04-17-2018, 06:22 PM | #1 |
Ceci n'est pas une tag.
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Vancouver, WA (Portland Metro)
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D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
As I continue "datamining" 4e, I came across the Fey Pact for warlocks. In wiki-walking through the Forgotten Realms wikia, I found that Lurue (unicorn goddess of good fey beasts) is an Archfey in 4e.
It got me wondering: Is there a list of fey and dark fey races? (E.g., centaurs, pegasi, satyrs, fomorians) How about Archfey in 4e products? (Even vestiges, for binder pacts...) And there's mention of the Summer and Winter Courts (found on wikipedia), is there some article or supplement that fleshes them out?
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04-17-2018, 06:49 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
D&D 4th edition isn't terribly big on the worldbuilding stuff, but they tend towards fairly generic, which means the summer court is generally associated with light, life, warmth, the winter with darkness, death, and cold. The fey classification is a bit odd, there are a number of creatures that plausibly could be called fey but aren't, and it's actually odd to call dryads and satyrs fey, since they're from Greek myth (hags and pixies are proper fey).
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04-18-2018, 08:28 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
Why does being Greek in origin disqualify them from being fey? It's hardly defined in D&D as being "creatures of celtic origin".
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04-19-2018, 04:38 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
Defining fae is really half the battle - the original legends aren't clear on what they were, so pretty much anything can go in the bag. Greek origin should by no means be a bar to fae classification - although you'd have to decide what the jurisdiction of the fae courts looks like (is it global or local, if global what meaning to "summer" and "winter" have to fae dwelling at the equator). Pretty much every culture has fae like things - the Scandinavian "trolls" seem very similar, as do a large number of Japanese yokai, various Russian critters like dormovoi and kikimora and and countless things in other places that I don't know the names of. You could even argue the Roman penates to be fae like.
D&D's other problem with fae is that they have good and evil ones ... blue and orange would be more likely. Likewise tagging them as inherently chaotic when they were famously rule bound... |
04-19-2018, 06:15 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
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Now, if you want one of those settings where reality is mutable by belief, then your fae might be the ultimate expression of that kind of magic, and would in fact take on whatever forms and attributes were required of them by modern human legend. They are exactly what enough people think they are. |
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04-19-2018, 07:42 AM | #6 | |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
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04-19-2018, 10:50 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
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That's half the problem with the D&D alignment system - it means different things to different people. Hence, as someone said, why the forces of law include everything from a glowing ball of light to a green woman with wings whilst the ultimate expression of chaos is nothing but giant frogs. Chaotic as incomprehensible is fine, so long as that doesn't mean your players expect the fae to be flexible and open minded. |
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04-19-2018, 04:47 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
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04-19-2018, 05:37 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
Depends what you consider in your definition of 'as published'. D&D isn't internally consistent in its handling of alignment.
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04-19-2018, 06:54 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: D&D 4e: Fey races and Archfey? Summer & Winter Court?
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Within a given edition, do you have any examples of inconsistency? I don't recall any, but I'm hardly encyclopedic on the subject. |
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