To me, D&D is slowly weakening the specialness of fey from edition to edition. It seems to want to push the magical fey into the side of "Monsters to be fought, killed, and stolen treasure from." In 5th edition, I see the continuation of the fey circle peg being shoved in the square hole.
Fey in my mind were always a bit alien. Not Far Realm alien, but it the way that you aren't normally supposed to fight them. Because most of the time, you couldn't. Either you couldn't because you couldn't catch them or you couldn't because most fey who didn't plan on running away on the first act of violence will squish you like bugs. I like how pixies don't even have combat attacks and hate fighting. But pixies are not tiny invisible flying fighter with sleep arrows.
The other part of fey alienness was how they place importance of things, and their sense of values. D&D fey are just not crazy enough.
Also the removal of cold iron weapons being needed to harm them once again adds to the element of "monsters to be faught" as they are now easy to fight.
The last upsetting thing is the lack of high level fey. Sure we know there a really powerful fey royalty out there like Titania, Oberon, and the Queen of A & D. But without genric powerful fey like nymphs, eladrins (as fey and not celestials), fey are boring. Even hags are wimpy now (at least they are fey now and can make covens).
In short, fey are boring now since they are too few, too weak, and too combat focused.
Your thoughts.
Plenty of classic monster special abilities that presented a tough challenge for you to work your way around were deemed "unfun" because they were "too hard" or "too severe" and thus were removed or lessened to something you can just overcome with a regular roll of dice.
It's not only with the fey.
Turning high elves into Eladrin that were fey living in another world with alien eyes and teleporting seemed like a big step up. Reducing them back to humans who meditate instead of sleep and get a cantrip that any old race can get seemed like a step back in the "fey are alien and awesome" department, IMO.
I'm guessing MM 2 will have more powerful fey. Also, if this edition is anything like all the others, we can expect focused rulebooks, aka splatbooks. 4e's Feywild stuff had cool fluff and player options for a fey-based campaign.
I do miss cold iron, though. I always liked all the funky materials and made up/stole from other fiction my own. (Adamantine, mithral, cold iron, red steel, blue steel, glassteel, ribbon, shadow steel, that Thri-Kreen resin, etc...) I'd house rule that in, personally, if the DMG doesn't have all that stuff.
As far as Fey getting 'weaker'...I disagree. I don't recall a Feywild before 4e. I also don't recall an official 'Fey' classification pre-3e either. Really, now they have their own plane, and that reminds me of the movie Troll 
. I think they are better than ever these days.
Rastapopoulos wrote:
The game is yours to modify as you wish and there is nothing saying that you change things to as you like it.
Keep what you want and tos the rest, in the end that is the true magic of Dungeons and Dragons. Splat books ate nice but nothing is more satifying then what you create yourself
My feeling on the MM is that it's less of a "these are the monsters in the world" and more of a "these are monsters to put in front of the PCs to kill". Pretty much everything in it is very killable for a competent party of PCs.
If I wanted "will squish you like bugs" monsters in 5e, I don't even think I'd bother to stat them up anymore than I'd stat up a tornado with AC and HP. I'd just have them do whatever it is they're going to do in the game world. I think once you stats something up in 5e, the PCs are going to whack it down to 0 HP at some point or another with some creative tactics.
Orzel wrote:
I never liked how Elves were handled in D&D. Elves are the Seelie and Unseelie Court for me. They are immortal rulers of all Faerie. They don't worship gods, they compete with gods for power. They are peers to the gods. They are the tricksters with motives that puzzle gods, mock gods, and with motives beyond mystery.
Rastapopoulos wrote:
Everything, in the MM is 'killable'. That's the very nature of an MM stat block. The MM exists so DM's can look at it and say; "Hey This thing is something I can have my PC's maybe kill."
Creatures and beings associated with 'Fey' in D&D are, IMO, cooler now than they ever were. WotC made them better than TSR ever did.
Also, the arguement that "a killable statistic in a TTRPG = bad" is silly. That's what everything in TTRPGs are; potentially player killable banks of numbers defined by fluff.
Orzel wrote:
arnwolf666 wrote:
orzel, i don't think i really understand the criteria by which measuring 5e and not liking the results. some of the things you mention seem pretty idiosyncratic, and perhaps more to the point, don't seem particularly well-defined. can you try explaining again, please?
Shasarak wrote:
When 4e turned elves into fey I thought, oh yeah, of course they should be. Outside of Tolkien, it's a no-brainer. When they turned gnomes into fey, I thought, wow - great idea! Finally I have no problem seeing the dividing line between dwarves and gnomes (although the changes to their appearance were unnecessary and ignored in our ongoing campaign). Leprechauns are effectively Irish gnomes, and it all seemed to dovetail nicely from there with more magical gnomish cousins having stronger ties to the magic of the feywild and ditto with elves. The elf/eladrin divide was unnecessary fluff for someone playing in Greyhawk.
I haven't scanned all the monsters that 4e to see which monsters remained fey in 5e but I wish they had not rowed backwards on these points. I think a fey supplement with more info and ideas for making fey weirder and more powerful is likely and should provide optional abilities to spice them up a bit. I'm not unhappy with what we have so far though...
Orzel wrote:
Orzel wrote:
* I would like the return of the celadrin (PC race from Dragon magazine), planetouched elves with eladrin blood.
* I imagine a cosmic conflict between the time dragons and leShay (3rd epic handbook), something like timelords vs daleks from Doctor Who
* In my settings there is a paper-stone-siccor between undeads, aberrations and feys. Undead preys fays, aberrations (and werebeasts) preys undeads and feys hunts aberrations. And there is a link between the titans and feys...(feys are the children of the loser faction for the titanmachy). In my campaign there are favored souls, like divine sorcerer with fey blood with a hate-love relations with the gods.
* Is banshee undead+fay humanoid?
* I have got some ideas from Changelling the dreaming and Changeling: the lost by White Wolf Publishig, with a special magic game mechanic about glamour and thorns.
Fey have never gotten much love in D&D prior to 4e with the introduction of the Feywild (read: Faerie). Prior to that, fey were just pixies and sprites and a few other nusance monsters that lurked in forests.
I'm hoping fey become a little more interesting with 5e, with the eladrin being the high fae race D&D has always lacked and the feywild getting a little more information.
Orzel wrote:
Decide the tone of your game and develop creature that work with that tone. Don't just "run" monsters from the book, unless you want a plain vanilla experience. Use the book to inspire you and give you examples.
The issue is not how I play fey, it is how the D&D community will play fey if D&D doesn't do anything special with fey.
If the books treat fey as weak boring humaniods with their onwn dimension, that's how many DMs and adventure writers will run them as.
They don't have damage reduction like 3e.
They don't have their noncombat enforcement of 3e and 4e.
They lack their powerful enchantments of pre-4e
They don't have their tactical confusion and attacks of 4e
They lack thethe middle, highm and epic level fey of 4e
They just have 3 creatures who can cause sleep or charm and the blink dog.
Fiends are interesting, Celestials are interesting. Elementals and undead are interesting.
Fey get a drunk goblin, CG flying mini-drow, and pixies.
The CG Flying Mini-Drow sounds cool,. which one is that?
Shasarak wrote:
Orzel wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
In Ultima 6 the wisps know the Armageddon spell that can end all life on the planet.
Now that's one badass faerie!
Grazel wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
Orzel, that's a really great idea! I'm sorry but I may have to steal it.
Not counting beasts, there are three kinds of conjure X critters: elementals, fey, and celestials. If the next AP (with supplement) is elemental based, then I suspect the next two after that will be fey and celestial based (to boost the spells). Undoubtably there will be new playable races in each AP (I would guess genasi, something eldarin-like, and aasimar). I don't think you will be happy with the eldarin-like race, because races aren't powerful in 5e (at least compared to 4e). Likewise, fey under CR 9 will probably be similar to what were in the monster manual (no conjurable super monsters), but I could see higher level ones fulfilling your desires.
Of course, I see nothing wrong with a critter having two types, so a fey celestial eldarin would work for me (especially if it had the ability to switch from one dominant type to the other as a reaction, so an anti-fey spell would affect it once, then it would switch to celestial).
Orzel wrote:
DogeBroder wrote:
Orzel wrote:
Orzel wrote:
Dracones wrote:
Not Night Hags. Those WERE Fey. Now they're Fiends.
Fey are only as weak and boring as the DM behind them...
(I'm all for having less enemies that are purely aesthetic in the MM, since these fey essentially are more like situation challenges than outright monsters, since a fey's entire stat block is "Giggle 'tee hee' and then blind everyone until they find a way to counter this." But as a DM I'm 100% confident in my own abilities to do this, anyway, given the present fey AND non-fey monsters. Save the actual monsters for the Monster Manual, as I can make plenty of challenges without an official stat block! But for things that the PCs should overcome with an actual battle and/or fighting? THEN I'll use stats. Otherwise it's simple narration, one that doesn't need to take up space in the MM. DMG, though, could offer some neat insights!)
DogeBroder wrote:
Orzel wrote:
Orzel wrote:
* Sluagh was a canon monster from Birthright setting... was it fey + undead?
* LeShay from Handbook of Epic Levels could be a interesting hook for adventures in the hands of a good DM or writter.
* Eladrins from 3rd Ed were celestials outsiders but... they could fay(touched) outsiders?
* Is "faytouched" subtype allowed for monsters?
* I imagine the D&D genies like fay creatures (and the genasies like planetouched humanoids with genie ancestors).
* I confess the rich background from the RPGs "Changeling: the Dreaming" and "Changeling: the lost" is a great influence for my own homebrew settins.
* I have thought about a fay softer version of werebeasts, for example the fay equivalent to a apoycalypse zombie in a region from the Faywild would be a plague of faytouched wererats, vulnerable to the cold iron (+ magic or silver).
Bluenose wrote:
One major race fey race in my games is the Howls.
Howls are based on the the wolves in many story's. They look like dire wolves with regal features.
Howls have powerful breath attacks with can destroy non-brick objects.
Howls love to eat (a feeding compulsion) and can swallow beings (up to 7), draining their lifeforce slowly.
Howls are good at deception and can shapeshift into anyone they have eaten.
Howls can survive their stomach being opened but cannot swim nor run when full.
Howls cannot be bound by ropes nor magic.
Howls will blow away the cleric, eat the mage, and fight everyone else.
Mechatarrasque wrote:
Night Hags are a bit different from the other Hags. So the normal hags are mostly Fey, while Night Hags are all planer
I also do roll Gremlins in there and have had brief ideas that Arborea should be dropped and completely replaced with Tir na Nog to fit better with the vaguely afterlife-esque themes of the other parts of the Wheel, if we can't get Feywild back
Night hags are the fey of the "Lower Planes" and Shadowfell.
And D&D always does the whole "if you stay in the Hells/Abyss too long, you get corrupted and turn into a fiend"
BUT AT LEAST sea and green hags are fiends now.
Faytouched outsiders and planetouched fays are posible also.
The AD&D firbolgs are at same time fay + giants, or feytouched giants.
Are redcaps from MM III (3.5 Ed) a "plantouched" fay?
Could a goblin subrace be feytouched subtype?
I miss a "cousins of goblyns", the norkers and the xvarts
Have you seen the fays from the shadow rift (Ravenloft)?
* What about the springgas (evil gnomes' cousins) from 3rd and 4th editions?
* Do you remember the leShays from Epic levels handbook?
* Whay if anybody isn´t born because a time-traveller changed her past become a fay? Fey´s kingdoms could be demiplanes created because somebody traveled across the time and the main timeline was changed.
Luis_Carlos wrote:
besides the small number of fey, most problems seem to be Roleplay and Campagin related. IF your running mudder hobos, its hard to throw in a monster that they wont just muder and move on. If your not running muder hobos, then when they run into "wild" fey, give a good description of what the creature is doing when party sees it, and the chance for knowledge checks from characters that would conceviably know about these creatures, Rangers, fey warlocks, oath of the ancients paladins, nature paladins, ect. That way there is good reason not to hobo muder these mercurial outsiders.
Timborama wrote:
For me the D&D firbolg were a tribe of giants who went to the feywild (to conquer or run away) and they lived too much there.
I like the idea of variations for cyclops, one of them it grimlocks with a new eye by mutation or magic gift, and another it is a three-eye mutation. In another version the eye isn´t organic but a magic stone or pearl in the front.
Maybe cyclops were the offsprings of titants who were defeated by gods, and the punishment was to be blinded but who worked in the blackmisth or to build divine palaces.
Timborama wrote:
Chaosmancer wrote:
Orzel wrote: