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: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthedarcana/folk_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:

45029A1A-E1B6-4BBD-93DB-33A363112735.jpeg
 

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Weiley31

Legend
My immediate thought was this was shades of hengyoki (spelling?) anthromorphic race of various animals with fey blood. That also had other animals like monkeys and dogs and such. The one consistent difference between them and this is I think those previously published could shapechange in to their specific animal, I think, but I could be remembering wrong.
Yes you are correct: Hengeyokai have the ability to turn into the animal that they are based on.
 

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iltharanos

Explorer
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.
MTG doesn't have owlfolk, but they do have owl-headed aven. These same aven have popped up in a couple of the Plane Shift PDFs.

Not sure about rabbitfolk lore-wise in either MTG or D&D, so I'll leave that to those more familiar.

About 20 years ago, Paul Kidd wrote a trilogy of novels set in Greyhawk based off adventures of the same name: White Plume Mountain, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, and Queen of the Demonweb Pits. One of the primary protagonists in the trilogy was a fairy named Escalla. A few times in the novels Escalla pointed out that fairies were distinctly different and "better" than pixies, despite the outward resemblance between fairies and pixies. Escalla and the other fairies in the novels were described as being about two feet tall. Compare this to the current description of pixies being "barely a foot tall" and it looks like there's some justification in the lore for differentiating between fairies and pixies.

In the old 4e Feywild book there was a whole kingdom of goblins in the Feywild. It was also described as having ogres, trolls, etc. So there's definitely some justification in the lore for a fey hobgoblin.
 

My immediate thought was this was shades of hengyoki (spelling?) anthromorphic race of various animals with fey blood. That also had other animals like monkeys and dogs and such. The one consistent difference between them and this is I think those previously published could shapechange in to their specific animal, I think, but I could be remembering wrong.
Last time I checked the Hengeyokai were shapeshifters with 3 different forms. Human, animal and hybrid.
 



Weiley31

Legend
If you're going to do that, you need at least 3 levels of monk to go Way of the Kensei. Which you would want so that you could use...

.......................................a vorpal longsword!
Or just take a page outta the Gothic Heroes Lineage UA and make Bite Attack your Monk Weapon. Then you find a DM insane enough to give you * VORPAL DENTURES/BRACES/MOUTHGUARD.*

I swear it's my last one thread: maybe.
 

Faolyn

(she/her)
The fairy race here is disappointing to me - just kind of dull, especially compared to the other four, which have some neat, new features and seem fun. An AC bonus for their size, or something like Evasion? I don't know.
They don't do size bonuses for AC or anything like that anymore. But I could see letting them take their reaction to dodge and add their proficiency bonus to their AC.
 

Nod_Hero

Explorer
The owlfolk sound cool but I'm still holding out for the inevitable wombatfolk.
wombat.jpg

My ranger, George the Smiling!
 

Weiley31

Legend
IIRC, Humblewood just treats the Jump that one of its race has as being counted as Movement Speed: so I think a movement speed of 30 and a Jump Speed of 30.
 

Weiley31

Legend
On a serious note: A Rabbitfolk Assassin, Monk, or Ranger would seem like a cool idea.

The Alice in Wonderland looking Rabbitfolk would probably be a Rogue though.
 

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