Do you want Tieflings in the phb?

[mhacdebhandia]

Elves, dwarves, halfings, are staples in fantasy writing.

Staples in Tolkien and his imitators, hardly "fantasy" in a general sense. Especially the halflings, which have no predecessors.

How many elves, dwarves, or halflings are there in Robert E. Howard? Jack Vance? Fritz Leiber? Michael Moorcock (okay, there are elf-like peoples in his work, but they're pretty different!)? H. P. Lovecraft? Clark Ashton Smith?

Not to mention more contemporary authors (err, not that Vance or Moorcock are dead . . .) like China Mieville, Steven Erikson, George R. R. Martin, et cetera?

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Only if 'aasimars' are included as well.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Drow would be a good choice for core but #1 for me would be warforged. The best new PC race for D&D since... hmm, 1974 I think.

Another warforged fan, and a fellow Celt to boot!

 

[Pale]

It is exotic enough to not waste precious page space on in the Core PHB.

Basically, you have a very conservative approach to your fantasy roleplaying. Just understand that others don't and it's not a waste of space simply because you won't use it. You may understand this, and you may understand that your wants and desires should not and will not dictate content in the Core books... but your posts don't reflect that understanding.

I would also like to point out that I find your board name highly ironic considering your hard-line stance in this discussion.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I don't want Tieflings in the PHB, but I do want them in the MM. I have a couple reasons for this. For starters, the PHB includes all of the core and default races, classes and features of the game. Something as exotic as the tiefling should not be included in the PHB, imo. I think part of the reason they're doing this is they want to show how to do the old LA races using the new "races gain powers as they go up in levels" feature of 4e. But imo, this would be better left to the MM.

Also, I've always thought that it was silly that Tieflings are a race (humans with a fiendish heritage) rather than a template. We've always used Tieflings that way in the group I play in, and we love it that way. We've had human tieflings, elf tieflings, halfling tieflings and so on. Makign them a core race in the PHB, especially with all of the racial progression rules coming in 4e, will make that very difficult to do.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

Don't Axe Gnomes, Half-Elves or Half Orcs for Tieflings

I don't mind having Tieflings as a core race, as long as the following prerequisites are met:

* No PC races that have existed since 1e AD&D are removed to make room for Tieflings
* Tieflings, Aasimar, Gensai, and all the other half-plane/energy-whatevers are equally represented

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Also, I've always thought that it was silly that Tieflings are a race (humans with a fiendish heritage) rather than a template. We've always used Tieflings that way in the group I play in, and we love it that way. We've had human tieflings, elf tieflings, halfling tieflings and so on.

Of course, in Third Edition we have many examples of planetouched races which are mixtures between outsiders and other, non-human creatures.

Fey'ri and tanarukk appear in Monsters of Faerun, for instance. They are elven-demon and orc-demon planetouched, respectively, and are in fact listed under "Planetouched, tiefling".

So. Consider that the Forgotten Realms is the first campaign setting coming out for Fourth Edition.

 

[Kent H]

Yes, more than any other race besides human.

 

[Darth Shoju]

I don't like the idea of the tiefling specifically being a core race, but if they make it into a "planetouched" (or whatever) race where you pick what bloodline you are and that determines your racial abilities as you advance (or however it will work in 4e) could be pretty sweet.

Beyond that, though, I've never been one to have much stomach for people playing really bizarre races as PCs. I'm all for players having fun, but someone rolling up an otyugh or manticore or teletubby or something would hurt my sense of immersion into the world I'm thinking.

 

[jeffh]

It (the Teifling) is exotic enough to not waste precious page space on in the Core PHB.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think they're in exactly the right place in terms of exotic-ness.

I'd be pretty sorry (and extremely surprised) to see Dwarves and Elves out of D&D, but that's more out of tradition than anything else. Beyond that, though, what's the point of playing a non-human that's just a human with slightly different abilities (and generally speaking, bland ones at that)? Why shouldn't the fourth through Nth (where I hope to see N be at least five and no more than eight) core races be slightly more exotic?

You keep going on as though you expected it to be obvious to everyone that, for example, a teifling PC in every game was a bad thing. I don't see how it's worse than an elf PC in every game, and it seems actively preferable to a halfling PC in every game.