Fiendish Sorcery

[Xendria]

In the beastiary preview, Tieflings get Fiendish Sorcery which allows them to "treat their Charisma score as 2 points higher for all sorcerer class abilities." My query is whether anyone knows if this includes spell dc's or just the abilities due to bloodlines?

 

[pawsplay]

Spellcasting is a class ability.

Honestly, I always found it a bit strange that a race known for deception and arcane magic would have a low Charisma. Thus, they are not very good at Use Magic Device, despite being magical, infernal beings and having a reputation as rogues. They are also not good at commanding undead or bargaing with fiends. Much oddness. Wouldn't instead giving them a racial penalty to Diplomacy have skipped to the point?

 

[Starbuck_II]

Spellcasting is a class ability.

Honestly, I always found it a bit strange that a race known for deception and arcane magic would have a low Charisma. Thus, they are not very good at Use Magic Device, despite being magical, infernal beings and having a reputation as rogues. They are also not good at commanding undead or bargaing with fiends. Much oddness. Wouldn't instead giving them a racial penalty to Diplomacy have skipped to the point?

D&D never makes sense with the Charisma penalties. Mindflayers are apparently hot since they have high Cha, but Dwarves and 1/2 Orcs are not so they get penalty.

 

[Salthorae]

D&D never makes sense with the Charisma penalties. Mindflayers are apparently hot since they have high Cha, but Dwarves and 1/2 Orcs are not so they get penalty.

Off topic, but need to reply...

Charisma has nothing to do with "hot" despite how most players I know interpret an 18 Charisma female NPC...

Charisma is basically how easily you are able to force your self/ideas/personality on others around you in the world, and how much they pay attention/listen. The more Charismatic you are, the more people pay attention and listen to your ideas. It's only in today's america that charasmatic = good looking and only good looking.

Donald Trump would not be considered by most to be "good looking" in the typical celebrity sense, but if stated would have a high Charisma score because he is powerful, successful, etc so people listen.

I think D&D players tend to forget that Charisma is one of the "mental stats", not phsyical like Str, Dex, & Con...

Dwarves have always been portrayed as "gruff", so the mechanic is to make them start off more poorly on all the social abilities with a -2 to Charisma, same can be said of 1/2 orcs. Illithids on the other hand are forceful, naturally powerful race whose demeanor and society is based on domination and enforcing their will on the world around them... therefore +2 to Cha.

For Tieflings, they are stigmatized from an early age, so they can't as effectively learn the social skills necessary to interact normally, plus they physically carry fiendish traits which will scare most new people they meet... therefore minuses to Cha.

 

[GlassEye]

Spellcasting is a class ability.

Honestly, I always found it a bit strange that a race known for deception and arcane magic would have a low Charisma. Thus, they are not very good at Use Magic Device, despite being magical, infernal beings and having a reputation as rogues. They are also not good at commanding undead or bargaing with fiends. Much oddness. Wouldn't instead giving them a racial penalty to Diplomacy have skipped to the point?

Hmm...so would class skills be considered a class ability? I'm beginning to lean in that direction. It would give tiefling sorcerers bonuses to those skills that it would logically seem they would be good at such as Intimidate and Use Magic Device while leaving out Diplomacy. Doesn't help other classes, though.

 

[pawsplay]

The thing is, tieflings are good at Bluffing, and they are fairly scary to normal humanoids. They also, seemingly, would excel at sorcery. Use Magic Device? If anything, as denizens of Sigil I think they would have a knack for making magical trinkets work. Their only real issue is Diplomacy. You could give them a racial penalty to Diplomacy, reflecting their furtive, perhaps creepy nature, but is beyond what's adequately covered by, "Eww, a tiefling, I'm ... unfriendly?"

In my view, the tiefling Cha penalty is a holdover from AD&D. In AD&D, there were no sorcerers. There was also very little in the way of social skills. Thus, Charisma was basically reaction penalties and hirelings. As rogues and wizards, Dex and Int bonuses made sense.

In D&D 3e, the only tiefling traits that would really carryover for a low Cha would be Diplomacy and their Leadership score. In every other way they seem like high Charisma creatures: they are supernatural, associated with the Sorcerer and Warlock class by heritage, good at Bluffing, slightly frightening to most humanoids, and probably able to be more forceful with summoned creatures and undead than most ordinary humans. Taken together, tieflings should have average Charisma or a bonus. I suspect one reason the Cha penalty was left as-is was to preserve the symmetry of the format most races have of two ability score bonuses, one penalty.

Arguably, the modern tiefling should have average Intelligence, since they are less renowned as wizards in 3e interpretations and are not known for being particularly skillful. Nor are they known for their towering intellects. Is a tiefling as smart as a gray elf or a blue?

My take on the tiefling would probably be +2 Dex, -2 Wis, +2 Cha. Thus, they would suck as clerics, druids, and paladins, while excelling as rogues, bards, and sorcerers.

 

[Salthorae]

I think the real issue with all of the stat bonuses & negatives is that traditionally they have been from the Human Point of View... So in planescape where Tieflings origniated, yes they are roguish, and highly magical because everything is different and weird in planescape, but from a common joe farmer point of view they are evil just from first sight and should be stoned or cast out, not listened to...

I do agree however that in a system where you have 2 bonus stats and 1 neg stat for a non-human race they should be +2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Wis, it flavors well and then they wouldn't have that weird ability to add 2 to sorcerer class abilities...

 

[James Jacobs]

Folks interested in variant Tiefling ability score modifiers should check out the article on tieflings in Pathfinder #25; there's 10 different variants, each based on a different fiend race (devil, demon, daemon, div, asura, rakshasa, demodand, kyton, qlippoth, and oni). A tiefling gets these variants if a GM wants to give the tiefling a specific tie to one of these fiendish races; the tiefling in the Bestiary does not have an assumed fiendish heritage. Of the variant tieflings in PF #25, only devil-spawn and oni-spawn have a charisma penalty. Demon-spawn and div-spawn and kyton-spawn and rakshasa-spawn get a Charisma bonus. All the rest don't modify charisma at all.

 

[Xendria]

I personally think that the Fiendish Sorcery is a really cool racial ability. It gives more to their heritage than just a couple stat bonuses. One of my players loves Genasi so I converted them to Pathfinder for him and definitely included this change (obviously for elemental bloodline though). I'm also pretty sure its gonna show up with Aasimar in the Bestiary.

Overall I do agree with removing the negative cha, although I think with the Fiendish sorcery the adjustments should be: +2 dex, +2 int, -2 wis. This gives them Rogue, Bard, Wizard, and Sorcerer as viable classes.

 

[James Jacobs]

I personally think that the Fiendish Sorcery is a really cool racial ability. It gives more to their heritage than just a couple stat bonuses. One of my players loves Genasi so I converted them to Pathfinder for him and definitely included this change (obviously for elemental bloodline though). I'm also pretty sure its gonna show up with Aasimar in the Bestiary.

Overall I do agree with removing the negative cha, although I think with the Fiendish sorcery the adjustments should be: +2 dex, +2 int, -2 wis. This gives them Rogue, Bard, Wizard, and Sorcerer as viable classes.

But penalizes the iconic tiefling cultist of the fiendish demon-god. The problem is that no matter what mental stat you decide to penalize, you're going to be nerfing at least one really cool iconic bad guy role. Which is the main reason we decided to present the ten variant tieflings in Pathfinder #25; you can pick and choose the right tiefling for the role!