The Feywild can be an incredibly fun place to explore inDungeons & Dragons, and the Archfey can either be compelling villains or compelling companions for your party. However, they can be a daunting character to take on, especially if you don’t know where to begin.
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The thought of playing a character that people generally assume embodies pure chaos can prove to be more challenging than you might expect, even more so if you start getting into your own head about it. All you really need to do, though, is take some deep breaths, relax, and roll with the dice.
7Fairy Godmother Or Chaotic?
There are two roads you can walk with an Archfey character, and you could, realistically, walk them at the same time. An Archfey can take on a role more similar to Cinderella’s fairy godmother type role or they could be a sheer force of nature who doesn’t leave the chaotic alignment.
Whatever path your Archfey walks, consider how this would affect their interactions with your players. Do they want to grant their every wish or see them succeed? Or are they just here for a good time and want to watch everything set on fire as the party panics and tries to figure out what’s going on?
Maybe, if they grow fond of your party’s antics, they might even intervene just a little bit to try and keep the fun times going or if the party upset them, they’ll intervene to hand oversome totally-not-cursed items.
6Seasonal Considerations
If you’re having a difficult time creating a theme for your Archfey or coming up with a way to group them, considering doing something along the lines of seasonal courts. Spring Archfey can be much lighter in both their color palette and in how they carry themselves, drifting with the breeze but becoming quick to anger or ‘storm’ if things start to go south.
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Summer Archfey can be much more bright and bubbly, though their anger can be intense and burning. Fall on the other hand can be, surprisingly, the more gentle of the Archfey, often mistaken for Spring in the breeze-like way they carry themselves but if you break etiquette their anger can be biting and rushing past hard enough to knock you off your feet.
Winter, on the other hand, can shift between a biting cold and frigid demeanor to something softer and more gentle, though the gentle blanket of warmth that comes with Winter Archfey is never what people expect. Playing with traditional ideas of seasons and the associations of personality with seasons can be a great way to give your Archfey a bit more character while also giving a way for your players to identify them.
5Names Have Power
Classic Archfey and fey-oriented mythology is that you don’t give them your true name under any circumstances because your name allows for them to hold power over you. Of course, determining what a ‘true’ name is can vary, whether it’s your birth name or the name you’ve chosen for yourself.
Realistically, the choice for how to define a character’s true name is up to the DM — whether it’s the name the Bard uses as theirstage name or the name that they use in private. Similarly, an Archfey wouldn’t give out their true name to anyone who asks for it because that creature could exert control over them similarly.
Discovering an Archfey’s true name could prove to be an interesting challenge and goal for your players to discover, whether they’re trying to banish an Archfey from the material plane or they are trying to bring an Archfey under their control, it’s something that you could experiment with.
4Etiquette Above All Else
Another common piece of mythology is that the fey have a strange etiquette that might not quite make sense to humans. you may play around with this idea by introducing it to your players and then seeing if they remember the etiquette lessons when they actually manage to meet an Archfey.
For example, you shouldn’t eat or drink anything they offer you, you never directly tell them thank you, you don’t join them in any dances, but you need to be exceedingly polite. A violation of this etiquette could infuriate the Archfey and, if they’re in the Feywild, could end with some bad news.
However, maybe they run across an Archfey who’s tired of all the etiquette and rules that starts to mess around with the system just long enough for your party to realize that they’re just here for a good time and not necessarily a polite time. It’s a good way to not only add depth to your version of the Feywild and to the Archfey, but to help develop the world as a whole.
3Location-Based Strengths
Depending on where you Archfey is found, they might have nearly as much power or influence over the environment. Obviously, in the Feywild, that’s their home turf — it’s where they’re the most familiar and where they understand how to bend it to their will the best.
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Things are different on the material plane, however, and the same rules of the Feywild do not apply. Regardless of how powerful your Archfey may be, things are going to be different and magic might have a different effect. Perhaps this has ended with an Archfey being stranded in the material plane and needing the help of your party to get back to the Feywild (under the promise of returning the favor one day).
Or this could be a way for your players to deal with a ‘big bad’ Archfey in the Feywild; they have access to lair actions when they’re in the Feywild, but as soon as they set foot on the material plane, they’re suddenly at a severe disadvantage.
2Reskin Archfiend Stat Blocks
If you’re struggling to come up with the stats for your Archfey, consider just using Archfiend stat blocks. They’re likely close enough to what you already need and with a bit of fiddling and adjustment on your part, they should work out perfectly fine.
It doesn’t matter too much if you opt for the stat blocks of creatures like Demon Lords or Archdevils; just look at the stats and tweak them as you will. It’s a lot easier than rolling for every stat, and it should, generally, help to keep things balanced so long as you don’t shift points around too drastically or add in points without removing some from another stat.
You don’t have to use the abilities that come with Archfiends, but it’s not particularly bad idea to play off of them if your Archfey does end up in a fight or two. Pulling your stats fromcampaign modules or other sourcesoutside of Wizards of the Coast can also help quite a bit.
1Improvise
Don’t be afraid to improvisewhen you’re playing around with Archfey, whether it’s at the table or away from it. If you really lean into the chaotic nature of an Archfey, things don’t have to make sense and can change at the drop of a hat simply because the Archfey in question was bored.
You don’t have to keep track of all the information that you throw out and into the wild because the Archfey certainly isn’t keeping track of it. Was their hair red a session ago? They certainly don’t remember and neither should you because it’s been blue the entire time.
Archfey can be really fun to play around with as a Dungeon Master and you really should lean into it without worrying too much about keeping track of the finer details.
