Sure, but this and the other stuff you mention doesn't mean that using 4e tieflings to explore issue of otherisation, ostracisim, etc is not consistent with the 4e material (which is what KM asserted in the post I replied to).
My assertion was more that the 4e material makes it more difficult to tell these stories, which is a subtle but important distinction. I could tell a story about an outcast, otherized, 4e tiefling, but it would not be the same story I'd tell about an outcast, otherized PS tiefling, because not all outcasts and others are created identical. Since it gives a noble and specific history for all tieflings, it changes the tale on some rather important points. One of those important points: 4e tieflings are outcast because of some evil their ancestors did, they earned their status as outcasts by doing something worthy of casting out. PS tieflings are outcast
for no good reason, for simply what they are born as.
I'm not claiming to have read your mind, just your post!
Fair 'nuff.
I also think your comments about teifling nobility aren't the only way of approaching the issue: if you want to use teifings to raise issues about class inequaity, you could start with the fall of the Bael Turath nobility as a commentary upon the illusory and usurpatory nature of aristocracy in general. That sort of ironic reading would seem to fit with at least some of the Planescape tone quite well.
But then you have a PC tiefling who is not poor because of their unfortunate birth, but is poor because of some sense of cosmic retribution for their ancestor's abuse of wealth.
That is a
much different story. It focuses more on the idea that the poor (as represented by the tiefling) are poor because they did something to earn being poor, rather than just being poor because they exist in an unfair multiverse (much as the player does). It implies that the heroic path is to atone for your ancestor's misdeeds and become wealthy again as a restoration of an ancestral state, with a villain represented by your own peoples' historical errors. It doesn't imply that the heroic path is to fight the chains of poverty tooth and nail because the world is capricious and doesn't care about being fair, with a villain represented by the wealthy and powerful in the PC's society who judge the character unfairly. No, the wealthy and powerful who exclude and shun the PC are perfectly reasonable people, because the PC's ancestors
deserved punishment. The antagonist is your ancestry, not the current hoi polloi.
The "typical story" is that the beautiful person cursed to be ugly breaks the curse and is beautiful forever after, that the ugly was a sign of some internal ugliness she needed to overcome to break the curse. People react with disgust because they can finally see her inner ugliness.
The story that the PS tiefling tells (that I find much more compelling) is the story of the beautiful person cursed to be ugly who learns that it's not some sin that makes them ugly, but only the eyes of other people -- other people who don't necessarily get to dictate for everyone what is ugly and what is beautiful. Rather than overcoming some character flaw that makes her ugly, she must overcome the flaws of the society around her that decides that beauty is the only thing worthwhile. Rather than struggle against her sinfulness, she struggles with her self-identity, with self-acceptance, with an unfair universe that maybe gets a little more fair by the time she's done with it.
That's not a story you can easily tell with the Turathi tiefling, because the idea that the reason people hate you is a
pretty good reason, actually (even if a little extreme) informs the way that you come to be a hero, the enemies you struggle against. It's not the rich and powerful -- it's your own past.
