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]

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."

Cool poetry?

The point is WotC is trying to do better despite some people's vehement objections.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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.

I'm pretty sure D&D's inception wasn't predicated entirely on brothels and a race being always evil that wasn't always evil at inception.

 

[Weiley31]

As it's been mentioned before, you can still use your old books.

So you can still have your Slaver Fire Giants that Ransom/Make you Pay the Price.

You can still have Volo be a Bigot and nobody bats an eye. So that way your PC can punch his clock out for being one.

You can still have it where the good Drow are just the minority with the rest of the Drow being evil.

You can still have your Savage Raider Orcs with all the negatives.

Your Barbarians can still exist alongside the Nomad class.

You can still have your Brothels with Bardic sex workers.

You can still have your Pre Tasha-ASIs and Post Tasha-ASIs.

You can still have your evil only brain eating Mind Flayers AND that one not evil Mind Flayer accountant located somewhere in Eberron that is pleasant to be around actually and doesn't bother a soul. Just does its job while snacking on Cow Brains and Criminal Brains.

And you can still have your Primitive Voodoo PC, who is actually well educated, snazzily dressed, and rides around on a magitek motocycle that is inhabited/powered by his/her Loa Spirit.

Aside from AL, your table/DND is moddable.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

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.

We're potentially on the cusp of that. Critical Role is getting long in the tooth and slowing down production, doing 3/4 weeks instead of their normal 4/4. WotC is in the process of an edition change / revision which will be the first time the majority of current players have gone through an edition chance / revision. They change too much and the fan base fractures again; they don't change enough and they potentially lose fans to boredom or system complaints. WotC has the numbers and they aren't sharing much of the finer details. We know the demographics of the game is wildly skewed younger and so that's the dollars the company is chasing. I think that's fundamentally a different stance than the Satanic Panic and D&D being under attack. The results might end up basically the same. We don't know yet.

Not for nothing, but right now is the actual golden age of TTRPGs. They have never been more popular.

So, from here, the only way to go is down.

 

[Weiley31]

and (what is the name of the rabbit race?)

Haregone

 

[Mind of tempest]

I'm pretty sure D&D's inception wasn't predicated entirely on brothels and a race being always evil that wasn't always evil at inception.

I believe it was about killing monsters and taking loot in the beginning.

We're potentially on the cusp of that. Critical Role is getting long in the tooth and slowing down production, doing 3/4 weeks instead of their normal 4/4. WotC is in the process of an edition change / revision which will be the first time the majority of current players have gone through an edition chance / revision. They change too much and the fan base fractures again; they don't change enough and they potentially lose fans to boredom or system complaints. WotC has the numbers and they aren't sharing much of the finer details. We know the demographics of the game is wildly skewed younger and so that's the dollars the company is chasing. I think that's fundamentally a different stance than the Satanic Panic and D&D being under attack. The results might end up basically the same. We don't know yet.

So, from here, the only way to go is down.

or a platinum age or it just plateaus.

 

[Weiley31]

Demiliches have no hands, so the PCs will win.

Demi-Lich IS the Big Hand: With the Soul Gems encrusted in the knuckles and Joints.

or

Demi-Lich knows all the Bigbsy Hand spells.

 

[Faolyn]

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

Whether that's true or not, any job can have horrible, exploitative employers, and I find it hard to believe that a horrible, exploitative brothel is somehow only going to exploit the workers' paychecks and vacation time.

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

If it's "only" a 5, is it actually puritarianism? Or is it just you being upset that it's not a 1, whatever that would be?

And as others have pointed out, are you planning on buying a copy of the book that says "music hall" instead of "brothel"? Or is there a rule that a music hall can't have sex on sale as well?

 

[Professor Murder]

We're potentially on the cusp of that. Critical Role is getting long in the tooth and slowing down production, doing 3/4 weeks instead of their normal 4/4. WotC is in the process of an edition change / revision which will be the first time the majority of current players have gone through an edition chance / revision. They change too much and the fan base fractures again; they don't change enough and they potentially lose fans to boredom or system complaints. WotC has the numbers and they aren't sharing much of the finer details. We know the demographics of the game is wildly skewed younger and so that's the dollars the company is chasing. I think that's fundamentally a different stance than the Satanic Panic and D&D being under attack. The results might end up basically the same. We don't know yet.

So, from here, the only way to go is down.

Not for nothin, but it seems like you are itching for failure.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I mean calling the last 4ish editions dark or harmful or implying that the players/writers/readers had any harm in mind.

Things a person likes being harmful does not mean the people who like them are harmful or bad people. The problem arises when they make the thing so big a part of their identity that it blinds them to the actual issues at hand because they are so set on defending 'themselves' from 'attack' rather than accept the truth that sometimes we like things that aren't perfect or even all that great.

I liked a lot of people who have sense shown themselves to be just absolute garbage human beings (now that I think about it, almost inevitable if you liked sitcoms in the 90's). I just don't throw myself to their defense because I'm worried that liking their work somehow makes me bad.