D&D 5E aasimar all humans?

[the Jester]

In my game, both tieflings and aasimars appear rarely as races in their own right, but more commonly as occasional births among other races. For instance, human parents might give birth to a tiefling or aasimar. Typically this happens because of something in the family's history- for instance, maybe someone made a deal with devils or had some kind of truck with angels. Such an aasimar or tiefling could come from any race, and its features would superficially resemble a member of that race like a bog-standard tiefling
superficially resembles a human.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

now to gild the lily, would any drow traits be eligible to be used?

Generally not, but if going by my writeup, if one wanted to replace Darkvision with a proficiency then one could. But I feel Darkvision is very much a Drow thing. But I feel that you could just replace the spell-like abilities with the Drow Magic spell-like abilities.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

now to gild the lily, would any drow traits be eligible to be used?

The answer here is very much "whatever the DM wants to allow". Drow superior darkvision is hypothetically balanced with sunlight sensitivity so importing both of those to a drow aasimar seems reasonably balanced on the face of it.

But really it's fine to just play them with normal Aasimar traits and say that the celestial heritage overwhelmed their Drow genetic inheritance. Not having some of the Drow abilities sets them up with a backstory as the ugly drowling who later learned they were an aasimar swan all along.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Nope: Aasimar can be of almost any base race. (I have one of half-orc origin for example.)
Still use Aasimar stats though.
There are Aasimar variants around. - Exploring Eberron has some, although these are more to do with the origin of the celestial power rather than the humanoid.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Traditionally, aasimar area presented as being human-derived, but only in a soft way. Likewise with tieflings and genasi. Implication, art, ambiguous statements, etc.

But, at least IMO, there's absolutely nothing wrong with expanding beyond that implicit limit and having aasimar drow or tiefling orcs or whatever. As long as the player's interest is genuine (non-exploitative and non-coercive), I'm there to support it, and I've never heard an argument for why I shouldn't be.

 

[michaeljpastor]

So comparing drow vs. aasimar (and even vs. half drow) , simply using aasimar racial bonuses gives me nearly the same advantages, and i get +2 to cha instead of +1 . The only thing ill ask my dm is for is to have dancing lights instead of light as my cantrip.

Thanks everyone for the help!

 

[OakenHart]

If they were to do a hypothetical 6e, I imagine Aasimar or Tiefling might be closer to how they did Lineages in the recent Van Richten's book.

 

[CleverNickName]

It would be pretty interesting to write both the Aasimar and Tiefling as subraces that could then be applied to any other humanoid. And while we're at it, let's do the same for the Genasi and the Feyblood. Why should humans and elves have all the fun?

Fellborn elves? Angelic halflings? Earth genasi dwarves? Yes please.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

If they were to do a hypothetical 6e, I imagine Aasimar or Tiefling might be closer to how they did Lineages in the recent Van Richten's book.

Agreed. I would actually prefer it that way, too, and make Eladrin and other Planetouched Races actually become Planetouched Lineages.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If they were to do a hypothetical 6e, I imagine Aasimar or Tiefling might be closer to how they did Lineages in the recent Van Richten's book.

This is more or less how I'd do "race" if I were in charge of 6e. Use either "kin" or "folk," group various things together into one common umbrella. Humans ("Wanderfolk," because--rightly or wrongly--other folk see them as being unable to settle anywhere, they keep going and moving and searching) would include a Dual-Blooded lineage, which would give a package of subrace options instead of the usual "humans can do anything" generic package of a feat, a trained skill, flexible stats etc. It'd cover tieflings and aasimar, but also half-orcs, half-elves, muls, genasi, etc.

The upside to this is, you start having (more or less) the same flexibility that class/subclass provides. That is, instead of needing to publish more "complete"kin, you can do so sparingly, only when it's really needed, and instead just publish more subkin for existing options. E.g., one of my proposed kin types was Beastkin, which covers a variety of anatomically-distinct (but related, because Fantasy Genetics) options like tabaxi and minotaur. Instead of publishing an entirely new kin for loxodon, you could just make loxodon one of the options within the Beastkin umbrella.

"Kin" or "folk" also has the advantage that they are already used in some places/games (e.g. Lizardfolk, Beastkin, the fae folk, Pathfinder's various "<thing>kin" aasimar variants), so this isn't an unprecedented leap--and "kin" is allowed to mean a broader range of things than pure blood relation, e.g. "of the same kind or nature; having affinity." So you can have Ashkin (the FFXIV term for all undead) despite them being united by the way they became what they are, rather than united by any blood link.