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.

 

[Faolyn]

For everyone upset at these changes, is there a reason you don't play older editions, retroclones, or OSR games? All of the old material has never been more easily accessible, and tons of new, very creative products are being developed by indie designers. Is there a reason that 5e, specifically, has to cater to your tastes, even at the expense of its own continued popularity and growth?

And for that matter, people can use that older info, or info from clones and OSRs, in their 5e games.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Everyone's feelings matter about the same amount.

Counterpoint-

1. Bards. Of course.

2. Dead-eyed, soulless elves.

3. People who pay with a check in the express checkout lane of the supermarket.

4. Whoever is driving in front of me- they always suck.

5. That co-worker who always says, "Hot enough for ya?" and eats all of the donuts on Friday before you get in because of the guy who is driving in front of you 20 mph below the speed limit.

6. Bards, again. The only feeling they have that matters is the terror before their lives are snuffed out.

7. Babs and Julio Iglesias. Because if I have to ever hear them sing about feelings again ....

8. People who make long lists that have nothing to do with a topic.

9. That dude who sits next to you on an airplane and seems to believe that he is entitled to have a conversation with you for the next six hours.

10. The friend who always (ALWAYS!) "forgets" their wallet when you go out, or just goes to use the restroom when the check comes.


Yeah, there are some feelings I can discount very easily. VERY EASILY.

 

[DorkForge]

Some of their ancestors certainly were slaves, unless of course they came to the US after the end of slavery and just don't know that anymore.
And even if, people hardly know how many ancestors were slaves or when they were freed. So how would that affect people today?
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?

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.

 

[Guest 7031328]

I'm not entirely sure that the "brothel" removal stuff is even necessarily related to the alignment/racial descriptions reasons for changing. Is it possible that it is due to WotC working to pivot to more digital offerings? What, with the relatively recent surveys gauging interest in WotC providing those offerings themselves for DnD (rather than 3rd party), as well as them buying up developers to make video games for them?

Even back in Neverwinter Nights and NWN2, they were trying to move away from FR canon by downplaying the existence of a brothel in Neverwinter (then in NWN2, straight up saying the brothel was no longer a brothel by the character who owned it). For whatever reason, probably North American prudishness, media other than books tends to get weird regarding sex or sex work.

Maybe not the reason for the brothel errata. Maybe it really is the reason as it is being discussed in this thread. Weirdly and specifically enough though, the topic of brothels has been an issue in D&D media outside of books and the actual tabletop game previously and it just sprung to mind.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Counterpoint-

1. Bards. Of course.

2. Dead-eyed, soulless elves.

3. People who pay with a check in the express checkout lane of the supermarket.

4. Whoever is driving in front of me- they always suck.

5. That co-worker who always says, "Hot enough for ya?" and eats all of the donuts on Friday before you get in because of the guy who is driving in front of you 20 mph below the speed limit.

6. Bards, again. The only feeling they have that matters is the terror before their lives are snuffed out.

7. Babs and Julio Iglesias. Because if I have to ever hear them sing about feelings again ....

8. People who make long lists that have nothing to do with a topic.

9. That dude who sits next to you on an airplane and seems to believe that he is entitled to have a conversation with you for the next six hours.

10. The friend who always (ALWAYS!) "forgets" their wallet when you go out, or just goes to use the restroom when the check comes.


Yeah, there are some feelings I can discount very easily. VERY EASILY.

Fair except for all the bits about Bards which instead apply to people who hate Bards. Bounces off me and sticks to you as I believe they say!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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

It's a time of night, usually 9pm. After the "watershed" at 9pm, you're allowed to show more "naughty" things on UK TV (nudity, sex and swearing, primarily - basically the whole of British TV could potentially become HBO), because the (hilariously outdated) presumption is that the kids have gone to bed.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There's some really profound point-missing here.

Slavery isn't being removed because it's wrong and might confuse people into thinking it's right.

It's being removed from the default descriptions because D&D is realizing a significant percentage of potential players might have ancestors, some not even that ancient, who were slaves, and that depicting slavery frequently or without considering the impact, as part of a "fun game for kids" might not be like, totally awesome for those people.

It's Pathfinder that removed slavery.

D&D still has so many races that are explicitly slavers that slavery is the majority position in the world.

As to why that matters to a descendant of those slaves centuries on , it's because it still has ripple effects on society and attitudes directed at us to this day. As in the racism invented to justify owning our people as a marketing campaign is still hanging around getting us disenfranchised, arrested and KILLED today.

So excuse me for not enjoying it when the game uses that as the dark veneer it paints over another whole people when they run out of ideas.

 

[Scribe]

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.

Sounds great for a session.

Considering they left in the part about Fire Giants being slavers, no change needed.

Which is the whole point.

If it's about slavery? REMOVE IT ALL.

It's not though. It's about the implication that Wizards could be uncharitablely (sp?) accused of ENDORSING or RECOMMENDING the players engage in such behavior.

This is nothing but wizards protecting itself from criticism from a vocal segment of the population, otherwise, they would remove the slavery aspect completely.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As in the racism invented to justify owning our people as a marketing campaign is still hanging around getting us disenfranchised, arrested and KILLED today.

Well-put. As a kid nothing staggered me more than reading about the extremely clear "invention" of modern racism, which was exactly that, an excuse/marketing campaign to enable/normalize slavery (and later intentional genocide and so on) in a culture which didn't previously really go for slavery much and where the religious predisposition was to be against slavery (that quickly got overrun, though never eliminated).

 

[Justice and Rule]

It's Pathfinder that removed slavery.

Then didn't even remove it! They abolished it in Absalom, the hub city of the world. Slavery still exists in Katapesh and Cheliax.

Sounds great for a session.

Considering they left in the part about Fire Giants being slavers, no change needed.

Which is the whole point.

If it's about slavery? REMOVE IT ALL.

It's not though. It's about the implication that Wizards could be uncharitablely (sp?) accused of ENDORSING or RECOMMENDING the players engage in such behavior.

This is nothing but wizards protecting itself from criticism from a vocal segment of the population, otherwise, they would remove the slavery aspect completely.

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.