Hello adventurers! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the fifth episode of our elven sub-race series which doubles as the final episode of the eladrin series if that makes sense. What are the eladrin you may ask well that is a great question! they are elves native to the feywild a realm of beauty unpredictable emotion and boundless magic.
An eladrin is associated with one of the four seasons and has coloration reminiscent of that season which can also affect the eladrin’s mood. We’re gonna be going over summer today we’ve gone over the previous three in the previous three articles surprise surprise and summer is described as the season of boldness and aggression a time for unfettered energy.
In any case the eladrin are found in mordenkainen’s tome of foes if you’re curious and if you’re curious about elven lore or 5e lore in general mordenkainen’s tome of foes is probably the best book to get. Just a great read, very entertaining. Now let’s dive into the eladrin’s mechanics here.
Mechanics
So like all of the eladrin’s the summer eladrin gives you a +1 bonus to charisma and gives you access to fey step.
Fey step: As a bonus action you can magically teleport up to 30ft 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.
It’s just a redressed misty step on a side note it is a magical ability it is not a spell. Because of that there’s not a ton various creatures can do to stop you from useing it. There are a handful of abilities here and there but you’re really likely not turn into them until higher levels. And if you’ve read the previous eladrin articles you’d know this but every eladrin season has their own twist on the fey step ability. So let’s take a look at the summer eladrin fey step.
Fey Step (Summer):
The summer eladrin fey step is relatively unique as it’s the only fey step variant that deals direct damage. So once you reach third level: “Immediately after you use your fey step, each creature of your choice that you can see within five feet of you takes fire damage equal to your charisma modifier (minimum of 1 damage).”
Now i know at a glance you’re like is this really good? is this really bad? and the short answer is it kind of depends. So this is nice because this is guaranteed damage, which is very hard to come by in 5e usually there’s something you have to roll for and usually if they succeed on whatever role they don’t take any damage or they take half damage.
This is consistent flat damage and because of that it is relatively nice. It is also AOE it’s a relatively small area of effect sure. But you’re also teleporting out of nowhere so it’s really feasible to catch people off guard and ideally when they’re hunddled up. There’s nothing to stop you from using this to teleport on top of a table for instance with a handful of enemies gathered around the table and you deal however much damage to all of them.
It’s also quite nice that charisma is used when determining how much damage you’re dealing out. Just because charisma is one of the more useful ability scores in the game. Not just if you’re a warlock or sorcerer or a bard or what have you.
But even just in general role play opportunities so the odds of you having a poor charisma score aren’t super high, i mean i suppose you could point by and choose it as one of your dumb stats but most people like to have a fairly high charisma. So this is quite nice and if you are one of the classes i mentioned earlier the warlocks, the sorcerers, the bards and the paladins to a lesser extent.
This is really going to help you out because this will scale up with your character and providing a little bit of AOE with a pretty nice utility aspect that’s teleporting away 30 feet is certainly hard to refute in terms of viability. The biggest downside of course that this is fire damage and as you get higher in level you’re gonna find things that are resistant or just outright immune.
But outside of that, i think it’s a fairly strong ability. Is it gonna be mind blowing damage you know probably not. Something else worth noting while i have it pulled up here is that it is still is not a spell effect. It is a magical ability of sorts but it is not a spell. So it’s not going to stack with any kind of elemental buffs you have regarding your spells.
However you know that being said! It might be more of a blessing than not. It is kind of sad it doesn’t say that it does, that it ignites things for instance i would have liked that there even if it was just technically flavor text because i don’t know i feel like a lot of DMs might fight with that.
That being said, have the conversation with them regarding the summer eladrin and get their take on how this ability would play out in a thematic sense and then extrapolate the data from there. Now let’s go over to my personal thoughts here.
Thoughts
So looking at the race as a whole and kind of comparing it to a lot of the other sub-races that the elf gets. The eladrin on the nose they feel a little lackluster in terms of just what they provide. There are some of the elven sub-races for example like the drow that essentially completely change how your character functions in almost every aspect of their life.
And i suppose you could make that argument with the eladrin too, namely the autumn and maybe even the summer eladrin based on what kind of a game you’re running. But i feel like they’d make for great one-shot characters i feel like they’d make for great potential backup characters but if we’re talking mid to late game viability i am a little hesitant. Especially as it pertains to the winter and the spring eladrin i consider them to be quite niche.
The autumn and summer are probably the better of the two and i want to say the autumn takes the cake in almost every regard. Simply because it’s viable not only during combat but also during the social and maybe even the exploration pillar of the game as well.
I don’t know that’s kind of where i sit on the eladrins as a whole. That being said, is it pertains to the summer eladrin in particular. I think having guaranteed damage in any sense is quite nice, even if it is one of the more resisted damage types in the game. At those early levels when you’re going to be dealing with small hit pools and potentially large groups of weak enemies.
This is going to be quite nice. Especially if you’re a tankier class or if you have some other way of getting out or maybe if you’re just administering the finishing blow. Once again that 30 feet can be done as a bonus action so you can still get your movement so you can essentially move 60 feet in a turn, stills have your action and still deal damage in addition to that. So if you use the dash action that’s a potential 90 feet of movement in a single turn which is nice and you get the added bonus of having the added effect of whatever a logic you decide to go with, so it is quite nice in that regard.
Conclusion
That being said, let me know what you think of the summer eladrin and maybe even the eldrin race as a whole. Mention any thoughts, questions, comments or concerns you have regarding it. I hope you all have a wonderful day and as always happy adventuring.