Through the Veil Treasures of the Feywild 5E D&D magic items

Travel Through the Veil to Discover Treasures of the Feywild for 5E D&D

August 1, 2021

Salutations, nerds! I’ve been given the opportunity to look over another fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons product from the Dungeon Masters Guild — Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild! One of the most common complaints I hear from people is there aren’t enough magic items in 5E D&D and if you are looking for a good fey flavored compilation you cannot go wrong with this one. Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild is 175 pages packed full of magic items high level and low, as well as full sets of magic items. I’ve got a few of these fingered for future use in games, myself, in fact.

Whimsical and wonderful 5E D&D magic items

I make no secret that I love the fey so I get kind of particular about their flavor. I’ve got to say, Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild knocks it out of the park.

There are some NPCs who come up several times throughout the book and as you’re reading about these magic items they’ve interacted with you get a pretty strong idea about who they are as people. This is done very vividly and consistently and as a player I would certainly want to know more if a Dungeon Master could figure out a way to get the lore in front of me.

In fact it seems to me like nearly every magic item in this book includes excellent flavor text. There is a lot of worldbuilding going on, not just a magic item with a set of numbers stapled to them. I’m a huge fan of this approach and I know a lot of other DMs who are too. It’s especially incredibly useful for sentient items and how to roleplay them. There are quite a few of those as well and listen — I’m a sucker for swords that sass at the people wielding them.

Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild incorporates a lot of whimsy into the book. One of the magic items I’ll point out is a giant pair of scissors you can separate and wield as a pair of swords for one thing. Even if it didn’t have any properties other than this I know at least three players who would get this magic item and be delighted. I can imagine one of them right now making it a point to yell about running with scissors. I feel like that’s a pretty good metric for whether or not a magic item is a good one. If you can imagine players getting excited about it and it isn’t an overpowered item in your game then it’s definitely worth being a loot drop at some point.

Through the Veil Treasures of the Feywild scissors of the seelie court

The nobles of the Seelie Court wear gowns of gossamer, dew, and starlight. These Scissors of the Seelie Court are the ones that cut them.

I’m also going to take a moment to give a shout out to my favorite weapon in the book, Hollythorn, which seems to have belonged to a sprite who uses they/them pronouns. This delights me beyond measure for a number of reasons, but one of its properties makes the wielder more boisterous and I think this a good effect. I don’t like objects that entirely change your motivation but if the effect is something like this and gives you a lot of room to roleplay it then it’s a lot of fun to decide what this looks like for your character.

I also don’t usually get hung up on the presentation of things but as a last note I think it’s worth talking about the art. A good chunk of it appears almost like an animation style, which brings a lot of charm to the items contained within. When I open Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild the stuff inside looks like it is intended to be fun, and doesn’t feel the need to push dramatic qualities to the detriment of this. For me this is a major strength of the piece.

NERDITOR’S NOTE: I can speak to the layout and presentation a bit. For starters the PDF version includes bookmarks so it’s super easy to navigate if you know what you’re looking for by name. The back of the book offers a variety of treasure tables for Feywild themed discoveries and there’s an index of items by type plus a breakdown of armor and weapons by rarity. Some categories of 5E D&D magic items don’t appear in the table of contents but searching around I found them incorporated into the Collections setting. I couldn’t find a description of this section and what each block of items means but I can surmise they’re items sharing a similar theme within the greater Feywild. Overall it could use a bit of refinement from a design and layout perspective but I have a great time flipping through it and finding new things each time, many of which inspire my imagination the same way they do for Robin.

All in all I can’t wait to pass some of the magic items inside Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild along to my players and see what they do with them. I’d recommend this to anyone who loves the Feywild and wants more 5E D&D magic items with a lot of whimsy to them. I’d not recommend this to someone looking for something on the grittier side. There are darker things in this book but it’s all pretty fairy tale dark and these stories don’t tend to run gritty, exactly.

All right, I’ve shared enough thoughts with you for now. Go have fun, check out Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild for 5E D&D if you get the chance and of course as always, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — Through the Veil: Treasures of the Feywild features over 400 unique Fey magic items, weapons, adventuring gear and trinkets for 5E D&D. This vast collection of items came together from the minds of over 80 creators. [Art by Sarah Godfrey]