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Today we are going to take a look at what is perhaps my favorite group of monsters: Fey. They are able to be both allies and enemies, and could even oscillate between the two. Fey and their home plane of the Feywild offer a truly classic fantasy experience. Let’s step into the Feywild and see what horrors await us — just don’t try the food! 

You can check out previous articles in this series where I cover: Elementals, Constructs, Aberrations, Beasts, and Celestials.

Fey as Monsters of the Week

Boggle CR ⅛

Boggles are little fey that creep and lurk under beds waiting to frighten people and cause all kinds of mischief. Clearing an infestation of boggles could be a great way for the party to gain the trust of a local wizard, or they can be employed by a Fey Lord to act as advance scouts or as cannon fodder. The boggle has the ability to create a dimensional rift, and create oily secretions from their skin. These (upsetting) abilities can be used to infiltrate someplace and retrieve an item that their master desires, or plant some incriminating piece of evidence.

Blink Dog CR ¼

Blink dogs are able to flash in and out of existence, teleporting around the battlefield. These fey are often sought out as mounts by small-sized players and can be employed against them to great effect. Mount them with some gnomish archers and spellcasters and you have a highly mobile attack force that can harass the party, going in to attack squishy characters and avoiding the more tanky characters.

Sprite CR ¼

Sprites, and their cousins the Pixies, are often summoned by players, but they can make interesting monsters of the week, either enlisting the party’s help or fighting against them to protect their territory. Sprites will do whatever it takes to protect their villages and forests. The party may need to negotiate with them for safe passage through a forest, or for a guide through a particularly nasty part of the woods. They are also brewers of poisons and could be enlisted by the party to identify what was used in the assassination of an NPC or to acquire a rare poison.

Meenlock CR 2

Meenlocks are horrifying bug-men that I would love to do nothing more than squish with a very large boot. With a fear aura, paralyzing claws, and a teleport, these nasty bois can easily overwhelm a party, especially when combined with other monsters. Meenlocks could be infesting the sewers of a major city, or by creating a nest in a settlement with the intention of tormenting more souls to twist them into even more Meenlocks. 

Fey Big Bad: Hags

The Hag is my favorite kind of big bad, and Night Hags are my favorite kind of hag. They offer not just a big evil meat shield to be smashed, but a truly devious enemy capable of hounding and outplaying the party. Add in a coven and they become truly formidable.

Hags are best played as a big bad if you look beyond their stat block. They can offer a boon to the party at a terrible cost, manipulating the party into working for them. They can negotiate alliances with all kinds of other monster types to fight for their own devious ends. 

Whether it is to stop a plot of a coven kidnapping a child, or perhaps preventing a war that the coven is fomenting, hags offer a ton of variety and challenge for even the most experienced players.

Next week we’ll look at Fiends!

You can check out previous articles in this series where I cover: Elementals, Constructs, Aberrations, Beasts, and Celestials.

Looking for more fey content? Check out our very own Brandes Stoddard’s Fey Gifts & Bargains here! The art for this article is the cover art for that publication.