D&D (2024) Monster manual Fey video up


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Or the rusalka, banshee, yuki-onna, and a few others that I can't remember offhand.
Could the Banshee and the Shadar-kai be aspects of the species?

I guess it depends on if the Banshee is actually a ghost of a dead Fey Elf, versus an immigrant from the Feywild to the Shadowfell.
 

It also reminds me of the Japanese word "youkai", which usually gets translated into English as "demon". While the term does encompass creatures that the West would considered demons, it's a much broader term that also includes things we'd call fae, undead, mischevious spirits, garden-variety monsters, dragons, and such.
Really, the term "demon" in the original sense of "daimon" (δαίμων) would also be a much more encompassing term to include concepts like Arabian djinn, Norse trǫll, German kobold, Irish leprechaun, Japanese youkai, moreorless any animistic concept.

The Christian "demon", in the sense of a spirit of illness, malicious impulse, or ceremonial impurity, would be a more specialized use of the term.

It reminds me how from Old English, the term for any kind of magical "fairie" came to mean a very specific kind of "fairy" − to the point the language needed a new term "magic" to cover the earlier meanings.
 

Persisting in not acknowledging it seems disingenuous to me.

Mod Note:
Hey.
In this very thread, I just gave someone what-for when they made things personal with you.
And so you... go make it personal with someone else?

Do you understand that this does not reflect well upon you?
Maybe, you know, do something about that...
 

Then you get weird things like Dullahan (Headless Horsemen) and Sluagh- are they fey or undead? Undead fey?
Undead and Fey it seems ;)

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They haven’t been “aggressively pushing it.” As I mentioned earlier, there was a severe lack of fey in early 5e. There’s still a lack of fey creatures, especially at high CRs. If you go to DnDBeyond’s monster search engine and you look for specifically Fey creatures, you’ll find that there are only 6 pages of them. Do that for nearly any other creature type and you’ll find more pages worth of that creature type. Dragons have 8 pages, Aberrations have 8, Constructs have 10, Fiends have 12, Undead have 13, Beasts have 13, Monstrosities have 16, and Humanoids have a whopping 42. The only creature types with fewer monsters are Celestials, Oozes, and Plants. I doubt that imbalance will change much given Jeremy Crawford said that there are still way more Humanoids than Fey in the new Monster Manual. WotC has slightly increased the focus on fey because there are so few in the game. I guess when you’re used to the imbalance, any attention given to the fey feels “preferential.”

For all your dislike of retconning pre-existing creatures into the fey, they’ve barely done that. Goblinoids, Bullywugs, Centaurs, Wargs, and Changelings. I’m pretty sure that’s it. In fact, 5e even retconned Gnomes out of the fey, which they were a part of in 4e.

Everyone knows I like Goblinoids being connected to the Fey as their origin before Maglubiyet conquered them, but I actually would prefer if they just stayed humanoids with the Fey Ancestry trait. I feel that’s more interesting as it shows how much Maglubiyet has changed them as well as opening up a niche of Goblinoids that avoided being captured by Maglubiyet and thus are still fully Fey.

The last time I used Bullywugs was in my first D&D campaign when I was still learning the rules. I haven’t used them since, because they’re just boring frog people and there are slightly more interesting frog people in the Grung. With them now being Fey I might actually use them again, because now I can connect them to other Fey adventures.

Changelings being Fey is actually a problem for me, because not being able to tell who is a Changeling is part of their lore in Eberron. Now you can tell who is a Changeling through spells and abilities like Detect Evil and Good and Divine Sense. I like the idea for non-Eberron Changelings, but Eberron Changelings are still humanoids in my games.

I couldn’t care less about Centaurs and Worgs becoming fey, and I don’t understand how anyone would care about this. Monstrosities is easily the most boring creature type in the game. Any creature moved out of that creature type and into another automatically becomes more interesting, IMO. Worgs are becoming Fey because Goblinoids are. Centaurs being fey makes as about much sense as Satyrs and Nymphs being Fey does. It’s definitely more interesting than them being Monstrosities.

I, for one, am disappointed they didn’t “retcon” Owlbears out of the Monstrosity creature type and turn them into Beasts. I thought that with the popularity of BG3 and the D&D movie, which both allow Druids to wildshape into Owlbears, they would do the same.

There is no “Fey preferential treatment.” If anything, WotC has been biased against Fey for the entirety of 5e, if not longer. The “aggressive push” you perceive is merely the Fey trying to catch up to the other important creature types. Like I mentioned earlier, Dragons, Giants, and Elementals got their own adventures in early 5e. It took Fey 7 years to get their own adventure, and they still have far less monster stat blocks than Fiends, Undead, Beasts, Monstrosities, and Humanoids. There were only 7 Fey monsters in the original 2014 Monster Manual, so IMO giving Fey more monsters through changing some old monsters into fey and making new stat blocks is good.
I forgot about grung. Might have to research and see if they make better froggloks than bullywugs do (stat wise).
 

They haven’t been “aggressively pushing it.” As I mentioned earlier, there was a severe lack of fey in early 5e. There’s still a lack of fey creatures, especially at high CRs. If you go to DnDBeyond’s monster search engine and you look for specifically Fey creatures, you’ll find that there are only 6 pages of them. Do that for nearly any other creature type and you’ll find more pages worth of that creature type. Dragons have 8 pages, Aberrations have 8, Constructs have 10, Fiends have 12, Undead have 13, Beasts have 13, Monstrosities have 16, and Humanoids have a whopping 42. The only creature types with fewer monsters are Celestials, Oozes, and Plants. I doubt that imbalance will change much given Jeremy Crawford said that there are still way more Humanoids than Fey in the new Monster Manual. WotC has slightly increased the focus on fey because there are so few in the game. I guess when you’re used to the imbalance, any attention given to the fey feels “preferential.”

For all your dislike of retconning pre-existing creatures into the fey, they’ve barely done that. Goblinoids, Bullywugs, Centaurs, Wargs, and Changelings. I’m pretty sure that’s it. In fact, 5e even retconned Gnomes out of the fey, which they were a part of in 4e.

Everyone knows I like Goblinoids being connected to the Fey as their origin before Maglubiyet conquered them, but I actually would prefer if they just stayed humanoids with the Fey Ancestry trait. I feel that’s more interesting as it shows how much Maglubiyet has changed them as well as opening up a niche of Goblinoids that avoided being captured by Maglubiyet and thus are still fully Fey.

The last time I used Bullywugs was in my first D&D campaign when I was still learning the rules. I haven’t used them since, because they’re just boring frog people and there are slightly more interesting frog people in the Grung. With them now being Fey I might actually use them again, because now I can connect them to other Fey adventures.

Changelings being Fey is actually a problem for me, because not being able to tell who is a Changeling is part of their lore in Eberron. Now you can tell who is a Changeling through spells and abilities like Detect Evil and Good and Divine Sense. I like the idea for non-Eberron Changelings, but Eberron Changelings are still humanoids in my games.

I couldn’t care less about Centaurs and Worgs becoming fey, and I don’t understand how anyone would care about this. Monstrosities is easily the most boring creature type in the game. Any creature moved out of that creature type and into another automatically becomes more interesting, IMO. Worgs are becoming Fey because Goblinoids are. Centaurs being fey makes as about much sense as Satyrs and Nymphs being Fey does. It’s definitely more interesting than them being Monstrosities.

I, for one, am disappointed they didn’t “retcon” Owlbears out of the Monstrosity creature type and turn them into Beasts. I thought that with the popularity of BG3 and the D&D movie, which both allow Druids to wildshape into Owlbears, they would do the same.

There is no “Fey preferential treatment.” If anything, WotC has been biased against Fey for the entirety of 5e, if not longer. The “aggressive push” you perceive is merely the Fey trying to catch up to the other important creature types. Like I mentioned earlier, Dragons, Giants, and Elementals got their own adventures in early 5e. It took Fey 7 years to get their own adventure, and they still have far less monster stat blocks than Fiends, Undead, Beasts, Monstrosities, and Humanoids. There were only 7 Fey monsters in the original 2014 Monster Manual, so IMO giving Fey more monsters through changing some old monsters into fey and making new stat blocks is good.
When looking at AD&D 1e and the Greyhawk setting by Gygax, I am continually surprised by how core the Fey are, of the very many kinds of fairy folk of the "little people" varieties. They just didnt have the term "Fey" yet.

Gnome being Fey and Fey Ancestry is solid. Some Gnomes might even be Earth Elemental with Fey Ancestry?

Similarly, I am fine with Goblinoids being Fey, while those relating to Maglubiyet might have immigrated into the Material Plane gaining the Humanoid type.

Worg as a term for British folkbeliefs encountering "black dogs" (fairy, ghostly, or devilish) works fine as Fey.

In the same way there are "Fey Crossings" between the Material and Fey Planes, there are also "Shadow Crossings" between Material and Shadow. Relatedly, there seems to be Fey Crossings between the Fey plane and each Celestial plane, such as the Eladrin connection. Likewise there seem to be Shadow Crossings between the Shadow plane and each Fiend plane, via the river Styx such as the "Hades" "chthonic" underworld connection. These crossings allow a person of matter to literally walk to the Astral realms of thought.

I still dont understand what a "monstrosity" is, or why it would be different from Fey or Aberration, for examples.

The term "soul" and "humanoid" are technical 5e terms without clear definitions. Probably, the term Humanoid can technically mean a "sapient" creature that has a "soul". The soul is the seat of consciousness and is a microcosm of the multiverse. The soul has a Material component being the "ki" bodily aura of a body, an Ethereal component being the self identity and magical influence of an artist, and an Astral component relating to the afterlife of Celestial/Fiend. This microcosmic quality of a "soul" can explain why some creatures arent Humanoid, and why souls in the Astral Plane might still be Humanoid.
 

@Sacrosanct

Where is your "Underworld". D&D multiverse has multiple variations of it:

Hades (Fiend)
Shadowfell (Undead)
Underdark (Material)
Feydark (Fey Underdark)
Shadowdark (Undead Underdark)
 


Looks like the Fey underworld, based on Finnbheara's entry:
Love it!


Regarding translating into D&D multiverse.

"Finnbheara primarily resides in the castle Cnoc Mheada within the fairy realm. However, he has also been known as the King of Dead and has a residence within the underworld."

In this case, I would interpret Cnoc Mheada to be the name of a Domain of Delight in the "Deep" Feywild. His underworld residence would be a Domain of Dread in the "Deep" Shadowfell.

Notably, Finnbheara is able to planeshift back-and-forth between them, probably at-will.

Between his two residences and his adventures across the Material Plane, he is quite a planeswalker.
 

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