Do you want Tieflings in the phb?

[Klaus]

Not the whole corpse just the organs. All the tastiest bits with none of supporting fluff.
Tieflings in, although Lizardfolk would be a much better choice.

Or gnolls. Or kobolds. Or hobgoblins.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

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.

A wisdom penalty might be more appropriate, although I am not entirely convinced they need one just because they have a dexterity bonus.

 

[howandwhy99]

Tieflings aren't a race, are they?

Perhaps they will be a racial ability you take optionally at first level after choosing a race. And then grow into it using feats and/or talent tree options?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Tieflings aren't a race, are they?

Yes, they are, at least in 3e. Sad but true. They should be a template, but they aren't - though I guess that's a very popular house rule. Note that Wizards has created 3 or 4 different tieflings: The normal tiefling (supposedly of some humanoid stock, though for some reason the racial traits of that race are suppressed, something unique to planetouched), the tanarukk (descendant of a demon/orc cross-breed), the fey'ri (descended from a blend of sun elf and demon, mainly succubus), and durzagon (descendant of duergar and fiend, probably some kind of devil).

The popular house rule part got me thinking, though: A lot of the things we know have been changed in 4e are things many people have house ruled in their campaigns, or at least complained about. I also think that a lot of people think that planetouched shouldn't be a separate race but rather a template. So it's not that unlikely that 4e won't have a tiefling race, but something like a template for them. Maybe as a bunch of feats.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Seems to me Forgotten Realms is the default setting for 4e

Nah. It's still an optional setting, as it should be. In fact, they god largely rid even of Greyhawk.

If the Realms were the default setting, they had to put the planetouched into the core rules, and also a big deal of sub-races for the races (everything except humans has at least three subraces in the realms)

 

[Kent H]

What else do they have? They are just humans with a bad attitude and look "cool."

Between here and the WotC boards, I'm pretty convinced you don't even really know what tiefling "flavor" is.

 

[AllisterH]

Planetouched races are as old as D&D itself, if not older...

Merlin in many mythologies would be a cambion, Gandalf is a celestial, Conan made liberal use of "demon-bred" humans while Sheeba (the Gray Mouser's patron wizard) is thought to be/rumoured in the novels themselves as being "born from an infernal conjunction".

I'm not sure why people insist that this is a "new" concept D&D has cribbed from WoW.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Gandalf is a celestial

That's not a planetouched, though. Planetouched are only touched by the planes. A celestial is a creature of the planes.

I'm not sure why people insist that this is a "new" concept D&D has cribbed from WoW.

WoW? Definetly not. Planetouched - as we know them now in D&D - have been around a lot longer than WoW. I guess they have been around longer than Blizzard, for that matter.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I'm not sure why people insist that this is a "new" concept D&D has cribbed from WoW.

Because they like to jump to conclusions and are largely ignorant of things not only from previous editions, but also things from the 3.5e monster manual.

 

[DonTadow]

No. "Planetouched" of any variety should be extreme fringe characters, not one of the basic choices right out of the box. Put 'em in the Monster Manual.

-The Gneech

I'm on the fence on this one. For one thing I'd like an iconic race such as a tiefling. Everyone always wants to play one. The only other race I could think of that is more popular is drow. Perhaps if they are going non campaign specific they include one or two races from the setting sthey are coming out with Tiefling from planescape, drow from forgotten realms, something dragonish from dragonlance, warforged from eberron (or shifter)

edited
oh the reason why i wouldnt want them is because aren't tieflings traditonally evil?