Heroes of the Feywild Preview: Pixie and Witch

There is a Heroes of the Feywild preview up on the Wizards of the Coast web site today. It features the pixie and the witch, two of my creations for the book.

I'm extremely happy with how they've turned out so far, especially that so much of the writing I did made it to the final product.

The pixie was a debt I owed to a friend who played one in our 2e game. His character was a vicious little bastard that didn't fly, but he threw globes of exploding light/dust (not sure whether that option made the final cut; we'll see). We began with the Tiny rules, more simulationist than abstract, but when I playtested it, those rules were hard to manage and, well, broken. Fortunately someone had the good sense to tweak them more to the abstract side of things. 
I think this version will work very nicely.

The witch. Last year I played a red box wizard who used Slimy Transmutation to turn people into frogs. I loved using that power so much I wanted to build a class that did that kind of thing A LOT, based on the archetypal witches of fairy tales and folklore. Not enough of the witch has been previewed yet to see how it works, but it's quite different from your typical wizard. I've seen some commentary about what "build" the witch should be, but this class is built on the sorts of things archetypal witches of fantasy, fairy tales, and folklore do; it wasn't designed toward any particular industry trend. They're kind of like warlocks, except they don't blast things to smithereens; they're kind of like druids, except they're far more into the arcane arts. In flavor, they're even a little like clerics I suppose. The sum of all those parts, and that story, however, is the witch of myth and legend. I have yet to see the final version, but I'm very, very excited to play this class.

I like that, as mentioned in the preview, the witch has access to all wizard spells. This rounds out the witch with practically unlimited magical options. Options are a big part of the witch. Every extended rest, they can switch out their utility or daily power for _ANY_ other wizard power. Like... even ones they don't know. That, to me, is crazy cool. But I like options. So there you have it.