WayOfTheFourElements
Hero
I don't think you do.
I don't think she was talking about banning a race from a setting. Rather, those who would ban the race from their game no matter the setting.
What about DMs that only ever run one setting?
I don't think you do.
I don't think she was talking about banning a race from a setting. Rather, those who would ban the race from their game no matter the setting.
What about DMs that only ever run one setting?
I don't know.What about DMs that only ever run one setting?
The comment was mostly a joke. In my campaign, demons are not widely known to be Pure, Living Evil, and tieflings are the ruling class of one particular nation, so the reaction in most places is "decadent foreign aristocrat with unnatural breeding customs" -- think Habsburg, not Faust.See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically look like a demon, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of all worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!
While its true that tieflings aren't assumed to be evil, it is also true that the official details of the race have always included "distrusted by many." Tieflings are, and always have been, the target of fantasy racism. They're forced to the fringes of society, where they have to pick up favored occupation Rogue and learn to lie really well (bluff bonus), which in turn increases distrust... its a vicious cycle, but one humans have engendered throughout real world history. Half-orcs tend to face a similar prejudice from humans, though ironically not from the orc tribes.
That said, its pretty nice that tieflings favor warlocks in 5e, because you can just pick up the Disguise Self Invocation. Want to avoid trouble? Snap, I look like an elf. Oh, look, Friends cantrip. Now you like me for a minute, and when I walk away, snap, I'm now human that looks nothing alike to the elf. So, its not like hiding from people isn't easy to manage to facilitate rp either, even in the most prejudiced setting.
Side Note - aasimar were said to face a similar prejudice, but I always found that a bit strained outside Planescape. In Planescape, I always assume Paladins to be part of the Mercy killers, so the association of aasimar to fanatic kill-them-all types is pretty strong, and that kind of bias is reasonable. But in other worlds, paladins tend to be highly regarded, so having them suffer prejudice from humans feels... odd.
No tiefling fan is surprised that tieflings aren't trusted. Since their inception in 2e, tieflings have always had a bonus to Bluffing others. Even 4e, who swapped focus from being sneaky types to more obvious, pseudo-fire elementalists, kept the bluff bonus. 5e is pretty much the first game to lose it. Deception is pretty much bread and butter for tieflings by both necessity (having to hide) and natural inclination (devils lie all the time).And people wonder why Tieflings aren't trusted....
Oh - agreed - probably not.Honestly, a serious problem here is simply that you refuse to see them as anything other than monsters. That is, it sounds like you literally can't understand how someone can look at a Dragonborn or Tiefling and not immediately, intuitively, and without the tiniest shade of doubt think "that's a monster." If you truly can't understand that, you'll never be able to grok a group that wants those things.
Fair enough...and that's what optional extras are for, be they official WotC or homebrew or whatever.I find that kind of...disappointing, I guess. As I have said before, we have a game which lets us imagine any world we choose, and so of course we always imagine perfectly identical ones...
Part of what makes a demon a demon and a dragon a dragon is that they rarely if ever even give their word, never mind keep it once given.Which is fine...for that character.
But what about worlds where the next fishing village over was established by dragonborn refugees from some horrible war or other that never mattered to your apprentice-of-the-village-elder? Or ones where a peaceful merger of two kingdoms means that, technically, there are two royal families that always ritually marry each other--one human, one dragonborn--but must seek gigolos/concubines because they're not interfertile? Does literally every character you make grow up "learning to kill these" sentient beings with a cultural penchant for honoring their deals? Does literally every world ever consider them "things" and not people?
Oh I gave him a chance to act alright...grudgingly ran with him for two (I think, might have been more) adventures until in mid-dungeon a dispute he had with another PC blew up and turned ugly, he went murderously PvP and the part of the party that disagreed with him realized quickly he was too much for us to handle. (the half-Dragon was kind of a power-build in an otherwise not very powergamed party) Needless to say the rest of that adventure was a bit of a gong show, though top marks for its entertainment value!The antithetical alignment stuff certainly doesn't help. Especially if one of you was Good-aligned and the other Evil. Of course, this also means you actually gave them a chance to act, rather than immediately saying "MONSTER, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!" (Though, frankly, I cannot square being "Good" and being 100% okay with instantly resorting to lethal force upon encountering a sentient of unknown disposition, regardless of how much one's been taught not to trust them.)
Planescape is a setting in which many races and beings exist in a kind of overall (and slightly artificial) detente because to do otherwise would ruin the point of the setting. Quite different from the core game/setting in that regard.See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically look like a demon, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of all worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!
Wezerek suggests a reason for the popularity of human fighters: "It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells."
What about DMs that only ever run one setting?