Last Updated on January 22, 2023
Known for its strange creatures and alien landscape, the Feywild is an iconic plane in many D&D worlds. Many player races can trace their origin back to the Feywild’s beauty and mystery.
However, some adventurers have a mark or change to their capabilities due to exposure to the Feywild’s magic.
For characters with these changes, the Fey Touched feat from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything allows players a way to give mechanical benefits to these alterations.
What Is the Fey Touched Feat?
The Fey Touched feat in D&D 5e is a feat from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything that instills a mote of Feywild magic into a character.
In addition to boosting one of the character’s mental ability scores, the Fey Touched feat also gives a character two spells that they can cast once per long rest for free.
Here’s what the text of the Fey Touched feat looks like:
Fey Touched
Your exposure to the Feywild’s magic has changed you, granting you the following benefits:
- Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 to a maximum of 20.
- You learn the Misty Step spell and one 1st-level spell of your choice. The 1st-level spell must be from the divination or enchantment school of magic. You can cast each of these spells without expending a spell slot. Once you cast either of these spells in this way, you can’t cast that spell again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast these spells using spell slots you have of the appropriate level. The spells’ spellcasting ability is the ability increased by this feat.
Right off the bat, you can see that this feat is different from many of the other “half feats” in the game.
Half feats are how the community refers to feats that provide a bonus to an ability score in addition to its other features. Feats like this act like half of a feat and half of an ability score, hence half feat.
Anyways, most of these feats only offer one predetermined ability score that they boost. However, Fey Touched gives your character a choice between three different scores, allowing the feat to slot into many different builds.
In addition to this flexibility, the feat offers a handful of free spells per day. The Misty Step spell is a strong and flexible spell that almost any character can benefit from.
When you add a 1st-level spell from the divination or enchantment schools of magic, you have a feat that offers a wide range of utility to your character.
What Are the Benefits of the Fey Touched Feat?
The Fey Touched feat does an amazing job of combining powerful character options with a versatility that allows this feat to match with any class.
To start, it’s not a secret that magic spells in D&D 5e are powerful.
Many classes in the game either have spellcasting as the main feature or a feature that one or more subclasses can pick up. Many other class features offer limited access to spells.
In other words, if the designers want a character to have some supernatural power, spells are an easy way to implement that.
The Fey Touched feat is no exception. The spells given by the feat are strong and usable for almost any character.
The Misty Step spell is a rare mobility option that can be used as a bonus action. Also, because the spell is a teleport, you can avoid melee combatants or reposition in a way that denies your foes opportunity attacks.
Finally, the divination and enchantment schools are full of solid spells that can fit into a variety of characters.
Here’s a quick list of some of the more powerful or widely useful spell options for the feat:
- Bless: With the bounded accuracy system of D&D 5e, every bonus to a d20 roll goes a long way in increasing your odds of success.
- Command: This spell is one of the few 1st-level spells to disrupt a foe’s turn without requiring concentration.
- Compelled Duel: Abilities that force a foe to engage with your character one-on-one are rare in D&D 5e.
- Dissonant Whispers: Melee-heavy parties will love this spell for its ability to generate opportunity attacks.
- Gift of Alacrity: Going earlier in the initiative list means that you can enact your battle plan before the opponent.
- Hex/Hunter’s Mark: Both of these spells help boost the damage output for characters that rely on weapons or spell attack rolls.
- Tasha’s Hideous Laughter: Few 1st-level spells can take an enemy out of the fight, and this is one of them.
There are also plenty of spells associated with fey creatures, such as Charm Person, Silent Image, and Sleep, that convey the mystery and mind-altering magics these creatures love to use.
Finally, all of this stacks up with a boost to one of your character’s mental ability scores.
Plenty of classes either natively or as part of a subclass rely on Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma to boost their abilities.
This feat can round out an odd score, boosting your ability score modifier while also offering spells that will help you in your character’s adventures.
It’s not often that you’ll go out of your way to make a character with an odd ability score.
However, for the players out there who like to plan their characters out ahead of time, they will find that this feat is a great way to round out that score while getting some solid benefits.
Who Benefits Most From the Fey Touched Feat?
The short answer of who can benefit from this feat is anyone.
While most any race or class can benefit from any individual feat, the Fey Touched feat fits into many character concepts, making it an easy pickup for any character trying to present some Feywild flair in their capabilities.
Specifically, the features the feat offers are useful no matter what character you play.
Because this feat works for almost any class in the game, it’s easier to talk about how this benefits classes across the different caster categories rather than individually.
Here’s what those rundowns look like:
- Martial classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, etc.): All of these classes can benefit from a spell or two to improve their combat prowess and out-of-combat utility, depending on what they prefer.
- Half casters (Artificer, Paladin, Ranger): The Misty Step spell is tough to find on any of these lists, usually only existing as a subclass-specific spell. Adding that spell to these classes, which tend to have some martial features, allows them to close gaps and make smart retreats.
- Full casters (Bard, Cleric, Wizard, etc.): As a full caster, spells are the main gimmick. Since the Fey Touched feat offers some free spells every long rest, you can save your spell slots for the spells you want to cast rather than on the utility options given by the feat.
Of all the classes, Barbarians will probably be the ones that benefit from this feat the least.
Barbarians can’t cast spells while raging, meaning that the spells offered by this feat will usually see use outside of combat.
When you combine this fact with the fact that most Barbarians don’t have any high mental ability scores, your spell choices become restrictive quickly.
Summary
The Fey Touched feat is a fantastic choice for almost any character that you can create.
Regardless of how many spells your character has normally, adding a few extra castings each day while also boosting a mental ability score goes a long way in boosting your character’s versatility during an adventure.
If you haven’t taken a look at this feat for a character of your own design, sit down when you can and try it out!
You’ll be surprised how many directions you can take this feat, just like how the Feywild offers a plethora of beauties, mysteries, and dangers to explore.
Rich is an avid D&D player and DM. He has been playing since the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st and 2nd editions. He has run campaigns of various editions with family and friends for over 20 years. Playing DnD 5th Edition in person at local game stores and online with VTT’s over the past 10 years has provided a consistent connection to how the game has grown. He strongly believes in understanding the source material, but catering the games to your individual players. Feel free to ask anything in the comments or drop him an email: [email protected].
