What is a spirit and how does it differ from a fey or elemental?

My cosmology is built holistically. That means that I take into account how everything fits together, where things come from and where they go, rather than cobbling together a random assortment of fantasy stereotypes and expecting them to play well together. Spiritually is a foundation of my setting, which I will explain in detail.


Much to my everlasting consternation, 5th Edition lacks a "spirit" type despite it being a universal concept. All we have are the vaguely defined aberration, celestial, construct, elemental, fey, fiend and undead types. None of those make any sense without explaining their context, but the rules assume an implicit context and make no attempt to educate you on the basics of the cosmology or even stay consistent.

Elementals originate from the writings of Paracelsus, fey originate from a mix of British folklore and Greek mythology, celestials and fiends originate from Judeo-Christian religion. D&D tosses all of these into the same setting and pretends they play well together. This fantasy kitchen sink only works with a heavy dose of double-think.

The path of least resistance would be to introduce a [spirit] tag a la the Spirit Shaman class from 3rd edition. According to the sidebar in Complete Divine:

What Is A Spirit?
Several of the spirit shaman's abilities affect spirits. For purposes of the spirit shaman's ability, a "spirit" includes any of the following creatures:

• All incorporeal undead
• All fey
• All elementals
• Creatures in astral form or with astral bodies (but not a creature physically present on the Astral Plane)
• All creatures of the spirit subtype (see Oriental Adventures)
• Spirit folk and telthors (see Unapproachable East)
• Spirit creatures created by spells such as dream sight or woodwose.

In the spirit shaman's worldview, elementals and fey are simply spirits of nature, and incorporeal undead are the spirits of the dead.

It should be simple to translate this into 5e terms. A rule of thumb is that the spirit tag applies to monsters that lack conventional body-soul duality, souls outside of bodies, souls that never had bodies, etc.

This has several ramifications for 5e monsters in my cosmology.

• Fey are distinct as lost or abandoned spirits imprisoned in fleshy vessels (cf. The Complete Guide to Fey).
• Elemental spirits serve the role of generic spirits which protect nature, cause weather phenomena, etc (cf. Encyclopaedia Divine: Shamans, Dark Roads & Golden Hells). They may assume any imaginable form.
• Not all elementals are spirits, as the sidebar refers to outdated 3e rules. Elementals without the spirit tag are the natural flora and fauna of the elemental planes (cf. The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire).

I should like to explore related concepts in future posts. The undead type, for example, includes creatures that were never alive to begin with. Where do they fit?