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.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Now that I've thought about it, I'm surprised Tieflings don't come up more in these kinds of discussions.

Here's tieflings according to a quote from the Planescape: Torment wiki:

So here we have tieflings described as children who are born with souls that are "unquestionably tainted with evil" and are regarded by others with prejudice.

From the 3.5 SRD:

So here we have a description of tieflings being conniving and dishonorable.

4E is, unquestionably, the edition with the most lore on tieflings due to them being promoted to a Player's Handbook race, their origin having a major role in the history of the default setting, and getting both a published supplement book and many articles related to them in the Dragon and Dungeon magazines. In the default setting all tieflings are descendants of the nobility of Bael Turath, an ancient empire that sought to delay its collapse by making the Pact of the Bloodfire Moon with Asmodeus. The Pact involved a month long ritual including the human sacrifice of the nobles of Bael Turath who opposed making a deal with the Nine Hells by the noble houses that sealed the pact: Houses Achazriel, Kahlir, Dreygu, Khanebor, Zannifer, and Zolfura. When Bael Turath finally did fall the tieflings were scattered and became not only distrusted outsiders in the communities they ended up in, but came to distrust other tielfings more than anyone else. It's also stated in the Tieflings supplement book that the Pact of the Bloodfire Moon gives Asmodeus the right to one day claim the souls of all tieflings for the Nine Hells, meaning that the aim of corrupting Bael Turath was to create a race whose souls could be reaped by the devils by cosmic law no matter the character of the individual.

5E keeps tieflings in the PHB but, honestly, does very little with them other than briefly and vaguely allude to the 4E take on their origin and reiterate that they are targets of prejudice.

Whereas 5E itself does little with tieflings, Baldur's Gate 3 has as it's first major conflict a group of tiefling refugees in a druid grove that wants them out but is threatened by goblins. It's communicated in no uncertain terms that following Elturel being teleported to the Nine Hells and back during the events of Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus that the non-tiefling population looked at the people with horns and pointed tails and ran them out of the city.

Looking at the Tal'dorei Campaign Setting and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount books covering the world of Exandria (the setting of Critical Role) is interesting and, I think, revealing of how the revised 5E will change in describing not only tieflings but other player character races that are subjects of prejudice. The Tal'dorei Campaign Setting effectively replicates the 5E PHB description of tieflings as being the inheritors of an ancient sin and subjects of prejudice with the minor consolation that their history of oppression caused them to be among the first to recognize and rise against a tyrannical ruler who would oppress others the way they have been, which in the more urban centers of the continent at least earned the tieflings more trust and respect.

Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, on the other hand, describes prejudice against tieflings as largely a thing of the past. This could just be due to changing attitudes towards depicting fantasy racism in D&D, but when this book was in development two of the player characters in Campaign 2 of Critical Role were tieflings: Jester Lavorre and Mollymauk Tealeaf. It could simply be that their players wanted to be horned and tailed people with unusual skin colors and hair colors and didn't want to have to deal with the baggage of tieflings being victims of prejudice.

This last point, I think leads to a central point in the issue: different people have different reasons for wanting to play a certain character race. One person who plays a tiefling might want to play a character that looks like a devil, one person might want to play a brooding character that is distrusted wherever they go, another player might want to play an Infernal Pact Warlock who has an ancestral link to their patron, and another player might just want to play as someone with horns, a tail, and unusual skin and hair colors. Different things attract people to playing a tiefling, but having the default lore being "tieflings are victims of prejudice" can inspire a DM to run with it and force that on a player that just wants to be a red or blue or green and have horns and a tail.

Tieflings are the new Drow. Gotta play the edgy race cause it’s so cool.

Eventually they will introduce a new semi-attractive mostly evil species. People will want to play it. They will. It will get watered down. It will get over done and the process will repeat.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Almost the exact same point has been made about Orcs, didn't stop them being changed.

It would be nonsensical to make that point about Orcs, because they've never been, in an edition, equivalent to the positioning of Gnolls in 5E.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

semi-attractive mostly evil species

Tieflings weren't introduced as "mostly evil". On the contrary PS portrayed them as having the full gamut of alignments. It wasn't until 3E made them an LA+1 race and monsterized them that they became "mostly evil". I know because I was bloody offended at the time.

But yes the cycle of sexy-edgy-races will continue on to eternity. Tieflings still have quite a lot of mileage in them yet, as do Drow though. Whereas poor old Shadar-Kai are now weeping in Goth taverns throughout the land, crying bitter tears into their dyed-black beer about how quickly they were forgotten.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Tieflings are the new Drow. Gotta play the edgy race cause it’s so cool.

Eventually they will introduce a new semi-attractive mostly evil species. People will want to play it. They will. It will get watered down. It will get over done and the process will repeat.

It's a cycle. Half-elves were the edgy race once, long ago, then half-orc then drow the orcs and now tieflings, although they've recently been cute-ified pretty often. I'm guessing a new one is coming, but I'm not sure what.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't think I've ever seen an edgy tiefling played. The pizza cutters (all edge, no point) I'm aware of tend toward humans, shadar-kai and weirdly halflings and pixies (because the point is to corrupt something traditionally pure).

Tieflings I've seen tend to be cheerful, energetic or super-righteous.

Edit: Come to think of it, most tieflings I've seen are descendants of either Jester of the one from the 'I'm a gnome' ad.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's a cycle. Half-elves were the edgy race once, long ago, then half-orc then drow the orcs and now tieflings, although they've recently been cute-ified pretty often. I'm guessing a new one is coming, but I'm not sure what.

I think there are like two things going on here. Like there's the "sexy" races and the "edgy" races, and the "both" races. Half-Elves are still in the "sexy" category and were yes, edgy once because hilarious though it is, Aragorn was edgy once, as was Tanis. Half-Orcs were only ever in the "edgy" category so only ever had limited appeal.

You could probably graph the whole thing, like Goliaths are a bit sexy and bit edgy but not very much of either. Dragonborn are slightly edgy but not sexy (unless... well let's not go there). Halflings are absolutely neither. And so on.

Also re: cute-ified, I'd argue that many Tielfings were cute as hell in a lot of DiTerlizzi's art back in 2E. They got uglier with 3E and 4E which forced them into this whole "A silly colour and giant horns" deal, which 5E continued though allowed escape from with Variant Tieflings (which will I suspect be the default in 6E).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think I've ever seen an edgy tiefling played. The pizza cutters (all edge, no point) I'm aware of tend toward humans, shadar-kai and weirdly halflings and pixies (because the point is to corrupt something traditionally pure).

Tieflings I've seen tend to be cheerful, energetic or super-righteous.

Whilst 90% of Tieflings we've had in our parties tend to be non-edgy in actual play, we still do have a Tiefling originating in 4E, whose player spotted the amazing name "Emon" in the name list, and who was played pretty edgy for a long time (admittedly partly as "a bit"). Trouble is, it's just hard to be edgy after years of play, just like edgy characters in TV shows that last more than 3-5 years tend to either become Flanderized or just chill out a bit, so he isn't edgy now.

Serious edgelords do indeed reject Tieflings, I guess they're too obvious or something. Also not butch enough, because let's be real, edgelord and "ridiculous machismo" are closely linked - c.f. Spawn, arguably the ultimate in edgelord technology. Most pick humans in my experience too.

 

[Azzy]

that is an interesting consideration.

concerning yes but it is utterly common as most people build their identities on the stuff they like not one whatever it is we were supposed to build them on.

That's unhealthy. Perhaps such people need to rethink their identities and try to see how irrational they're being.

 

[Umbran]

You can suggest whatever, but it seems unreasonable to take criticism of aspects of one's hobby as criticism of people. It's very concerning.

Yeah. Consider - since the 1970s, we have gone from there being no such thing as a personal computer, to computers with access to much of the written knowledge of our species ubiquitous in our pockets. But, not having that technology in the past wasn't a personal criticism - you just worked with what you had, and cannot be blamed for that.

And, even if you^* do take it that criticism of the hobby implies criticism of the people....

If your car has a flat tire, does that mean the car is complete garbage? No, it means that it needs a tire change. For each of us, if our own behavior has a few warts (don't deny it, it does), that doesn't mean we are a complete scumbags. It means there are ways we can improve.

Like, you can't accept the mere suggestion that maybe you did some things that aren't the most cool with a little aplomb?




*All instances of "you" in this post are generic, not directed at Azzy or any other particular person.

 

[Azzy]

I mean, I've run D&D for people's kids... so.... /shrug. And as I noted before, you really just need to be looking for 30+ players. It's a bit like dating - age gaps can get very creepy if someone is below 30 but they stop mattering as much as both people involved get older. 30 dating 50 is not the same as 20 dating 40. Or if that's too creepy, guys you might hang out with at work or whatever. Yeah, if you're 40 and the 20-somethings want you to hang it can feel awkward (I know, I'm 43 but people assuming I'm 30-something and I find it awkward to hang out with 20-somethings when invited). But 30-somethings and you're 40 or 50 or even 60? No real problems.

That reminds me of this comic: