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.

 

[Azzy]

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

Then it doesn't require an implied setting in the PHB whose assumptions need to be played against.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I define that as tame, do I have a high tolerance for darkness or something

Where are you on a scale of 1 to 40k?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One that shows at least a puritarian leaning.

That's one reading (puritanical btw).

But I think the actual thing that's going on here is something kind of scarier.

Family-friendly-ness.

That's a much better explanation than puritanical leanings. If WotC was puritanical, that would never have been in to start with, and they'd likely have changed it to something distinctly less fun, like a library. Changing it to a music hall strongly suggests to me that they're going towards "kid-friendly".

I define that as tame, do I have a high tolerance for darkness or something

How old were you when you watched it? If below ten yes you have a high tolerance for darkness.

 

[HammerMan]

It's particularly wild given a lot of us have been running it that way for 30+ years without any apparent ill-effects or blandification.

yeah, as a teen way back when the dinos roamed the earth in the evils of the 2e days, I had good orc tribes. I also ran into good gnolls in a game once. by 3e Kobolds were allies as often as enemies (I blame Sunless citadel) and by 4e Hobgoblins were roman armies and samari in the games I played... so 'not all' has not been the case for me for ever in D&D.

Heck, I have heard stories of good demons, evil angels, and once we had a DM try (didin't go way he wanted) to have a neutral Flayer fighting against teh change....

 

[Scribe]

so that bat guy from 40k?

How dare you offend Curze.

 

[HammerMan]

Could be. May be. What if.

Considering Wizards doesnt want to offend, better to just remove it, and replace it with something that cannot be (or is less likely) to be misconstrued, or assumed.

and when they do I will call it weird and prude like... so, thats that.

 

[Professor Murder]

yeah, as a teen way back when the dinos roamed the earth in the evils of the 2e days, I had good orc tribes. I also ran into good gnolls in a game once. by 3e Kobolds were allies as often as enemies (I blame Sunless citadel) and by 4e Hobgoblins were roman armies and samari in the games I played... so 'not all' has not been the case for me for ever in D&D.

Heck, I have heard stories of good demons, evil angels, and once we had a DM try (didin't go way he wanted) to have a neutral Flayer fighting against teh change....

Just had the final villain of my game be the Conquistador pastiche Paladin who was killed at the game's halfway point, only to be raised up as an avenging angel by the will of the God Emperor.

 

[Mind of tempest]

That's one reading (puritanical btw).

But I think the actual thing that's going on here is something kind of scarier.

Family-friendly-ness.

That's a much better explanation than puritanical leanings. If WotC was puritanical, that would never have been in to start with, and they'd likely have changed it to something distinctly less fun, like a library. Changing it to a music hall strongly suggests to me that they're going towards "kid-friendly".


How old were you when you watched it? If below ten yes you have a high tolerance for darkness.

8-11 it was shocking but I watched speculative evolution show by age five and nature documentaries at the same age so nothing I had not really seen before.

How dare you offend Curze.

how is he not grimdark space batman/punisher (turns out that is a real character the grim knight)

 

[HammerMan]

That's one reading (puritanical btw).

But I think the actual thing that's going on here is something kind of scarier.

Family-friendly-ness.

That's a much better explanation than puritanical leanings. If WotC was puritanical, that would never have been in to start with, and they'd likely have changed it to something distinctly less fun, like a library. Changing it to a music hall strongly suggests to me that they're going towards "kid-friendly".

yeah, I still think it's weird.

I mean I could understand going forward not including them, but to go back and errata it out is weird.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm just pointing out that there was a long period where D&D tried to "think of the children" when it came to using language in it's game products, and it did come after a period of huge popularity followed by harsh criticism.

And the end result of that "think of the children" period was the near-demise of the game.

Trying to market D&D to kids, while perhaps good for sales, IMO doesn't make the game any better at all.

History repeats

Indeed. Let's hope the repeat pattern doesn't continue much longer, though, else we'll be into mid-90's TSR flounderings all over again and I think we can all do without that.