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.

 

[HammerMan]

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.'

right it has to do with the stigma a not insignificant part of the population puts up with... not just in brothels', but on only fans, in strip clubs, in the porn industry.

I don't want sexualisation to be part of the game,

cool, but that argument is 7-10 years too late...it is there.

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.

where I agree the art is a step forward I fear this is a step back.

If you want to sexualise your game, then you're perfectly welcome to and you don't need a book to do so.

yup

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.

and yet in a game about dragons and heroes and magic, the creators want to call out a single word on a table printed in a book years ago when in the next year or two it wont matter... because the new edition is coming.

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'.

great... and 1 word on 1 chart stops this how? I have been playing with women (well young girls back then) since day 1. SOme of them have very vocally objected to the art... this table not once have I heard a peep.

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.

sex work is work. sex workers are no more or less people then any other profession. There is no need to 'opt in' to the brothal... you can do what I have done fore 30 years, fade to black.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Fair except for all the bits about Bards which instead apply to people who hate Bards.

Saying I hate bards does a true disservice to the deep well of antipathy I have cultivated toward those miscreants.

My hatred of Bards is the fuel that warms the cold, dark cockles of my heart as the sun grows ever dimmer during the Winter. I hate Bards like a young child loves Christmas morning; with unreserved enthusiasm.

Some might say I drink too much, but I only drink to separate my knowledge of the existence of Bards from my consciousness.

 

[Weiley31]

So does this mean the 4E lore with Gnomes is not kosher? Because 4E has the best version of Gnomes in DND with both lore and looks.

Because that's what I totally use for Gnomes in my games.

 

[J.Quondam]

Heck, I have ancestry in the Balkans so there is a chance that one or more of my ancestors were enslaved by the Osmans 300 years ago. So what?

Back in college, I had a Bulgarian girlfriend. She was very much not over "The Turkish Yoke." It was an utterly irrational thing from my perspective, and I can't pretend to understand it; but for her it was a very real, ongoing hurt.

Whether you understand a thing or not, doesn't actually change the thing for others. So that's what.

 

[cowpie]

I don't get the modern Zeitgeist.
You have games which are in their core war games with 90% of the rules are about how to kill things and during a campaign the PCs often achieve kill counts in the dozens, if not hundreds of often sapient creatures. Yet that is totally fine but people are concerned about the word Madness, Brothel or 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.

Downside of course is that everything becomes even more generic and kitchen sink with literally all edges filed off. And its quite funny how on one side when people blatantly copy a historic culture they can't repeat enough that they are respectful about it, but then remove anything bad said culture did in history because staying true to history is apparently not included to being respectful...

So while removal of alignment is in theory a good thing, I doubt it will lead to more grey (and imo interesting) morality.

No man, you're not too old. Older people like ourselves have lived life a bit, and often have a better big picture perspective than angry young people on a moralistic crusade (not that they'll stop and listen to us). We've all seen censorship before, and not just in D&D. It's always the same. Somebody is afraid the world will end if they can't "be in control" of what other people do or think, so they manipulate, threaten and cajole others to censor things they don't like. Usually they dress it up as "being good", but it all ultimately comes down to personal issues the censor is dealing (or not dealing) with.

Like most targets of censorship, Wizards is probably just throwing these people a bone as a token gesture, as part of corporate PR to get the censors off their back. The people clamoring for the censorship get to do a victory lap, and WOTC hopes that will satisfy them. Sadly, for hardcore censors it's never enough (for the reasons outlined above), so they'll just keep on making demands.

This is totally a token gesture-- that's why they remove a few off-color references to Vistani in Curse of Strahd, but they leave in Strahd, who is a creepy stalker, kidnapping, mind controlling, assaulting, blood drinking mass murderer--far worse than anything they removed.

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...

There are a thousand more examples of stuff you could censor in D&D far worse that what was taken out--most of these are actual attempts made in the past:

- Some people are afraid of fire, so we need to delete all fire spells from the game--if you don't, aren't you promoting arson in real life?
- Players brutally kill people in the game with swords, axes, clubs, etc. Since shooting people while playing DOOM causes school shootings--won't stabbing people while playing D&D also cause real life mass murder incidents?-- Remove combat from the game.
- Some people are afraid of heights, so no more adventures where PCs travel through treacherous mountains--if you don't, how are the players going to feel safe enough to play?
- Killing endangered species is wrong, so we need to remove animals as monsters from the game. If you kill a wolf in D&D from the safety of your basement, that's no different than killing a wolf in real life.
- Devil worship is evil, and puts player's mortal souls in real danger. Tieflings are half fiend and promote real life devil worship--remove them.
- Bards provoke promiscuity in RPGs, promoting teen pregnancy -- remove Bards.
- Demi Liches drain souls from PCs and trap them in gems. This is blasphemy to devout Christians, and offensive to atheists who don't think people even have souls. Delete Demi-Liches from the game.
- An oldie, but goodie: a few teens who play D&D and listen to Heavy Metal have committed suicide, therefore D&D causes all teen suicide, and must be universally banned.
- Dancing and racy music lead to promiscuity and teen pregnancy. No Dancing allowed! (sorry, that one's from "Footloose")...

 

[Scribe]

They didn't, you just took someone's word at face value and didn't actually look it up, so you're just outraged over nothing right now

You've misread. They remove the "Price" section. They leave the previous paragraph on Fire Giants being slavers.

 

[Ixal]

On the off chance that you're genuinely not seeing the issue here:

An entire ethnic group still faces widespread racism directly as a result of that slavery. Being sensitive to that is not a bad thing.

If you were oppressed today because of how your ancestors were treated, you'd likely feel differently.

And even if you wouldn't feel differently, who cares? Seriously, people getting a bit peeved that these changes are being made are nothing compared to the potential harm prevented by it's removal. A little discomfort for the greater good hardly seems like an issue worth dwelling on, especially when you're free to add in whatever you want to your own games.

The main problem is racism, not slavery and the entire idea that there are races of humans was more a invention of the 19th century and the rush to colonize Africa at which point large scale slavery was already over. So I see it as as a different issue.
And what is affecting people today is mostly poverty and their economic situation and not slavery.

 

[Justice and Rule]

You've misread. They remove the "Price" section. They leave the previous paragraph on Fire Giants being slavers.

I'm talking about Pathfinder.

 

[Faolyn]

never been out of the US actually... what is watershed?

Actual definition: a drainage basin.

UK definition: 9 p.m., when they start showing TV that isn't for kids.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Here me out: The PCs offer themselves as slaves to the Fire Giants to secure the ransom/pay the price. Then, cue the next segment where the PCs stage an epic break outta jail/Oceans 11/Hogan's Heroes escape from the Fire Giant slave camp. Then the scene ends with the PCs flying off on their Giant Eagle as the Fire Giants stamp on the ground realizing how they have been bamboozled.

The fire giant sergeant to his baron: "I saw nuthink!"