I can reproduce this with DynamoDB and S3. For example, this file as `template.json`:
```json
{
  "AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
  "Transform": "AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31",
  "Resources": {
    "S3Setup": {
      "Type": "AWS::S3::Bucket",
      "Properties": {
        "BucketName": "testbucket"
      }
    }
  }
}
```
Apply using
`awslocal cloudformation create-stack --stack-name local --template-body file://template.json` -> 200 OK
Immediately followed by
`awslocal cloudformation create-change-set --stack-name local --change-set-name nochanges --template-body file://template.json` -> Error
Errors happen if stack has multiple objects and any one has no changes, which makes it impossible to update the stack via cloudformation.

Here's a DynamoDB example for which it happens as well:
```json
{
  "AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
  "Transform": "AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31",
  "Resources": {
    "DynamoSample": {
      "Type": "AWS::DynamoDB::Table",
      "Properties": {
        "TableName": "ExampleTable",
        "AttributeDefinitions": [
          {
            "AttributeName": "name",
            "AttributeType": "S"
          }
        ],
        "KeySchema": [
          {
            "AttributeName": "name",
            "KeyType": "HASH"
          }
        ],
        "ProvisionedThroughput": {
          "ReadCapacityUnits": 1,
          "WriteCapacityUnits": 1
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
```

cloudformation = aws_stack.connect_to_service('cloudformation')
        response = cloudformation.describe_stack_events()
        self.assertEqual(response['ResponseMetadata']['HTTPStatusCode'], 200)
    def test_validate_template(self):
        cloudformation = aws_stack.connect_to_service('cloudformation')
        template = template_deployer.template_to_json(load_file(TEST_TEMPLATE_1))
        response = cloudformation.validate_template(TemplateBody=template)
        self.assertEqual(response['ResponseMetadata']['HTTPStatusCode'], 200)
    def test_validate_invalid_json_template_should_fail(self):