What should be done about questions about the original versions of "Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron" content, now that it has been updated?

Question

Background

The Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron was originally released on July 23, 2018. Keith Baker's foreword on p. 4 stated (emphasis mine):

Bear in mind: this book presents my current vision of Eberron. This is the world I run at my own table and the way that I’ve converted its ideas to fifth edition. The game mechanics are usable in your campaign, but at this time they aren’t officially part of the game and aren’t permitted in D&D Adventurers League events. These mechanics will evolve based on player feedback. This is a living document, and as these concepts are refined, this book will also be updated for free—so you will be kept up to date with any changes that are made to it.

As of the release of Eberron: Rising from the Last War on Tuesday, November 19, the final versions of the races, artificer class and subclasses, dragonmarks, equipment and magic items, etc. were published in that book. Many of those things had also appeared in the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron; as of the same date, the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron has also been updated with the final versions of that content (as well as the artificer class, with only the Alchemist subclass).

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4 Categories of Questions

After WGtE initially came out, there were a number of questions asking about the content in it - specifically, the versions of those things as they appeared in the initial release of that book. Most of that content (but not all) also went through the Unearthed Arcana playtest process - and not all of the questions about content that went through UA were marked as such by including the unearthed-arcana tag.

However, as of the release of RftLW, much of the content those questions are about has changed to varying degrees:

1. Some of the content being asked about did go through the UA process, but changed in a minor way that doesn't substantially affect the question.

   Examples:

   • Does the Warforged Resilience racial trait apply to saving throws against poison damage?
     (The name of the trait was changed to "Constructed Resilience", but the quoted text is unchanged.)
   • Can a Changeling shapeshifted into a mind flayer read Deep Speech?
     (The name of the relevant changeling trait was changed to "Shapechanger", but the relevant portion of it was unchanged.)
   • Can changelings change shape to look identical to a specific person?
     (Besides the trait being renamed, the wording of the trait changed slightly, but not in a way that invalidates the question or answers.)

2. Some content being asked about did go through the UA process, and did change in some substantial way in the final version of that content (potentially invalidating the question entirely).

   Examples:

   • Can a Warforged suffer from magical exhaustion?
     (The relevant line about exhaustion was entirely removed in the final version of the racial trait, which was also renamed.)
   • Is a Warforged considered to be wearing armor?
     (The Integrated Protection trait was totally changed.)
   • Can a warforged druid use composite plating?
     (Same as above; the trait was changed to remove the thing being asked about.)

3. Some content didn't go through the UA playtest process, but changed in a minor way (since its appearance in WGtE) that doesn't substantially affect the question.

   Examples:

   • Does the double-bladed scimitar's special attack let you use your ability modifier for the damage of the attack?
     (The wording of its Special property is slightly different, and the Revenant Blade feat no longer adds a damage die to the double-bladed scimitar's bonus action attack, but the underlying question remains.)

4. Some content didn't go through the UA playtest process, but did change in some substantial way in the final version of that content (potentially invalidating the question entirely).

   Since I can't find any examples of this, this category is purely hypothetical - but it would be nice to cover the possibility in case it exists.

   • This case would be theoretically possible if it covered one of the lore sections of WGtE, or one of the mechanical sections of WGtE that weren't playtested in UA (such as the clawfoot raptor, which did have some changes but didn't get any questions asked about it).

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Question

How should we handle these 4 types of questions going forward? Do they need to be handled differently based on category?

My previous approach:

After RftLW was announced but before it was released, I did retag some of the questions about WGtE content that appeared in UA - particularly about warforged, which I knew were going to change - with the unearthed-arcana tag (and edited the question to clarify that they were referring to the versions that appeared in UA: Eberron Races) in anticipation of the impending changes:

• Does the Warforged Envoy's Integrated Tool feature give you a free tool?
• Does a UA envoy warforged have to choose a specific vehicle?
• If a UA warforged envoy's integrated vehicle is damaged, does it regain hit points when its warforged host takes a long rest?

However, I'm not sure if we should continue to take the same approach for other questions of this type in categories 1 and 2 - and more significantly, that approach isn't feasible for handling questions in categories 3 and 4.

Should questions in categories 1 and 2 be retagged? What should we do about categories 3 and 4?

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Outliers

In my search, I did find a few other questions that I wasn't sure how to categorize:

• How you calculate a warforged barbarian's AC?
• What are the consequences for a Warforged that does not spend 6 hours in its inactive state?
• How does a spellshard spellbook work?

In these cases, each question itself seemed based on the UA (i.e. original WGTE) version of the content being asked about; the final version of that content did change in RftLW and the updated WGtE in a way that didn't necessarily invalidate the whole question but did potentially change the answer.

In these cases, I left a comment informing the user that the content in question had changed, and asked if they were interested in the UA version alone or whether they were interested in an answer based on the revised version.

(That said, my assessment of these questions might be off, and it might warrant its own separate meta.)

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Of course, there are also questions about content that appeared in the original version of WGtE - whether or not they appeared in UA - but didn't change at all... But those aren't really a concern here, since they can be left as-is without any real issue.

Answer 1

Create a new tag specifically for this content

I think this topic has generated enough content to deserve its own tag. Honestly, I'm not certain why a tag for WGtE wasn't created in the first place. If there was a good reason for it I might revise my opinion, but for now they should get a new tag, possibly more than one.

Tags that we should consider:

• wayfinders-guide-to-eberron - All questions related to any version of WGtE should have this tag to make them distinct from RftLW. Downside is the lack of version clarity.
• eberron-5e-playtest - Or similar tag with "playtest" in it. Similar to the dnd-next-playtest tag this makes it clear this content is related to the pre-release versions of this eberron content.

Answer 2

Nothing, unless the questions might seem unclear

If the new material makes attribution of references unclear, editing in dates or links to the referenced material can avoid confusion. If it doesn't make any references unclear, there's no reason to do anything about this; questions about the UA versions of the content or old WGtE versions of the content aren't inherently any worse than the most recent versions and there's nothing particularly special about that content that would, in my opinion, warrant any special treatment.

Answer 3

For categories #1 and #2: add the unearthed-arcana tag.

This is pretty straightforward - it's what I was already doing, as described in the question:

After RftLW was announced but before it was released, I did retag some of the questions about WGtE content that appeared in UA - particularly about warforged, which I knew were going to change - with the unearthed-arcana tag (and edited the question to clarify that they were referring to the versions that appeared in UA: Eberron Races) in anticipation of the impending changes [...]

This works for categories #1 and #2 because it went through the Unearthed Arcana playtest process, so the unearthed-arcana tag makes sense to include.

For categories #3 and #4, the unearthed-arcana tag wouldn't be appropriate. Part of what I was asking was whether a different tag should be used (or a new tag created); the answer I settled on is that no tag is really necessary. As mentioned in my comment on linksassin's answer, I feel making a new tag for WGtE in particular (or Eberron playtest content for 5e in general) would be inappropriate, as it would functionally be a "meta tag" describing the book the content in question is from, rather than describing the question/issue itself, and it would probably not get used for future questions anyway.

For all 4 categories: edit the question to clarify which version it's about.

As I mentioned in a comment on the question (and have reiterated above), a tagging solution doesn't work for categories #3 and #4, so a different approach is needed:

My proposed solution might be to just edit the body of those posts to clarify which version is being asked about

This solution works for all 4 categories equally, and is probably the most straightforward. The tag system has its limits in terms of what it's intended for and what it's useful for; it doesn't really cover situations where some rules and other content is modified slightly.

The other answer to this meta touches on this solution, though it doesn't really expand on it much:

If the new material makes attribution of references unclear, editing in dates or links to the referenced material can avoid confusion.

That said, the issue is not just about references in the sense of citations in answers; it's about both questions and answers based on different versions of the content from that book.

Basically, the changes in question are sometimes more substantial than a mere errata (in D&D 5e, at least, errata is reserved for correcting errors, not redesigning the game), but less substantial than a brand-new edition that actually changes the rules. There's a sort of precedent for handling such situations in this way in the World of Darkness tag cleanup; the 20th-anniversary editions mostly ended up not getting their own tags (save for werewolf-20th-anniversary) because the rules changes were not seen as distinct enough to warrant a separate tag.

The same is true in this case, even more so than for the WoD games (where it was marketed as a new edition but closer to errata with minor redesigns). Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron's release process was basically equivalent to buying an "early access" video game; customers got access to the playtest version early with the promise of a revised final product later.

In this case, a "minor redesign" of one set of content within the same edition doesn't really need its own tag just to indicate a different sort of playtest process than unearthed-arcana; the questions just need to be edited to make clear which version of the content they refer to.

For outliers: just ask the querent which version they're asking about.

As mentioned in the question:

In these cases, each question itself seemed based on the UA (i.e. original WGTE) version of the content being asked about; the final version of that content did change in RftLW and the updated WGtE in a way that didn't necessarily invalidate the whole question but did potentially change the answer.

In these cases, I left a comment informing the user that the content in question had changed, and asked if they were interested in the UA version alone or whether they were interested in an answer based on the revised version.

Basically, if the question could make sense for either version but the answer may have totally changed, just ask the OP if they're interested in answers based on the revised version. If they are, leave the question as-is; if not, edit the question to clarify which version of the content (e.g. warforged) is being asked about, adding the unearthed-arcana tag if relevant.

(In these cases, the questions are not invalidated by the revised version, so there's no harm in leaving the question as-is anyway, except maybe giving the OP an answer they're not interested in. For instance, sometimes the original wording of the WGtE content being asked about was vague - hence the question - and the revised wording is clear; it could still be helpful to point out that the text now answers this question.)