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.

dnd.wizards.com

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.

 

[pukunui]

I'm not sure either, are Pixies not in the current list of creatures? Like, we have Fairy?

Pixies are in the MM. Unless they’re about to get the axe.

EDIT: Run it in Urban Dictionary, I bet thats it.

Ah. Yes, that could be it.

Disney uses “pixie dust” for its Tinker Bell stories. I wonder if they know about that alternate meaning?

EDIT: Looks like “fairy dust” is a euphemism for all sorts of things too. So maybe that’s not it.

 

[Scribe]

Your Honor, I'd like to submit Exhibit A.

Until Wizards provides Source Books that they refer to as Canon (again, which they have disavowed as of now) how can they be anything but?

No Culture.
No ASI.
No Size.
No Alignment.

A few special rules.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

There's nothing that they can do to the game that won't disappoint someone. With that in mind, we need to ask two things - keep the hyperbolic statements down, and stop sniping at each other.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Anyone know if D&D Beyond has (or is going to) change all this? I don't like the new spellcasting statblock changes, so I'll have to do something to preserve the rules I actually paid for.

 

[pukunui]

What are people’s thoughts on changing TOA’s “mad monkey mist / fever” to “blue mist / fever”? It no longer provokes a random madness (as per the DMG rules) but instead just causes the victim to see illusory blue monkeys.

As I mentioned upthread, I’m surprised they haven’t cut out the whole madness section of the DMG. Maybe they’ll leave it for the revised book. Or maybe they’ll just rename it “insanity” like they did in a few other spots.

I suppose if they do get rid of madness effects all together, they’ll need to drastically redo OotA (or pretend it doesn’t exist).

 

[bedir than]

Anyone know if D&D Beyond has (or is going to) change all this? I don't like the new spellcasting statblock changes, so I'll have to do something to preserve the rules I actually paid for.

From the linked blog

"The changes in those PDFs appear in recent printings of the affected books, and the changes will also appear on D&D Beyond and anywhere else the books are available digitally."

 

[Scribe]

I suppose if they do get rid of madness effects all together, they’ll need to drastically redo OotA (or pretend it doesn’t exist).

I went to do a double take on if OotA was removed fully.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Anyone know if D&D Beyond has (or is going to) change all this? I don't like the new spellcasting statblock changes, so I'll have to do something to preserve the rules I actually paid for.

D&D Beyond has to keep up with what WotC is doing; it's their bread and butter. Better make with the cut and paste quick.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Digital stuff you rent can be changed or removed with no notice. It's why I was so slow to start using streaming services.

 

[bedir than]

Another fun thing to learn from this Sage Advice is that SCAG is still being reprinted.