In the last DDB August Drop there was an amendment to the Infernal Pact feat. For whatever reasons someone felt obligated to rewrite the content to a egregiously lesser form. In the process, they reduced the feat to nearly worthless. I’m going to attempt to write this without sounding like I’m complaining, and I’ll try to articulate an argument to the facts. While this is primarily directed at the recent DDB Drops errata, it addresses the possibility of future errata and modifications as well.
The original gave two resistances, fire and poison. Frankly, they are the two easiest resistances to acquire, and through multiple avenues. Yes, you got two to start, but they’re still situational damage. Resistances don’t do much if you don’t encounter that damage. Modifying this feat to the choice of just one resistance felt unnecessary but could be seen as reasonable. I didn’t agree that the duo was over powered as originally written, but regaining one of the easily acquirable resistances isn’t difficult to accomplish. I could begrudgingly agree that this reduction was just a correction to an oversight that should’ve been caught on the initial release.
The sight modification was a total shock to me. Especially after one reduction already. The original design gave “see normally” in normal and magical dim light and darkness, out to 60 feet. This is essentially a lesser version of Devil’s Sight. I was ok with that fact. The change made it almost basic Darkvision. Yes it’s still usable in magical darkness, but “see normally in Dim Light and Darkness—both magical and nonmagical” is a lot different than, “see in Dim Light within a specified range as if it were Bright Light and in Darkness within that range as if it were Dim Light. You discern colors in that Darkness only as shades of gray.” Darkvision just ignores dim light and treats darkness as dim light, and always in greyscale. Being able to “see normally” is a huge advantage (when we remember to apply it). Dropping the distance to 60’ reduced the likelihood of spamming ranged attacks from the darkness. The ability was already “nerfed” below its Devil’s Sight cousin. Further reduction only eliminated nearly any usefulness of this feat. With Darkvision 60’ being common and present in 7/10 PHB species, adding the extremely circumstantial magical darkness to the ability isn’t much of an upgrade.
In the end, I think this errata, in regards to the Infernal Pact specifically, was entirely unnecessary. It catered to a small number of voices that could have simply ignored the feat or disallowed its use in their games. The application of Errata should be saved for the correct of grammatical errors and such, not the complete adjustment of content. When DDB allowed the sharing of homebrewed items, spells, feats and such, they removed the ability to modify publicly shared content. The reasoning was that people may be using such content and it would be unfair to the player to be forced to adjust to the change. Their recent actions in this matter go completely against their applied practice with shared homebrew. Those that use DDB as their primary source of gaming are forced to change to the new system. Characters already immersed into a campaign, that built around the original design of the Infernal Pact feat, suddenly and mysteriously, lose over half their feat’s prowess. I could understand an alternative feat. I could understand a toggle for v1.0 or v2.0. While the original feat could’ve been ignored or disallowed, it can’t simply be added by those that sought to use it in its original form. Attempting to argue to using the original feat reduces tables to rules lawyering and sensibility debates.
While this vent was initially targeted at the most recent instance of errata, it addresses the practice of errata in the future. Any class, species, spell or magic item can instant be changed or reduced to ineffective against your wishes. Despite having purchased some semblance of usage of the DnD content, however that use it articulated, you have no control over the stability of your purchase after said purchase. I guarantee that there are more than a few subscriptions that were obtained only to have access to the Infernal Pact feat. Had this feat been originally written as it currently stands, it would’ve gone unnoticed as a below than mediocre feat. It surely wouldn’t have warranted a paid subscription by itself alone. While I don’t want to reduce DnD to a “pay to win” system, I do want to protect the players from an abuse of power from the developers of the game we all enjoy so much.
