I'm just wondering what the general take on the new official fairy features vs the original UA is. I can understand why they removed things like being able to fit through 1-inch cracks and the ability to hover, but I feel like in doing so they removed a lot of the actual fairy-ness of it. I personally don't think those two abilities were overpowered or game breaking in any way, and that the flavor fits the concept of the race in a much more organic way.
Personally, I'll be offering my players the choice of which version they would want to play, but I'm curious as to what the general consensus is.
Removing hover doesn't bother me much as it can be fun to flit around.
The going through gaps thing was just a little weird. Do they shrink? Do they just kind of pour through like an ooze? I liked it but I don't think they could find a good way to conceptualize it.
Really I wish they'd been bold enough to just make them Tiny and allow them to shrink equipment to their size. I know that comes with some design challenges, but as is it really doesn't feel different enough to me.
I am unhappy with the official fairy because of the flight mechanics. The official flight mechanics are basically an aarakocra. Magical flight was going to be such a cool concept and game mechanic to play around. Also I feel strongly that there should be a race that can be tanky and fly. UA Fairy Armorer RIP.
Yeah, Fairy wasn't defined by the spell casting but by it's ability to be tiny and magical flight. I was expecting Smol and Can Fly, now it's not Smol and while it can still fly they did it in a way that funnels it into a few specific classes and removes the unique little gimmick of it that gave it flavor. The railroading itself is sad since it already gets the Post Tasha treatment of minimalist descriptions and lore because it's supposed to be able to be anything. There's not even choices in spells it can learn, can't trade out Druidcraft for something like Dancing Lights, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion, or Vicious Mockery which are all Fey-like spells. There's no Subraces for what should be an incredibly diverse species in a book all about them, but nothing is given for other types of faries.
If they thought Flight was an issue they should have made it a Variant trait like they did with the Tiefling in exchange for their casting. If they thought being Tiny would be an issue then they could have reduced their speed when Smol like treating everything as Rough Terrain.
All in all this new Fairy is bland as white bread, there's no interesting lore or descriptions of them to make them seem interesting or spark the imagination, and they remove their only real gimmicks, and they locked down it's only other somewhat unique trait so only certain classes would effectively have access to it.
I am a bit disappointed in the transition from UA to TWBtW. I hope there will be a refresh in future source books like they have done with some other races and classes. So let's break it down.
I fully understand why they made them small and not tiny, it would be to much of a mechanics hassle to be introduced in an adventure rather than an extended source book. And making them small really makes the one inch gap feature odd. To remove that and give them Enlarge/Reduce was in my opinion the right choice since it is not limited to self and thus opening up more options. I also like that they spread the spells out over various levels in Fairy Magic since Faerie Fire out of the gate may be a bit too powerful at low levels.
I find it weird that they do not have some sort of Fey Ancestry or Magic Resistance traits. Looking through the fey creatures about half of the humanoid fey have Magic Resistance. And the none fey Elves and Half-Elves have the Fey Ancestry. Looking at the Fairy's smaller cousins Sprite and Pixie one of them has Magical Resistance, both have (superior) Invisibility and winged flight. Granted being Fey means that some spells cannot target them anyway but still ...
I understand that magic flight and hover may be too much if combined with magic resistance or fey ancestry but to remove this without offering something in return lessens the Fairy in my opinion. I would like to see some variations like the Half-Elf variants; choose magical flight w/ hoover or winged flight with either magical resistance or fey ancestry. Maybe add additional choices and variants involving invisibility (one per day spell?), heart sight, speak with beasts and plants, keen senses of some sort, mimicry, etc. Mix it up a bit.
Choose one of:
Magical flight equal to your walking speed and the ability to hoover
Winged flight equal to your walking speed and have advantage on saving throws against magical effects (Magic Resistance)
Winged flight equal to your walking speed and have advantage on saving throws against the charmed and frightened condition (Fey [Ancestry])
Winged flight equal to your walking speed and you can cast invisibility once per short/long rest.
Flightless but you can cast invisibility once per short/long rest and have advantage on saving throws against magical effects (Magic Resistance)
Flightless but you can cast invisibility once per short/long rest and have advantage on saving throws the charmed and frightened condition (Fey [Ancestry])
Other ideas and combinations,
If there is a fear that magic flight w/ hover will be OP then nerf it a bit; let it be concentration preventing a Fairy w/ magic flight from flying above the battle field and dominating the enemies. Force them to land or use winged flight in order to cast concentration spells. This would also have an impact on their hovering ability should they take damage or suffer certain conditions.
What would have been the difference between winged flight and magic flight? What could magic flight do that winged flight couldn't do? And why not winged flight with hover; why does hover seem to be tied to magical flight? Or am i misunderstanding something
And can someone elaborate on what exactly makes a Tiny PC difficult to balance? Is there a worry that they would be overpowered or is it the opposite (they would be too squishy and unable to do much damage)?
Their previous magical flight didn't have any restrictions and could hover. This meant they didn't need wings to fly, so you didn't even have to choose them for the character when it was created in UA and they pointed this out. It was a nice bit of flavor. Mechanically I'm not sure if there's even any rules the differentiate magical and non-magical flight other than just letting the DM have excuses for why this does or does not work when making crap up about how the flight interacts with some niche situation. Honestly Magical Flight seems more like a hindrance than an asset since it ties it to magic rules, if not spell casting rules, so it can be detected or interfered with by things that work on magic as a whole.
And I'm not sure why Tiny PCs would be hard to balance for, other than squeezing into tight spaces I don't really see much mechanical benefits to being smaller than everything. There's some mechanics that interact with size but pretty much all of them heavily favor the larger creature. I suppose it allows 4 fairies to occupy a single tile but it also means that a single fairy can't really block someone out of passing through their square. And worrying about this leading to action economy issues where 16-32 PC fairies can surround a single enemy is basically a non-issue. Maybe more access to cover, but that is on the DM who is saying that said cover exists but then not thinking about if a teacup would actually be effective at blocking an arrow or a magic blast.
Well, if you use Enlarge/Reduce as an example. Shrinking (or tiny size) means you do 1d4 less damage. I guess you could say tiny an only use small weapons but then you have to define what a small weapon is. So maybe they can use a shortsword or dagger but not longsword. Or they can use any one handed but not heavy weapon but do d4 less damage, minimum 1.
Edit: or weapons 2 pounds or less. So yes, balancing issues
That is part of a spell and not actually anything about size rules or weapon rules in general. It is not relevant. Likewise limiting the weapon options (edit: for tiny sized creatures) is a house rule you're introducing. Again, not relevant. Weight limits are, once again, just a houserule you're apparently using so for a final time: Not. Relevant.
Honestly, pointing to a spell as evidence. In that same spell, following that same logic, halflings and other Small creatures (if you assume the default size is supposed to be medium; otherwise it'd just be everything smaller than the largest size) should have disadvantage on Strength saves and checks.
My thought was that a fairy can use a dagger but only as a two-handed sword; similarly a light hammer would be the equivalent of a maul and a hand-axe the equivalent of a battle-axe. if they wanted anything one handed they would need to have it custom made to fit their small size (or they could just use something that they can modify into a weapon like a sewing needle). But I don't expect most players to be playing a fairy in order to do high damage with melee weapons; rather if they get into melee range at all it will be to attack some specific part of the enemy's body (as harassment or to inflict a condition). A melee tiny build will be much more surgical than a typical melee build.
From PHB p 191: "Flying creatures enjoy many benefits of mobility, but they must also deal with the danger of falling. If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of the ability to move, the creature falls, unless it has the ability to hover or it is being held aloft by magic, such as by the fly spell." (Underlining by me to make the point below)
Magical flight and/or the ability to hover prevents the character from falling if it is incapacitated whereas winged non-magical flight would make them fall. It is a big deal if hit with a spell that inflicts various debilitating conditions.
As for the mechanics regarding small/tiny that is a bit unclear. For small creatures there is a limitation in regards to heavy weapons so what is the next step? Will tiny creatures just do one die size less damage or will they have other restrictions. Those are the unexplored mechanics of being tiny. We don't know what/how it will impact but it is something that WotC would have to deal with if they where to allow tiny characters. SO it is much easier for them to avoid that by making the fairy small rather than tiny.
That is part of a spell and not actually anything about size rules or weapon rules in general. It is not relevant. Likewise limiting the weapon options (edit: for tiny sized creatures) is a house rule you're introducing. Again, not relevant. Weight limits are, once again, just a houserule you're apparently using so for a final time: Not. Relevant.
Honestly, pointing to a spell as evidence. In that same spell, following that same logic, halflings and other Small creatures (if you assume the default size is supposed to be medium; otherwise it'd just be everything smaller than the largest size) should have disadvantage on Strength saves and checks.
Yes, it would all be house rules if the official book included tiny size for fairies but made no mention of it. However, tiny is not official and people were asking about “what balance issues?” and I was giving examples of possibilities of balancing issues if they included tiny.
Maybe WotC thought to limit the official tiny version but then decided it would be too much headache or too much backlash because “how dare they not allow my 12” tall 14 ounce fairy wield a longsword”, and so stuck with small.
I was just giving an opinion and example of possible balance issues And not how I think fairies should have been designed.
If it was really that much of an issue that it could have easily been handled with some sort of feature or additional rules added in the book for tiny characters. Given it's a magical Fae race just having "They can still use them normally, because magic" would have been simple enough. Such as "Inchling: While normally being incredibly small the Fairy often uses magic to increase it's size for convenience. You can use your bonus action to decrease your Fairy's size by one category, from Small to Tiny, or increase your size by once category from Tiny to Small. All equipment you are wearing, including weapons or small objects in your hands or on your person at the DM's discretion, changes in size with you. These items function normally for you but may become unusable by larger creatures. If you fall unconscious, die, or your HP is reduced to 0 you do not revert in size."
Once per day. Once. People already complain about Dragonborn breath weapon, why would this be any different. Enlarge/Reduce is not an adequate substitute any more than if you substituted al Elf's Fey ancestry trait with Counter Charm. "Oh hey, I know this race had Dark Vision innately in UA but we replaced that with the Dark Vision spell that you can only use once per long rest, but it's basically the same thing right?" "Oh, Changelings were known for changing shape frequently? How about instead of that we just give them a once per long rest use of Disguise self but only after getting to fifth level?"
Flight that's already nerfed to restrict armor usage (Without the +20ft of Movement that the Aarakocra has) and the "We have Prestidigitation at Home" Cantrip (Not even the actually okay one). They basically removed the one thing that actually made the Fairy kinda unique. If you're after flight, go for the bird or the tiefling, if you want to be a fey there's two other races that actually have unique gimmicks while still being fey, if you want to RP an actual fairy well this race doesn't even do that since the book doesn't include more than 2 paragraphs of text to describe it, let alone summarize their common traits, culture, or even names. WoTC have balanced other things before from UA to deal with imbalance but I'm having a hard time thinking of another time where they basically just ripped out the actual heart of the build to do it. I'm reminded of when Konami errata'd cards like Sangan, Future Fusion, and Crush Card to take them off the banlist but ended up stripping down their effects so much that people just kept using the substitutes anyway.
If there is a fear that magic flight w/ hover will be OP then nerf it a bit; let it be concentration preventing a Fairy w/ magic flight from flying above the battle field and dominating the enemies. Force them to land or use winged flight in order to cast concentration spells. This would also have an impact on their hovering ability should they take damage or suffer certain conditions.
I thought about it a bit and why not use existing magical flight as a template, with a few tweaks.
Magical Fairy Flight: You can cast Fly on yourself at will a number of times equal to you proficiency bonus. You regain all uses when you finish a short/long(?) rest. When you do this you do not need any material components and you cannot target any other creature than yourself. Your flying speed when flying in this way equals your walking speed.
Doing it this way would remove the unlimited magical flight as well as limiting it's usefulness by taking an action to cast, tying up concentration and limiting the flying speed. The DM may still have to deal with a flying ranged attacker or spell caster but at least they can't maintain concentration spells to buff allies or nerf enemies. The mechanics for the flight would follow the spell in all regards except target and speed.
And yes, I really liked the magical flight aspect. I based a fairy character off of the ability to fly without wings. He would typically try to blend in, hiding his fey heritage as much as possible, so flight would be a last resort. So I am more opposed to the added wings than I am to the inability to hover.
I realize now that the D&D definition of "hover" is likely not my understanding of the word "hover". "hover" in this context seems to mean "levitate". The way I was reading things it sounded like a fairy could not fly in place.
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I'm just wondering what the general take on the new official fairy features vs the original UA is. I can understand why they removed things like being able to fit through 1-inch cracks and the ability to hover, but I feel like in doing so they removed a lot of the actual fairy-ness of it. I personally don't think those two abilities were overpowered or game breaking in any way, and that the flavor fits the concept of the race in a much more organic way.
Personally, I'll be offering my players the choice of which version they would want to play, but I'm curious as to what the general consensus is.
I think they took away hover to keep in line with other races like aarakocra
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Removing hover doesn't bother me much as it can be fun to flit around.
The going through gaps thing was just a little weird. Do they shrink? Do they just kind of pour through like an ooze? I liked it but I don't think they could find a good way to conceptualize it.
Really I wish they'd been bold enough to just make them Tiny and allow them to shrink equipment to their size. I know that comes with some design challenges, but as is it really doesn't feel different enough to me.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I am unhappy with the official fairy because of the flight mechanics. The official flight mechanics are basically an aarakocra. Magical flight was going to be such a cool concept and game mechanic to play around. Also I feel strongly that there should be a race that can be tanky and fly. UA Fairy Armorer RIP.
Yeah, Fairy wasn't defined by the spell casting but by it's ability to be tiny and magical flight. I was expecting Smol and Can Fly, now it's not Smol and while it can still fly they did it in a way that funnels it into a few specific classes and removes the unique little gimmick of it that gave it flavor. The railroading itself is sad since it already gets the Post Tasha treatment of minimalist descriptions and lore because it's supposed to be able to be anything. There's not even choices in spells it can learn, can't trade out Druidcraft for something like Dancing Lights, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion, or Vicious Mockery which are all Fey-like spells. There's no Subraces for what should be an incredibly diverse species in a book all about them, but nothing is given for other types of faries.
If they thought Flight was an issue they should have made it a Variant trait like they did with the Tiefling in exchange for their casting. If they thought being Tiny would be an issue then they could have reduced their speed when Smol like treating everything as Rough Terrain.
All in all this new Fairy is bland as white bread, there's no interesting lore or descriptions of them to make them seem interesting or spark the imagination, and they remove their only real gimmicks, and they locked down it's only other somewhat unique trait so only certain classes would effectively have access to it.
I am a bit disappointed in the transition from UA to TWBtW. I hope there will be a refresh in future source books like they have done with some other races and classes. So let's break it down.
I fully understand why they made them small and not tiny, it would be to much of a mechanics hassle to be introduced in an adventure rather than an extended source book. And making them small really makes the one inch gap feature odd. To remove that and give them Enlarge/Reduce was in my opinion the right choice since it is not limited to self and thus opening up more options. I also like that they spread the spells out over various levels in Fairy Magic since Faerie Fire out of the gate may be a bit too powerful at low levels.
I find it weird that they do not have some sort of Fey Ancestry or Magic Resistance traits. Looking through the fey creatures about half of the humanoid fey have Magic Resistance. And the none fey Elves and Half-Elves have the Fey Ancestry. Looking at the Fairy's smaller cousins Sprite and Pixie one of them has Magical Resistance, both have (superior) Invisibility and winged flight. Granted being Fey means that some spells cannot target them anyway but still ...
I understand that magic flight and hover may be too much if combined with magic resistance or fey ancestry but to remove this without offering something in return lessens the Fairy in my opinion. I would like to see some variations like the Half-Elf variants; choose magical flight w/ hoover or winged flight with either magical resistance or fey ancestry. Maybe add additional choices and variants involving invisibility (one per day spell?), heart sight, speak with beasts and plants, keen senses of some sort, mimicry, etc. Mix it up a bit.
Choose one of:
If there is a fear that magic flight w/ hover will be OP then nerf it a bit; let it be concentration preventing a Fairy w/ magic flight from flying above the battle field and dominating the enemies. Force them to land or use winged flight in order to cast concentration spells. This would also have an impact on their hovering ability should they take damage or suffer certain conditions.
What would have been the difference between winged flight and magic flight? What could magic flight do that winged flight couldn't do? And why not winged flight with hover; why does hover seem to be tied to magical flight? Or am i misunderstanding something
And can someone elaborate on what exactly makes a Tiny PC difficult to balance? Is there a worry that they would be overpowered or is it the opposite (they would be too squishy and unable to do much damage)?
Their previous magical flight didn't have any restrictions and could hover. This meant they didn't need wings to fly, so you didn't even have to choose them for the character when it was created in UA and they pointed this out. It was a nice bit of flavor. Mechanically I'm not sure if there's even any rules the differentiate magical and non-magical flight other than just letting the DM have excuses for why this does or does not work when making crap up about how the flight interacts with some niche situation. Honestly Magical Flight seems more like a hindrance than an asset since it ties it to magic rules, if not spell casting rules, so it can be detected or interfered with by things that work on magic as a whole.
And I'm not sure why Tiny PCs would be hard to balance for, other than squeezing into tight spaces I don't really see much mechanical benefits to being smaller than everything. There's some mechanics that interact with size but pretty much all of them heavily favor the larger creature. I suppose it allows 4 fairies to occupy a single tile but it also means that a single fairy can't really block someone out of passing through their square. And worrying about this leading to action economy issues where 16-32 PC fairies can surround a single enemy is basically a non-issue. Maybe more access to cover, but that is on the DM who is saying that said cover exists but then not thinking about if a teacup would actually be effective at blocking an arrow or a magic blast.
Well, if you use Enlarge/Reduce as an example. Shrinking (or tiny size) means you do 1d4 less damage. I guess you could say tiny an only use small weapons but then you have to define what a small weapon is. So maybe they can use a shortsword or dagger but not longsword. Or they can use any one handed but not heavy weapon but do d4 less damage, minimum 1.
Edit: or weapons 2 pounds or less. So yes, balancing issues
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
That is part of a spell and not actually anything about size rules or weapon rules in general. It is not relevant. Likewise limiting the weapon options (edit: for tiny sized creatures) is a house rule you're introducing. Again, not relevant. Weight limits are, once again, just a houserule you're apparently using so for a final time: Not. Relevant.
Honestly, pointing to a spell as evidence. In that same spell, following that same logic, halflings and other Small creatures (if you assume the default size is supposed to be medium; otherwise it'd just be everything smaller than the largest size) should have disadvantage on Strength saves and checks.
My thought was that a fairy can use a dagger but only as a two-handed sword; similarly a light hammer would be the equivalent of a maul and a hand-axe the equivalent of a battle-axe. if they wanted anything one handed they would need to have it custom made to fit their small size (or they could just use something that they can modify into a weapon like a sewing needle). But I don't expect most players to be playing a fairy in order to do high damage with melee weapons; rather if they get into melee range at all it will be to attack some specific part of the enemy's body (as harassment or to inflict a condition). A melee tiny build will be much more surgical than a typical melee build.
From PHB p 191: "Flying creatures enjoy many benefits of mobility, but they must also deal with the danger of falling. If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of the ability to move, the creature falls, unless it has the ability to hover or it is being held aloft by magic, such as by the fly spell." (Underlining by me to make the point below)
Magical flight and/or the ability to hover prevents the character from falling if it is incapacitated whereas winged non-magical flight would make them fall. It is a big deal if hit with a spell that inflicts various debilitating conditions.
As for the mechanics regarding small/tiny that is a bit unclear. For small creatures there is a limitation in regards to heavy weapons so what is the next step? Will tiny creatures just do one die size less damage or will they have other restrictions. Those are the unexplored mechanics of being tiny. We don't know what/how it will impact but it is something that WotC would have to deal with if they where to allow tiny characters. SO it is much easier for them to avoid that by making the fairy small rather than tiny.
I hate the changes. My plate wearing fairy armourer is suddenly grounded. And the squeezing through spaces was really nice flavour.
Yes, it would all be house rules if the official book included tiny size for fairies but made no mention of it. However, tiny is not official and people were asking about “what balance issues?” and I was giving examples of possibilities of balancing issues if they included tiny.
Maybe WotC thought to limit the official tiny version but then decided it would be too much headache or too much backlash because “how dare they not allow my 12” tall 14 ounce fairy wield a longsword”, and so stuck with small.
I was just giving an opinion and example of possible balance issues And not how I think fairies should have been designed.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
If it was really that much of an issue that it could have easily been handled with some sort of feature or additional rules added in the book for tiny characters. Given it's a magical Fae race just having "They can still use them normally, because magic" would have been simple enough. Such as "Inchling: While normally being incredibly small the Fairy often uses magic to increase it's size for convenience. You can use your bonus action to decrease your Fairy's size by one category, from Small to Tiny, or increase your size by once category from Tiny to Small. All equipment you are wearing, including weapons or small objects in your hands or on your person at the DM's discretion, changes in size with you. These items function normally for you but may become unusable by larger creatures. If you fall unconscious, die, or your HP is reduced to 0 you do not revert in size."
Once per day. Once. People already complain about Dragonborn breath weapon, why would this be any different. Enlarge/Reduce is not an adequate substitute any more than if you substituted al Elf's Fey ancestry trait with Counter Charm. "Oh hey, I know this race had Dark Vision innately in UA but we replaced that with the Dark Vision spell that you can only use once per long rest, but it's basically the same thing right?" "Oh, Changelings were known for changing shape frequently? How about instead of that we just give them a once per long rest use of Disguise self but only after getting to fifth level?"
Flight that's already nerfed to restrict armor usage (Without the +20ft of Movement that the Aarakocra has) and the "We have Prestidigitation at Home" Cantrip (Not even the actually okay one). They basically removed the one thing that actually made the Fairy kinda unique. If you're after flight, go for the bird or the tiefling, if you want to be a fey there's two other races that actually have unique gimmicks while still being fey, if you want to RP an actual fairy well this race doesn't even do that since the book doesn't include more than 2 paragraphs of text to describe it, let alone summarize their common traits, culture, or even names. WoTC have balanced other things before from UA to deal with imbalance but I'm having a hard time thinking of another time where they basically just ripped out the actual heart of the build to do it. I'm reminded of when Konami errata'd cards like Sangan, Future Fusion, and Crush Card to take them off the banlist but ended up stripping down their effects so much that people just kept using the substitutes anyway.
I thought about it a bit and why not use existing magical flight as a template, with a few tweaks.
Magical Fairy Flight: You can cast Fly on yourself at will a number of times equal to you proficiency bonus. You regain all uses when you finish a short/long(?) rest. When you do this you do not need any material components and you cannot target any other creature than yourself. Your flying speed when flying in this way equals your walking speed.
Doing it this way would remove the unlimited magical flight as well as limiting it's usefulness by taking an action to cast, tying up concentration and limiting the flying speed. The DM may still have to deal with a flying ranged attacker or spell caster but at least they can't maintain concentration spells to buff allies or nerf enemies. The mechanics for the flight would follow the spell in all regards except target and speed.
And yes, I really liked the magical flight aspect. I based a fairy character off of the ability to fly without wings. He would typically try to blend in, hiding his fey heritage as much as possible, so flight would be a last resort. So I am more opposed to the added wings than I am to the inability to hover.
So the printed version requires winged flight? I’m glad after hearing of people on Reddit planning to cheese Wildshape with magical flight.
I realize now that the D&D definition of "hover" is likely not my understanding of the word "hover". "hover" in this context seems to mean "levitate". The way I was reading things it sounded like a fairy could not fly in place.