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.

 

[HammerMan]

Because in reality, a large percentage of sex workers in the real world are exploited or harmed in some way.

and most of them are victimized BECUSE we sweep under the rug illegalize the work and stigmatize the idea of safe places like brothels'.

Does that actually matter? If someone exploits you, does it matter if the business was legal or not?

it is easier to exploit people when you shame them first... hence why I say sex work is work... no better or worse then any other work (no wiat...it is better then working at walmart)

I hardly think this is a sign of puritarianism or prudeness. Complain again when the books have married couples in separate beds and the MM has an entry for baby-delivering storks.

oh, becuse they didn't take something to 11 I can't say they did it at 5 or 6?

But odd that you think it's bad to get rid of brothels but are OK with not dealing with catching STDs from going to one.

I don't really have an opinion of the STD part other then a joke or two about Paladins being immune to the D part...

 

[Ancalagon]

With the SCAG, they've finally gotten rid of the extraneous "Keen Senses" half-elf variant swap, and they've updated the radiant soul's sun bolt and swashbuckler's rakish audacity - presumably to bring them into line with their more recent versions.

But isn't this material from Xanathar's? is the update to match Xanathar?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sweet summer child.

Drizzt is like an 8 on a 1-10 scale of terrible D&D lore.

Elminster, specifically sexy, sexy Elminster is at least a 9. There are plenty of other FR characters who are a 9 or 10, but luckily I've forgotten most of their names and details, and only remember how completely, truly awful they were.

That's without even starting on how bad stuff like the lore changes to Athas was, or the Prism Pentad in general.

A. You are a terrible, terrible person for bringing up sexy Elminster.

B. You are also incorrect; on a scale of 1-10 of terribleness, sexy Elminster is a 17.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Except all of colonial history.

D&D is kind of lucky in that, at least for the next couple of decades, computer games have essentially "overwritten" colonial history, and most people, even on the left, don't really make much of an association between that kind of approach and colonialism, even though, obviously there's a huge one.

You do get stuff like people trying to "decolonialize" or "decolonize" both TT RPGs and video games, but it tends to run into a couple of issues:

1) A lot of colonialism is stuff that societies which were not colonial or imperial societies did, just writ large. That doesn't make it okay or something, but it makes it hard to entirely extract it from a world/setting without turning it into Peaceful Peacetown and making Blue Rose look like it's kind of edgy and grim. There's nothing wrong with Peaceful Peacetown, but I think the mass appeal is limited.

2) Decolonization-type movements often have a lot of people in them who want to go further than people are comfortable with following, like, for example, removing the idea that higher numbers are better, or in some cases being actively anti-science (for all sorts of reasons).

So that stuff generally has a lot of trouble getting traction beyond a region of academia and Twitter which tends to keep itself outside most conversations. To be honest I laud the attempts, but I don't think they're going to get anywhere.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I also find it funny that on page 6 I said:

not "OMG I'm never playing" or "how dare they" just pointed out that it was a weird thing and for cleaning up it was a strange double standard of in a game about killing the idea of sex work being bad... just still 11+ pages later I find myself defending what I thought was a pretty clear thought...

You do get how it's weird how in this thread about discussing things like toning down all the problematic elements vs keeping tradition, one person keeps going 'hey guys, what about the brothels? Not having brothels is something that requires attention', right?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A. You are a terrible, terrible person for bringing up sexy Elminster.

B. You are also incorrect; on a scale of 1-10 of terribleness, sexy Elminster is a 17.

I accept this correction. In my defense, your honour, I did say "at least a 9".

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm a little late to the thread; I didn't want to comment (or even read the thread) until I'd had a chance to read the errata for myself. I only own three of the books linked in the OP, so those are the only ones I care about the errata for, and will be the only ones I will comment on.


PLAYER'S HANDBOOK
A lot of the corrections here don't really affect the way I play the game. Getting a minimum of +1 hit point per level is an old house-rule of ours, actually. And needing a free hand to reload a weapon with ammunition is just basic common sense.

The biggest change is that all of the "Alignment" portions of all the racial traits have been removed. For some reason, this did not fill me with anger and disappointment. I must be doing it wrong.

I like the new flavor text for the magic of the Underdark and the cult of Lolth. (I also liked the old flavor text too.) And the new section, "Alignment in the Multiverse," feels forced...but it's necessary, given all of the other changes that they are making in the game. There's no real good way to handle this, or at least no good way to handle it in a way that will make both sides happy, but it's a decent attempt and a fair compromise. I couldn't have done any better, and I'm one of the rare birds who actually like using alignment in my games.

The clarification on the cantrips ("doesn't count against the number of cleric cantrips you know") and the monk's Deflect Missiles ability ("regardless of your weapon proficiencies, and the missile counts as a monk weapon") are going to make some friend of mine very happy; they've been getting robbed.

Changing "ray of sickness" to "charm person" for the Warlock class is an outrage and I hate them forever for ruining my game, my childhood, the global economy, my marriage, and...oh wait, no. This isn't a big deal at all. Nevermind.

All of the other changes didn't really catch my notice; they typically don't come up in our games or I just wasn't paying attention very much.


VOLO'S GUIDE TO MONSTERS
I like the new roleplaying notes for the DM, especially the bit about how the tables are possible inspiration and suggestions, and not hard-coded rules. Apparently this was a real bone of contention in some circles.

Again, the largest change here is the removal of Alignment traits from the list of racial mechanics. It's still not a big deal.

And the orc in my gaming group is going to be very happy about the Primal Intuition...more options is always a good thing.


TASHA'S CAULDRON OF EVERYTHING
It looks like this errata is mostly clarification, a general tightening up of the writing and the rules.

But the "Custom Lineage" change is solid gold. If this were a video game, that would have been considered a major bug fix. I'm happy they clarified that.


IN CONCLUSION
Five stars, would recommend to a friend.

EDIT: Sweet Pelor, there are already 18 pages of commentary on this thread. This might take me a minute to get caught up.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

VOLO'S GUIDE TO MONSTERS
I like the new roleplaying notes for the DM, especially the bit about how the tables are possible inspiration and suggestions, and not hard-coded rules. Apparently this was a real bone of contention in some circles.

Again, the largest change here is the removal of Alignment traits from the list of racial mechanics. It's still not a big deal.

And the orc in my gaming group is going to be very happy about the Primal Intuition...more options is always a good thing.

But what about how they put in a paragraph basically saying "Volo is a dumbass and these are his dumb opinions!"? Surely Volo has been cancelled and needs to get on Twitter right now to complain about this betrayal. Perhaps he can become the new Twitter guy for TSR3?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Except all of colonial history.

I think what we are all seeing at this moment in time is our young people reacting to the treatment of everyone on this earth right now. What seems to be the overwhelming concern is the removal (or at least attempted removal) of attitudes and ideas that have been in place for whatever lengths of time that have been used to denigrate or hold people down (especially at least for Americans those who have been the traditional recipients of that denigration-- racial minorities, women, and the LGBTQIA+). It's not about the past history in of itself, it's about how that history is impacting things right now. And colonial expansionism I don't believe is currently a going concern with today's young people, but people's flippant use of language in describing people certainly is. And that's where we are seeing the edits and changes occur.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And colonial expansionism I don't believe is currently a going concern with today's young people

I think there is a vein of concern about how colonial attitudes are behind a lot of the oppressive approaches you discuss (which is true, I'd suggest), and maybe need to removed in order to truly root-out the oppressive approaches. However, I think you're right re: young people, as this is something that was bigger a decade or more ago, so the people interested in it are often 30+ or 40+ or more, and tend to be academics rather than influential people.