D&D 5E Latest D&D Errata: Drow, Alignment, & More

Sage Advice is a series of articles in which Jeremy Crawford, one of the D&D Studio’s game design architects, talks about the design of the game’s rules and answers questions about them.

Book Updates | Sage Advice | Dungeons & Dragons

This Sage Advice provides updates and errata for a number of books, as well as answers to rules questions.

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D&D books occasionally receive corrections and other updates to their rules and story. This Sage Advice installment presents updates to several books. I then answer a handful of rules questions, focusing on queries related to Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons and Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos.

Official errata has been published for the following books:

• Curse of Strahd
• Dungeon Master’s Guide
• Player’s Handbook
• Storm King’s Thunder
• Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
• Tales from the Yawning Portal
• Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
• Tomb of Annihilation
• Volo’s Guide to Monsters

Here's some of the highlights.

• Alignment is removed from the Racial Traits section of races.
• Drow have undergone lore changes which reflect the different types of drow. The 'darkness of the drow' sidebar which portrays them as only evil has been removed.
• Storm King's Thunder alters references to 'Savage Frontier' and 'barbarians'; Curse of Strahd alters references to the Vistani.
• The controversial Silvery Barbs spell has been clarified.

As a drow, you are infused with the magic of the Underdark, an underground realm of wonders and horrors rarely seen on the surface above. You are at home in shadows and, thanks to your innate magic, learn to con- jure forth both light and darkness. Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues.

The cult of the god Lolth, Queen of Spiders, has cor- rupted some of the oldest drow cities, especially in the worlds of Oerth and Toril. Eberron, Krynn, and other realms have escaped the cult’s influence—for now. Wherever the cult lurks, drow heroes stand on the front lines in the war against it, seeking to sunder Lolth’s web.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Hilarious.

 

[Scribe]

The errata for Volo's is a wimpification. And these cuts remove some of the most interesting language from the book.

The game has monstrous monsters for a reason. But we will see soon, as it effective replacement is coming.

Maybe mind flayers now just give head messages, and yuan-ti venom is a source of healing potions.

/shrug

It was always going to go this way, based on the last...year, maybe more?

5e is sold on being accessible, and not taking a position on even their own fiction. "Rulings before Rules." even at the lore level.

No canon? Check.
"Suggestion of characteristics ... it might possess." Say nothing definitive? Check.
Suggested Alignments? Removed, we cant have anything like that be suggested now can we.
Racial ASI? Already gone going forward, but I'm surprised they didnt remove this fully in the Errata.
Size ranges? "Human like." aka: Undefined, aka: Do whatever.

Riveting stuff.

 

[TerraDave]

The tables with all the evilness is still there.

As I look again at Volos, a lot is still there.

Kobolds slow roasting other humaniods, fire giant slaves, and much more, including of course mind flayer brain eating.

So I guess I over-reacted, but mystery remains about the parts they did cut.

And who knew this was such a good book!

 

[Nefermandias]

The other big change in the PHB has to do with removing alignment from all the race entries and changing the way its worded elsewhere in the book.

They've also rearranged some of the wording in the find familiar spell and made it so Small PCs can legally use the clone spell on themselves.

They've also clarified that the various bonus cantrips that certain clerics and druids get don't count against the normal number of cantrips they know.

In the DMG, they've changed a number of things in various tables - e.g. swapping out "brothel" for "music hall" and "stutters / lisps" for "speaks in an unusually formal manner" and such. In the section on the Abyss, they changed one entry in the table from "Mad Ambition" to "Overwhelming Ambition". They must have had a sensitivity reader go through the book.


There's some interesting changes in the Storm King's Thunder errata, like changing "pixie dust" to "faerie dust". They've also redone all the spellcasting dragons, giants and humanoids, giving them the newer spellcasting action option. They've reworded stuff about the Northlanders and Uthgardt -- looks like they're trying to remove the word "barbarian".


With the SCAG, they've finally gotten rid of the extraneous "Keen Senses" half-elf variant swap, and they've updated the radiant soul's sun bolt and swashbuckler's rakish audacity - presumably to bring them into line with their more recent versions.


Tales from the Yawning Portal now actually has errata, but still nowhere near as much as it should have.


ToA has had "mad monkey fever" renamed "blue mist fever" and it just causes you to see illusory blue monkeys. Given this change, and the removal of other instances of "mad" or "madness", it's a wonder they didn't completely remove the section on madness effects in the DMG.

With Volo's, they've removed all the race references to alignment, and they've added in some disclaimers about how the book is entirely Volo's perspective and may not reflect "reality" in worlds other than the Forgotten Realms. Most of the "roleplaying X race" sections have been removed or have had a "use this as inspiration" disclaimer added to them.


The CoS changes are all pretty minor.

Also, the orcs in SKT now have a 75% chance of being nice people.

 

[overgeeked]

Also, the orcs in SKT now have a 75% chance of being nice people.

Well good. Cannot wait to move beyond this silly notion that entire races are inherently good or evil.

 

[Dire Bare]

As a drow, you are infused with the magic of the Underdark, an underground realm of wonders and horrors rarely seen on the surface above. You are at home in shadows and, thanks to your innate magic, learn to conjure forth both light and darkness. Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues.

The cult of the god Lolth, Queen of Spiders, has corrupted some of the oldest drow cities, especially in the worlds of Oerth and Toril. Eberron, Krynn, and other realms have escaped the cult’s influence—for now. Wherever the cult lurks, drow heroes stand on the front lines in the war against it, seeking to sunder Lolth’s web.

I like it.

Almost as much as I'm enjoying the hyberbolic over-reactions in this thread.

 

[J.Quondam]

Looks like they didn't remove the Hypersensitive trait from the description in the "Grognard" entry, though.

 

[Nefermandias]

Well good. Cannot wait to move beyond this silly notion that entire races are inherently good or evil.

I will be keeping the evil humanoid races in my games. Dungeons and Dragons is already silly in many ways and that has never bothered my group.

 

[humble minion]

I'm fine with the widening of creature alignment possibilities, but it does irritate me a little when they release 'errata' and use it to mess with phrasing and background (which most home campaigns will have individual interpretations anyway) rather than do something about actual nagging rules issues. Errata SHOULD be used to clarify the text of Barkskin to make it clearer exactly what it stacks with. Or to tweak the weapon table so sometimes a bard or rogue might want to wield anything other than a rapier. Or tone down the laughable darkvision that the Twilight cleric can hand out.

 

[Parmandur]

Errata SHOULD be used to clarify the text of Barkskin to make it clearer exactly what it stacks with

Absolutely nothing...?