My group has just started "Quest for the Frozen Flame" and as the GM I was surprised by how many fey appear in Book 1. It's been a pleasant surprise for me. I thought this was going to be a Vikings meet Conan the Barbarian sort of campaign, but instead on this journey my players keep meeting various fey creatures.
So it got me thinking; what are your favorite fey things in Pathfinder? Whether it be a creature, an individual, companion animal, etc.
For me it's been the Twigjack. There's something so entertaining about how mobile and dangerous the little guys are. Despite their tiny size and unassuming appearance, these twig men are CR3 and will easily slaughter caravan guards or soldiers who come into their woods unprepared. And they are difficult to deal with diplomatically, because unless they need something from you they are very aggressive.
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Always been partial to dryads, sprites, nixies/neriads, spriggans and redcaps. If there are some decent d20 selkies, I'd be into them as well, but I don't recall seeing any that blew my skirt up.
I like fey that have very limited magical abilities, with a tight theme (trees, water, etc.), more than fey that have sort of a grab bag of magical stuff without as much rhyme or reason (like pixies or brownies). I also tend to prefer one of each type of fey. So yes to sprites, but not a bunch of other little flying dudes like pixies, and yes to nixies, but not as keen on too many other water-fae. (Selkie, being seal fey, are 'different enough' to work for me.)
I'm also fond of mites, especially the visual of them taming oversized insect life as mounts and 'attack critters,' but not so much of all the other different types of gremlin, just because I'm not really a fan of there being a half-dozen different versions of them. (And, obviously, like everybody else who's ever played Pathfinder, I loathe pugwampi with the heat of a thousand exploding hyperboles!) :)
I also like the idea of using 'fae' to encompass other creatures that occupy similar niches. There were some kinda 'fey-ish' Native American 'spirits,' like the Cherokee 'water cannibals,' little people who live underwater and could be handily written up as some particularly antisocial nixies (who act a bit more like redcaps...).
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Grodairs! They're delightfully pompous fish-octopus beasts with ADHD who adore telling stories, consider themselves knights of the fey waterways, love trying new foods and spray water like the crown witness!
The creepier, the better for me.
Bonus points if they don't look especially creepy on first glance, but are utterly awful, like Lurkers in Light, Rusalkas, or Kishis.
Seeing my answer to this is the same as my answer to the one question that popped up on the subreddit a while ago, I'll just quote my answer there:
Tad bit of a weird one, but I utterly adore Culdewen. As long as you change that "Can't be recovered except by wish" to "Can't be recovered by the culdewen except by wish" (thus preventing very low level perma-killing. It's not like it even makes sense in-lore: one of the examples on what happens is rescued by merfolk), they're a really fun creature with a very fluid fighting style that has an alternate "win condition" (it does, not you. Namely grabbing a player and escaping) which doesn't kill anyone and opens up new plot hooks with however you get away. Plus, fun goofy fishing fey which mechanically can swear like a sailor which has the effect of... Mariner's Curse, and how can you not love that pun?
Oh, the Culdewen is an interesting one. Looks like it would be a fun plot hook (ba-dum tish) to have him kidnap a player or companion. The party hunts him down afterwards, but he's lost his catch already and now you need to deal with merfolk/athamaru/grindylows who have your friend for whatever reason.
Grodairs seem awesome too, I like their exploding into water trick. Might be an interesting trap to have players in a small room that floods more each time a player defeats one, and they need to find their way our before killing the last one or calming the grodairs.
Never realized there were aquatic fey options like that, outside the aquatic gremlins. Though I'm surprised there's no klabautermann stat block.
