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]

yeah I don't know if Barbarian is as problematic in that sense (but in the just confusing terminology it is)

Barbarian back in the day was what 'orc' is to many today: people you can kill and loot as much as you want with no guilt because they're acceptable targets.

Weirdly, I don't think the vikings, who had the berserkers the barbarian class is based on were called barbarians.

At least modern barbarians classes no longer literally can't read though.

 

[HammerMan]

I mean, if you can avoid calling them "Orient style traits" (!!!) then you'd probably be fine if they're not just crude cut-and-pastes from real cultures, but actual adaptions of ideas/concepts. Especially as almost no ideas/concepts are actually unique to any one culture if you look hard enough.

I was trying to find a way to fit with the way they had OA typed, I normally would quick reference the Hobgoblins of my worlds as "They have a feudal system, one with chosen warriors that are one part Samarii and one part US Marshal, but with legions under them like in Rome, they have an emperor (kinda like both) but instead of a senate of elected it is more of 'powerful houses'. They don't have what normal D&D would call gods, but there greatest warriors and scholars ascend like in star gate and become something of a mix between a demi god (like Celtic folklore) and an archangel. They also worship spirits, and the two are separate."

 

[Fallen star]

It will survive by improving and doing better and shedding the dark, tragic past and onus of 'tradition' it's been weighed down by for so long.

The dark and tragic don't just live in the past. They live in every human heart. That's why we can't shed them.

Pure evil doesn't exist in the real world, but works of fiction are not the real world. Works of fiction are tools we construct to help us understand the real world. Pure evil absolutely can exist in fiction.

And "doing better" is a choice each individual makes. No one can make another person "do better."

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah Stealth apex predator's totally not a gritty D&D idea...

Gritty for D&D and gritty are not the same thing. We have a similar thing with Ravenloft. Horror for D&D and horror are not the same thing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Terms like "barbarian" and "druid" are certainly problematic from certain cultural (and historical) perspectives.

I don't expect to see Druid go anywhere any time soon. No-one uses it abusively. There's no major world religion which uses the term, and the neo-pagan groups which do have zero clout (of any kind, including on Twitter). It's been very well-established by TT RPGs and more importantly video games to represent a very specific kind of magic-user (and not uncommon in TV/movies either).

Barbarian on the other hand, well, I think 5.5/6E is probably the last edition where it's actually called that. It's much rarer as a term in video games, and is frequently used as a term of abuse (usually as "barbaric"), primarily against majority non-white cultures (or, really unfortunately, to imply Western cultures are "just as bad" as those - uhoh, frankly). Not sure what the alternative term is, but honestly you could probably fold it in to Fighter and/or Ranger, like in 2E (where the "Barbarian" class was oh god no awful, introduced in a Complete Handbook, and basically a bad Fighter designed to cover the warriors of various "primitive" (kill me now) societies. It was one of those classic early '90s utterly ham-fisted attempts to "get modern" which end up more racist than if they just didn't, like WoD:Gypsies).

 

[HammerMan]

It will survive by improving and doing better and shedding the dark, tragic past and onus of 'tradition' it's been weighed down by for so long.

yeah, as much as I am 100% for improving the game (both in inclusiveness and game play) I find demonizing the past to be a great way to cause schisms... Can't we improve without calling the work that came before it names... remember those 'dark, tragic past's are theonly reason enworld is here, or we have an RPG community or D&D at all.

 

[HammerMan]

Gritty for D&D and gritty are not the same thing. We have a similar thing with Ravenloft. Horror for D&D and horror are not the same thing.

okay, I will give you that one... but since we are talking D&D, I'm not sure that distinction helps.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I was trying to find a way to fit with the way they had OA typed, I normally would quick reference the Hobgoblins of my worlds as "They have a feudal system, one with chosen warriors that are one part Samarii and one part US Marshal, but with legions under them like in Rome, they have an emperor (kinda like both) but instead of a senate of elected it is more of 'powerful houses'. They don't have what normal D&D would call gods, but there greatest warriors and scholars ascend like in star gate and become something of a mix between a demi god (like Celtic folklore) and an archangel. They also worship spirits, and the two are separate."

I think the key thing to make this sort of stuff work is to not use comparative shorthand like that. Let people draw the comparisons for themselves. Don't say "Like the Samurai and US Marshalls", for examples, just describe them, and then let readers figure out the similarities or not.

The difficulty is always lazy or poorly-directed artists who then do something like straight-up draw a Hobgoblin in Samurai-style armour with a katana.

 

[Morrus]

The game survived the satanic panic of the 80's. It will survive the woke panic of the oh-20's. Just keep playing your old books.

Careless. Please review the rules before you post again.

 

[Weiley31]

(And if so, can I roll on the Random STD table?)

Well they have a book for that.