D&D 5E New Errata Released For D&D PHB, OotA, Xanathar, and ToF

WOtC has published an updated Sage Advice compendium with updated errata for the D&D Player's Handbook, Out of the Abyss, and for Xanathar's Guide and Tome of Foes.

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/PH-Errata.pdf PHB

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/OotA-Errata.pdf OOtA

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/XGtE-Errata.pdf Xanathar

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/MTF-Errata.pdf ToF

 

[Blue]

So keep HS the same and Ancestral Guardians D8 still. Got ya.

Ancestral Guardian was aligning the table and the text. The d6 is just as valid in the book as the d8. That is a clarification of which of the two given die sizes was the correct one, not a change to the feature.

 

[Blue]

PHB errata fixed several feats but most notably:
Sentinel can not be used at reach
Polearm master can be used with spears
I think most GMs were doing these anyway but its nice to have it in writing.

I think yo may have accidentally reversed one of these.

Sentinel CAN be used at reach with the errata.
Polearm Master can be used with spears with the errata.

 

[Mistwell]

I understand the importance of RAW and what WotC does. But I think some of you are just way to emotionally attached to it. It's just not that important. These are just rules for a game, and the first rule has always been, 'change the rules to fit your table'.

Missing the point. I am all in favor of houserules. The distress is what happened with 4e. This sort of errata started to destroy the game. It resulted in literally a book of errata to rebalance stuff and sometimes to rebalance stuff which the errata caused in the first place. Which fostered a reputation for the game that the books were not complete so why even bother to buy them if you needed another book just to correct the first book.

WOTC acknowledged this issue early on with 5e saying the type of errata they'd enact would not be this type - where they use errata to balance something by changing the rule entirely as opposed to just clarifying it or correcting a typo.

 

[Blue]

It's still 4-6 dice of healing for a second level spell. That's a good rate. It's roughly on par now with the custom spell rules. Much closer anyhow.

While out of combat healing doesn't need a nerf, it doesn't need a buff, either, and 10d6 healing for all party members for a 2nd level spell is plainly egregious.

I agree.

Want a multi-target 2nd level healing spell? For in combat Healing Spirit is a bonus action and heals several dice. For out of combat Prayer of Healing takes 10 minutes to cast and heals more. That seems nicely balanced - which to take, or use two of your prepared/known and have best-in-class for each case?

 

[Blue]

Fair enough but the fix isn't a good fix and more importantly the means of enacting this fix was terrible. The promised they wouldn't do this 4e-style "using errata to balance the game" stuff.

They started making these types of changes years ago.

In 2018 they added in a whole new subsection about effects not stacking in the DMG.

Also in 2018 they added an new weapon to Polearm Master, a one handed one when before the only 1H weapon was the quarterstaff and there was a lot of people thinking us it 1H was cheese and disallowing it.

Heck, you can go back earlier that that with the changes to unarmed, which used to be a melee weapon and then was taken out of that category which caused a lot of ripple effects. That was one of the first errata documents for the PHB, maybe the first.

This has been going on for a long time. It's not something new to be outraged or surprised about now.

 

[Blue]

Same here. I've been looking forward to buying a new PHB for years, but every year or so I am holding on to see if there is a new errata-corrige, and there always is, so I haven't bought it yet. At least this year's corrections really are few and minor (unlike last year's ones).

The last erratas were in 2018. So 2019 there was no errata and you could have bought a new PHB, and your reference to last year's errata as not few/minor must be referring to something else.

 

[clearstream]

Yes errata-corrige should be for editing mistakes only. But in D&D there's RAW and RAI, and sometimes the RAW seemed enough to express the RAI but it later turns out it wasn't, even tho the RAI hasn't changed. The problem is that a lot of people insists that RAW is more important even when the results it's against the RAI.

That's a fairly interesting argument. The way I might put it is that the game designer knows their intent and attempts to express it in words. There can be various kinds of errors and omissions in that expression, and any such are fair game for errata. If it is the goal of errata to repair any faults in that expression of an intended mechanic, then it is as valid to rewrite so that the mechanic is expressed as the designer really intended, as it would be to fix an incorrectly transposed value or omitted word. That is, it is the job of errata to secure that the designer's RAI is eventually made comprehensible to others.

The straight challenge to that would seem to be to say that it's not the goal of errata to do anything in regard to the designer's RAI, but only to repair faults in editing. However, I suspect one might find ways to finagle that around to showing that some fixes of faults in editing will amount to shifting the RAW toward some RAI anyway.

So the approach that excites me more is to suggest that the designer doesn't really know their intent in the first place, beyond what they actually put in words. So the supposition that errata can possibly make clear their original intent is misguided in the first place. There is no such original clear intent to work towards. If they later decide that what they should have intended is Y rather than X, well that is a rule versioning not errata.

What do you think? Is there an obvious way in which the second challenge is wrong?

 

[Weiley31]

Ancestral Guardian was aligning the table and the text. The d6 is just as valid in the book as the d8. That is a clarification of which of the two given die sizes was the correct one, not a change to the feature.

True, but at my table the D8s are preferred more.

 

[Blue]

True, but at my table the D8s are preferred more.

Easy enough to house rule - do what makes your table happy.

Just saying that this isn't an errata-nerf to a feature, just a clarification errata on which of the listed die types was correct.

 

[Blue]

The straight challenge to that would seem to be to say that it's not the goal of errata to do anything in regard to the designer's RAI, but only to repair faults in editing. However, I suspect one might find ways to finagle that around to showing that some fixes of faults in editing will amount to shifting the RAW toward some RAI anyway.

An example of what you are talking about can be found in the errata to Contagion. Before it legitimately could be read in different ways, and the wording was updated to be unambiguous in terms of what was intended. The die size for Ancestral Guardian listed differently in text vs. table and picking which was the correct is also an example of correcting conflicts in wording and chosing which is correct based on RAI.