Role-playing Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for gamemasters and players of tabletop, paper-and-pencil role-playing games. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The Sage Advice Compendium holds errata/clarification for rules and descriptions within the core rulebooks of D&D's fifth edition.
Each time it is updated the new additions are tagged with [New]. However, I find myself often wondering about the timing of SAC updates compared to when related questions are asked on this site.
Is there anywhere where the updates to the SAC are catalogued in more detail? Something like a change log?
Past Sage Advice articles, which contained download links to the SAC can be found here:
Going through some of the past articles, many older article links have been updated to more recent versions of the SAC. Other than this index of articles, there is no central changelog or version history maintained.
With the help of Exempt-Medic, I have been able to recover links to SAC versions:
Unfortunately, these links are subject to change without notice.
I don’t especially care about the SAC's formatting, title, or the opening blurbs on rules, errata, and rulings; as such, this list does not point out the many changes to those sections. It points out what I would consider major changes, that is, when new questions are added, or when old ones are either removed or significantly changed (what is significant is subjective, so there are many changes this list ignores). This list was made by hand using the links found in Thomas Markov's answer.
Title:
Rules References:
Errata:
Official Rulings:
Compiled Answers:
Various changes to errata sections.
The change to unarmed strikes is related to a correction coming in the Monster Manual. As corrected, unarmed strikes aren’t weapons, but a character can use them to make melee weapon attacks. Such strikes aren’t meant to bypass a creature’s resistance or immunity to bludgeoning damage from nonmagical weapons.
Here’s a simple fix to use until the Monster Manual errata is released: whenever a stat block refers to resistance or immunity to bludgeoning damage from nonmagical weapons, read that last part as “nonmagical weapon attacks.”
[OLD]
Yes, it does. Savage Attacker benefits melee weapon attacks, and an unarmed strike is a melee weapon attack.
[NEW]
No. Savage Attacker relies on a weapon’s damage dice, and an unarmed strike isn’t a weapon (a point that was clarified in the Player’s Handbook errata).
Various changes to errata sections.
I don’t especially care about the SAC's formatting, title, or the opening blurbs on rules, errata, and rulings; as such, this list does not point out the many changes to those sections. It points out what I would consider major changes, that is, when new questions are added, or when old ones are either removed or significantly changed (what is significant is subjective, so there are many changes this list ignores). This list was made by hand using the links found in Thomas Markov's answer.
[OLD]
The intent is no. The Trance trait does let an elf meditate for 4 hours and then feel the way a human does after sleeping for 8 hours, but that isn’t intended to shorten an elf’s long rest. A long rest is a period of relaxation that is at least 8 hours long. It can contain sleep, reading, talking, eating, and other restful activity. Standing watch is even possible during it, but for no more than 2 hours; maintaining heightened vigilance any longer than that isn’t restful. In short, a long rest and sleep aren’t the same thing; you can sleep when you’re not taking a long rest, and you can take a long rest and not sleep.
Here’s what this all means for an elf. An elf can spend 4 hours in a trance during a long rest and then has 4 additional hours of light activity. While an elf’s companions are snoozing, the elf can be awake and engaged in a variety of activities, including carving a lovely trinket, composing a sonnet, reading a tome of ancient lore, attempting to remember something experienced centuries before, and keeping an eye out for danger. The Trance trait is, ultimately, meant to highlight the otherworldly character of elves, not to give them an edge in the game.
That all said, if you’re the DM and you decide to let Trance shorten an elf’s long rest, you’re not going to break the game. You are making a world-building choice if you do so. You’re deciding that elves, on a global scale, are ready to reenter a fight before anyone else, that they heal faster than most humanoids, and that they regain their magical energy faster. Such a choice would make sense in a world where elves are the dominant race, where they not only live longer than others, but also recover faster.
[NEW]
If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf otherwise follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed. [This answer has been altered as a result of a tweak to the rules for a long rest, which appears in newer printings of the Player’s Handbook.]
[OLD]
The intent is that the bonus attack can come before or after the cantrip. You choose when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action specifies when it must take place (PH, 189).
[NEW]
The bonus action comes after the cantrip, since using your action to cast a cantrip is what gives you the ability to make the weapon attack as a bonus action. That said, a DM would break nothing in the system by allowing an Eldritch Knight to reverse the order of the cantrip and the weapon attack.
The main purpose of this limitation is to prevent the tedium of excessive rerolls. Many of the limits in the game are aimed at inhibiting slowdowns. Having no limit would also leave the door open for Great Weapon Fighting to grant more of a damage boost than we intended, although the potential for that is minimal compared to the likelihood that numerous rerolls would bog the game down.
A literal interpretation (RAW) of Wild Shape could reasonably lead you to think that transformed druids can speak only languages that appear in an elemental’s stat block, but the intent (RAI) is that druids retain their knowledge, including of languages, when they transform and can speak the languages they know if an adopted form can speak.
If a DM wants advantage and disadvantage to play their normal roles even when the Lucky feat is used, here’s a way to do so: roll two d20s for advantage/disadvantage, roll a third d20 for Lucky, eliminate one of the three dice, and then use the higher (for advantage) or lower (for disadvantage) of the two dice that remain.
Creatures with blindsight are an exception to this rule, because that ability lets those creatures “see” within a certain radius.
That’s the literal interpretation of the rules (RAW). In contrast, the intent (RAI) is that a druid isn’t considered to be at 0 hit points for the purposes of an effect like disintegrate until the druid’s normal form is reduced to 0 hit points.
- Is it fueled by the use of spell slots?
You get only one bonus action on your turn, no matter how many are granted by Frenzy, Great Weapon Master, and other features. See the “Bonus Actions” section in the Player’s Handbook (p. 189) for more about how bonus actions work.
In the Forgotten Realms, only battleragers are trained to use spiked armor effectively as a weapon, and only via their class features
If you have the barbarian’s Brutal Critical feature and score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you get to roll one additional damage die when rolling the weapon’s damage. It’s one die, no matter what weapon you’re using. For example, if the weapon normally deals 1d8 damage, you roll 3d8 (1 for the weapon, 1 for the critical hit, and 1 for Brutal Critical). If the weapon normally deals 2d6 damage, you roll 5d6 (2 for the weapon, 2 for the critical hit, and 1 for Brutal Critical).
The Dueling feature applies to a melee weapon wielded in one hand. Spiked armor is worn, not held.
Nothing in the Bladesong feature is incompatible with wielding two weapons.
A bonus always gets added when the game instructs you to add it, unless you’re already receiving the bonus from a game feature with same name. Don’t confuse a bonus to AC (such as +2) with an AC calculation (AC = 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Constitution modifier). AC calculations don’t stack with each other. Bonuses do.
You can’t take the same Fighting Style option more than once.
Standing up costs movement but moves you nowhere. When the game refers to you moving, it means moving some distance. It doesn’t mean making a gesture or standing up in place. To move while prone, you crawl or use magic (PH, 191).
The grappled condition does, indeed, reduce a creature’s speed to 0.
The grappled condition ends if an effect removes the grappled creature from the reach of the grappler (PH, 290).
Multiple instances of resistance don’t add together. Either you have resistance to an instance of damage or you don’t (see PH, 197). No matter how many things give you resistance to the damage you’re taking, you get to apply resistance to that damage only once. The same is true of vulnerability.
You make a death save when your turn starts. If you roll a 20, the 1 hp you gain lets you then take your turn.
See the “Longer Casting Times” section of the Player’s Handbook (p. 202) for how such casting times work.
[OLD]
For a rogue/fighter or a rogue/bard, Reliable Talent does work along with Remarkable Athlete and Jack of All Trades. Even though you add only half your proficiency bonus when using one of those two features, that’s enough to qualify for Reliable Talent.
[NEW]
No. Each of these features has a precondition for its use; Reliable Talent activates when you make an ability check that uses your proficiency bonus, whereas the other two features activate when you make an ability check that doesn’t use your proficiency bonus. In other words, a check that qualifies for Reliable Talent doesn’t qualify for Remarkable Athlete or Jack of All Trades. And Remarkable Athlete and Jack of All Trades don’t work with each other, since you can add your proficiency bonus, or any portion thereof, only once to a roll.
[OLD]
If disintegrate reduces you to 0 hit points, you’re killed outright, as you turn to dust. If you’re a half-orc, Relentless Endurance can’t save you.
[NEW]
Yes. The disintegrate spell turns you into dust only if the spell’s damage leaves you with 0 hit points. If you’re a half-orc, Relentless Endurance can turn the 0 into a 1 before the spell can disintegrate you.
[OLD]
The druid turns to dust, since the spell disintegrates you the instant you drop to 0 hit points. That’s the literal interpretation of the rules (RAW). In contrast, the intent (RAI) is that a druid isn’t considered to be at 0 hit points for the purposes of an effect like disintegrate until the druid’s normal form is reduced to 0 hit points.
[NEW]
The druid leaves beast form. As usual, any leftover damage then applies to the druid’s normal hit points. If the leftover damage leaves the druid with 0 hit points, the druid is disintegrated.
The errata for the first printing of the Player’s Handbook sparked a number of questions. Why did we make the changes we made? Why didn’t we make other changes? Did we change certain things, such as Empowered Evocation, because they were overpowered?
The answer to such questions is straightforward: we fixed mistakes in the text. The errata fixes text that was incomplete or off the mark in the original printing of the book. In the new edition, the errata process is strictly for the correction of such things. Rebalancing and redesigning game elements is the domain of playtesting, Unearthed Arcana articles, new design, and possible revision later in the edition’s life span.
We play the game often, and we regularly review Twitter posts, Reddit discussions, website forums, survey results, emails, and customer service reports about the game. You have concerns about the contagion spell? We know about them. You feel the Beastmaster is underpowered? We’ve had our eye on that subclass for a while. In fact, we have a long list of things in the game that we keep an eye on and that we expect to experiment with in the months and years ahead.
But that experimentation is unrelated to errata. Corrections—that’s what errata is about. If you read the errata document and think, “We were already playing Empowered Evocation the way it appears in the errata,” then the errata process is working as intended. It’s not intended to be filled with new design surprises. It’s meant to repair spots where we forgot to tell you something, where we inadvertently told you the wrong thing, or where some of you grasped our design intent and others didn’t, as a result of the text’s not being clear enough.
Fifth edition now belongs to the thousands of groups playing it. It would be inappropriate for the design team to use errata as a way to redesign the game. When we come across something that is more of a redesign than a correction, we put it into a queue of things to playtest and possibly publish at a later date. We’ll let you know if a redesign is around the corner!
The final benefit of the Dungeon Delver feat refers to a nonexistent rule (from the 5E playtest). Ignore it. We’ll cut it in a future printing of the Player’s Handbook.
Cantrips scale with character level. For example, a barbarian 2 / cleric 3 casts sacred flame as a 5th-level character.
The effects of the contagion spell’s disease activate after three failed saving throws. When the spell attack hits, it effectively infects the target with a magical disease that requires a little bit of time to take effect before plaguing the target for up to a week.
No, at least not because of the instrument. An instrument of the bards provides this benefit only if it is used as a spellcasting focus in the casting of a spell that causes its target to become charmed. Because charm person doesn’t have a material component, the instrument has no effect on the spell.
[OLD]
No. Divine Smite requires a melee attack using a weapon. The rules don’t consider unarmed strikes to be weapons.
[NEW]
No. Divine Smite isn’t intended to work with unarmed strikes. Divine Smite does work with a melee weapon attack, and an unarmed strike can be used to make such an attack. But the text of Divine Smite also refers to the “weapon’s damage,” and an unarmed strike isn’t a weapon. If a DM decides to override this rule, no imbalance is created. Tying Divine Smite to weapons was a thematic choice on our part—paladins being traditionally associated with weapons. It was not a game balance choice.
[OLD]
No. Animate dead targets only the corpses of creatures that have the humanoid creature type.
[NEW]
When animate dead targets a corpse, the body must have belonged to a creature of the humanoid creature type. If the spell targets a pile of bones, there is no creature type restriction; the bones become a skeleton.
Various changes to formatting and errata sections.
