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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[embee]

Flying is a balance issue. But it’s typically a thing that is KEPT out of encounters. Mainly to balance to non-flying PCs. Flip the script and open up encounters to flying adversaries and I think the issue won’t be so bad. D&D is rife with flying creatures at all levels. It’s an artifact that they are generally kept OUT of encounters.

thats my 2cents anyway.

There is also the issue of having to add a called shot mechanic to any fight between flying creatures as the best weapon to use against a winged creature is the ground.

 

[tetrasodium]

Incidentally, rabbitfolk would make pretty good assassins with the initiative bonus.

In fact, a rabbitfolk assassin/gloomstalker could cap out at +16 to initiative without magic.

Toss in a level of monk for UAD to really put that dex/wis combo to use

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My suggestion is if the PC races have got floating ASI then we should enjoy the option to add racial feats with some optional increasing atribute.

* Flight as racial traits could be very overpowered. That character hastn't to worry about to climb or avoid falls.

* It is not yet the time for the hengeyokai and other races from... Kara-Tur and cia. (off-topic. We have to remember to avoid potential controversies, for example about the earings with the shining sun flags from the anime Demon Slayer).

* WotC wants D&D to be family friendly, but this doesn't mean to become too childish.

* I love to speculate about future crossovers, but after the annoucement about a sequel of "Transformers+My Little Pony" I dare to say I am very opened-mind about fool ideas, for example a Ravenloft-Ghostbusters, or Ravenloft-Buffy Vampire-slayer. In the past I suggested as April's Fool an UA article about "d20" version of Hasbro franchises (but I guess now that is a work for Renegade Games Studio).

If I say, for example, heroes of Dragonlance will be skins in Fortnite, I don't think this is going to happen, but we could find some things as surprising like this. (And Ember is a Fortnite skin with a look as a female drow).

* The "fey gift" by the fey hobgoblins may be useful, but too complex for the simplicity we are used in 5th Ed. When you have to remember a lots of things about when there is some adventage or disadventage then combat becomes too slow.

 

[darjr]

There is also the issue of having to add a called shot mechanic to any fight between flying creatures as the best weapon to use against a winged creature is the ground.

I wouldn’t say needed. There are things that stop flying without it. Nets for instance.
I agree about the ground being a good weapon though.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Hmm... The names seem awfully generic and there isn't much lore on each race. I'm going out on a limb they are placeholder info for some rules and the real lore if being hidden to not give away the project...

Anyone know enough about MTG lore to see if these line up with any creature types? Lorwyn perhaps?

I could be wrong, but this feels a little like the centaur minotaur UA or the School of Invention/Circle of Spores UA...

I didn't see a correct answer to this.

There have never been owlfolk in an MTG setting. There are many owls, but they're just Birds. I'm pretty sure art has depicted owl-headed sphinxes and gryphons, too, but they're still sphinxes and gryphons.

There has been one rabbitfolk. Kwain, Itinerant Meddler is clearly a rabbit. However, the set he is in, Commander Legends, is not associated with any one setting. Instead, it specifically includes characters from any of the known settings in MTG's history. So, yeah, they exist, but it hasn't been made clear from where. The flavor text suggests the inspiration may have been any of the numerous rabbit fables or Alice in Wonderland, so it may very well have been a card that was designed for Throne of Eldraine and was left out for space (this is pretty common). The other rabbit creatures have been various rabbit-beasts like jackalopes.

I do not recall MTG faeries ever being presented as anything other than the diminutive creatures that D&D generally calls pixies or sprites, either. Throne of Eldraine, mentioned by a number of other posters, does have a fairy tale theme and lots of faeries (it's one of the more common creature types) but they're not unusually large, AFAIK.

There may have been fairy-adjacent goblins. MTG is kind of known for inventing oddball origins for goblins, and there are always goblins. It's almost played like the MTG equivalent of the carcinisation phenomenon. I remember the planeswalking characters point out that it was strange when they travelled to a world which hadn't evolved goblins. The only actual hobgoblins were on Shadowmoor/Eventide, IIRC, but I don't recall their origin.

I'd wager they're just going to have an adventure path in the Feywild or Shadowfell. They're some of the more interesting locations in the game, and some of the best lore to come out of 4e. I'm surprised it's taken this long to get to.

 

[tetrasodium]

I didn't see a correct answer to this.

There have never been owlfolk in an MTG setting. There are many owls, but they're just Birds. I'm pretty sure art has depicted owl-headed sphinxes and gryphons, too, but they're still sphinxes and gryphons.

There has been one rabbitfolk. Kwain, Itinerant Meddler is clearly a rabbit. However, the set he is in, Commander Legends, is not associated with any one setting. Instead, it specifically includes characters from any of the known settings in MTG's history. So, yeah, they exist, but it hasn't been made clear from where. The flavor text suggests the inspiration may have been any of the numerous rabbit fables or Alice in Wonderland, so it may very well have been a card that was designed for Throne of Eldraine and was left out for space (this is pretty common). The other rabbit creatures have been various rabbit-beasts like jackalopes.

I do not recall MTG faeries ever being presented as anything other than the diminutive creatures that D&D generally calls pixies or sprites, either. Throne of Eldraine, mentioned by a number of other posters, does have a fairy tale theme and lots of faeries (it's one of the more common creature types) but they're not unusually large, AFAIK.

There may have been fairy-adjacent goblins. MTG is kind of known for inventing oddball origins for goblins, and there are always goblins. It's almost played like the MTG equivalent of the carcinisation phenomenon. I remember the planeswalking characters point out that it was strange when they travelled to a world which hadn't evolved goblins. The only actual hobgoblins were on Shadowmoor/Eventide, IIRC, but I don't recall their origin.

I'd wager they're just going to have an adventure path in the Feywild or Shadowfell. They're some of the more interesting locations in the game, and some of the best lore to come out of 4e. I'm surprised it's taken this long to get to.

Alongside the Nycter might be another possibility & could also explain the inclusion of hobgoblins

 

[embee]

I wouldn’t say needed. There are things that stop flying without it. Nets for instance.
I agree about the ground being a good weapon though.

There are a lot of fiddly bits with flying but I think they could (and maybe should) be left to DM discretion.

If you have an aerial dogfight, I could see having to work out bonuses or advantage for things like attacking from above, grappling, being inverted, surprise attack when attacking out of the sun (the Richthofen attack), whether to give individual HP to wings, and the like.

Imagine two fliers grappling, they start falling, and you could have some kind of contested dex check to see who lands on whom.

It might be too much to work into an every day encounter. But for a special aerial encounter, it could work if you planned out a lot of the issues ahead of time.

 

[Sir Brennen]

The jumping rules are a bit of a mess at the best of times, and the Jump spells only really makes them worse. I think the intent here is to effectively add an unpredictable amount of speed to rabbitfolk PCs, with the additional flavour of that speed being jumping distance - while engaging as little as possible with the messy jumping rules. But the d12 just introduces more messiness, in my opinion. Not sure what a neat alternative is though - extra distance of d2 x 5ft or d3 x 5ft seems obvious, but 5e doesn't like anything smaller than d4s very much, and d4 x 5ft makes this the fastest PC race i can immediately think of, and not by a small margin.

You could make it 1d4 x 5ft, and lower their base speed to 25ft.

The weird thing with this ability is a player doesn't reliably know the character's speed until they move, which changes tactics quite a bit. Do you only plan on attacking enemies within your minimum movement, and make alternate plans if you get a couple extra squares of movement on a grid? Should the DM let you roll your movement bonus first so you can simply plan based on that?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

The first thing I normally do when DMing for experienced players is to limit their choices, to help create a world. My campaign that started in 2006 only had humans, gnomes and dwarves, for instance, which gave it a very distinct feel.

If I were starting a new campaign after whatever this book is comes out, I would likely use these choices while excluding most others. (Like I said, I don't think you need both halflings and rabbitfolk, for instance.)

More options don't have to mean all of them are available all the time. I'd recommend against it, myself.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Alongside the Nycter might be another possibility & could also explain the inclusion of hobgoblins

No, I think Feywild and Shadowfell alone are more than enough to involve hobgoblins, depending on exactly what folklore, myths and legends you're reading. Goblins or hobgoblins are often depicted as a part of the Unseelie Court. The Wild Hunt is variously depicted as being led by the fairy king, the yule king, or the goblin king (or Odin, in some tales).