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.

 

[MGibster]

I post something in the thread this morning and when I get back I learn that D&D took away my hookers! I can't honestly say brothels have ever played a significant role in any of my D&D campaigns. At best, they get a mention when my character returns to town and I just deduct 500 gold from my stash and tell the DM I'm going to party like a rock star for a while. I figure my D&D character is young, physically fit, and in the prime of his life in a very, very dangerous occupation and is likely to blow off some steam between dungeons.

I'm going to take exception to those who refer to D&D as a children's game. I started playing chess when I was 6. Does that make chess a children's game? Of course not. I'm in my mid 40s now, am I playing a children's game? No, I'm not. D&D is a game that can be enjoyed by people of many ages.

 

[Vaalingrade]

He doesn't represent...I dunno...Mongolians or something. C'mon, that's silly!

Did you pick Mongolians on purpose?

 

[cowpie]

Did you pick Mongolians on purpose?

Now, now--we both know I didn't!

 

[Alzrius]

It honestly doesn't.

No, it really does.

For those who didn't follow the link it's about Tycho insisting that not wanting NFTs in gaming is gatekeeping because he has his own NFTs he wants to sell. In context, he's misrepresenting gatekeeping for profit.

Except that's not a misrepresentation, hence the irony of the statement in the second panel; everyone doesn't have the same amount of respect for everyone else's stuff.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So own your past by NOT changing stuff that could be changed? That's... an interesting... take.

Rockstar North Rep: "Yeah, we know we released the GTA Trilogy - Definitive Edition with a whole bunch of bugs... but we're not going to fix them, we're going to leave the broken game as-is so that you all can know for the rest of time just how we messed it up."

The idea is, you accept that your book is (now) being poorly received, and you publish a NEW book. You know, like they're going to do in about a month or so.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The idea is, you accept that your book is (now) being poorly received, and you publish a NEW book. You know, like they're going to do in about a month or so.

Also, there's a difference between correcting errors that affect the ability to play the game at all, and those that don't.

 

[Krachek]

Personally I prefer much more the Drow as free spirit being who have fall under the corruption, plot and bullying of Lolth.
Inherent evil avoid the continual entrapment Loth operate over Drow people.
Errata made the Drow universe much more interesting now.

 

[Dausuul]

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

There is no Prism Pentad. There never was. The only Dark Sun books ever published were the original boxed set.

You have been reported to the Grognard Thought Police for references to proscribed metaplot.

 

[cowpie]

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.

Well, races in D&D are kind of like aliens in Star Wars. What's the point of playing a Wookie, or an R2 Droid, or a Jawa, or a Hutt gangster, if they aren't different from one another? They are meant to be exaggerated archetypes. Sure, you could play a Wookie who scavenges droids in a sandcrawler, or makes wisecracks in front of a 7-eleven in New Jersey with his short jawa buddy Jason, but the main reason most Star Wars players want to play a Wookie, is that they get to make believe they're like Chewbacca from the movies.

Most D&D players like elves and dwarves and hobbits from LOTR, so when they show up to play, they can immediately get to live out their fantasy of playing Legolas, Gimili, or their favorite hobbit.

The same principle applies to Vampire factions (Vampire factions vs. Werewolves), or Star Trek aliens (Klingons, Vulcans and Gorns are different), and lets face it, it's fun to try out new things that are different from who you are in boring real life.

You can always house rule or reinvent the culture for a D&D race, but having cultures and physical traits that make each one unique is a good baseline starting point for most players. Then, if you want to, house rule it to make the character an exception to the rule, or modify your group's game world to make it a game in which everyone is say, a dwarf, and there are multiple dwarf cultures.

What WOTC is doing is flipping this to make the races start samey, requiring the majority of players to house rule the game just to play the most popular archetypes. This turns off new players, in much the same way making Wookies and Jawas and Mandalorians generic would be pretty bleh for most Star Wars players.

 

[Scribe]

"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.

That doesnt miss any irony.

If I'm paying for a product, why would I accept a less developed "Just do it yourself!" product...that I literally pay money for them to provide?