Do you want Tieflings in the phb?

[hong]

Ain't nothing exists that can't be banned anyway.

 

[jeffh]

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?

Actually, Christopher, I've been wondering for a while what your ideal list of races would be. I think you were asked that on Usenet a while back (when I was still fairly active there), but I can't remember much except that I seem to recall you like Goliaths. Suppose you get to pick 5-8 races to be considered core, with no constraints save that humans have to be one of them and that most of them should have appeared somewhere in the 3.5 cannon. Your selection doesn't have to appeal to anyone besides yourself, though your players should at least be able to tolerate it. What lineup would you choose?

Er. Not that I see anything wrong with a human-only campaign, something I've considered a number of times.

 

[hong]

Actually, Christopher, I've been wondering for a while what your ideal list of races would be. I think you were asked that on Usenet a while back (when I was still fairly active there), but I can't remember much except that I seem to recall you like Goliaths. Suppose you get to pick 5-8 races to be considered core, with no constraints save that humans have to be one of them and that most of them should have appeared somewhere in the 3.5 cannon. Your selection doesn't have to appeal to anyone besides yourself, though your players should at least be able to tolerate it. What lineup would you choose?

Chris just hates J.J.R. Tolkein with all of his body, including his pee-pee.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Well, I think it would be hypocritical of me to say tieflings shouldn't be core, since the first D&D character I played a long-running campaign with was a changeling warlock with a fiendish connection. Not a tiefling, but close. Chaotic neutral "destroy darkness with darkness" type, secretive, a bit angsty at times...

At least tiefings are more interesting than a strange elf-subrace that gets too much attention. Drow just seem boring and one-dimensional to me. Also, I have a general liking for the idea of a culture which exists entirely as a subset of some larger culture, rather than being something seperate, and planetouched characters fill that somewhat.

I would like to have assimar in as well though, if tieflings are core.

Of course, the names tiefling and aasimar are terrible, so if they are core, I would prefer them to use a better name. Even "demon-kin" would work better.

 

[jeffh]

Chris just hates J.J.R. Tolkein with all of his body, including his pee-pee.

Oh, I know that. I've seen him say pretty much those exact words (er, minus the pee-pee bit) on rgfd probably about as often as you have. (Though nowhere near as many times in total - I gather you know each other fairly well in real life, while I've not had the pleasure of meeting either of you.) Still an interesting question, though.

 

[variant]

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.

How much can you possibly write about the Tiefling? "Fiendish blood, have horns, feel like they don't fit in, vagabonds, outcasts"? Seriously, what do they have that can't be done in a simple template in the Monster Manuel or Dungeon Master's Guide? Do you people really want them to take up space in not only the PHB with their Talents and Feats, but in every single Supplement to ever be released for then on?

Has anyone else here actually read the Half-Orc and Half-Elf text in the PHB? Anyone try to suffer through Races of Destiny? I have never read so much useless bloat in my life. The Tiefling suffers the same problem!

Elves, Humans, Halflings, Dwarves, and Gnomes all have their own unique fully established cultures. These 'don't just fit in' races do not belong because they aren't worth the trouble.

 

[Someone]

Ain't nothing exists that can't be banned anyway.

No. 4e PHB will include Rule -1: Tieflings can't be banned.

 

[Crashy75]

You know what bothers me most about Tieflings? The charisma penalty. Have you ever noticed most demons have fairly high charisma scores? Even the dretch is average. As for the feeling of wrongness they emanate; give them a diplomacy penalty and be done with it.
EDIT: This may not be an issue in 4e however.

 

[jeffh]

How much can you possibly write about the Tiefling? "Fiendish blood, have horns, feel like they don't fit in, vagabonds, outcasts"? Seriously, what do they have that can't be done in a simple template in the Monster Manuel or Dungeon Master's Guide? Do you people really want them to take up space in not only the PHB with their Talents and Feats, but in every single Supplement to ever be released for then on?

Has anyone else here actually read the Half-Orc and Half-Elf text in the PHB? Anyone try to suffer through Races of Destiny? I have never read so much useless bloat in my life. The Tiefling suffers the same problem!

Elves, Humans, Halflings, Dwarves, and Gnomes all have their own unique fully established cultures. These 'don't just fit in' races do not belong because they aren't worth the trouble.

Your lack of imagination isn't universally shared. I see no reason why there couldn't, in principle, be as much to say about tieflings as any other race, with the added advantage that it hasn't already been said.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Actually, Christopher, I've been wondering for a while what your ideal list of races would be. I think you were asked that on Usenet a while back (when I was still fairly active there), but I can't remember much except that I seem to recall you like Goliaths.

I think goliaths are probably among the best of the Races of freshmen, but mostly because of their interesting design and fun culture. I'd never put them in the core rules.

Suppose you get to pick 5-8 races to be considered core, with no constraints save that humans have to be one of them and that most of them should have appeared somewhere in the 3.5 cannon. Your selection doesn't have to appeal to anyone besides yourself, though your players should at least be able to tolerate it. What lineup would you choose?

With the understanding that we're talking about the Fourth Edition model, with subsequent core rulebooks which can present other options? Easy, despite the fact that I wouldn't play some of them:

Changelings
Dwarves
Elves
Humans
Kobolds
Orcs
Tieflings

Here's my thinking:

I don't want to "double up" too much. Why have humans, elves, and half-elves? Why have half-orcs when you could have orcs?

Why have halflings when you already have Tolkienesque elves and dwarves, and kobolds fill the Small race niche while bringing the unique D&D flavour? (Their presence would imply a closer relationship with other humanoids than in most settings, but they fill the "low-status" or "untouchable" niche well, too.)

Why not have changelings to emphasise the new social and non-combat challenges (they're better diplomats and social chameleons - ha! - than half-elves)?

Why not have tieflings - again, with their distinctively D&D flavour - as a signifier of a slightly darker world where fiends are important? (I consider the involvement of the Lower Planes with the mortal world another distinctive element of D&D.)

Edit: My second Player's Handbook would probably include at least two or three of half-elves, halflings, half-orcs, gnomes, along with warforged and shifters. I'd be inclined to include gnomes before halflings, as an aside.

Chris just hates J.J.R. Tolkein with all of his body, including his pee-pee.

I'm really just completely sick and tired of seeing D&D discussions dominated by Tolkienesque assumptions which have never applied, since the beginning of the game - especially when people start talking about "fantasy traditions" as though Tolkien and the hacks who imitated his work over the last fifty years are representative of the good fantasy fiction out there, or the tradition as a whole.

Tolkienesque elements are fine in D&D. I don't use them, but then the next guy probably doesn't use the Lovecraftian elements I might. D&D should be more than one 20th-century writer and his hackish imitators - and it should be true to its own self-defined genre, which has never been tied to one type of fantasy.