What Is Wrong With Sylvan Creatures?

[Plane Sailing]

You'll never see a mind flayer caper, that's for sure.

Everyone else has it wrong, wrong, wrong. The REAL reason why you will never see a mind flayer caper is because *they keep all their capers locked away in their secret kitchen guardens on another plane*. That is what they use their plane shift power *for*. Nobody likes having their vegetable larder raided.

 

[rounser]

What Is Wrong With Sylvan Creatures?

As others have pointed out, not enough use of dark fey. Too many DMs use only one side of the coin.

Once the goody-two-shoes are done playing tricks and giggling, the dark faeries should come along to do their twisted, warped, insane stuff. They also serve as good combat targets to work off the tension caused by encountering the seelie faeries.

Unseelie are usually lonely, bitter, hateful, insane, sadistic and anything but fun. They're the perfect cure for their seelie counterparts. So...introduce a redcap brownie who dips his cap in the blood of his victims, a twisted leprechaun, a sadistic satyr or a dark sidhe to your game next time you use fey, and the PCs will begin to view them differently.

 

[mythusmage]

Everyone else has it wrong, wrong, wrong. The REAL reason why you will never see a mind flayer caper is because *they keep all their capers locked away in their secret kitchen guardens on another plane*. That is what they use their plane shift power *for*. Nobody likes having their vegetable larder raided.

Of course, along with all their (justifiable) pride, comes a deep, abiding envy of the work of other illithids. Such that not only do mind flayers spend a lot of time on growing their own, they are also actively involved in stealing the product of the labor of others. When a successful theft is pulled off they dance a little dance in celebration. They even have a name for this dance. The caper caper caper.

Alan

 

[frankthedm]

D6 hD and low hp wouldn't be so bad if thier most of thier magic powers weren't so single targeting & save or nothing.

In most of the folklore thier magic WAS gonna affect you though you might eventually see your way past it. in 3e you roll your save right there and may not be effected at all while the rest of the party rend the fey thing to bits.

 

[BOZ]

Would you like to help us make a new fey?

 

[barsoomcore]

On Barsoom, what pass for fey are a subset of a much larger group of entities referred to as "spirits". Spirits are sentiences brought out of the infinite possibilities of the Dream Worlds and bound in some fashion to remain on the Living World. Some spirits are bound to objects (thus djinnis) while others are controlled through the use of their true name (ergo, demons) and occassionally they can be bound to an oath.

Long ago a sorcerer named Tushan Kal Kabbar drew forth an array of powerful spirits and bound them to the Oath of MacKebar. The exact terms of that Oath are not well-known, but the spirits, who refer to themselves as the Tarn, have dwelt in the land of Shaer ever since. They are tricky, untrustworthy folk who keep the details of their Oath secret so that no one can exploit them.

By and large they seem sort of typical "faerie", but nobody who encounters them considers them "prancy". They don't prance. They cackle from time to time, but they don't prance.

I find players can get truly disturbed when they encounter creatures whose morality is incomprehensible, whose priorities are so different from their own as to be alien. The Tarn don't reproduce, don't eat and never die. They are in no way human and their priorities and behaviour reflect this. They freak the heck out of my players.

Fey are unpredictable and unpredictable is dangerous.

 

[mmadsen]

One problem with fey in D&D is that D&D elves aren't fey. Anyone else find that odd?

 

[Piratecat]

They even have a name for this dance. The caper caper caper.

You know, you can be banned.

 

[seasong]

You forgot the dance of the illithid who prevented someone from thieving his caper. The counter caper caper caper.

llithid police have their own version, when they successfully protect someone's caper: the copper's counter caper caper caper (and it's little known bad cop variant, the colluding copper's counter caper caper caper (optional: +caper caper) ).

But I still say a capering, insane illithid who titters is creepier than any pansy redcap caperer.

Edit: Can't believe I forgot the almost traditional illithid method of stealing capers; the caterer caper caper. I mean, what illithid in his wrong mind hasn't posed as a tentacled refreshment vendor in order to secretly observe a rival's four step?