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I plan on being a fairy who came from the Feywild to the Material Plane via fey crossings, and there are some things that are good about this, and some that are bad.

For starters, I've noticed that the 3 spells with "person" in the name (hold person, charm person, and dominate person) don't affect me, in addition to calm emotions. However, as I am native to the Feywild, I am affected by things like banishment, banishing smite, anything with "evil and good" in the name (dispel evil and good, protection from evil and good, detect evil and good, etc), and a few other things.

Do the spell immunities balance out the vulnerabilities? Do those tradeoffs make fey characters balanced when compared to the other playable races?

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    \$\begingroup\$ I tried my hand at reframing the question, to hopefully make it less opinion-based. Worst case, this could stay closed as too broad, but I think this framing should at least grant room for non-opinion-based answers. \$\endgroup\$
    – Matthieu
    Commented Sep 3 at 14:08
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Matthieu thank you for the help with editing the question. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tasi
    Commented Sep 3 at 14:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ It's impossible to evaluate "fey in general". You could perhaps try to figure out if "fey" is a net positive or negative overall (indicating whether the other racial features should be stronger or weaker to compensate), but the entire set of racial features, as a whole, is what has to be balanced. If you want a more unambiguously positive creature type, Spelljammer offers races with the Construct, Ooze, and Monstrosity types, all of which provide the protections of being non-Humanoid, with few or no negatives in terms of added vulnerabilities that Humanoids lack. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Sep 3 at 14:43
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Tasi I am not sure that comparing to other playable races would bring any further helpful information to this questions. If you just ask: "Do the spell immunities balance out the vulnerabilities?", that would be answerable. There are two quite separate things being asked in your question at the moment because you then ask to compare that part of the question to all other playable races (of which there are, a lot). \$\endgroup\$
    – Senmurv
    Commented Sep 4 at 6:44
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    \$\begingroup\$ I'm reminded of a question I asked here ages ago, I'll leave it as a "related question": What are the mechanical consequences of a Centaur's Fey trait? \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Commented Sep 4 at 22:18

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This depends on your campaign/DM

To be honest, this seems like a question that can all too easily become purely opinion based, so I will try to focus only on my experience in playing a Fairy (Specifically the Fairy race from Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse), and how it felt playing a fae alongside mostly humanoid companions.

As a preface: the campaign I play a Fairy in is set in a homebrewed setting, and as such the DM has and does take my Fairy features into account when planning encounters and such.

Generally, there's no balance difference, but flight can be dangerous

On the whole, outside of debating whether the spell immunities/vulnerabilities play into it, as NotArch has so aptly put it all officially published races tend to be balanced, or at least not so unbalanced that you will feel obviously behind any other player for playing a certain race.

However, something I feel that may have been ignored is how the Fairy race has access to a fly speed. A 30ft. fly speed can certainly make some challenges trivial for you where your other players may struggle. This is especially true in low level campaigns, and/or settings with few magic items.

As an example, in the early stages of my campaign the party came across a fast flowing river, 60ft. across, with a key on the other side we needed to progress. Given we were only 2nd level, without my character's ability to fly this would have certainly been a very challenging feat.

Of course, there are non-fae races which have a fly speed, but these are already considered quite powerful. Just a grain of salt to take with playing a Fairy specifically, as you seem intent on.

The spell changes balance out, so long as your DM isn't cruel

While it's true that some PC features can cause you some grief as a fey (Ancients Paladin's Turn the Faithless comes to mind), from my experience there are so few spells that actually impact you that the chances of encountering an NPC with access so any of those spells is minimal. This, of course, varies by setting, and a particularly cruel DM can simply throw a ton of fey-hunting rangers or other such threat at you if they want to make a point of your character being non-humanoid.

In my campaign, we have fought against hostile mages on occasion, some of which carried hold person, but since I was playing a high-wisdom character anyway it was unlikely I would have been the target of those spells regardless, and then even if I were targeted I had a high chance of succeeding the save, so being immune to the spell did not have a huge impact. We have also fought against spellcasters with protection from evil and good, but in those cases this just meant I focused my efforts on other aspects of the fight, like attacking other creatures, or in my case specifically healing/supporting the other party members. Thus, on both sides of the spell differences I found it really didn't impact my power level in combat. I can't speak too much for out of combat, however.

Overall, I would say there's no real balance issue here, excepting of course the fly speed, which is something you should check with your DM about anyway (A thoroughly overused saying on this SE, as I understand, but nonetheless the best advice here). Happy Fairy-ing!

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks for the help with this based on your experience! A quick note about hold person, if you had been targeted by the hold person as a fairy, it would immediately fail, as it only works on humanoids \$\endgroup\$
    – Tasi
    Commented Sep 12 at 14:54
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Tasi Yes, I did know this, my point being that If I weren't a fairy character I wouldn't have been impacted massively in that example. Sorry if that wasn't clear, I will edit to reflect. \$\endgroup\$
    – Hythonwolf
    Commented Sep 12 at 15:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ Oh, sorry if I came off as rude or condescending \$\endgroup\$
    – Tasi
    Commented Sep 12 at 18:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Tasi Oh not at all! I've made a small edit to hopefully make it clearer, I could see how the confusion came across haha \$\endgroup\$
    – Hythonwolf
    Commented Sep 13 at 7:15
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We can't tell you this

A question of balance is more an issue for 3rd party races and not so much officially published races. While there may be opinion about what race may be 'stronger' or 'better' for any given build specifics, the general take-away is that the WoTC provides balanced options for players.

That doesn't mean that the choices are equal - just generally balanced. You're going to have to look at specific pros and cons of the races you are deciding between and then make a decision as to what you're willing to give up for what you get. The same as any risk analysis or build decision.

In your case, you seem fairly invested in this fairy idea and I'm not sure why you want to pull away at this point after all the questions you've asked for your build. It's totally fine to switch it up before your first session, but the thoughts you're having are really best discussed with your DM and not strangers on the internet. They know the game they're developing, they know you, and they know the group.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ And this is probably the worst time to ask too, because the session is later today \$\endgroup\$
    – Tasi
    Commented Sep 4 at 12:49

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