The Wee Folk

Pixie stats are up, ready for you to use under the assumption that you are not entirely reliant on Character Builder. The ability score spread came out as expected–though I could also have seen Wisdom instead of Intelligence, if for no other reason than to make them good at primal classes–but I had assumed that since 3rd Edition pixies were Small that they would follow suit, but these guys are literally Tiny. As we had been told, they can fly but have an altitude limit of 1, get a racial bonus to Nature and Stealth, can “communicate with natural and fey beasts”, have a reach of 1 instead of 0, take a -5 to break things, and get two racial powers; pixie dust and shrink.

Pixie dust lets them channel some Peter Pan, allowing one ally within 5 squares to fly as a free action (happy thoughts are optional). It is a nice little leader-type ability, though it takes a Move action to use. On the other hand, shrink seems to be best suited for allowing a pixie to arm herself with whatever loot the party finds, without having to fallback to a ritual in order to get it properly sized…or have the DM start populating dungeons with Tiny magic items. However, since it works on any unattended object “sized for a Medium or Small creature”, it will be fun to see what types of creative uses the players will come up with. If the pixie is not carrying it around, the effect wears off during the next extended rest, but that is plenty of time for a pixie to sneak around and shrink the bad guy’s weapons, armor, and/or plot devices.

This is a nifty looking experimental race in that it is both Tiny and can fly right out of the gate. There is a 30+ thread on the forums where people are “discussing” whether or not it is too good, and while the pixie can simply fly over difficult terrain, and avoid some traps and hazards, I really do not see how it would be game breaking. Unless of course none of your encounters feature monsters with ranged attacks, and there are lots of terrain features that they can safely perch on. However looking back on my rendition of Keep on the Shadowfell, the pixie’s flight would not have kept in safe in any encounter, even the ones without artillery. At best it would have been able to avoid the difficult terrain (not that other characters cannot simply walk around).

My Friday grouped joked about trying out an all pixie party for a delve-night, and if we do go through with it I somehow doubt that it is going to be remarkably easier.

Rule-of-Three: Pixies

In addition to Totem Expertise and Two-Handed Weapon Expertise, the other content tidbit from Heroes of the Feywild is that pixies will have a flying cap of 1 square. Reactions and interpretations are varied, with some stating that WotC should have waited for a better solution, and others expecting as such. Others are confused by what a height limitation of 1 square actually means, despite Rules Compendium explicitly stating that it means they can fly one square above the heads of Medium critters. As for myself, I was trying to make a pixie race for Liz because she played on in 3rd Edition, and am actually surprised that one of her balance pitches was exactly this (another was to impose an attack or defense penalty while hovering).

While I am reserving judgement until I actually see and use the final product, I think that being limited to one square off the ground is a pretty good deal; you get to ignore difficult terrain, hazardous terrain, and traps and hazards that trigger on the ground, but basically anything can still go after you in melee. Despite the aerial limitation, they can still fly well above the 1 square-ceiling, they just have to find a safe landing place before their turn ends to avoid falling. While this can make it handy to get to some hard to reach places, I cannot think of many situations where any other character could not do the same thing given another round or two, and a sufficiently high Athletics check. Now there might be more to it then just this, we will just have to wait and see.