Author: Xenken
This post is to provide a brief update to our recently published Race and Lineage Guide with the release of two new races in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight adventure. The full guide above has already been updated, this post is for anyone who has read the above guide already and just wants to read about the new stuff.
Fey Typing
This prevents you from being targeted by things that target humanoids and lets you be targeted by things that target fey. This tends to favor you greatly, as many monsters have designs resting on the assumption that parties are made up out of humanoids. Take spells, for example. Charm person, hold person, and dominate person, which you are now immune to, are featured in around 80 NPC spell lists. Meanwhile, things you’re now vulnerable to, like forbiddance, hallow, and protection from evil and good, are only found in nine, eight of whom are adventure specific. Monster abilities that aren’t spells are similar, with fey being immune to several iconic monster attacks such as Vampire Charms and Ghost Possessions while gaining almost no extra vulnerabilities in return, an ability made even better by the high level of danger posed by most of these abilities. Be sure to mind the party’s Paladin since both the Oath of Ancients and Oath of Watchers have fey turning area of effect abilities that can’t avoid allies.
Tiefling (Winged), Fairy, Aarakocra (★★★★★)
These races are an extremely powerful option. Flight is amazing because on a fundamental level, almost every encounter in Tier 1 and 2 skews heavily towards grounded enemies with big melee damage, and the ability to just ignore them completely at any time for free is very good. Even when monsters have ranged attacks, they often do twice as much damage in melee regardless.
Then there are the numerous powerful tactics flight opens up, like grappling or casting thorn whip while flying to drop people for damage and an automatic prone, immunity to difficult terrain and ground-locked area of effect spells or abilities (including your own), the powerful exploration benefits unavailable to grounded characters, the universal helpfulness of three-dimensional movement as an aid in positioning, and the borderline degenerate play of flying a little bit ahead with a longbow or firebolt and kiting things for free. Dealing with flying player characters in a published adventure can require significant overhauls by the DM to make encounters challenging, which is a surefire sign of how powerful it can be.
Winged Tieflings, unlike either Fairies or Aaracokra, can use their wings in medium armor. That combined with their Darkvision and resistance to fire damage, which is the most common form of elemental damage, means they’re generally the best of the three on account of being the most well rounded and having the least opportunity cost. Fairies instead gain small size, immunities from their fey typing, and a useful but not amazing casting suite in the form of druidcraft, 1/day faerie fire, and 1/day enlarge/reduce. Aarakocra make up for their lack of other useful traits with the highest base racial speed in the game (though not quite the fastest movement, as we’ll see later). 50 feet would be impressive even as a ground speed, but when combined with flight it really pushes their mobility into a league of their own. Either way, flight is the one racial feature that your DM will have to think about in every encounter they ever run, and for that it’ll always be powerful.
Harengon (★★★☆☆)
Rabbit Hop negates opportunity attacks and can allow the Harengon to leave difficult terrain from a standing start. These are nice benefits, although proficiency bonus uses per long rest isn’t many, and the bonus action is a high cost compared to most racial movement features. Lucky Footwork’s d4 bonus to Dexterity saving throws can situationally be quite good, but it comes at a high cost. Reactions are quite valuable, especially when they could be used for something like absorb elements instead. Note also that you can’t use this feature if you’re prone, a fairly common scenario for characters that aren’t in melee range of their opponents. Small size is quite good, as usual.
The race’s best feature by far is their bonus to initiative, which amounts to extra turns and the ability to reposition before enemies act. Said boost is limited by its lack of scale at earlier levels, but it can still be easily taken advantage of. Using proficiency to determine this bonus has a couple of side effects for Bards and Rogues. The former only gets half the benefit of the Harengon feature (because Jack of All Trades no longer applies) and the latter can eventually apply Reliable Talent to set a floor on their initiative.
