Tieflings

[Elphilm]

Isn't cambion, though, a male form, sort of like incubus is to succubus? What would the feminine form be?

I believe that outside of D&D the word is gender neutral. In D&D alu-fiends are the female counterparts to cambions.

 

[Dausuul]

I disagree. I like the term Cambion and I'll probably use that in place of tiefling. Cambion just sounds more sinister and more closely tied to the "hellish" origin of tieflings. Isn't cambion, though, a male form, sort of like incubus is to succubus? What would the feminine form be?

The Wikipedia article on cambions, in the original sense of the word, makes no mention of it being gender-specific. In previous editions of D&D, a male half-fiend was a cambion while a female was an alu-fiend, but I think you could quite legitimately use "cambion" for both.

 

[DandD]

Alu-fiends are specifically the daughters of a succubus and a mortal man. Totally unneccessary, I say, as in D&D 3rd edition, this one should simply be called a half-fiend, and that's it. But wacky additional half-races are all the jazz in D&D, so whatever...

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Tie-fling sounds more sinister...

... or like something you do with a neck-wear.

But it really is "Tomato, Tomahto," so do whatever the heck you like!

 

[Walking Dad]

Originally Posted by jaelis
Dungeonbjörn and Dragonbjörn!


I fixed that for you.

björn is swedish and means "bear".

I hope it helps

 

[fafhrd]

... or like something you do with a neck-wear.

Dear gods.
Sans pause. Perhaps I should have written it 'tife-ling'.

 

[Faraer]

I have a fairly strong mental link between the term 'tiefling' and Tony DiTerlizzi artwork.

Alu-fiends are specifically the daughters of a succubus and a mortal man. Totally unneccessary, I say, as in D&D 3rd edition, this one should simply be called a half-fiend, and that's it.

Most of the D&D monsters are 'unnecessary'. D&D lore, like legend and folklore, wasn't built according to utilitarian minimalism.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

björn is swedish and means "bear".

I hope it helps

Dragonborn, I'm generally indifferent.

Dragonbears, however, sound awesome.

 

[Shemeska]

I also dislike the name; along with aasimar, baatezu, tanar'ri, and so on and so forth, it's one more legacy of TSR's boneheaded decision to excise all mention of demons and devils from 2E.

People saying that alot doesn't make it true. They didn't have fiends in a book till 2 years into 2e, and they initially avoided using the terms demon and devil (but that's all they avoided).

2e had orders of magnitude more development of and exposure for the fiends, and they did in fact use the terms demons and devils (if it took them a bit to get around to it). They gave specific groups of fiends (and yes, they were still called fiends) particular racial (for lack of a better word) names to denote a common heirarchy and/or origin for their kind. It's lets you have the baatezu who migrated/fell to the 9 Hells, the ancient baatorians who were there much earlier, kytons, and even bezikiira as distinct groups all of whom are devils. Same thing with other types of fiends.

Ultimately it's a case of 'my made up word for a made up race is better than your made up word for a made up race'. I prefer tiefling etc because it's inventive, it isn't hamfisted like devilborn or something like that, and names like tanar'ri etc don't automatically have the baggage of real life mythology's use of demon and devil (usually not distinguishing between them) unless you want to add that in.

Edit: That said, the 4e tiefling is ugly as sin with those giant bessie the cow horns. I also don't like the 4e assumption of all tiefling's sharing a single origin, so they all have the same features. It's a real reduction in the flexibility that was one of the race's founding hallmarks: they could be descended from any sort of fiend, and oftentimes more than one contributed to their bloodline, and the traits were sporadic in their expression. Loved it. 4e really limits that with its assumptions.

 

[Zinovia]

You could always call them "Draenei"

I like cambions better as a name. As an older player, it means something to me, where tiefling implies some new-fangled weirdness created by munchkins. (Not necessarily true I grant, but that's the *feel* it has to me). Our 3.5 campaign is four years old at this point and we never made weird races out of the monster manual. So tieflings are not part of our campaign world. Nor are gnomes.

The use of "Tieflos" as a prominent leader of the people who originally made the demonic pact that formed the tieflings is also is a great concept.