Hail Wanderers!

This week I'm popping in to drop off a couple of gifts and give an update on where we're at with Faerie currently!

First of all I have some super high resolution previews of various double page spreads from the book, Conor has been hard at work deciding on layouts, border art, font choices, and a number of other artistic bits and pieces that make sure the final product will look gorgeous when it gets into your hands. These four double page spreads have been mocked up with the current vibe and honestly we're loving it!

Obviously these are just sample pages, not all in the correct order and subject to change but they give a very strong idea of the final product! (also for the eagle eyed amongst you, containing a tiny little taster of the fealty system!)

Next, a gift for the more mechanically minded of you folks. One of our Stretch Goals for the campaign was the Magic Of Names. Which introduced a new sub-school of magic to Faerie, Naming is particularly important to Faerie folklore so we wanted to make sure we do it justice for the book. Not simply relying on flavor or vibe to put across the implications of Onomancy, there are a couple of rules specific to this category of spells which help them feel ancient and 'different' to some of the more standard 5e spells without bogging down spell descriptions. Below I have the page explaining those rules, as-well as a preview of four of the thirteen upcoming Onomancy spells!

Don't worry about the order of the spells in the preview image, these are just four spells we chose to share to give y'all a real feel for the type of magic you can expect! A particular favorite of mine is Goetia: a spell cast as a reaction to your own spell casting! (Fellow spell slot burners anyone?)

Finally, a bit of a brief update in terms of where we're at! As you can see the book itself is really coming together, most of the actual writing of the book is pretty much finalized at this point (pending proof reading etc!), Conor is also deep into illustration the various art pieces for the book and designing the physical goods too! All this to say, Faerie is getting very close! And as always we just want to reiterate: Faerie is only possible because of you guys, getting to spend our research days with our nose in books on British folklore and designing rad new mechanics based around what we find. We truly have the greatest job in the world and that is all thanks to our wonderful backers & preorder customers!

Okay, enough from me for this week! As always, if y'all have any questions or queries (or just wanna chat!) feel free to hop into our Discord! Or if you need any order related support drop me an email at [email protected]!

Thanks guys!
Aston

Hail Adventurers!

Me again this week, I have come once again to ask for your valuable feedback! This time last month we released Playtest 06: Player Heritage Options, which included two entirely new lineages, a sub-lineage for multiple base-game lineages as well as lineage specific feats for the Hagborn, Etterkin, and Cairndwin! If you missed that just scroll back here a few updates and you'll see it, or you can jump onto our Discord to find all of our playtest files easily accessible! (Plus lots of discussion about them and how our Wonderful community immediately breaks our homebrew!). If you've had chance to playtest any of the lineages or even just have an opinion on their balance, design, or feel then please fill out the survey found Here! It's always a real joy to read through the responses, whether it's just someone telling us they love the vibe or if there's an issue with balance, we love to know what you think.

But this week I do not only come baring surveys and discord links! Conor has mocked up a little look at the art for the Etterkin as well as their lore write up from the book itself. This gives you a little sneakpeak into some design elements that will be making their way into the final book, obviously some elements are subject to change but we're really loving how it's all coming together right now (and honestly, speaking personally Conor has done an Incredible job!)

Honestly, I'm still astounded at the amount of wonderful art Conor is able to consistently pull out! But enough gushing from me for this week! We hope to hear from you in the Survey, Speak to you in the Discord, and See you again in a couple of weeks!

Have a wonderful start to May!
Aston

I hope you are all fairing well and enjoying (for those in the northern hemisphere, apologies to our Australian and Kiwi backers) these early weeks of spring as winter finally thaws and the land wakes up! I wanted to check in and touch on all the tariff craziness going on right now, and what impacts it could have on Faerie; But before we get into that I do also come bearing a much requested piece of the book for your eyes only!

There has been discussion aplenty in our discord (which you should check out if you haven’t already) about the familiars that we will be introducing in Faerie, especially those tied to the Witch and the coven subclasses. I am happy to finally return with an answer to such a request and present all of the relevant creature statblocks, accompanied by their artwork that I have been working on recently, in the backer-only section below!

Of course, these stats are subject to changes before final publishing, but this provides a very close look at just what you can expect to find in the final tome. If you have any feedback on these feel free to comment it below or in the Discord!

Now I would like to take a moment to touch on the turbulence being caused by the current US / China tariff situation. As I am sure many of you are aware, like most small tabletop studios, the physical production of our goods is currently based in China and a large amount of our backers are in the US. Which means we fall firmly within what economist's call the "screwed by the tariffs" category.

I'm not here to worry you or make any declarations, it is still extremely early in this whole fiasco and it seems to be changing on a near daily basis. I am hoping that by the time we have to make any final decisions there will be some resolution to this mess that will allow us to continue with our original fulfilment schedule without any real changes. Regardless of the outcome I'm confident we will figure out how to get everything sorted with minimal impact on you all.

For the moment the only thing to do for most of us is wait and see. If you do happen to be in the US, you actually can help by getting in touch with your local representative via THIS LINK, and letting them know how concerned you are.

That’s all for now! Apologies for ending on a less bright note, but I wanted to make sure we continued to be as open with you as we possibly can, and this is something that really will affect us all as enjoyers and supporters of this hobby. Hopefully the next time I have to mention tariffs it will be accompanied by much better news! 

In the meantime enjoy the familiars, and make sure to bask in the spring sun if you're fortunate enough to see it!

Hail Adventurers!

While going through our Class feedback to tweak and modify the classes for their finalised versions we realised we didn't actually collect feedback for playtest 05, so before we chuck out the survey for the Lineages released last update we're just gonna run our standard survey for the Barbarian and Cleric Subclasses! You can find that specific Survey here! We can't wait to hear what you think of our final Subclasses!

Also we've had a couple of questions about the interactions between the Cleric Dream Domain and its interaction with the 2024 edition of 5e, specifically Channel Divinity: Divine Slumber. While all of our mechanics are pretty much exclusively designed with the 2014 rules in mind we do want as many people to be able to run the Faerie classes as possible, one potential tweak to bring this in line with the 2024 Sleep well is:

As an action, you present your holy symbol, and cast the sleep spell at the highest level you are able to cast, but do not expend a spell slot when doing so. When cast in this way you may subtract half of your cleric level rounded down from each creatures Wisdom saving throw to resist the spell.

This tweak is untested but still provides a scaling buff to the sleep spell in line with the design of the original subclass. If you're primarily a 2024 player we'd love to know what you think of this fix but please don't give that feedback via the above survey as that is for current class balance rather than the adjusted version! If you wanna chat to us or other members of our community about this feel free to hop onto our discord!

As always, I hope you're doing wonderfully and I'll be back in a couple of weeks for the Lineage survey!
Aston