D&D 5E New Unearthed Arcana: Folk of the Feywild!

Wander into the magical realm of the Feywild with our latest Unearthed Arcana: Folk of the Feywild!

Your character can be a member of one of the new D&D races: fairy, hobgoblin of the Feywild, owlfolk, or rabbitfolk. Which will you choose?

Playtest now:

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[Faolyn]

I'm not sure, because they are hiding it as they did for Ravnica months before Ravnica: they introduced a UA for the Centaur and Satyr as "Hellenistic Options" when they were testing for Magic the Gathering options. A Magic Setting seems plausible, maybe a new Setting. But they don't want to tip their hand just yet

Ah. That's a bit less of a "red flag" and more of a "possibility." I asked because red flag has such a negative connotation to it.

Also, satyrs weren't in a UA, as far as I can tell. It was centaurs and minotaurs. /pedant

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Unearthed Arcana class archetypes, playable races, and rule variants. View the complete listing of all the supplemental material from the D&D website.

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[Azzy]

Seems a like cludge to appease min-maxers, because a small strength build is still suboptimal. I soon expect to see the lack of medium halflings be declared a hate crime.

Can you not?

 

[Azzy]

Potential unpopular opinion: I really dislike the Mos Eisley/Pirates of Dark Water style anything goes attitude for PC ancestries. At some point it's just a bunch of bad rubber masks. A few species with defined, deep cultures (a few each, even; monoculture is bad too) is much more preferable. You can actually tell interesting stories with that.

And, yes, you can kindly get off my lawn.

Good thing you can still do that. And people that like to have a lot of species can do their thing, too. As far as defined, deep cultures, telling interesing stories, etc. you can do that with diverse species, too—the only limit is the effort a DM wants to put into it and how much players actually give a damn about all the DM's juicy fluff.

 

[SirMoogle]

Maybe it could be a background for fey goblins?

Sounds appropriate. Maybe it should have some benefit when it spends an action to dip its hat in an enemy's blood (for example, advantage on attacks or add proficiency bonus to damage rolls for the next minute)?

 

[Gladius Legis]

This UA is clearly an indicator that they may be running out of ideas.

 

[FireLance]

Hmmm...

Apr 2011: Heroes of Shadow released
Nov 2011: Heroes of the Feywild released
Jan 2012: Development of 5e announced

 

[Azzy]

This UA is clearly an indicator that they may be running out of ideas.

Sure, Jan.

Just because you aren't interested in something or know what's driving the design doesn't mean that "they may be running out of ideas". If they were running out of ideas, it'd be more likely that they'd just convert some stuff from a previous edition since as that's fairly easy and requires less creativity.

 

[JEB]

Thoughts:

• If anyone still thought the Ravenloft lineages would be treated differently than other character races as far as ASI, it should be clear now that isn't the plan.
• I was really happy for a second when I saw the "quick build"... until I realized it only points you to the quick build for classes, basically telling the casual player to pigeonhole their character by class. So I guess folks who wanted advice on how to have ability scores reflect their character race, instead of de facto class optimization, are on their own. A shame.
• Fairy: Well, at least it's Small size, and not Medium. Too bad we won't be seeing the return of the Tiny pixie as a playable race, but Wizards continues to be terrified of character races with unusual sizes. IMHO, the fairy is the least interesting option of the four.
• Folks may be right that the fey hobgoblin is a placeholder for something else... but I also recall reading some wonderfully weird things about Feywild hobgoblins in 4E, so I'd certainly be interested in them as well. They also have the most interesting abilities by far of the four.
• Owlfolk seem to be new (though they are pretty close to hsiao, true). Not super interesting, though.
• Rabbitfolk are also new, but potentially fun. Some pretty cheesy trait names, though.

Hard to say what book this and the dragon UA are meant for, any of the theories shared so far seem plausible (planar book, something like Volo's/Mordenkainen's with multiple creature types, secret MTG setting). That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a standalone fey-centric book, based on the clear interest in the subject among some 5E designers, separate from a dragon (or Dragonlance) book.

 

[JEB]

Is there anything you do like about it, or is this going to be the limit of your contribution to the conversation?

Folks are allowed to express their unhappiness, are they not?

They could probably just eliminate the idea of ancestry entirely and let every player choose from a menu and make up whatever they want their character to look like. That seems to be the direction of the game.

They probably won't do that, because while some players would love it, it would also make the game much less accessible to the casual player. They're more likely to strip back the difference between races, sort of like the base character races in 4E (basically an ASI and one power).

Jeez they just stick ANYTHING in the Feywild now. Next I'll be reading kobolds have a Feywild origin.

Feywild hobgoblins were actually a thing in 4E, they do have history.

I'm going to take a moment to say, they should really release a book where all of the past races are redone using this new system, if they go forward with it. I know they are fighting tooth and nail to not have to push for a “5.5” or “5esentals” but really the design philosophy of races and classes have changed enough to where they should do something along those lines.

On the contrary, I think it's increasingly clear we will be seeing a 5.5/5E Essentials/6E. You can't convince folks you've changed your ways on stuff they consider problematic, and also leave that stuff in the core product for the game in stores. To prove they're serious, the core rules have to be adjusted. And 2024 would be a good excuse...

 

[Aldarc]

Potential unpopular opinion: I really dislike the Mos Eisley/Pirates of Dark Water style anything goes attitude for PC ancestries. At some point it's just a bunch of bad rubber masks. A few species with defined, deep cultures (a few each, even; monoculture is bad too) is much more preferable. You can actually tell interesting stories with that.

And, yes, you can kindly get off my lawn.

Popular Opinion: I love Pirates of Dark Water style settings, campaigns, and approaches to ancestries. It's been an enormous influence* on many of the homebrew worlds that I have made.

* Along with the Dark Crystal, Star Wars, and He-Man: I think a lot of these "alien" worlds hit me at the right time in my childhood.

This opens up the possibility of having Owlfolk wizards wearing glasses, though!

Mr. Owlfolk, how many d20 rolls does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?