Anyone know why tieflings suddenly started having such big horns in 4th and 5th edition?
I know you can have them look however you want in your games but I much prefer the smaller horned versions in the artwork of 2nd and 3rd edition. I had hoped that 5E would return to the original way tieflings looked but then I saw them in the players handbook and realized it wasn't meant to be. It's a small thing really but it still bothers me a little.
I am in pretty much the same boat.
While there isn't an explicit reason from WotC about this specific change, many of the 4e changes likely had to do with a rebranding effort. Like a lot of rebranding, this was likely guided by a few major principles, and some of those are to
differentiation from competitors or to become
more meaningful to consumers or
to signify a change in direction (all of which were, presumably, going concerns in D&D land circa 2006-2008 or so).
What's that got to do with tieflings? Well, giving tieflings a unified appearance and a single story (The Fall of Bael Turath), they made tieflings something that other companies couldn't do - they weren't just any half-fiend whatevers, they were specific to D&D-land and D&D lore and D&D Intellectual Property. The concept of a fiend-spawn wasn't new, but the specific story about a pact with Asmodedus leading to the Fall or Bael Turath in a war with Dragonborn - that's not something that any other company can come along and claim. A unified appearance goes hand in hand with this - a distinctive, recognizable look that they could slap on the cover of a book or into digital form that would instantly mean this thing was
D&D-branded in the minds of customers, not just some random fiendling. The diversity and vagueness of the old tiefling's look and story wasn't as easily marketable.
In the 4e run-up, the fact that this would annoy people who liked the old tiefling was apparently not really a concern. Folks would like the new story BETTER, probably, one would assume.
That's my working hypothesis, anyway. I find it's a theoretical framework that explains kind of a lot about 4e in a way that seems simple and reasonable, if perhaps debatably a bit misguided.
5e tries to split the difference - 4e aesthetics and Asmodeus origin, but no Bael Turath and more of an "outcast" reputation than a pulpy, sword-and-sorcery "evil fallen empire of dark magic" vibe.
This still doesn't work great for folks who liked the old tiefling because of its diversity. But 5e is less precious - the DNA of the tiefling is easy to replicate into a more diverse race more akin to the old-school tiefling as a planetouched orphan whose strange mutations might manifest in any number of ways.
For that, there's the Planetouched: +2 Cha, +1 to any one ability score, darkvision, one kind of resistance, one exotic language, a cantrip at 1st, a 1st level spell at 3rd, and a 2nd level spell at 5th. Mix and match, roll on a chart, make your own.