The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is nearly upon us! Releasing September 21, the adventure book will take players into the Feywild for a romp through the Witchlight Carnival and Prismeer, a domain of delight! Players will have new character creation options, including two new races: the fairy and the harengon, a rabbit-like humanoid.
Fairies are central to the Feywild and as varied as the realm's people. But while the fairy race shares physical characteristics with the creatures you might be familiar with, there are some key differences that bring them in line with other Dungeons & Dragons races.
Click below for a sneak peek at the fairy race and how you might build one:
- Fairy racial traits
- A fairy's outlook on life
- Building a fairy character
- More previews from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
Fairy racial traits
Fairies are a wee folk, but not nearly as much so as their pixie and sprite friends. The first fairies spoke Elvish, Goblin, or Sylvan, and encounters with human visitors prompted many of them to learn Common as well. Infused with the magic of the Feywild, most fairies look like Small elves with insectile wings, but each fairy has a special physical characteristic that sets the fairy apart.
Source: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
Fairies have a long, storied history in the Feywild. Appearing as diminutive elves with insectile wings, fairy creatures come in all kinds of varieties. When you choose the fairy race, you'll get to decide what kind of fairy creature your character takes after. Will you have the midnight blue skin tone of a quickling and moth wings, the light green skin of a pixie and butterfly wings, or something else?
Unlike your typical fairy creature, you won't be Tiny. The fairy race is size Small. The following are other notable racial traits. Not all of the fairy's traits are represented below.
Fairy Magic. Fairies are magical by nature. At 1st level, you know the druidcraft cantrip. As you level, you'll pick up two additional spells, faerie fire and enlarge/reduce. You can cast one of these spells for free once per long rest. If you have spell slots of the appropriate level, you can use them to cast either of these spells.
When you select the fairy race for your character, you'll choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Flight. Your wings aren't just for show. You have a flying speed that is equal to your walking speed. Like the aarakocra, you can't fly if you're wearing medium or heavy armor.
What about ability score increases?
When you create a harengon or fairy using the rules found in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, you can choose to increase one ability score by 2 and another by 1, or choose to increase three different scores by 1.
A fairy's outlook on life
Fairies are as unique as the fey realm. When deciding how your fairy character might act, you can look to fairy creatures for inspiration:
- Pixie: Kindhearted and naturally curious, pixies can be seen as childlike, but they are wise enough to identify friend from foe. Because they are delicate creatures, pixies prefer to play tricks on enemies rather than face them head-on.
- Quickling: These fast-moving and mischievous fey are temperamental.
- Sprite: Cold and calculating, sprites are natural-born warriors. These fey protect others from evildoers.
Characters that grow up in the Feywild will quickly learn the art of trickery, and that caution is a virtue. Seemingly innocuous requests in the Feywild can be dangerous. Has a kind old woman stopped you on the street and asked for your name? A character from the Material Plane might not bat an eye over such a request. But in the Feywild, you could grant someone power over you by giving them your name. To get a better idea of the unique dangers of the fey realm, check out this article on surviving the Feywild.
Make your fairy character your own
Don't feel obligated to dig through monster descriptions to determine your fairy character's personality. Your character and their backstory is your own. Perhaps your fairy character has insectile legs and is prone to rage whenever they are mistaken for an oversized insect. Or they look similar to a pixie but are mopey like a winter eladrin. The Plane of Faerie is a wild and untamed place, so let your imagine run free!
Building a fairy character
Fairies aren't just mischievous and beautiful to the eye. They can make mighty warriors depending on how you utilize their racial traits. Consider the following as you brainstorm character ideas:
- Fairy Magic lets you be Tiny. If you've always dreamed of being Tiny size, enlarge/reduce will allow you to live out that dream in one-minute increments. Use this spell to get into otherwise inaccessible areas. Alternatively, cast it on the party fighter to boost their damage and more.
- Fairy Magic adds faerie fire to your spell list. Faerie fire is a potent 1st level spell. It grants advantage on attack rolls against creatures who are affected by it and doesn't allow them to benefit from being invisible. But positioning this area-of-effect spell to avoid hitting allies can be tricky in tight quarters. Sorcerers, which don't normally get faerie fire, can apply the Careful Spell Metamagic to avoid affecting allies. Similarly, wizards can apply Sculpt Spell from the School of Evocation subclass.
- Flight is a powerful racial trait. If the aarakocra have taught us anything, it's that having a flying speed at 1st level is a big deal. Need to scale a cliff to retrieve a roc's egg? Fly. Afraid of trapped floor tiles in a dungeon? Fly. Orcs charging at you with greataxes? Fly.
Build your fairy on D&D Beyond
When The Wild Beyond the Witchlight releases, you can purchase the book or just the races and backgrounds in the marketplace and then use D&D Beyond's character builder to explore different builds for your character. Test out different classes for your fairy, adjust their ability scores, and more to bring your new character to life.
More previews from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
The latest D&D adventure doesn't just introduce additional player options, you'll also find new monsters to challenge your players! For longtime fans of the game, you'll even discover some old friends lurking between the covers of this book.
Check out Amy Dallen's interview with Chris Perkins to learn more about The Wild Beyond the Witchlight:
Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn't in the DM's seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he's playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.
I sooo wish the fairy was tiny size. I'd love to make a tiny barfairyan. Also, I'd like to refer to all fairy-barbarian builds as Barfairyan. Can we make that happen?
So, you’re telling me that an ordinary fairy can only be in its normal state for 1 minute a day. Cool, very nice
If this is how its going to be like then I really like this new race.
I wish they had kept the ability to fit through 1 inch gaps, it was such a fun little feature of the fairies. Also upset that their flying went from magic hovering to just... wings...
Well looks like everything unique got stripped away. The harengon looks way better. Just kinda eh now for the fairy.
This is actually quite disappointing. The charm of a fairy race PC was its (albeit sometimes game-breaking) size. This new race feels more like an aarakocra-high elf hybrid that will certainly be brushed off by my players for the former two. Ah well, I guess balancing this one had the opposite intended effect.
The post says that not every trait is listed.
Fairies are going to be small instead of tiny? I'll pretend it's Tiny to save this race from being dead on arrival.
Flight at 1st level is problematic. And considering some classes get access into double digits, it seems somewhat oddly powerful in comparison.
Wah wah wah, it's not tiny despite nothing indicating it would be. I know the article mentions Sprites, quickings and pixies for inspiration- they are not what this race is. This is not the pixies race, it's not the sprite race.
Now, onto the actual important stuff... the way the Racial spells are being handled is interesting and worrisome? Both the ability to choose your spellcasting ability, AND the ability to use your spell slots, is more than any other race with spells has had (looking at you, Tiefling). If this is the new trend, will it make those old races either irrelevant or less appealing?
I'm hoping they'll give us a Tasha's Cauldron style customisable origin retcon for other races in future, i.e- if your race grants you access to spells, you can choose which mental ability to use for spellcasting and can use your own spell slots to cast with.
Unless it's intended to be specifically a benefit of the faeries? i.e- they are more specifically creatures of magic?
I don't get all the complaining about not being Tiny; while I did like the squeeze through one inch gaps compromise that was in the UA (and am hoping that's still in but not mentioned) that's something you could easily discuss with your DM, as they're the one who has to try and somehow account for it (same as with flight). Players really need to put themselves in their DM's shoes more and think "how the hell do I create a challenging environment when one of the players can squeeze through any gap or fly to bypass everything?"
i feel more so the racial flying thing is more of an issue because the dms don't wanna take it into account and don't imbrace it cuz they feel they are suppose to be dm vs player which is not the nature of the relationship between the 2
Flight at 1st lvl is not an issue, considering the armor issues. Sure the orc with a greataxe can't hit you. Until he picks something up and throws it at you, considering your ac AT BEST at level 1 with standard equipment and abilities is gonna be like 14 or 15. Not hard to hit at all. Flying over traps? Cool. Until you realize that the brittle fairy just left their entire party behind. Classes get flight later on, sometimes in double digits? Yep. And have no weight or armor restrictions at all. I had an aarakokra cleric and trust me, the flight wasn't nearly as game breaking as it seems.
I like the UA version much better. Where do I go to vote on UA things? Whoever is doing it now is garbage...
I love it! We can finally be a fairy! Yay!
If I were to use them for one of my campaigns, I would modify em' a little bit. The first change: I'd make it so they have a +2 to Dex and a +1 to another score of their choice. The second: they can't fly if their equipment+their own weight exceeds their carrying capacity. While more of a challenge for Aarakocra, this would make flight a little less OP. It always says "the ability to fly from level 1 is incredibly powerful in some situations and incredibly useless in others, but really that's not true. It's OP unless you're actually underwater or inside a gelatinous cube.
Here's my sample fairy character: Defirk Bomber. A fairy pyromancer that appears like a little garden gnome with metal wings and metallic hair, he's an artificer artillerist who rides his eldritch cannons around the battlefield and likes flamethrowers. Banished by his fellows for his obsession with destruction, you'd expect him to be "just another tragic backstory", "too emo", etc., but he's the happiest little pyromaniac you'll ever meet and can't wait for you to try his flamethrower-cooked cookies (they're a little burnt, but whatever!)
I'm really glad to hear this! It makes me feel more reassured about playing/DMing for flying players.
I semi-agree with this, and would place a few nerfs on my player's fairies. That being said, kobolds are size small too, and they can be like... 1 and a half feet tall. So you can make tiny fairies if you really want. I know you guys weren't complaining, this just seemed like a good place to put that.
About the spellcasting, being able to choose your spellcasting ability is something the Hexblood already got.
Granted, Hex doesn't care about your spell save dc, but Disguise self does if a creature tries to see though it.
Hee hee. Barfairyan.
Like to point out, the fairy in UA was Small, it had a Fey Passage (one-inch spaces passage) ability - but that might still be in the book. It also didn't have enlarge/reduce. The article makes it seem like the wings are part of the flight, but it doesn't seem to quote the book.
I hope the Fey Characteristics table is still in the book, in one form or another.
Fey Characteristics
d8| Characteristic
1. You have small wings like those of an insect.
2. You have shimmering, multicolored skin.
3. You have exceptionally large ears.
4. A constant, glittering mist surrounds you.
5. You have a small spectral horn on your
forehead, like a little unicorn horn.
6. Your hands never look dirty.
7. You smell like fresh brownies.
8. A noticeable, harmless chill surrounds you.
Also wish the Hobgoblin of the Feywild was in the book.
Whelp, looks like i can see whats getting perma banned at my table.