Witchlight Hand 5e
You crept into the Witchlight Carnival as a child or youth and never looked back, earning a place among those who work behind the scenes to keep the carnival in business. As a hand, you work hard and party hard. The carnival has borne you to many fantastic worlds, circling back around to your home world once every eight years, but you know almost nothing about these worlds because you spend all your time in the carnival. You know the other hands well, but the carnival's owners-Mister Witch and Mister Light-remain mysterious to you even after all these years.
Maybe you joined the carnival to escape a dismal life at home, or maybe you were enchanted by the idea of visiting new places or the dream of becoming one of the carnival's star attractions. Now that you're older, carnival life has lost some of its appeal. The daily routine has grown tedious, the cyclical nature of the carnival's journey monotonous. The carnival no longer fills your heart with a sense of wonder. Perhaps greater adventures await you beyond the carnival's gates.
Source: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
Skill Proficiencies: Performance, Sleight of Hand
Tool Proficiencies: Disguise kit or one type of musical instrument
Languages: One of your choice
Equipment: A disguise kit or a musical instrument of your choice, a deck of cards, a carnival uniform or costume, one trinket (determined by rolling on the Feywild Trinkets table), and a pouch containing 8gp
Features
Carnival Companion: Over the years, you have earned the friendship of another carnival fixture. Roll a d8 and consult the Carnival Companion table to determine whom or what you've befriended, or you can choose an option that you like. Work with your DM to flesh out this friendship. This companion hangs around you while you're in the carnival, but it won't voluntarily leave the carnival.
The DM can use the Witchlight Hand stat block to represent hands, performers, and animal trainers who serve as carnival companions. Statistics for the other companions appear in the Monster Manual.
Carnival Companion Table
| d8 | Companion |
|---|---|
| 1 | Old, cantankerous Witchlight hand |
| 2 | Young, impressionable Witchlight hand |
| 3 | Performer (such as an acrobat, a clown, or a musician) |
| 4 | Retired performer |
| 5 | Seasoned animal trainer |
| 6 | Old blink dog |
| 7 | Cheery sprite |
| 8 | Harmless, magical wisp of light (no stat block required) that has a flying speed of 30 feet, can hover, and sheds bright light in a 5-foot radius and dim light for an additional 5 feet |
Carnival Fixture: The Witchlight Carnival provides you with free, modest lodging and food. In addition, you may wander about the carnival and partake of its many wonders at no cost to you, provided you don't disrupt its shows or cause any other trouble.
Suggested Characteristics
These tables, while optional, are well suited to Feywild-themed adventurers and are ideal for any character who has the Witchlight Hand background.
Witchlight Hand Personality Traits
| d8 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I'm haunted by fey laughter that only I can hear, though I know it's just my mind playing tricks on me. |
| 2 | Like a nomad, I can't settle down in one place for very long. |
| 3 | Good music makes me weep like a baby. |
| 4 | Wherever I go, I try to bring a little of the warmth and tranquility of home with me. |
| 5 | I have never lost my childlike sense of wonder. |
| 6 | When I have a new idea, I get wildly excited about it until I come up with another, better idea. |
| 7 | I live by my own set of weird and wonderful rules. |
| 8 | I can't bring myself to trust most adults. |
Witchlight Hand Ideals
| d8 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | Friendship. I never leave a friend behind. (Good) |
| 2 | Empathy. No creature should be made to suffer. (Good) |
| 3 | Wanderlust. I prefer to take the less traveled path. (Chaotic) |
| 4 | Changeability. Change is good, which is why I live by an ever-changing set of rules. (Chaotic) |
| 5 | Honor. A deal is a deal, and I would never break one. (Lawful) |
| 6 | Rule of Three. Everything in the multiverse happens in threes. I see the "rule of three" everywhere. (Lawful) |
| 7 | Obsession. I won't let go of a grudge. (Evil) |
| 8 | Greed. I will do whatever it takes to get what I want, regardless of the harm it might cause. (Evil) |
Witchlight Hand Bonds
| d8 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | I would never break my word. |
| 2 | I find magic in all its forms to be compelling. The more magical a place, the more I am drawn to it. |
| 3 | I do what I can to protect the natural world. |
| 4 | A trusted friend is the most important thing in the multiverse to me. |
| 5 | I can't bring myself to harm a Fey creature, either because I consider myself one or because I fear the repercussions. |
| 6 | The Witchlight Carnival feels like home to me. |
| 7 | I'm drawn to the Feywild and long to return there, if only for a short while. |
| 8 | I feel indebted to Mister Witch and Mister Light for giving me a home and a purpose. |
Witchlight Hand Flaws
| d8 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | I easily lose track of time. My poor sense of time means I'm always late. |
| 2 | I think the whole multiverse is out to get me. |
| 3 | I'm always operating under a tight timeline, and I'm obsessed with keeping everything on schedule. |
| 4 | I'm a kleptomaniac who covets shiny, sparkling treasure. |
| 5 | I'm forgetful. Sometimes I can't remember even the simplest things. |
| 6 | I never give away anything for free and always expect something in return. |
| 7 | I have many vices and tend to indulge them. |
| 8 | I'm always changing my mind-well, almost always. |
Should You Be a Witchlight Hand?
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight's backgrounds tie players directly to a whimsical trek from wild circus to hag hunting romp across the Feywild. The Witchlight Hand does so about as directly as it can; you’re an employee of the Witchlight Carnival. If you aren’t playing this adventure, this option probably isn’t the best fit for your table.
Features: Carnival Companion and Carnival Fixture
Carnival Companion gives you basically a bonus Bond that is tied specifically to the carnival. There isn’t going to be much gained from this that you couldn’t get through your normal bonds- still, the bonus character ties you closer to the adventure out the gate, which can be a fun bonus.
Carnival Fixture is equally worthless past the first adventure, and slightly more useful in that first adventure. Navigating freely around the circus might gain you access to some people earlier than you’d otherwise have access to them, but given that this does nothing outside the carnival, it will be entirely pointless as the game goes on past the introduction.
Skills
Performance and Sleight of Hand are skills whose value ranges based on your initiative. If you’re the kind of player that’s pushing into the world, coming up with your own plans and enacting your will on others, both of these can be fantastic methods to beguile and pilfer your way around. Rarely will you be asked to make either while casually adventuring- you have to be the one to prompt them to happen.
Social characters love these free skills. Bards, warlocks, and sorcerers all will want a high Charisma and high dexterity. Rogues tend to be able to afford a solid Charisma if they want it as well, making these two appealing to those kinds of characters.
Other Proficiencies
If you’re going for additional utility out of your background, the disguise kit proficiency will be a tool you can consistently mess around with, especially in the early tiers, where the instrument will be something to decorate your performance checks with. Bonus languages rarely are particularly relevant or useful, but disguise kits are a major enough boon I’m not too bothered.
Equipment
I love a good trinket, and the Feywild Trinkets are incredibly fun. The uniform or costume I don’t rate particularly highly- fortunately, the disguise kit gives you everything you could need out the gate to have some bonus functionality from this background.
Bonus Tables
On top of the characteristics typically offered, the random companion table and feywild trinket table ties you closely to The Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign. It's the primary reason this option only really works there, where Feylost can work in any campaign where fey exist.
Like Feylost, the characteristic tables are plagued by generic, bland options. To make matters worse, they copied a bunch of Feylost characteristics, giving you little new ideas to play around with.
All Together
If you want an entire character based around Chapter 1 of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, this is that. The background tables are disappointing, and the background feature can only impact you in the Witchlight Carnival, making it worthless in the majority of environments and campaigns. The skill selection and disguise kit is handy enough that it’ll play fine enough in the campaign it comes with- outside of that, I’d move past it.
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