How would you walk through the world if you could put on a face as easily as you don a coat? If you could adopt the voice, the identity, the authority of the people around you? You might discard these masks easily, or perhaps maintain a selection of fully-developed identities. As a changeling, you may feel freer than other members in your party, and less known.
The changeling species first appeared in fifth edition in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. It was updated in 2022 for Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. The species supports characters who are talented infiltrators, diplomats, and tricksters.
Below, we take a look at their traits and review some recommendations when building a changeling.
- Changeling Traits and Lore
- Best Classes and Subclasses for the Changeling
- Recommended Backgrounds, Feats, and Spells
- Roleplaying as a Changeling
Changeling Traits and Lore

Changelings hail from the Feywild, the land of extreme and fleeting emotion. Many in the Feywild are mercurial and fickle, shifting easily from one mood or opinion—or identity—to the next.
How Shapechanger Works
Changelings can be Small or Medium-sized creatures, and they have the standard 30 feet of movement speed. Their most iconic trait is Shapechanger. It allows them to alter their physical shape almost as easily as other humanoids can adjust their facial expressions.
Some changelings prefer to create whole personas around each of their appearances, while others prefer quick-use visages that they can toss away and forget about when they’ve outlived their use. Your changeling could use a different face for swindling, sneaking, and fighting.
Shapechanging takes only a few seconds, and there is no limit to how many times a changeling can alter their form. Shapechanging can alter your voice, hair length, height, and other similar characteristics, but your game statistics remain the same.
For example, you might be able to adopt the appearance of scales and sharp teeth, but you couldn’t mimic a dragonborn’s Breath Weapon. Importantly, you are limited to your current basic body shape, i.e. bipedal with four limbs. Unfortunately, this means that your espionage plans can’t include shapechanging into the villain’s housecat—but the butler is fair game.
A Species Tailor-Made for Social Encounters
Helpfully, the Changeling Instincts trait provides two additional skill proficiencies from a list tailored to social interactions:
Many changelings select the bard or rogue class (more on that later), which bestow skill proficiencies and expertise. But if you don’t want to play one of those classes, then your Changeling Instincts can still help ensure you’re capable during social encounters.
Fey in More Than Name
Unlike many other D&D species, changelings have the Fey creature type. This can feel like a boon in some moments and an obstacle in others.
For example, you are unaffected by common spells that only target Humanoids, such as calm emotions, crown of madness, and hold person. However, your identity may be revealed by spells such as detect evil and good, and some clerics and paladins will be able to turn you with their Channel Divinity features—although, as you’ll see below, there’s a spell for that.
Best Classes and Subclasses for the Changeling
Changelings are well-suited to an infiltration or social role in the party. If you want to focus on sneaking around castles, stealing valuable artifacts, or assassinating enemies, the rogue class might fit best. If you want to focus on lying through your teeth and using a carefree and confident demeanor to freely enter into a room you shouldn’t be in, or enchant a group of guards, look to the bard class.
However, while both the bard and rogue are excellent choices for the changeling, they aren’t the only options if you want to lean into trickery and subterfuge.
Sorcerers and warlocks can also be great choices for a changeling. Neither class boasts the ability check bonuses of a bard, but using a sorcerer’s Subtle Spell to cast calm emotions could be even more effective than a well-placed lie. A changeling warlock with Eldritch Invocations that allow it to cast disguise self, levitate, and silent image at will could be just as effective for an infiltrator as any bard or rogue.
Our Favorite Subclasses for Changelings
Several subclasses provide unique bonuses that befit a changeling looking to swindle or steal:
- College of Whispers: A College of Whispers bard makes for an excellent saboteur or assassin. When you sneak through the shadows and kill one of the king’s guards, the Mantle of Whispers feature will magically bestow you with some of the guard’s memories, to help you pass yourself off as them. Then, once you’re near the king and it’s time to make your move, the Psychic Blades feature will add psychic damage to your weapon attacks.
- Fey Wanderer: The Fey Wanderer ranger can add their Wisdom modifier to Charisma checks, allowing for otherwise unattainably high bonuses to some of your most frequently used skills. This archetype also adds a bit of extra psychic damage to your weapon attacks, and grants you spells that any sneaky or deceptive character would appreciate.
- Soulknife: Nearly any rogue archetype will treat your changeling well, but the Soulknife is practically tailored to the changeling’s playstyle. Their features are on any changeling rogue’s wishlist: a touch of telepathy, a dash of teleportation, a boost to ability checks, invisibility without requiring concentration, and weapons that disappear without leaving behind any physical evidence.
- Trickery Domain: The Trickery Domain cleric can create illusory duplicates, and gains access to spells like pass without trace and modify memory. If nobody sees you coming, they won’t expect it when you hit them with inflict wounds!
If you have a vision for your character—how you want them to behave in battle, during tense social situations, or as part of a con—then your class and subclass give you the tools to realize that vision. If you’re imagining a psychic assassin, the Soulknife might help you bring that concept to life. But what if what you want for your character can’t be provided by one class or subclass alone? Consider multiclassing.
A changeling College of Eloquence bard multiclassed with Fey Wanderer ranger could convince me that it was nighttime at high noon. A rogue multiclassed with the Champion fighter subclass and two levels in paladin can use their bonus action to Hide, attack an enemy from hiding (granting advantage), land a critical hit on a 19 or 20, add a Divine Smite to the hit, and then use Action Surge to heal themselves or an ally. Multiclassing can help you become a niche expert in a type of combat, or can broaden your character’s horizons and round out their skillset.
Recommended Backgrounds, Feats, and Spells for Changelings

Backgrounds
- Charlatan: If you’re adopting personas left and right, it may be challenging to keep track of all your identities, their documents, and details. Fortunately, the charlatan background grants you proficiency with a disguise kit, forgery kit, and all of the necessary materials to maintain a second identity.
- Courtier: A courtier is a person in a noble court or aristocracy. You traffic in clout, information, and gossip. Use your Shapechange feature to turn into a servant or a tax collector to suss out dirt on your opponents, or learn what motivates them.
- Criminal: Who makes a better thief than someone who steals your wallet with one face and blends into the crowd using another? If you’re inclined to adopt the appearance of a security guard as part of a heist, you may want to take the Criminal background. You gain proficiency with thieves’ tools and in Deception and Stealth. The Criminal Contact feature also connects you to an underground network of other criminals. If you don’t want to play a rogue but do want to be able to sneak around, try out a little crime!
- Faceless: The Faceless background helps you maintain the integrity of an additional identity. The Dual Personalities feature ensures that you have at least one persona that reliably fools people: "Upon donning a disguise and behaving as your persona, you are unidentifiable as your true self." Pick up this background if you’d like a few in-game connections that already know you as a false identity.
- Urchin: The Urchin background helps you expertly navigate around a city. As a changeling, you might be able to adopt a new face and blend into a crowd, but as an adventurer, you’ve probably got a party of friends traveling alongside you! The Urchin’s City Secrets feature will help you quickly lead them through a city’s shortcuts and lesser-known routes. This background also grants proficiency in thieves’ tools, allowing non-rogues an opportunity to sneak and steal.
Feats
If permitted by your Dungeon Master, feats grant your character unique abilities that can radically change how they approach combat, exploration, or roleplay. A good feat either rounds out your character by providing a skillset you feel their build currently lacks, or helps them specialize in a particular playstyle.
- Actor: The Actor feat is practically made for the changeling. It bestows a +1 to Charisma, and it grants you advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Charisma (Performance) checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person. A changeling is much more likely to make these checks than most other characters, so you may find yourself using this feat’s benefit quite often.
- Alert: If you’re going to be sneaking around and lying all the time, you’ll need to watch your back. You might change shape when you think you’re unseen, only for a hidden guard to fire their crossbow bolt at your back. If you have Alert, you cannot be surprised while you are conscious, and other creatures don’t gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being unseen by you. You’re also much more likely to make the first move due to the feat’s +5 bonus to initiative! If your cover gets blown, this feat can keep you alive.
- Mobile: The Mobile feat shines in combat, but it can also keep you alive if you get caught scheming. Your movement speed increases by 10 feet, and you can ignore difficult terrain when you use the Dash action. No standard street guard is going to catch you when you’re running that quickly through a thick crowd! But you might most appreciate the Mobile feat after you roll initiative; if you make a melee attack against a creature, you do not provoke opportunity attacks from them for the rest of the turn.
- Skill Expert: Who doesn’t love doubling their proficiency bonus when making an ability check? The Skill Expert feat provides a little bit of everything: +1 to an ability score, proficiency in one skill, and expertise in another skill. It’s most useful for changelings who didn’t want to play a bard, ranger, or rogue, but still want a high bonus to a critical skill like Deception, Insight, or Perception.
- Telepathic: Telepathy can open many doors that your quick-thinking social skills may not have been able to fake. If a guard asks you for the password to a protected area, simply hop into their mind with detect thoughts, take a peek around, and provide the password. This feat can also radically change the way you coordinate with your allies. Your allies might know that you’re disguising yourself as the target’s bodyguard, but which one? Use your telepathy to tell your party members exactly where you are, or when you intend to act.
Spells
If your changeling is a spellcaster, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to use magic to amplify their trickery. Remember that if a spell you want isn’t available for your class, you may be able to ask a fellow party member for help, or there may be a magic item out there that can allow you to cast it.
- Arcanist’s Magic Aura: What if being recognized as Fey was optional? This spell has the aptly-named Mask effect, which can disguise the way you appear to spells and magical effects that detect creature types. This can even trick powerful spells like symbol or hallow, which enemies may be relying on for protection. How safe would Frodo have been if an orc could have approached without Sting glowing blue? Your targets may find out.
- Dimension Door: Time to run! Dimension door is an excellent spell for getting the heck out of dodge when your cover is blown. Teleport up to 500 feet away, to a place you need not see. When your pursuers catch up, you may be wearing an entirely different face. This spell can also be used for infiltration, perhaps to jump to the other side of a vault door.
- Disguise Self: Shapechanging is useful, but it doesn’t affect your clothes. If you’re wearing elaborate, brightly-colored robes in the middle of a crowd of simply-dressed folk, tweaking your eyebrows and sharpening your cheekbones isn’t going to fool anybody. Sometimes, you need to radically change your appearance, all the way down to the shoes. For that, you’ll need disguise self.
- Pass Without Trace: When it’s time to sneak, you’ll want pass without trace. This spell grants you and any nearby allies a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks, and it lasts for an hour. Compare this to invisibility, which grants advantage to your Stealth check, does not aid your allies, and is broken if you make an attack or cast a spell.
Roleplaying as a Changeling
When playing a changeling, you have an opportunity to explore themes of identity and growth that few other character builds can provide. Who are you, underneath all the masks?
How your character feels about their abilities may be heavily influenced by how they grew up. Someone who grew up stealing their meals with one face and fleeing with another may have a different attitude toward shapechanging than one who has only ever alternated between the same three personas.
If your character cultivates personas methodically and carefully, what does the process of "retiring" one look like? If, conversely, your character prefers to change faces as frequently as clothes, what would it take for them to become attached to one particular personality?
What does inner growth look like, when you can decide what you look like on the outside? When you can adapt your height, your size, your hair, your voice, how do you adapt to criticism about things that aren’t as easily changed, like the way you communicate?
Your character might be used to maintaining different circles of friends for each of their distinct personalities. How does that affect your party dynamics? If maintaining one identity around so many varying people is not something you’re used to, how is it making your character feel?
Building Your Own Changeling
There’s no wrong way to approach building your character. You can start with a sense of what role you want your character to play in the party, what city or culture you want them to hail from, or you may want to try out a specific mechanical build. Follow your gut, and play what feels fun.
When you’re ready to roll some dice, jump into the D&D Beyond character builder and get started!

Damen Cook (@damen_joseph) is a lifelong fantasy reader, writer, and gamer. If he woke up tomorrow in Faerûn, he would bolt through the nearest fey crossing and drink from every stream and eat fruit from every tree in the Feywild until he found that sweet, sweet wild magic.
Completely undercuts the lore of changelings that their one big defining feature is countered with no save by a first level, highly accessible spell. The original version may have been restricted to medium sized disguises, but they were humanoids which meant that they actually had the ability to hide from those that would persecute them. And why, pray tell, do changelings have this glaring hole in their identity to prevent the player keeping that secret when the reborn and Dhampir lineage are both humanoid, despite being undead in all but name? I’m more frustrated by the inconsistency than anything if I’m being honest, either rule that players aren’t allowed to keep their characters secrets or that they are, don’t flip flop on it.
Just to clarify: changelings of classic folklore are fey. Changelings of Eberron don't have a clearly defined origin, and while their species could have originated in Thelanis, the plane of fairytales, they also could have easily be descended from doppelgangers or the blessing of the one god who might exist in Eberron, the Traveler.
I took Arcanist's Magic Aura on my Changeling Wizard because he's afraid of people finding out he's Fey. I even wasted a spell slot for 30 in game days to make the effect permanent.
It has never been relevant.
I've been playing a Changeling Soulknife Rogue for a long time. His most common disguise is as a foppish merchant who happens to be the grandson of Lord Arunsun.
Two magic items can help with the Changeling as well. Glamoured Studded Leather can change into any outfit. Cloak of Many Fashions can likewise change into the appearance of any cloak.
Changeling Moon Druid. Master Shapeshifter.
Everyone is using campfires or indoor firepits = everyone smells of smoke, tar, food and sweat (if you'd been to a medieval house/village you'd know) . Unless you have a special sense, or frequently use perfume, I don't think smell is a big deal. It might be cool to have dogs and other animals react to a changeling or doppelganger though :)
Remember when "everyone" used to smoke cigarettes everywhere, and when it got banned, everything started to smell? As the toxic fumes left people , clothes and walls, we started noticing smells again. Now when someone down the street lights a cigarette you can tell.
Doppelgangers can also mimic thoughts, so they are next level, and bodyguards also have spell slots and spell duration to worry about.
lastly, it's not illegal to be a shapeshifter, unless they are using it for crimes.
just some random thoughts to add to your mix XD
I just started playing a changeling and decided to go totally against stereotypes. My character is a guild artisan who works as a tailor. Her habit has been to put on a new face, find a job, and then live as that person for months or even years before switching things up and moving on to the next city and next job. She was as boring and ordinary as an average working person can be until she found herself in a pact with an Archfey nobleman. Now she has to go out adventuring to practice all these new magical things the Archfey is teaching her so she can serve his interests someday. She's in way over her head and, frankly, terrified of this new life of hers. The party members (and most of the players) don't yet know she's a changeling - and they also think she's a man.
As a tailor, she made most of her clothing reversible and added design elements that would accommodate changing size. However, our DM very kindly allowed her a set of glamoured studded leather armor, so changing the appearance of her clothing is now a lot easier.
In my experience, playing a changeling in a D&D group is often a difficult experience. The main problem is that their abilities are better suited for solo games - they can infiltrate into a society or a group of enemies without being discovered, develop new identities, and do a lot of fun stuff, but this will always involve only yourself, leaving the other PCs waiting in another room. In a Play-by-post game, this can work better, but it still requires more resources from the DM. I've played at least four changelings characters, and this is my overall feeling. I'd also recommend making the other players be aware of the fact that you can change your appearance, and work together to find ingenious ways to take advantage of it, rather than hiding if from them.
Here are a few fun moments I have had with my changeling characters:
Changelings are my favorite species to play. Unfortunately, changeling doesn't fit all campaigns. I've made some changelings in some campaigns that didn't delve into the social interactions as other campaigns would, so it felt like the character was wasted. But they are still very dear to me and when I get to play one and use their perks, it makes the game so much more enjoyable.
Now with Eldritch Adept feat available, you can get Mask of Many Faces instead.
The major issue I've always had with changelings is that for 95% of the cases, unless your campaign is designed for the changeling to thrive, alter self and disguise self will satisfy the trickery needed.
The only real advantage is that changelings:
- Can touch people without giving away the disguise, unlike disguise self
- Do not need to concentrate, unlike alter self
- Doesn't require access to spellcasting, but most (sub)classes that mix well with the changeling have access to said spells.
I feel like at least they could have given them darkvision in all shapes or some secondary minor racial effect aside from shapechanger.
My Changeling is a teenager who was raised in an Elven orphanage then adopted by half-elven investigators. He's never met another Changeling & doesn't do (or even know about) the multiple persona things. I mostly play him as a single identity which is a half-elf that looks pretty similar to his true form. He'll do Shapechanging mainly for pulling pranks or if he needs to do something possible a bit illegal (don't tell his parents).
He's also a Wizard with a 7 Charisma so the whole passing himself off as someone else if iffy at best even when my DM kindly gives me advantage on my checks. I could have just taken Alter-Self for the few times I needed to infiltrate, but it's a lot of fun just using Shapechanging from an RP standpoint and every now and again it comes in handy. I don't think races in D&D really offer that much in terms of game-breaking mechanics, so this is one area where I don't usually care about optimization.
Encounter of the Week? *puppy dog eyes*
Decent article but it would've been nice if they paid a little more homage to Eberron for pioneering playable changelings and how their culture and origins differ there, and in other settings.
Mechanically, Changelings could use just an Eensy bit more... OOMPH, maybe being able to change to mimic 'small' creatures or something in that vein?
Interesting take on this race
Not, you are not, they are valid points that I'm going to take into consideration when I play my Changelling sorcerer/thief.
I hope my DM don´t read your comment, he will make a hell of a campaign for me. XD