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.

 

[Malmuria]

What is so bad about a word that appears in 1 random table once... a place that is a safer place for sex workers to work... oh becuse they don't think sex workers are workers maybe?

I don't necessarily have a problem with brothels in my cities. I'm playing Blades in the Dark now, and one of the core aspects of the game is that each character has a "vice" that they indulge in during downtime. We don't usually roleplay that out though, it's just part the downtime procedure

However, as I mentioned above, historically brothels and the like in dnd has been an excuse for casual misogyny and objectification of women. Go read rpghorrorstories on reddit and you'll see many stories of how that in-game misogyny carries over into sexism at the table in very weird ways. So, you can make an argument that including these elements are pro-sex work, but I feel like you at least have to acknowledge the very really possibility that they will actually be anti women in a lot of games. The dmg could help guide games away from the latter, but this would require additional text.

 

[Scribe]

Slavery (Paizo just promised to never ever mention slavery again after a anonymous freelancer complained that it was too prominent in Golarion) because apparently even just using those words causes some sort of harm.
Which for me is just silly, but I guess I am too old and thus not sensitive enough for that.

Since I am both, still hung up on the lunacy of the Fire Giant update, and playing WAY to much Wrath of the Righteous, I find this not surprising, and insanely disappointing.

Chalk it up as one more reason to stick with PF1.

It's not just Wizards that's jumped the shark. Western 'morality' is a joke.

Deleted a bunch of text as I doubt very much it's relevant, but I don't need an RPG book to tell me slavery is wrong.

Then again, the utter lack of sense, and acceptance of reality we see in the western world, maybe 20 something's would be confused after all.

'Well D&D says it's OK...'

 

[DorkForge]

what... are you kidding me? in a game where we regularly kill things with sharp or pointy weapons (or beat them to death with blunt ones) the word brothel offended someone?!? that is the most American thing ever... violence gets a pass but we can't even do a hint of sexuality...

I'm not American and I couldn't give a hoot about one state in the entire US. And to be frank, this has nothing to do with 'but they can be nice places.'

I don't want sexualisation to be part of the game, the change in art direction of 5th has gone a long way to help that, removal of stuff like rolling up a brothel is an excellent step forward. If you want to sexualise your game, then you're perfectly welcome to and you don't need a book to do so. That doesn't mean that it should be part of the base game, and if a counter argument is anything to the effect of 'worlds oldest profession' or 'in the real world at x time' feel free to save the energy, it's a game where real dragons, interfering gods, and magic are objective facts, the real world has no bearing on stuff like this.

I want to be able to play this game with my future daughter, when I do so I don't want to have to skirt, or risk her seeing sexualised depictions of females or any sexualised content as something that is okay or 'normal'. The world is more than that, and despite what pop culture (and seemingly, yourself) says on the matter, it should be opt-in, not opt-out. Opt-out sexualised culture is extremely damaging, I know, I was a terrible example of it.

 

[Malmuria]

For everyone upset at these changes, is there a reason you don't play older editions, retroclones, or OSR games? All of the old material has never been more easily accessible, and tons of new, very creative products are being developed by indie designers. Is there a reason that 5e, specifically, has to cater to your tastes, even at the expense of its own continued popularity and growth?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

sex workers are criminalised

This isn't the place for discussing this in detail but this is extremely misleading to the point where I think it's necessary to correct it. I would suggest people disbelieve Paul and look up the information on this themselves, the situation is ridiculously more nuanced than he's portraying it.

Britain is absolutely considerably less prudish than the US re: sex. So is most of Europe, even bits you might not think. But in any country you're unlikely to convince people that stuff with brothels in is particularly child-friendly.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Deleted a bunch of text as I doubt very much it's relevant, but I don't need an RPG book to tell me slavery is wrong.

Then again, the utter lack of sense, and acceptance of reality we see in the western world, maybe 20 something's would be confused after all.

'Well D&D says it's OK...'

There's some really profound point-missing here.

Slavery isn't being removed because it's wrong and might confuse people into thinking it's right.

It's being removed from the default descriptions because D&D is realizing a significant percentage of potential players might have ancestors, some not even that ancient, who were slaves, and that depicting slavery frequently or without considering the impact, as part of a "fun game for kids" might not be like, totally awesome for those people.

 

[Scribe]

Is there a reason that 5e, specifically, has to cater to your tastes, even at the expense of its own continued popularity and growth?

The issue is, it isn't at the expense of continued popularity or growth.

False premise.

 

[Scribe]

It's being removed from the default descriptions because D&D is realizing a significant percentage of potential players might have ancestors, some not even that ancient, who were slaves, and that depicting slavery frequently or without considering the impact, as part of a "fun game for kids" might not be like, totally awesome for those people.

Yet there it is, one paragraph above.

Why isn't that removed?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The issue is, it isn't at the expense of continued popularity or growth.

False premise.

The problem is, WotC don't agree.

And WotC own the IP.

WotC think that in order to keep growing and being popular, these changes are needed. WotC have shown no signs of ever doing anything except in the name of the holy dollar bill.

So basically you're one of those ageing guys who stands next to building sites and tells the builders they have no idea what they're doing.

 

[Weiley31]

And 5e has primarily depicted them as a sort of evil, demon-worshipping, cannibalistic, human-sacrificing "Mayincatec" culture, even with some "Feathered Serpent" themes included (and Keith Baker's Shulassakar Yuan-Ti are guilty of a lot of this, too), which, you know, is kinda iffy.

A Feathered Serpent Yuan-Ti sounds actually awesome. Especially since this is the first time I'm hearing of such a thing.