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.

 

[DarkCrisis]

To 1990's and mechanically weak/obscure.

Not edgelord enough few decades to late. Maximum emo points in the 90's though.

My Dhampire Fighter. He wears a black trench coat, sunglasses, and has a katana. His name is “Razor”.

 

[Justice and Rule]

My Dhampire Fighter. He wears a black trench coat, sunglasses, and has a katana. His name is “Razor”.

 

[Zardnaar]

My Dhampire Fighter. He wears a black trench coat, sunglasses, and has a katana. His name is “Razor”.

Maximum edgelord points.

He should get a girlfriend. You can call her Raven or something.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

My Dhampire Fighter. He wears a black trench coat, sunglasses, and has a katana. His name is “Razor”.

I, too, love playing a Dhampir!

 

[Faolyn]

By the same logic used to justify censoring Vistani, leaving Strahd in is probably going to cause people to think that all real-life Romanians are like Strahd (except of course, that everybody already knows better, and doesn't need to be controlled). I double dog dare WOTC, remove Strahd from "Curse of Strahd", but they won't. No one will shell out $50 for a book about Strahd, with no Strahd in it, or a nerfed Strahd who in the final battle, drinks lemonade with the players and hugs it out while elevator muzak plays...

I think most people are also aware, or at least should be aware, that an individual doesn't represent an entire people. Strahd doesn't represent all Romanians (or even all vampires).

However, the books, throughout 2e and 3x, and into 5e, have presented the Vistani as an entire people who are all mystical drunkards, spies, thieves, and liars who lay curses and sell children to pedophiles (as per the first of the Van Richten Guides).

Or: it's OK to have evil individuals. It's OK to have evil groups when it's a group that people choose to join. It should not be OK to have an entire ethnic group who are all evil "except for one or two individuals," especially when that group is based on a real-world group of people who still suffer from discrimination.

How do you not get this?

 

[HammerMan]

Or: it's OK to have evil individuals. It's OK to have evil groups when it's a group that people choose to join. It should not be OK to have an entire ethnic group who are all evil "except for one or two individuals," especially when that group is based on a real-world group of people who still suffer from discrimination.

every RPG writer should have this printed and hang it in all there work spaces...

 

[Faolyn]

wait...what? are the newspapers playboys or are they VIctoria secret catalogs?

Apparently some British newspapers (not just porn mags) would have topless women on page 3.

Fun fact: in an episode of the Muppet Show (filmed in England, IIRC) there was a reporter who told Miss Piggy that he would love to take pictures of her for the newspaper to put on page 3. They knew this would go completely over the heads of the American viewers.

 

[Cadence]

Spaghetti?

A place near us had "lasagna" (actually rotini iirc) stuffed calzones that were pretty good.

Pizza place I shift managed had a slice of the day that was (iirc) chicken or turkey teriyaki. Never sold a slice (unlike the Denver omelette taco, and cheeseburger with pickle in the middle on top slices).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Spaghetti?

This is like I Am Legend (the written version, of course).

Look around you, Zardnaar. Look at the world. Then look down at your ... spaghetti pizza.....

YOU ARE THE MONSTER!!!!!!!!!

 

[HammerMan]

Apparently some British newspapers (not just porn mags) would have topless women on page 3.

Fun fact: in an episode of the Muppet Show (filmed in England, IIRC) there was a reporter who told Miss Piggy that he would love to take pictures of her for the newspaper to put on page 3. They knew this would go completely over the heads of the American viewers.

learning more about England as we go (mostly that 13 year old me would have read the newspaper more and the D&D books less)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

May not be edgelord enough Minotaurs not pretty enough.

I'll take any edgelord race over Kender though.

I feel like you're conflating edgelords and Goths. There's some crossover but they're both capable of being separate things without the other.

If there's any confusion, you can apply the Fight Club/Nightmare Before Christmas test. Fight Club is pretty much perfectly edgelord (the movie anyway), i.e. trying to be dark and transgressive, and well, edgy and so on for the sake of it, but not at all Goth. Nightmare Before Christmas is pretty much perfectly Goth, but not really edgelord at all, because it's so twee.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I feel like you're conflating edgelords and Goths. There's some crossover but they're both capable of being separate things without the other.

If there's any confusion, you can apply the Fight Club/Nightmare Before Christmas test. Fight Club is pretty much perfectly edgelord (the movie anyway), i.e. trying to be dark and transgressive, and well, edgy and so on for the sake of it, but not at all Goth. Nightmare Before Christmas is pretty much perfectly Goth, but not really edgelord at all, because it's so twee.

I use Fight Club as part of the edgelord test too. Actually, any misaimed fandom: Rorschach from Watchmen, American Psycho, Pulp Fiction, etc, etc. Basically, 'Do you know the difference between Villain Protagonist and Hero?'

 

[HammerMan]

I feel like you're conflating edgelords and Goths. There's some crossover but they're both capable of being separate things without the other.

If there's any confusion, you can apply the Fight Club/Nightmare Before Christmas test. Fight Club is pretty much perfectly edgelord (the movie anyway), i.e. trying to be dark and transgressive, and well, edgy and so on for the sake of it, but not at all Goth. Nightmare Before Christmas is pretty much perfectly Goth, but not really edgelord at all, because it's so twee.

good test

 

[HammerMan]

I use Fight Club as part of the edgelord test too. Actually, any misaimed fandom: Rorschach from Watchmen, American Psycho, Pulp Fiction, etc, etc. Basically, 'Do you know the difference between Villain Protagonist and Hero?'

Rorschach from Watchmen, is the poster child for 'missing the point' but to one extent or another all superheroes are like babies first edgelord... "Man the cops can't do it, but those guys that don't have to follow the cops rules can"

 

[Justice and Rule]

I use Fight Club as part of the edgelord test too. Actually, any misaimed fandom: Rorschach from Watchmen, American Psycho, Pulp Fiction, etc, etc. Basically, 'Do you know the difference between Villain Protagonist and Hero?'

Don't forget the Punisher.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I use Fight Club as part of the edgelord test too. Actually, any misaimed fandom: Rorschach from Watchmen, American Psycho, Pulp Fiction, etc, etc. Basically, 'Do you know the difference between Villain Protagonist and Hero?'

Good examples, especially Rorschach, though I feel like I used to fail some kind of other test because in my teens I was like "Yes he killed a lot of people but Ozymandias was kind of right...". Sigh. I worked it out eventually.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Don't forget the Punisher.

I did not use him on purpose because the Punisher symbol has been coopted elsewhere to something far beyond the realm of edgelord.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

but to one extent or another all superheroes are like babies first edgelord...

To be fair not all superheroes are vigilantes who are above the law, but yeah, a lot of them are. Batman is actually the gateway-drug to edgelord-ness imho. Rorschach is like the, I dunno, meth to Batman's weed?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I use Fight Club as part of the edgelord test too. Actually, any misaimed fandom: Rorschach from Watchmen, American Psycho, Pulp Fiction, etc, etc. Basically, 'Do you know the difference between Villain Protagonist and Hero?'

Wait ... Patrick Bateman isn't the hero?

But what if you think that nice business cards and the musical stylings of Huey Lewis and the News are very, very important?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Good examples, especially Rorschach, though I feel like I used to fail some kind of other test because in my teens I was like "Yes he killed a lot of people but Ozymandias was kind of right...". Sigh. I worked it out eventually.

I got gaslighted by my peers for a long time as to the quality and meaning of Watchmen (and DKR, but that's another kettle of fish), but once I got involved in the Superhero genre writer's community, it really was just Moore in a dark period working some stuff out about his relationship with the industry. A lot of Moore's stuff is about his relationship to with the industry and that's interesting on its own.