D&D General Do you think we might start to see more varied Tiefling art to match the PHB descriptions?

[TheHand]

I’ve also encouraged varying appearances for tieflings, ala Planescape, but I think another thing that’s cemented their more modern look is BG3 and their prevalence there.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've been playing D&D for two decades and just been a fan of general post D&D fantasy milieu for another decade, and while I can tell you the difference in how demons and devils (and yugoloths) BEHAVE, I cannot, for the life of me, give a cogent aesthetic difference between fiends. I know what a devil is; horns, red skin, cloven hooves, maybe a tail and bat wings. So if we say "ok, that's a devil, tieflings descended from devils look like that"... I can't really say "in contrast, DEMONS look like XYZ, therefore tieflings descended from them look like XYZ."

We won't be getting more visually distinct tieflings until we get more visually distinct fiends. We can't even say "demons are more bestial than devils" or "demons use more elemental magic than devils" when we have creatures like the bone devil and ice devil.

It’s also a pretty narrow subset of D&D devils that actually look like that. Between barbed devils, bone devils, bearded devils, ice devils, chain devils, the similarly diverse array of demons, plus the various neutral evil fiends… I feel like there’s no aesthetic cohesion among the fiend categories.

 

[Older Beholder]

I’ve been a fan of Tiefling art from 2E onwards.
5E is no exception, love this piece for example,,.

 

[Charlaquin]

I dunno, considering how we used to allow smoking everywhere once, and a popular image* of the dame fatale is the one with those long cigarette-thingies, maybe smelling like smoke isn't that much of a turn-off.

*) Admittedly, it is an image, we still don't have smellovision TV or cinema (or at last it's not common.)

To be fair, when you smoke tobacco regularly, you don’t really notice the smell of tobacco smoke. When smoking was allowed everywhere, it seemed pretty olfactoriaely inoffensive to smokers. It was pretty disgusting to non-smokers though, which is a big part of why as smoking became a less ubiquitous practice, there was more and more social pressure to stop allowing it everywhere.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’ve also encouraged varying appearances for tieflings, ala Planescape, but I think another thing that’s cemented their more modern look is BG3 and their prevalence there.

It was pretty cemented before that.

 

[TheHand]

It was pretty cemented before that.

I don’t disagree, but I think it helped popularize tieflings (and the way they looked in the game) to a wider audience. I know a few casual gamers who didn’t care much about tieflings until Karlach.

 

[Clint_L]

As a big Planescape fan I haven't been very satisfied with Tielfing art since 4E made them a default species option. Plus the Diterlizzi art can't be beat. I am however happy with the Tiefling options in the 2024 PHB, and the descriptions of the fiendish legacies are relatively clear that Tieflings don't all the look the same. The accompanying art though... makes it seem like they all just look like little devils still. Not great, and a real missed opportunity in my mind, but maybe we'll start to see some more variation at some point? Maybe someone's character in an actual play will catch on like Jester did. Maybe? I'm hoping anyway

Agreed! They’re one of the most popular classes with new players, and more variety would be great!

BTW Jester is half-Tiefling and half-Genasi.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No one wants to paint the poor ugly tieflings! Only the sexy ones!

But sexy demon person has been the popular culture trope for a while, and that gets imposed on tieflings, not the other way round (also see Pathfinder, WoW etc). Which is why the unsexy 4e bull horns were so unpopular. NB Dispatch has a Karlech expy.

Annah from Planescape Torment (1999) is a little different, but still sexy. Can't see in the pic, but she has cloven hooves.

Haer'Dalis from BG2 (2000). Also a little different, but still sexy. A bit limited, because he was stuck with a half elf model in game.

 

[nyvinter]

I loved the far realms tiefling I played in Planescape campaign. Non-standard looks ftw, because not everything need to be "easy marketable."

 

[J-H]

Yeah, it was really annoying how many full-on fiend looking tieflings there were in the Tasha's art. I am not onboard with them being super common.