D&D (2024) Monster manual Fey video up

[Micah Sweet]

Nah bro. Thats not at the same level as those other books. I really dont understand the push back against the Fey here.

My specific issue with the fey is preferential. I don't like the fey and fey asthetics, and I really don't like changing established lore, so the combination of the two is very irritating to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’m saying you’re tilting at windmills, Quixote. Worse. You’re seeking out farms on the chance that they might have a windmill, and thus a giant to fight. Hasbro has had WotC for over two and a half decades. They have probably meddled in quite a few of the decisions WotC made in 3.X, 4e, and early 5e too. Probably some decisions you liked, too. The only reason you have suddenly decided that Hasbro is meddling in the game to “ruin it” for you is because you didn’t like their Ravenloft book and now have a personal vendetta against WotC. It’s condescending and demeaning to people that do like the changes to imply you’re a “true thinker” that’s the only one that can see the corporate meddling that you think was involved in them.

I don't recall implying anything. You're welcome to disbelieve me.

 

[Scribe]

My specific issue with the fey is preferential. I don't like the fey and fey asthetics, and I really don't like changing established lore, so the combination of the two is very irritating to me.

Fair enough. I like Fey, under a bit of a different interpretation than we usually get from Wizards, but all the same I can still appreciate their place in a historic perspective.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fair enough. I like Fey, under a bit of a different interpretation than we usually get from Wizards, but all the same I can still appreciate their place in a historic perspective.

Yeah, I don't like the "faerie-land/Midsummer Night's Dream" asthetic. It is a turn-off, and for the last few years it feels like WotC has been fairly aggressively pushing it. I won't apologize for my preferences.

 

[Mecheon]

Yeah, I don't like the "faerie-land/Midsummer Night's Dream" asthetic. It is a turn-off, and for the last few years it feels like WotC has been fairly aggressively pushing it. I won't apologize for my preferences.

Fey stuff is widely gaining in popularity and it wouldn't be the first thing D&D grabbed from outside sources. You can see Spelljammer was released around when anime was gaining in popularity due to it having Guyvers and Aura Battlers, for example

D&D's always been moved by pop culture, and spooky fairies are back in for stories so they'll keep at them for a while

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fey stuff is widely gaining in popularity and it wouldn't be the first thing D&D grabbed from outside sources. You can see Spelljammer was released around when anime was gaining in popularity due to it having Guyvers and Aura Battlers, for example

D&D's always been moved by pop culture, and spooky fairies are back in for stories so they'll keep at them for a while

I don't see how that affects my feelings about it in any way whatsoever. Popularity does not sway me.

 

[Scribe]

Yeah, I don't like the "faerie-land/Midsummer Night's Dream" asthetic. It is a turn-off, and for the last few years it feels like WotC has been fairly aggressively pushing it. I won't apologize for my preferences.

I dont think anyone is asking you to apologize for your preferences.

You had started this by asking "Why Fey?" and being provided answers, until eventually getting here, to "Well I dont like it and I wont apologize for not liking it."

Which is fine, but if thats your position and you knew it from the start, why ask anything? Just state, "Dont like it, and wont like it." and that way nobody has to waste time trying to explain "Why Fey?" from historical, Folk lore, or foundational points of view.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Yeah, I don't like the "faerie-land/Midsummer Night's Dream" asthetic. It is a turn-off, and for the last few years it feels like WotC has been fairly aggressively pushing it. I won't apologize for my preferences.

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'm A Banana]

Are Trolls and Ogres Fey too? They are pretty integral to most world myths, or their equivalent stand-ins anyway.

If goblins are Fey, I’d personally house rule Trolls and Ogres as well.

Ogres are an interesting case study for this new typing, because of our old school "ogre magi" AKA Oni.

So you can have Ogres of the Giant type.

And you can have Ogres of the Fey type that might be a little more fairy tale. Maybe they turn to stone if touched by sunlight.

And you can have Ogres of the Fiend type - oni with horns and terrible fangs.

And they can all be Ogres. Some linked to lower planes, or the feywild, or the material world. ...

 

[Azzy]

That reminds me about the divide in the paranormal community between ghosts, demons, and fey. Any paranormal entity is one or more of the above, depending on who you ask.

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.