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.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Going for realism, now I'm wondering what the D&D equivalent of drones would be and what class would have training to fly them to take out the opponents?

what do you think summoners are dudes just picking demonic sposes?

 

[Professor Murder]

I am not speaking as a dm as I am only a player, not a dm so what makes it easier for my fellow player to be inspired is in my interest as we can bounce of each other to be better at role play beside some time a starting point gives you something to subvert for your enjoyment.

I do not enjoy watching people stumble at the start of a game unable to see how to role play, struggle to choose what they should be, and flounder at connecting their character to the world, hence I like a certain degree of basic fluff to act as a starting guide to how to play characters so I do not have to watch others be miserable or lost so I can get back to worrying about how to do it my self.

that is the real problem of the Underdark it's all one-note, we should make a better ideas for the underdark thread.

that is more cosmically pessimistic than a big squid faced monster.

Now this is more my concern, in that removing these elements of clear "good and bad" without seeing new avenues of conflict being fleshed out for new DMs and players to build off of. I admit, it's easy for me to give up these writing crutches because of my experience. But I have bought my fair share of games that had great systems but only broad strokes for setting and not near enough to easily glom on to to create drama. It's good to let go of storytelling elements that are past their social expiration date, but games should have fresh new ideas to replace them. I do worry that not enough development is occurring to fill in the gaps of the changes. I am hopeful that 2024's revisions will keep this in mind.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I'd argue if you are going with 'Nothing' on one side, the other is 'Everything'.

Pixie Dust.
Wall of the Faithless.
Monsterous Aberrations! LOL
Brothels.

Wizards has jumped the shark.

WTF is offensive about Pixie Dust?!?!?!?

This is starting to turn less into Errata and more into an Onion Article.

Wall of the Faithless at least was never really popular with established fans, but Pixie Dust? WTF.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The Wall of the Faithless thing is a FR thing only, in every other campaign setting Atheists go to through whatever afterlife process that all of the faithful go through. In the Great Ring cosmology they probably won't end up in the realms of any deities, but they'll still be petitioners on an Outer Plane that suits how they were in life.

 

[Cadence]

WTF is offensive about Pixie Dust?!?!?!?

Too Disney. They're trying to make the game grittier.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Too Disney. They're trying to make the game grittier.

True that!

That's why they replaced it with Angel Dust.


Oh ....

 

[Vaalingrade]

They got rid of the Wall of the Faithless? Why?

For making all the gods just inherently evil for tolerating it?

For being a weird anti-atheist screed?

For somehow being the worst thing in a setting that has Elminster in it?

 

[HammerMan]

Anyway, in westerns, would it often be some combination of saloon/hotel/music hall?

I am not familiar with that genre (outside of deadlands and F troop) so I'm not sure... it still is weird to replace brothels' with music hall

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

For somehow being the worst thing in a setting that has Elminster in it?

Take that back! Nothing in the Forgotten Realms is worse than Elminster!

 

[Scribe]

The cold fact is that WotC is going to make DnD as vanilla as possible to cast the widest net to draw in the most people to their products.

100% and I get that, and I have learned to live with it, by simply dismissing Wizards work in this regard as irrelevant.

Doesnt mean I dont find it unintentionally hilarious to watch them remove and remove and remove, chasing after some utopian purity that will offend nobody.