When it comes to Dungeons and Dragons expansions, fans generally have to wait a while between installations. Wizards of the Coast can’t exactly make a well-balanced book with several hundred pages of new Dungeons and Dragons content every month. Fans are willing to tough out the long waits between expansions, as they’re certainly worth the wait. Books like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything add fantastic spells and subclasses for fans to play with, and others like Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes gives DMs some fantastic new monsters to flesh out their worlds.
However, Wizards of the Coast doesn’t just give fans new content via books. There’s also the fairly regular stream of Unearthed Arcana. The Unearthed Arcana system makes unfinished Dungeons and Dragons content available for public testing. It’s a great way for Wizards of the Coast to get player feedback on its plans, while also teasing future expansions.
The newest piece of Unearthed Arcana is called Folk of the Feywild. It introduces four unique races meant to represent the diverse peoples of the Feywild, some of which haven’t been addressed in previous books whatsoever. The Folk of the Feywild Unearthed Arcana not only indicates that Wizards of the Coast is getting bolder in player race design, but also that it’s probably planning a Feywild sourcebook.
There’s four races in the Folk of the Feywild Unearthed Arcana: the Fairy, the Hobgoblin of the Feywild, the Owlfolk, and the Rabbitfolk. Each race plays very differently and they generally play into the Feywild’s themes of nature, magic, and whimsy in their own ways. Fairies are Small creatures with a hovering fly speed, a couple spare spells, and the ability to slip through tiny spaces. The Hobgoblin of the Feywild is largely built around unique ways of buffing the Help action, alongside other benefits. On top of flying, Owlfolk are stealthy and good at seeing magic. Rabbitfolk are fast and nimble, coming with benefits like a bonus to initiative rolls and a knack for jumping.
Fans can take quite a few things away from these new races. For one thing, it sounds like Wizards is less scared of Dungeons and Dragons races with a flying speed. Flying speeds are really strong, since players can just hover above enemies. It looks like Wizards is interested in trying to give players flying speeds while balancing other interesting abilities around them. The Dungeons and Dragons developers also seem to want more races to have unique mechanics. Not many abilities in the game overall interact with things like initiative rolls or the Help action. Wizards of the Coast seem determined to make the Folk of the Feywild stand out.
Beyond the implications of race design, the Folk of the Feywild clearly mean something for the next Dungeons and Dragons sourcebook. The vast majority of content published in Dungeons and Dragons expansions started out in Unearthed Arcana, so a very Fey-specific expansion seems to mean that Wizards wants to publish a Feywild book. That could appear in a few different ways. It could mean a Ravnica-esque book focused on the Feywild, offering an extra subclass or two, new stat blocks based on the Feywild, and more resources for setting campaigns in this plane.
There’s a fair few good options for subclasses based around the Feywild. For instance, there isn’t a Sorcerer subclass focused specifically on drawing magic innately from the Feywild. A Feytouched Sorcerer seems like a shoe-in for this kind of expansion, bringing magic based on teleportation, charms, nature, or any of the Feywild’s other themes. There’s also options for a more unorthodox Feywild subclass, like something for a Fighter or a Monk. A Way of the Fey Monk whose soul is in tune with the innate magic of the plane would certainly make for a memorable addition.
A Feywild sourcebook would almost surely add some noteworthy new monsters to Dungeons and Dragons. It’s worth noting that there aren’t a ton of Fey stat blocks in Dungeons and Dragons published content so far. There’s room for a lot of expansion here, playing into the realm’s themes of the Seelie and Unseelie Fey. Good and evil Fey alike would be valuable additions to all kinds of adventures, even those not set in their home plane. It’d be great to see official stat block for the most powerful denizens of the Feywild too, much like how Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes provided some excellent final bosses in the form of several ruling demons and devils.
A sourcebook akin to Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft wouldn’t be surprising. After all, it was foretold by an Unearthed Arcana revealing some Gothic races. Maybe there’ll soon be a sourcebook akin to the Ravenloft guide, providing adventures in the setting supplemented with some other content. A Fey expansion deserves to be more expansive, though, considering how little attention the Feywild has gotten so far. Fans would benefit from seeing things like rare spells, magic items, and so on introduced on top of Fey-themed races and subclasses.
There’s always the chance that the Folk of the Feywild Unearthed Arcana falls into ignominy. There’s a few subclasses like the Psionic Wizard and classes like the Mystic that have yet to reappear after Wizards put them out for players to test. It’s unfortunate, but not everything can make it past the drawing board right away.
Wizards of the Coast is wise to put content like these classes and races out for players to test so that it can get a good sense on how its newest ideas will affect Dungeons and Dragons as a whole. Hopefully the Folk of the Feywild make it into an official expansion someday. They’re unique races that benefit lots of unique builds and playstyles. The best way Wizards of the Coast could improve on them is by publishing them alongside more material that fleshes out the Feywild.
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