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.

 

[Bolares]

oh please explain what (other then sex) is wrong with a brothels'.

Abuse, sex trafficking, exploitive pimps, exploitation of sex workers?

Not that all brothels are like this, but those are not rare...

(not that I'm saying the word shouldn't be used on the book, or trying to be a prude, but you asked)

 

[Mind of tempest]

I wonder if the same people who are complaining about WotC's so-called laziness in making all the races generic and not culturally specific in each setting anymore... would respond to the question "If you need highly specific cultures for these races in these settings, why don't you just make them up yourself?" with "I'm buying a campaign setting! I shouldn't HAVE to!" Completely of course missing the irony of the potential laziness here.

But I mean in all seriousness... if anyone REALLY needs the races in Faerun to be culturally specific and concise, with all their own picadillos and customs... you already have that for yourself. A lot of it has been given over the 35 years of FR products and none of that has gone away. In fact you probably still own and reference those products and can easily remind yourself "Hmm... how do Humans react to Tieflings in the Dalelands?" by flipping through a few of your books. You've been playing with all these cultural ideas in your Faerun for years now... so any changes that appear in these errata'd books going forward (books you won't actually buy because you already own a previous version of them)... do not impact you and your game at all. Your game and your setting will not change with these book reprints. All these reprints do is change the starting point of any new player for whom this will be their first product and thus will learn of this new baseline as their standard. And that is absolutely no different than any single change that has ever happened over the course of these past 40 years. An older player knows of a previous thing... a new player coming from a new book has a new idea about said things.

And what happens when the two of you get together? Whichever one is DMing determines their truth for the game, and the other one either plays it that way, or they choose not to play at all. Just like any D&D game ever.

it is nice to have something to fall back on or subvert as a starter otherwise you get the noob human fighter trap.

 

[DEFCON 1]

oh please explain what (other then sex) is wrong with a brothels'.

There's an ideal that people can choose to work in the sex industry of their own volition and without issue... but in many places in our world's past, that ideal has not been present. People working in the sex industry have not been there by choice, or could make their own decisions, or were harassed / cajoled / assaulted / threatened etc. to be a part of it.

So if I had to venture a guess... the term 'brothel' has cultural reference and significance of not being a place of choice for the people involved. The same way the use of the term 'pimp' has its own connotations that imply cultural indicators of less than above-board conduct.

Now yes, we always have the "But not all..." excuse built in to any of this stuff, but usually if the lowest common denominator of implication from hearing a word is not that great... people are choosing to just try and remove the terms from common use. If there's a newer and better word, then maybe they'd go with it. But whatever that word is that would replace 'brothel' would probably be a modern one that would look out of place in a supposed medieval landscape.

 

[DEFCON 1]

it is nice to have something to fall back on or subvert as a starter otherwise you get the noob human fighter trap.

Why is the 'new human fighter' a trap? Seems to me that's more an indicator that a DM wants a more in-depth roleplay experience from their players, rather than any issues with the player making that character choice themself.

 

[Jimmy Dick]

It really doesn't matter what the books say regarding alignment or any cultural stuff. It's your campaign. Make it the way you and your players want it. We were doing that in 1979 and have been ever since. To me, that's the real beauty of this system or any system. They're just a set of rules that you can use for your entertainment. Need to alter this to make it fit the campaign? Done!

We are not playing a hard-coded video game. It's a role-playing game. We are the ones who are going to determine how it gets played at each individual table. Play it the way you want to play it.

 

[Mirtek]

Given the 'wise serpent' is a bit of a mythological trope in many parts of the real world (India and the mythic Nagas, I think?), I could easily envision a setting where not-always-evil yuan-ti replaced elves, for instance, as the elegant, artistic, long-lived race of lost ancient glory. The whole tempting-of-Eve thing did snakes no favours when it came to PR in the western world.

(Does anyone know why yuan-ti have a vaguely Chinese-sounding name, anyway?)

But D&D has Nagas and they're separate from yuan-ti

 

[Mirtek]

oh please explain what (other then sex) is wrong with a brothels'.

I guess we'll no longer see stuff like Ed Greenwood explaining 50 different FR slangs for 'hooker' in the future

 

[Mind of tempest]

Why is the 'new human fighter' a trap? Seems to me that's an indicator that a DM wants a more in-depth roleplay experience from their players, rather than any issues with the player making that choice themself.

if you do not know what you're doing ie a are a noob being both a human and a fighter both things where you have a lot of freedom can instead end up with nothing but a dull and bland character as when you are new it is hard to RP properly hence the trap part.

also, we pay them a lot of money I want more than mechanics I want inbuilt inspiration so I can be inspired to use the mechanics.

It really doesn't matter what the books say regarding alignment or any cultural stuff. It's your campaign. Make it the way you and your players want it. We were doing that in 1979 and have been ever since. To me, that's the real beauty of this system or any system. They're just a set of rules that you can use for your entertainment. Need to alter this to make it fit the campaign? Done!

We are not playing a hard-coded video game. It's a role-playing game. We are the ones who are going to determine how it gets played at each individual table. Play it the way you want to play it.

you are correct but we do seem to be losing bad fluff with no corresponding replacement that strikes me as a bad thing.

 

[HammerMan]

Abuse, sex trafficking, exploitive pimps, exploitation of sex workers?

wow that is quite a way to demonize sexworkers... you do know that the legal brothals in NV are less likely to be used for trafficing or exploitation then most fast food resterants?

Not that all brothels are like this, but those are not rare...

normally those ones are places where the brothal is the crime...if it isnt they are the SAFE places for SWs

 

[Bolares]

wow that is quite a way to demonize sexworkers... you do know that the legal brothals in NV are less likely to be used for trafficing or exploitation then most fast food resterants?

I'm NOT demonizing sex workers. Rarelly the sex workers are owners or receive the bigger cut of brothels. In all the stuff I listed sex workers are the victims, so how am I demonizing them? Also, the situation of legal american borthels IS NOT the reality of a lot of brothels around the world? Please try to make a more globalized take before acusing me of something.