Fey Touched – DnD 5e Feat Guide

Introduction

Fey Touched provides a +1 increase to any mental ability score plus more spells, making this an easy choice for any spellcasting class. Misty Step is a 2nd-level spell, and is among the most tactically-impactful spells in the game. On top of those benefits, you get the daunting task of selecting a 1st-level Divination or Enchantment spell to learn and cast for free once per day.

Despite how powerful it is, Fey Touched is not necessarily the best way for your character to get access to these spells. If you primarily want misty step, the Eladrin and the Shadar-Kai both teleportation, and the Githyanki can cast Misty Step. Unless you plan to use both spells frequently and put additional spell slots into casting both of them more than once per day, consider other options.

The clear winner among Fey Touched’s spell options is Silvery Barbs, because of course it is.

For more information about spellcasting feats, including ratings of the various feats, see our Spellcasting Feats Guide.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Fey Touched 1st-Level Spell Options

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

• Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
• Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
• Green: Good options. Useful often.
• Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Fey Touched 1st-Level Spell Options

For a full list of available spell options and spell descriptions, see DnDBeyond.

• Animal Friendship^PHB: Too situational.
• Bane^PHB: A decent debuff, but it’s more reliable to buff your own allies with Bless.
• Beast Bond^{EEPC / XGtE}: Too situational. Most classes have little reason to invest the resources to make an animal friendly enough to be the subject of Beast Bond.
• Bless^PHB: Among the best low-level buffs in the game, Bless remains effective across the level range even if you cast it as a level 1 spell.
• Charm Person^PHB: Given the choice, I would take Skill Expert with Persuasion before I spent a feat to get Charm Person.
• Command^PHB: Decent crowd control, and upcasting it works reasonably well. Against enemies which rely on weapons, you can command them to drop what they’re holding then rush over and collect it before they can.
• Compelled Duel^PHB: Excellent for tanky spellcasters like artificers, clerics, and bladesinger wizards. This doesn’t force enemies into melee with you, but it forces enemies close enough that they’re easily within your movement speed.
• Comprehend languages^PHB: Take Ritual Caster instead.
• Detect Evil and Good^PHB: Too situational.
• Detect Magic^PHB: Take Ritual Caster instead.
• Detect Poison and Disease^PHB: Take Ritual Caster instead.
• Dissonant Whispers^PHB: A good way to break a grapple, to force enemies to move away from you or an ally, or to force enemies to provoke Opportunity Attacks. But it’s not much damage so unless you want the crowd control effect skip this.
• Gift of Alacrity^EGtW: A good buff at any level, but unless you plan to also cast it on allies you may do better to with the Alert feat.
• Heroism^PHB: A good combat buff, Heroism is perfect on any front-line martial character. The replenishing temporary hit points can mitigate a ton of damage, significantly reducing your party’s reliance on healing at a very low spell slot cost.
• Hex^PHB: Great on almost any character that relies on multiple attacks to deal damage. With a Bonus Action casting time it’s easy to cast before spending your Action to attack. You can also use it to give targets Disadvantage on Strength or Dexterity checks to make them more susceptible to things like Grapple and Shove. On top of that, the 1-hour duration and the ability to move to a new target means that you get a lot of mileage out of a single spell slot. This is a go-to option for fighters and paladins.
• Hunter’s Mark^PHB: Similar to Hex, but the benefits beyond damage are more situational and harder to abuse.
• Identify^PHB: Borderline useless.
• Sleep^PHB: The 1st-level casting won’t scale, so unless you’re spending spell slots to cast it this is totally useless.
• Silvery Barbs^SCoC: Extremely powerful, but also very complicated. See our blog post on Silvery Barbs for details on the numerous abuse cases which the spell allows.
• Speak with Animals^PHB: Too situational.
• Tasha’s Hideous Laughter^PHB: A good single-target save-or-suck option, but the valid targets are intentionally limited and you don’t get anything for upcasting it.