Pixie

A pixie is a mythological creature that like every other myth has been used in many fantasy settings over the years. In traditional sources they are of Celtic origin, usually about the height of a finger. They can be nice, or bad, or just plain old mischievous. They are usually childlike, fond of dancing outdoors in groups and can resemble elves with their pointed ears and similar clothes.

They are sometimes confused with fairies, but actually doing so in front of either a fairy or a pixie is a bad idea; hilariously, the two races are at odds (or even at war on occasions!) in the myths. Yeah, seeing a bunch of pint size little fellas going at it won't scare you, so much as it would incline you towards placing bets on the winner. Historically speaking, "fairy" was once originally the umbrella term for all fey creatures, but was later reduced to the catch-all definition of tiny pixie-like creatures we use today.

/tg/ makes use of pixies every now and again, usually as a good or neutral race/people in a setting. They tend to be overshadowed by elves, fairies, sprites, etc., but you can find them in most settings if you look hard enough.

Warhammer Fantasy

The Wood Elves make use of pixies as a range of power-ups, almost like choosing what kind of fancy sword you want to swing today. They have a range of nasty abilities and can add some character to your usual elf lord. In the fluff they are denizens of the living forest Athel Loren and can either be nice (as in not kill you in an instant) or mean (anything and everything to you – death will seem pleasant in comparison). Mostly though they like to play a variety of practical tricks on both the elf natives and wanderers into the forest.

Shadowrun

Pixies also appear in Shadowrun, where they are supposed to be some mysterious race that reappeared thanks to the return of magic to the world (just like dragons and others). They're the setting's hillbilly hippies, basically a bunch of 15 inches tall winged folk living in their forests in France and (ex-)Ireland, not giving a single fuck about the rest of the world...

At least that's what they were supposed to be until they were made a PC option. Due to a couple of oversights, imprecisions and other editing fuckups; pixies are one of the most hilariously overpowered and broken choices as a character race. Don't talk drek about Tinkerbelle unless you want to end up in an ocean of trouble, omae!

Dungeons & Dragons

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Appearing in primarily D&D as NPCs, pixies are often played as tiny flying assholes. In combat they are not very tough, but they tend to stick back and befuddle the PCs with magic and fairy dust. That said, D&D also has a tradition of pixie PCs.

BECMI

The first such appearance was all the way back in Basic edition, where they were one of the many fey race-classes presented in "Tall Tales of the Wee Folk". As a PC, pixies were the "fightiest" of the small fairy folk; they could use magical items as if they Fighters, and were mostly combat-orientated, in comparison to the more wizardly sprites. They could fly, though they needed at least a round of rest for every three rounds spent flying, and could not only become invisible like most faeries, but attack foes and remain invisible in the process, something unique to them.

AD&D

Pixies subsequently appeared in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, as part of the "Complete Book of Humanoids". There, they had the following statblock, which actually made them in many ways more magical than they had been in Basic! In fact, this was part of a general switch-over that took place in 2nd edition, where Pixies became the "magical fairies" and Sprites became the "warlike fairies".

Ability Score Range: Strength 3-14, Dexterity 8-19]], Constitution 7-16, Intelligence 6-18, Wisdom 3-16, Charisma 3-18

Ability Score Adjustments: +1 Dex, +1 Cha, -1 Str, -1 Con

Class & Level Limits: Fighter (7), Thief (12)

Alignment: Any Neutral

Natural Armor Class: 5

Can become invisible and polymorph self at-will.

Can cast Know Alignment 1/day.

Can cast Create Illusions with both auditory & visual components 1/day, which sustains itself until actively dispelled.

Can inflict Confusion with a touch 1/day if the target fails its Save vs. Spells, which is permanent until the pixie deigns otherwise or the victim receives a Remove Curse.

Can cast Dispel Magic 1/day.

Can cast Dancing Lights 1/day

Can cast ESP 1/day.

Can attack whilst invisible without returning to visibility, forcing enemies who cannot detect invisible creatrues to suffer a -4 penalty to their attack rolls.

Can Fly with Movement Speed 12 and Manueverbility B.

If targeted by a Dispel Magic that succeeds against an 8th level effect, the pixie is forced to remain visible for 1 round.

Requires twice the normal XP amount to advance in level as a human of the same class.

Height is 2' 6".

3e

In 3e, pixies appear with both monster and PC stats in the Monster Manual.

Ability Score Modifiers: -4 Strength, +8 Dexterity, +6 Intelligence, +4 Wisdom, +6 Charisma

Size: Small

Base Land Speed 20 feet

Fly speed 60 feet (Good Maneuverability)

Low-Light Vision

Racial Skill Bonuses: +2 to Listen, Search and Spot.

Racial Bonus Feat: Dodge

+1 Natural Armor Bonus

Spell-like Abilities: All of these abilities can be used 1/day and with a Caster Level of 8th. Lesser Confusion (DC 14), Dancing Lights, Detect Chaos, Detect Good, Detect Evil, Detect Law, Detect Thoughts (DC 15), Dispel Magic, Entangle (DC 14), Permanent Image (DC 19, Visual and Auditory elements only), Polymorph (Self Only). 1 in 10 pixies can also use Otto's Irresistible Dance.

Damage Reduction 10/Cold Iron

Greater Invisibility (Su): A pixie can become invisible as a free action and remains invisible even when it attacks.

Spell Resistance 15 + Class Level

Automatic Languages: Common, Sylvan

Bonus Languages: Elven, Gnome, Halfling

Favored Class: Sorcerer

Level Adjustment: +4, or +6 if it has Otto's Irresistible Dance.

Pixies are unique among things with LA+4 in that they only have one hit die, so they benifit from the easily overlooked line that "Creatures with 1 or less HD replace their monster levels with their character levels" and players don't have to worry about their ECL being clogged with a bunch of worthless bullshit monster levels. Flight, small size, natural greater invisibility, and a decent array of Spell-Like Abilities on top of high ability scores are actually worth +4 LA in some instances, and they'd make badass rangers or rogues.

Pathfinder

Pathfinder Pixies are among the few OGL monsters that had significant changes from their 3.5 counterpart. Instead of relying purely on their size and invisibility to not die instantly, Pathfinder pixies received three additional hit dice to make them take a hit and hit targets easier. This and the death of LA makes them no longer suited for PC use.

4e

The pixie wouldn't appear as a PC race again until, ironically, 4th edition. Joining the Satyr and the Hamadryad in "Heroes of the Feywild", they're notorious for being one of the few 4e races you can honestly describe as being overpowered as fuck. With a small size, natural flight, only minute penalties due to size regarding strength and carry weight, Pixies make for ideal Rangers. Even worse: Heroes of the Feywild contains a character origin that allows your Rangers to ride their animal companion if said companion is at least one size bigger. And given that Pixies are Tiny this means that they can ride a bird companion, allowing your Ranger to fly around outside of the reach of your enemies and keep shooting them with your bow.

Gallery

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  1e
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  3e. Pixie on right
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  4e. Pixie on left
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  5e
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  Pathfinder

Monstergirls

As "pixie" is used interchangeably with "fairy", they have a long tradition in the field of monstergirl enthusiasts, since the standard "fairy" is an attractive, well-formed woman (or a loli, if you're Japanese, vaguely Japanese-adjacent, just into that sorta shit or some combination thereof) of diminutive stature with beautiful insect-like wings. It helps, of course, that most depictions of pixies tend to portray them as hedonistic and/or romantics, who often flirt with human (or elven) men - and Dungeons & Dragons certainly isn't shy about depicting them in the same light. Surmounting the size difference is usually handled through either the pixe's natural adeptness at sorcery - either temporarily growing herself up to human-like stature or shrinking her boyfriend down to her level - or very inventive applications of the pixie's smaller stature. A more /d/-style method is to just make the pixie impossibly elastic and an incredible size-queen, such that being used as a living condom is not only survivable, but actually hugely pleasurable for her.

In the laughably awful The Legend of Zelda cartoon from the 1980s, Link had a pixie (well, fairy) companion named Sprite, who was quite shamelessly in love with Link and wished he'd give up on Zelda to be with her.

In the Disney adaptation of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell has a huge crush on Peter and tries to kill Wendy, whom she sees as a rival for Peter's attention. This crush was revisited in the live-action movie Hook, though in a less homicidal context.

Paul Kidd's three contributions to the "Greyhawk Classics" - seven novelizations of well-known Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules Against The Giants, White Plume Mountain, The Temple of Elemental Evil, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Keep on the Borderlands and The Tomb of Horrors, with Paul Kidd writing the White Plume Mountain, Descent into the Depths, and Queen of the Demonweb Pits - all feature the secondary character Escalla, a perky and well-proportioned pixie sorceress with the morals of your typical kleptomaniacal rogue paired with the "blow shit up for fun!" approach of the Chaotic Stupid-leaning arcanist, and a shameless love for her party's leader, the human ranger known only as the Justicar. In fact, the Queen of the Demonweb Pits novelization outright confirms their couple-hood status by noting she keeps a stockpile of Potions of Growth/Giant Size to be able to assume a form more suited for mutual pleasure.

In the Monster Girl Encyclopedia, Pixies are a breed of mamono described as imps that have evolved to mimic the appearance of the more innocent and friendly fairies whose territories they share. Believed to have been reincarnated from the souls of dead children, pixies are described as highly lewd and mischievous creatures, loving practical jokes and trickery almost as much as they love sex. They relish sizeplay, and particular enjoy using their small bodies to grind against a man's genitals until he showers them with sexual fluid, but are also able to manipulate sizes with their magic - they can grow themselves large enough to fit their lover, or they can shrink him down to a more manageable size. It's unclear if they do or don't have the same "elasticity" as the common fairy mamono does. They are known to be the Demon Queen's agents in the fairy-lands, actively spreading corruption as far as they can.

See Also

• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition races