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.

 

[Vaalingrade]

People have been playing in it for decades so think it stands on its own merits well enough.

People do a lot of things for decades that fall out of favor due to progress.

Like heroin baby drops, uranium watches or carbonated milk

 

[darjr]

Gamma World 1e? (It's been a long time!).

Witchlight drop in encounter for @Alzrius

 

[Faolyn]

Except they remove stuff like..

Paying the Price (p. 26) from the Fire Giants background which is about ransoming slaves they have.

Yet keep all the stuff about having slaves, and feeding the weaker ones to trolls.

What's the logic here? Paying a ransom is negotiating with terrorists/kidnappers so bad, not suitable for 10 year olds, but having slaves and feeding slaves to trolls is fine?

Killing slavers is generally considered OK. How many adventuring groups have ransomed a slave and then just let the slavers live? If the king said "PCs, I hire you to take this gold to fire giants and use it to buy the release of these people who've been enslaved," I have a feeling the PCs would just kill the giants and free the slaves and keep the gold for themselves. Unless they were generous anti-slavers, in which case they'd let the king keep his gold and only take the giant's treasure for themselves.

So maybe WotC removed this bit because it was unnecessary?

 

[Umbran]

You know that would include Tiamat, who WotC considers a personal mascot at this point?

They already have Takhisis established as an alternate name. And "Bahamut" can be swapped out for Paladine.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They already have Takhisis established as an alternate name. And "Bahamut" can be swapped out for Paladine.

Jaded goth little sister Tiamat as universal canon? Sold.

 

[DarkCrisis]

You can argue whatever you like. What you should observe is what your argument demands of others. It's not a challenge for me to weigh "game fidelity" against "game accessibility and inclusiveness." For others it may be. 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. Ultimately, drawing in more people to the hobby over all is a net good. If it costs me explicit language that Drow are all evil, somehow I will learn to live with that.

See I could get making standard PHB, MM, DMG just bland and vanilla. Make your own world and define Orcs and Elves and Whatever however you want.

But why change the established worlds? Orcs are evil in FR... except they aren't now. Fire Giants in FR are slavers.. .except they aren't anymore. Mind Flayers are just you know... different dudes its all good. Etc etc

With all these changes that seem to even to change established world setting, I kind of hope they don't touch Dragonlance now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Profoundly unsurprised to see the Silvery Barbs clarification, given I feel like you had to work pretty hard to read it any other way lol.

Interesting that they're now errata'ing the sort of thing they basically said they would never errata though. To be clear I'm not against it, I'm basically for it, and presumably it presages what will happen in 2024.

 

[HammerMan]

I don't recall any of those fey being talking bunnies. Trying to make them gritty tends to come across as something like this:

I mean the rabbits may be a bit of a streatch, but only a bit. Grim dark and gritty is a playstyle not a race choice. I can play happy fluffy Half Orcs and Teiflings, I am sure I can play dark gritty bunnies.

 

[Micah Sweet]

See I could get making standard PHB, MM, DMG just bland and vanilla. Make your own world and define Orcs and Elves and Whatever however you want.

But why change the established worlds? Orcs are evil in FR... except they aren't now. Fire Giants in FR are slavers.. .except they aren't anymore. Mind Flayers are just you know... different dudes its all good. Etc etc

With all these changes that seem to even to change established world setting, I kind of hope they don't touch Dragonlance now.

This is why Tasslehoff's Pouches of Everything was such a godsend. Doesn't matter what WotC does now.

 

[Scribe]

But why change the established worlds? Orcs are evil in FR... except they aren't now. Fire Giants in FR are slavers.. .except they aren't anymore. Mind Flayers are just you know... different dudes its all good. Etc etc

FR is the default. That certainly appears to be the assumption to make.

With all these changes that seem to even to change established world setting, I kind of hope they don't touch Dragonlance now.

You can give up on that as well, Fizban's already touches on it, and its going to see massive changes once that new trilogy hits, I'd bet money.