Owlbears are Fey?!? Cold Iron is gone?

[Fredrik Svanberg]

Cold iron is just regular old iron anyway so fey are just as weak to it as everyone else.

 

[kaomera]

I always thought Owlbears were the result of some demented wizard or druid - who didn't live very long afterward!

Now they are Fey - what sence does that make?

I think both are cool flavor. Oddly, I think that Owlbears as mutant cross-breeds would actually have "Natural" as their origin and "Beast" as their type. I think really it comes down to the Owlbear being a cool, iconic D&D critter that could easily be reimagined as a creature from the Feywild. With the change in cosmology in 4E they needed to "stock" the new realms, especially the ones more likely to be interacted with by adventurers at Paragon tier or before (the Feywild and Shadowfel).

(As a note: after seeing the new Hellboy trailer I am jonesin' to run some adventures set in the Feywild... And I can also imagine an Owlbear (or at least Owlbear-like critter) with the body of a bear and an owl head / feathers seemingly carved out of living wood...)

Also - Fey are no longer effected by Cold Iron?

Well, it does solve the problem of arguments over which character had to lug the cooler full of dry ice through the dungeon...

 

[Christian]

I don't know, having owlbears originate in the Feywild (they're not necessarily fey per se) makes more sense to me than even a crazy wizard crossing a bear with an owl.

You're not the only one.

 

[wayne62682]

There is no more DR in 4e, so other than silvered weapons, a golfbag full of swords forged from different metals is no longer needed.

This. DR was the most worthless garbage ever in 3e. The "weapons golfbag" was a terrible, terrible idea. I will shed no tears now that it's gone.

 

[deadsmurf]

I still like the flavor of iron being a weakness to the Fey... but I did think 3E handled it horribly. I think iron should interfere with Fey powers, such as the Eladrin Fey Step and the various charms they use. An iron weapon can cleave through their illusions, an iron helm protects your mind, bonds of iron restrict a teleport... I'll probably add a unique feature to the Feywild that causes its natural energies to erode iron to dust within a relatively short amount of time though, due to the greater concentration of the conflicting energy in that realm.

might want to restrict that to non-magical equipment!

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's a WoW thing. 4e is very videogame-y, you know.

 

[fuzzlewump]

Insert missing concept here is not "fun."

It has or they have been removed for your "fun."

No other explanation exists.

 

[Ashenboychild]

Of course they are fey - they live in Darkshore, which is a night elf area...

Oh, sorry those were Moonkin.

Hehe, exactly what i thought when i first saw the entry

 

[generalhenry]

MADE UP DETAILS ABOUT MADE UP MONSTERS?!?!

NO WAI

in previous editions there was no explanation for them so they went into the must have been a wizard catagory.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Historical notes for the geekily inclined:

As more civilized tribes who used iron and grew wheat (which requires exztensive agricultural and milling work) invaded or out-competed more primitive tribes who used bronze (and still a fair amount of stone) and relied on barley (which could be eaten with very little processing , and grown semi-wild with little encoouragement), they tended to mythologize the cultures they obliterated, in much the same way that American and Australian native cultures have been romanticized by modern society.

It is likely that tales of the "faeries" or "wee folk" originated during that transition,and referred to the "old people" who were there before the storytellers, remnants of whom might still be in the wild lands nearby.

Wheat and Iron, in those stories, became symbolic of the new ways, and poisonous or dangerous to the Old Folk. Barley appears frequently in folk tales as a bribe or treat for the Faeries.