D&D General The Evolution of Tieflings in D&D: Interviews with Zeb Cook and Colin McComb

Kobold Avenger · Jul 11, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
Druids are in the PHB, and yet they're pretty low on the list of most played classes. PHB status doesn't explain it by itself.

But chances are they'll still be more popular than Artificers or Psions even after those classes officially come out. Being in the PHB really does matter for exposure.

Imaro · Jul 11, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
Druids are in the PHB, and yet they're pretty low on the list of most played classes. PHB status doesn't explain it by itself.

Possibly but in general Druids being in the PHB means they are more than likely, from exposure alone, going to be more popular than a class regulated to a single campaign setting which is what Tieflings were in 2e or a splat book which is where they were found in 3e...

Aldarc · Jul 11, 2019

Kobold Avenger said:
But chances are they'll still be more popular than Artificers or Psions even after those classes officially come out. Being in the PHB really does matter for exposure.

Sure, but it hardly erases how it seems that players in 5e mostly enjoy the version that essentially carried over from 4e. Did they offer variants later? Sure. But the fanart and current version seems strongly influenced and increasingly locked into the 4e-brand tiefling, much in the same manner that kobolds began moving towards being mini-dragons with 3e. These things happen as the game evolves.

Aldarc · Jul 11, 2019

Imaro said:
Possibly but in general Druids being in the PHB means they are more than likely, from exposure alone, going to be more popular than a class regulated to a single campaign setting which is what Tieflings were in 2e or a splat book which is where they were found in 3e...

But not always. I seem to recall from D&D Next polls that some of the PHB classes included in 5e were actually beaten in popularity by some of the classes that didn't. (Sadly most of the articles from this time were taken down.) The same is also true now when looking at PF2. There are classes that will be in the PF2 PHB1 that were out-stripped in popularity by later introduced classes of PF1 (e.g., Witch, Oracle, etc.).

Kobold Avenger · Jul 11, 2019

Aldarc said:
Sure, but it hardly erases how it seems that players in 5e mostly enjoy the version that essentially carried over from 4e. Did they offer variants later? Sure. But the fanart and current version seems strongly influenced and increasingly locked into the 4e-brand tiefling, much in the same manner that kobolds began moving towards being mini-dragons with 3e. These things happen as the game evolves.

But it's because they weren't presented with anything else back in 4e, unless something becomes too much of the wrong direction to bring back in the edition change from 4 to 5 (such as Warlords) every non-niche general thing from the 4e PHB came back in the 5e PHB.

Azzy · Jul 11, 2019

AriochQ said:
I am not a huge fan, but I did have a younger player start playing a tiefling in one of my home games. It has good role play potential, and she does a great job with it. Of course, I run in Greyhawk, so I had to fit them in. I ended up just tying them to Iuz and the Greyhawk wars, which seemed an easy way to explain their lack of history in the setting.

I played a tiefling in Greyhawk, but mine was a scion of House Naelax in the (former) Great Kingdom.

Imaro · Jul 11, 2019

Aldarc said:
Sure, but it hardly erases how it seems that players in 5e mostly enjoy the version that essentially carried over from 4e. Did they offer variants later? Sure. But the fanart and current version seems strongly influenced and increasingly locked into the 4e-brand tiefling, much in the same manner that kobolds began moving towards being mini-dragons with 3e. These things happen as the game evolves.

You're assuming alot without much to back it up. I find your assertions interesting when contrasted with the fact that WotC has at this point published 10 subraces of Tieflings (plus the PHB main race) to date... The first of which in Sword Coast was basically an addendum to the Tiefling race stating that they didn't have to be of the blood of Asmodeus or look like the Tieflings in the PHB (Even if they have the PHB abilities)... if there was widespread preference for the monolithic Tiefling why expend the resources, page count and time to expand te race like this?

Hussar · Jul 11, 2019

AriochQ said:
I am not a huge fan, but I did have a younger player start playing a tiefling in one of my home games. It has good role play potential, and she does a great job with it. Of course, I run in Greyhawk, so I had to fit them in. I ended up just tying them to Iuz and the Greyhawk wars, which seemed an easy way to explain their lack of history in the setting.

Which is exactly how Ghosts of Saltmarsh presents tieflings in Greyhawk. Servants of Iuz. Great minds and all that.

Wrathamon said:
Considering how popular tieflings became in the 4e & 5e era. I think the change was a success.

And, really, how popular is that actually? Aren't tieflings about as popular as gnomes? As in, virtually no one plays except a tiny slice of gamers who are REALLY passionate about the race? I've never even seen so much as a suggestion of playing one in any game I've sat in on. Wasn't it somewhere around the bottom of the pack in the D&D Beyond polling?

Tony Vargas · Jul 11, 2019

Kobold Avenger said:
But it's because they weren't presented with anything else back in 4e

4e was in print for 4 years, it didn't have any kind of monolithic, inertial influence on the shape of the game just by being the only thing for a long time - that was the game of the TSR era.

unless something becomes too much of the wrong direction to bring back in the edition change from 4 to 5 every non-niche general thing from the 4e PHB came back in the 5e PHB.

Circular logic, at best, and irrelevant to Aldarc's point.

5e offers a range of Tiefling images, current fans gravitate maybe towards the more diabolical ones? Well, 5e's growing rapidly, lots of new fans are just gravitating towards the things they like from what 5e presents, where it may have been presented before notwithstanding.

doctorbadwolf · Jul 11, 2019

Imaro said:
You're assuming alot without much to back it up. I find your assertions interesting when contrasted with the fact that WotC has at this point published 10 subraces of Tieflings (plus the PHB main race) to date... The first of which in Sword Coast was basically an addendum to the Tiefling race stating that they didn't have to be of the blood of Asmodeus or look like the Tieflings in the PHB (Even if they have the PHB abilities)... if there was widespread preference for the monolithic Tiefling why expend the resources, page count and time to expand te race like this?

The design team loves planescape. like, a lot. To the point where they decided, without any survey data to back it up, to make planescape the canon of all 5e dnd. Even to the point where they had to come up with a weird explanation for why the cosmology and history of certain races are different in Eberron. It's a mind boggling decision, IMO, but that ship has sailed into the space between crystal spheres.

Apperently, we're supposed to care about the status or Greyhawk Nerule when determining whether to keep The Raven Queen's origin the same or completely change her entire character to the point where it simply isn't the same entity in any way, even though she doesn't exist in Greyhawk. Because planescape, therefor all the worlds share a cosmology to some degree. There aren't enough emojis for how lame this is.

So, of course they include weird options for the race from planescape that had a ton of different ways to look.

And yet, nearly all fan art for the race is still pretty much the default aesthetic.