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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Alright, now fit Aasimar, Dragonborn, Genasi, Goliath, Owlin, Triton, Tortles, and Verdan into each of those realms.

I'll ignore the fact that if they did so, the people who screamed bloody murder about the 4e Realms would...be rather unhappy. Because it would require changing "canon" to make more room for them.

For Aasimar (and Tieflings), we don't need to. They aren't common enough. They're members of another race with cosmic heritage and traits.

Dragonborn have distinct cultures and history in FR and Eberron.

Goliath are pretty easy to put in small numbers in places others don't want to or can't live. I'd add some variants like desert dwelling goliaths that resist fire and ignore extreme hot weather and have bright red hair, and some cliff diving coastal nomad cultures that mix goliath, human, and orc, along some coastline or other. They don't need complex history in a setting book, they need a writeup like the Exandria book gives to the cities in Wildemount.

Verdan are brand new within the world, and their elders were born as goblinoids in the Underdark.

Tritons simply suffer from the rarity of undersea cultures getting fleshed out.

Tortles don't need anything more than the basic writeup for them, and maybe a story or two about in-world tortle sages, heroes, whatever.

Owlin, isn't there a beast-folk country somewhere in the east of Faerun? Was that a 4e invention?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I know the conventional wisdom is that mechanics sell better than settings, and settings sell better than adventures, but I'm wondering if WotC knows something we don't on that front. They've released more adventures than settings, and more settings than mechanics books - even to the point where Strixhaven was ~60% adventure despite being nominally a setting book. Although there's clearly a strategy of releasing mechanics sparingly to prevent 3e-style option bloat and power creep, I don't think they'd be doing this if it wasn't working for them on a sales front.

I wonder if perhaps this particular conventional wisdom isn't true any more. Maybe it was true back in 2e when TSR was spitting out far more adventures than the most diligent gaming group could ever hope to play, but perhaps with the slow 5e release schedule, perhaps more groups are able to actually keep up playing through the adventures at or near the pace they get released?

Anyway, sorry for thread hijack.

i think it's a matter of 5e adventures being part setting book, and often having new bits and bobs for players, and generally being written to also be useful as books to steal things from for a homebrew game.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Looks like they didn't remove the Hypersensitive trait from the description in the "Grognard" entry, though.

I am sick and tired of the word grognard always being used as a pejorative.


Oh. Wait..

 

[overgeeked]

I know the conventional wisdom is that mechanics sell better than settings, and settings sell better than adventures, but I'm wondering if WotC knows something we don't on that front. They've released more adventures than settings, and more settings than mechanics books - even to the point where Strixhaven was ~60% adventure despite being nominally a setting book. Although there's clearly a strategy of releasing mechanics sparingly to prevent 3e-style option bloat and power creep, I don't think they'd be doing this if it wasn't working for them on a sales front.

You're kind of missing the point. There's no such thing as a pure setting book. There's only setting & mechanics books. There's practically no such thing as a pure adventure book. There's almost only adventure & mechanics books. The "pure" mechanics books are the big three...which sell better than anything else. Just about every single other book has some player-facing mechanics in it. Former employees of WotC have commented that the higher ups actively push mechanics into every single product they can because mechanics sell more books.

I wonder if perhaps this particular conventional wisdom isn't true any more. Maybe it was true back in 2e when TSR was spitting out far more adventures than the most diligent gaming group could ever hope to play, but perhaps with the slow 5e release schedule, perhaps more groups are able to actually keep up playing through the adventures at or near the pace they get released?

Anyway, sorry for thread hijack.

Adventures are generally easier to drop into any setting, official or homebrew. Much harder to drop settings or setting elements into other settings, though obviously it's still doable.

 

[Mirtek]

VGTM: Cannibalism and Sacrifice (p. 99). This sidebar has been removed

Next errata: Change Sseth/Mershaulk alignment to Lawfull Good and move him from the Abyss to Celestia

 

[Micah Sweet]

Next errata: Change Sseth/Mershaulk alignment to Lawfull Godd and move him from the Abyss to Celestia

While this is of course an exaggeration, I am also very glad I have all the physical books, and don't use D &D Beyond.

 

[Mirtek]

Who would have thought that the society portrayed in Demolition Man would turn out to be an accurate forecast rather than a satire.

Hope someone figures out the three seashells soon

 

[billd91]

Who would have thought that the society portrayed in Demolition Man would turn out to be an accurate forecast rather than a satire.

Hope someone figures out the three seashells soon

Allow me to be the first to welcome our Taco Bell overlords!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ah yes, a game got slightly more inclusive. Definitely gonna be illegal to “curse” soon. Also only virtual sex. For sure.

/s

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Alright, now fit Aasimar, Dragonborn, Genasi, Goliath, Owlin, Triton, Tortles, and Verdan into each of those realms.

Why would you need to fit them into each of those realms? Tortles come from Chult. If you encounter a tortle somewhere else, they have come from Chult.