 for 1 overrides the general rule 1 for 1.

[gogogome]

To further add to my hatred of WotC, they didn't increase the number of turn/rebuke attempts for additional daily uses of water devotion. They did not limit the number of water elementals you have out at a time. Instead of doing these balance options, they just lazily killed the feat, or at least tried to.

Anyways that is my argument. Instead of balancing the feat, they just killed it because they're lazy and incompetent, so I'm gonna use that laziness and incompetence to protect this feat from dying. I couldn't save Astral Construct, but I will save Water Devotion!!!


I can tell you, gogogome, if I ever played at your table, I'd for sure be taking feats like Animal Devotion and Law Devotion and abusing the Nine Hells out of your general exchange rate.

If the Errata didn't exist, I would be more than happy to let you permanently sacrifice turn/rebuke attempts for more Animal Devotion and Law Devotion at a 1:1 trade. As long as it's not something like wish loops or pun-pun, I allow everything RAW in my game. I am more than capable of challenging DMM:Persist parties, incantatrix parties, and even uberchargers.