You are a tiny, mischievous sprite. The big people call you the Fair Folk, the Gentry, Little People or faeries. You live in mounds or great hollowed trees in secluded, sacred forests and hillsides. You live to torment or treat the larger races if they stumble into your territory. Little children dream of finding you but those who do may regret it. Sometimes kind and helpful, at other times known to play mischief (or worse) upon mortals, their actions, taboos, and customs can seem inscrutable and confusing.
Faeries are generally social and gregarious creatures. Faeries that join together in a confederacy are called trooping faeries, those that do not are known as solitary faeries. Trooping faeries are further divided by their morals and supernatural characteristics into the benign Seelie Court and the malevolent Unseelie Court. The courts are public places to hear grievances, make decisions, and celebrate.
Trooping faeries live communally under mounds or hills, or in Elfland itself. Their social structure closely imitates that of humans with nobles, gentry and servants. All faeries love making music and dancing, even the evil ones, and all troopers enjoy rades (ritualistic processions). Faeries often interact with humans, and many have human ancestry, just as many humans unknowingly have faerie blood in their lineage.
The Seelie Court is filled with the sort of entities that most have heard in fairy tales. The aristocratic caste of Seelie are typically enchanting and beautiful beyond measure. Mortals that set eyes upon them usually fall deeply in love. The Seelie faeries are generally honorable and, while unpredictable to a mortal’s sense, tend to defend their homes, the natural world and the otherworld around them.
The Unseelie Court abhor the mortal realm. They seek to harm humans, and delight in bringing woe to all that cross their path. Some are spirits of the restless dead, intent to wreak even more unhappiness from beyond the grave. Unseelie faeries are ugly, malicious, and evil. The Seelie may see responsibility in their magical powers whereas the Unseelie put their passions first and use their power as the ends to every means.
Hit points: A faerie gains 1d4 hit points at each level.
Weapon training: Tiny bows, clubs, daggers, rapiers (treat as a short sword), and spears. Faeries tiny weapons are made from non-ferrous materials like bronze, knapped flint or stone, bone, wood, and, in rare circumstances, mithril. Tiny weapons deal -3d on the dice chain than their humanoid sized counterparts.
they don protective gear, it is usually made of plant materials like tough leaves, bark, or seed/nut hulls.
Alignment: The Fair Folk appear to mortals to be almost exclusively chaotic (and their morals to be capricious and strange), but that is not necessarily the case. Trooping faeries tend more towards lawful and solitary faeries more towards chaotic, but, faeries of any stripe may be of any alignment.
Magic: Faeries are inherently magical beings. More so than humans or elves, they form relationships with natural powers and trade favors amongst themselves. Their spells tend more toward those associated with elemental or fey powers.
Faerie spells are determined randomly like a wizard’s, except they must use the Faerie Spell List below. In addition to known spells, faeries also know the
Glamour and
Invoke Nature's Spirits spells.
Caster level: Caster level is a measurement of an faerie’s power in channeling a spell’s energy. A faerie’s caster level is usually his level as a faerie. For example, a 2nd-level faerie has a caster level of 2.
Night vision: Faeries can see in the dark up to 60’.
Vulnerabilities:Direct contact for even a moment causes an intense burning sensation, and exposure at close distances is painful. A faerie may not wear iron armor nor wield iron weapons. Direct, prolonged contact with iron causes 1 hp of damage per round. Being struck with an iron weapon or implementdie for the next round. Luck may not be used to modify this save. If a faerie is in the vicinity of a large concentration of iron, they have a –2 penalty to attack rolls, skill checks, and spell checks.
Size bonus: Faeries are fast moving and small. Consequently they are harder to hit and evade attacks and area of effect spells better than bigger creatures. Apply the faerie’s size bonus, to their armor class and Reflex saving throws.
Size and Combat: Due to faeries’ small and fragile physiology, combat with man sized opponents is more deadly. Adjust all damage and effect dice from normal and critical table results up one step on the dice chain. Opponents with Mighty Deed class feature may attempt to Giant Strike and substitute their critical table as per the chart below (damage and effects dice from Crit Table G are not adjusted up the die chain as indicated above):
| Deed Die |
Giant Strike Result |
| 3 |
1d3 on Crit Table G |
| 4 |
1d4 on Crit Table G |
| 5 |
1d5 on Crit Table G |
| 6 |
1d6 on Crit Table G |
| 7+ |
1d7 on Crit Table G |
Growth: Faeries may grow to humanoid size for a number of turns equal to their level (gear and equipment also changes size). Whilst man sized, faeries lose their ability to fly and forfeit their stealth bonuses. Their base land speed becomes 30’. Size bonus no longer applies to their AC and Reflex saves, but is instead applied to their Strength score and hit points. At 5th level a faerie may retain humanoid size indefinitely.
Movement: A faerie has a base land movement speed of 10’, as opposed to 30’ for humans. However, faeries rarely walk and instead rely on their wings to move quickly from place to place. Faeries have a base flying speed of 40’. Wearing any sort of armor reduces a faerie’s flying speed to 20’. Medium armor slows a faerie’s flight speed to 10’ and heavy armor renders flight impossible.
Stealth: Faeries are quite good at sneaking and hiding. They receive a bonus to sneaking silently and hiding in shadows depending on their class level. This can be used in the same manner as a thief’s abilities.
Languages: At 1st-level, a faerie automatically knows common, the pixie racial language, and one other language. A faerie knows one additional language for every point of Int modifier. Additional languages are randomly determined as specified below in Languages Known.
Action dice: A faerie’s action dice can be used for attacks or spell checks at any level. At 6th level, a faerie can cast two spells in a single round, the first with a d20 spell check and the second with a d14; or he can make two attacks, the first with a d20 attack roll and the second with a d14; or he may combine an attack with a spell check. Note that the results of mercurial magic supersede the action dice, so a faerie with a particularly high (or low) spell check die from mercurial magic uses that result instead (with his total actions still limited by his level).
Luck: Faeries add their Luck modifier to their size bonus.
Seelie/Unseelie Court: Faerie characters must decide to which band of trooping faeries they align, even if they consider themselves to be solitary. In certain circumstances, this cultural allegiance may change, but not without some sort of genesis (i.e. questing, supernatural forces, etc.) Seelie and Unseelie Court members must roll 1d4+1 times on Seelie Features or Unseelie Features tables below as appropriate.
Faeries at level 0: Faeries are sensitive to iron, are always in their tiny form (with no size bonus, base speed of 10’, and base flying speed of 40’), and have infravision of 60’.
Comments
Author's Notes
Originally from 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac