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.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Not really much here, other than changing the Drow description to be less "All drow are evil." I'm sure the "you know who" crowd will LOVE that...

 

[pukunui]

Not really much here, other than changing the Drow description to be less "All drow are evil." I'm sure the "you know who" crowd will LOVE that...

The other big change in the PHB has to do with removing alignment from all the race entries and changing the way its worded elsewhere in the book.

They've also rearranged some of the wording in the find familiar spell and made it so Small PCs can legally use the clone spell on themselves.

They've also clarified that the various bonus cantrips that certain clerics and druids get don't count against the normal number of cantrips they know.

In the DMG, they've changed a number of things in various tables - e.g. swapping out "brothel" for "music hall" and "stutters / lisps" for "speaks in an unusually formal manner" and such. In the section on the Abyss, they changed one entry in the table from "Mad Ambition" to "Overwhelming Ambition". They must have had a sensitivity reader go through the book.


There's some interesting changes in the Storm King's Thunder errata, like changing "pixie dust" to "faerie dust". They've also redone all the spellcasting dragons, giants and humanoids, giving them the newer spellcasting action option. They've reworded stuff about the Northlanders and Uthgardt -- looks like they're trying to remove the word "barbarian".


With the SCAG, they've finally gotten rid of the extraneous "Keen Senses" half-elf variant swap, and they've updated the radiant soul's sun bolt and swashbuckler's rakish audacity - presumably to bring them into line with their more recent versions.


Tales from the Yawning Portal now actually has errata, but still nowhere near as much as it should have.


ToA has had "mad monkey fever" renamed "blue mist fever" and it just causes you to see illusory blue monkeys. Given this change, and the removal of other instances of "mad" or "madness", it's a wonder they didn't completely remove the section on madness effects in the DMG.

With Volo's, they've removed all the race references to alignment, and they've added in some disclaimers about how the book is entirely Volo's perspective and may not reflect "reality" in worlds other than the Forgotten Realms. Most of the "roleplaying X race" sections have been removed or have had a "use this as inspiration" disclaimer added to them.


The CoS changes are all pretty minor.

 

[overgeeked]

They're also stripping out the alignment sections of all the playable races. That will go over well with the screamers.

Also removed the size limit on Clone.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Honestly the drow description is more accurate now, from what I understand. Drow were most often evil before, true, but drow society originally had more variety until everything started focusing on Menzoberranzan.

 

[Kurotowa]

With Volo's, they've removed all the race references to alignment, and they've added in some disclaimers about how the book is entirely Volo's perspective and may not reflect "reality" in worlds other than the Forgotten Realms.

Which was a common take already in a lot of corners of the Internet, given how antiquated a lot of the Volo's takes were. So it's not a huge leap to canonize it as officially Volo's biased perspective, while not actually changing anything for the people who like it as-is.

 

[Umbran]

That will go over well with the screamers.

Mod Note:
The name calling isn't necessary, or constructive. Next time, make your point without the insult.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Which was a common take already in a lot of corners of the Internet, given how antiquated a lot of the Volo's takes were. So it's not a huge leap to canonize it as officially Volo's biased perspective, while not actually changing anything for the people who like it as-is.

I'll be honest, given that they snipped out four whole paragraphs devoted to roleplaying yuan-ti (more paragraphs than any other entry had) I'm very curious what the description for them in the revised Monster Manual will be.

EDIT: Also kind of amused that they basically decided to add a disclaimer to VGtM that calls Volo a bigot.

 

[Scribe]

As expected.

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

Just go f*** yourself WotC https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/VGtM-Errata.pdf
Beholders, Mind Flayers and Yian-ti are all decent people now. I’m not buying any more of this s***. This is all complete dog crap