Hello adventurers! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the fourth episode of our elven sub-race series. Today we’re going to be going over another one of the eldrin namely the spring eldrin if you can’t tell already. It is found in mordenkainen’s tome of foes the eladrin are elves that are native to the feywild. A realm of a beauty unpredictable emotion and boundless magic.
The eladrin is associated with one of the four seasons and has a coloration reminiscent of that season which can also affect the eladrin’s mood. In spring’s case it’s described as being the season of cheerfulness and celebration. Marked by a merriment as winter’s sorrow passes. Essentially chaotic good is how it makes it out to be…just a good time.
Now before we move on to its mechanics and eventually it’s personal feystep, i just want to say you’re really going to want to check out the category in its entirety on this one at the very least of the elf article we’ve written, reason being since we’re only going over the sub-race it doesn’t include all the perks you get just for being an elf in general. So do bear that in mind and you can click on the link to go the main article of elf race. With that out of the way let’s now dive right into their mechanics.
Mechanics
As per all of your eladrin brothers you get a +1 to charisma and you gain access to fey step.
Fey Step: As a bonus action, you can magically teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
Essentially it’s just like misty step only gussied up a little bit different with the biggest difference being it’s not a spell it’s just a racial ability. Because of that a lot of things that would commonly forged spells have no effect on you because once again it’s not a spell.
In addition to that you don’t have to worry about petty and frivolous things like components. So if you’re playing in a game where those really do matter then you’re really going to be in a great position here. And misty step in general is one of those spells that most casters take without hesitation it’s just borderline great!
And fey step being based off of it is certainly no exception to that rule. However with every eladrin there is a variation on their fey step and let’s get into the variation for the spring fey step.
Fey Step (Spring):
The spring eladrin is a little unique and leads to some interesting opportunities as a result. Currently we’ve already covered the autumn eladrin as well as the winter. And both of their fey steps are fairly comparable to one another. One imparts the charming condition and the other imparts the frightened condition. The spring is different altogether.
When You Reach 3rd Level: So when you use your fey step, you can touch one willing creature within 5 feet of you. That creature then teleports instead of you, appearing in an unoccupied space of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of you.
This is really interesting. Because depending on how you define the term willing it can get really crazy. So there’s like a little bit background on this in particular. There is like this long standing history of spell casters tricking non-spell casters by asking them like leading questions for example you run into a wizard in the middle of nowhere and you help him out and he’s like “hey man listen…um as thanks for you helping me out, how about i make you a magical animal!”
Right and they’re like “Oh sweet, a magical familiar!” no that sounds great i’d love one of those and then they just cast polymorph on you and turn you into a rabbit and like proceed to just destroy you. You know like there’s always kind of been things like that in dnd and maybe just in the fantasy trope in general.
So you could use that same rational and it applies to this. I suppose, so you could have a conversation with like i don’t know like someone that you’re trying to like assassinate for example. And let’s say you’re in an area with like i don’t know some kind of seperate room like a jail, cell or just another room in general.
And you walk up to put your hand on their shoulder like kind of like a buddy would and you’re like hey man maybe we should check that out that jail cell later or maybe we should like check out that room later what do you say about that. And they’re like “oh yeah sure whatever sure” and then wham they’re teleported 30 feet into that rumor jail cell and you lock the door and you’re like sucks to suck bro.
Like you could do stuff like that. I understand that’s not really the intended purpose of this fey step. But it could be interesting, the intended purpose if you haven’t already figured out is to treat it as more of a support based ability. So if you have like a rogue let’s say and they want to do sneak attack from a better vantage point but they can’t really get up to a certain area then you use this fey step on them and they can teleport.
That’s kind of the way this is meant to be used. I suppose you could also use it to like help people escape from jail cells or rooms or whatever i mentioned earlier. Through the same way! Now seeing as how it’s not a magical spell, it’s a magical ability or a racial ability that just happens to be magical in nature.
You can’t use it with like distant spell or with the find familiar touch spell transfer gimmick and that’s kind of one of the bigger drawbacks to this. However the plus side is it’s not a magical spell. So if for whatever reason there’s a ward or an area of anti-magic or just dead magic you can still use this. That’s going to be really beneficial. Verdicts out on how useful this is…i’d say it’s relatively niche, maybe even more niche than the winter eladrin. However yeah let’s get to my personal thoughts on it.
Thoughts
The spring eladrin is interesting for sure and it lends itself to a certain play style to say the least. To be fair none of the eladrin are what i would consider bad not by really a long shot but some of them are certainly more useful than others. The spring is kind of hard to peg in terms of like ranking them. Just because it’s fey step customization is not really directly comparable to any of them and it just boils down to a circumstance by circumstance basis. That’s what i was saying was kind of niche.
It’s an interesting way to solve problems for example like you can avoid traps straight up just teleport into volts stuff like that or an ally into a vault whatever it doesn’t really make a huge difference. So it is really neat for all that stuff. But relative to the autumn eladrin in particular.
I still feel like autumn’s the most useful in just a general jack-of-all-trades sense. However man if you get to use the spring fey step and you get to use it effectively is this going to make a cool story! Almost guaranteed or it might turn into new meta for your group who knows.
When it comes to support based abilities it really does just come down to the group dynamic and party composition as a whole. So you might be able to get a ton of use out of it, you might be able to get next to no use out of it. It’s just a niche ability.
Conclusion
That being said! i don’t know, maybe i’m wrong, maybe i’m missing something let me know what you think down beneath in the comment section, be sure to mention any thoughts, questions, comments or concerns you may have regarding the spring eladrin. As well as any cooler stories and even ideas you have. That being said, i hope you all have a great day and as always a happy adventuring.