D&D (2024) How the Aardling should be reintroduced in the future. With a fiendish bestial counterpart

[tetrasodium]

I dunno if it was an outright kneejerk reaction to furries per se as much as it was piling celestial furries with cosmic wings on top of ‘mundane’ furries, especially when the trampled on the Aasimar stick.
I recall it being bring back Aasimar - we dont need new furry angels when people can already be tabaxis or aaracockras or loxodons

This so much.

Guardinals were a thing in 2E. Straight out of Elysium in the outer planes. But they haven't really been a thing since then. So it's no wonder why people were sniffy towards Aardlings, which were meant to be prime plane descendants of Guardinals originally. If Guardinals were more prevalent in the game... having a player race for them would have been more acceptable as something the game could "want".

Do I think there needs to be a "fiendish" version of Aardlings? No. Because there isn't a "fiendish" version of Guardinals. Instead, the racial mirror equivalent would be a player race based upon daemons/yugoloths, as Hades is the opposite side of the Great Wheel from Elysium.

Now that being said... it also is going to come down to exactly how the designers wish to define which planes Aasimar and Tieflings are descended from. They've already made "demonic" tieflings, just like the standard ones were "devilish". So they are saying that the descendants of the Lawful Evil outer plane and Chaotic Evil outer plane both fall under the category of "tiefling". Which should mean really, that decsendants of the Neutral Evil outer plane (Hades) should probaby be considered tieflings too.

Which means on the Celestial side... Aasimar should thus be the category of the Lawful Good archon descendants of Mount Celestia, the Neutral Good guardinal descendants of Elysium, and the Chaotic Good whatever-creatures-come-from-Ysgard-anyone-really-know? descendants of Ysgard are. They all should be considered Aasimar.

And the two remaining outer planes of Lawful Neutral Mechanus, and Chaotic Neutral Limbo? Maybe the Modrons and Slaad get their own special descendant races, or perhaps we just suggest that those two planes just couldn't support or ever have relations with Prime creatures to actually create descendants of those planes?

Preferably none of the planes for one very simple reason. It's the GM's role to decide planar cosmology, the contents of those planes, & how it interacts with the world/prime material plane where most games take place. That role is not assigned to players & any race that does so is toxic to the GM's ability to run their own game world.

 

[Corinnguard]

And the two remaining primary-alignment outer planes of Lawful Neutral Mechanus, and Chaotic Neutral Limbo? Maybe the Modrons and Slaad get their own special descendant races, or perhaps we just suggest that those two planes just couldn't support or ever have relations with Prime creatures to actually create descendants of those planes?

In PF1, the Ganzi and the Aphorites were Planetouched beings who were the descendants of Lawful and Chaotic Outsiders.

Aphorite - Races - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder RPG Database

The primary inhabitants of the perfect city of Axis are the race known as axiomites, outsiders born of lawful neutral souls whose primary focus is to serve Axis in one of three ways: the construction and tending of inevitables, the expansion and maintenance of the city itself, and exploring and...

www.aonprd.com

Ganzi - Races - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder RPG Database

Ganzis are the end result of planar chaos touching living creatures. Where the planes brush against the Material Plane or where chaotic inhabitants (be they chaos beasts, proteans, valkyries, or others) affect or influence mortal life, ganzis are born in their wake like ripples in a pond.<br...

www.aonprd.com

I should also point out that PF1 had six Aasimar heritages (Agathion, Angel, Archon, Azata, Garuda and Peri) and 10 Tiefling heritages ( Asura, Daemon, Demodand, Demon, Devil, Div, Kyton, Oni, Qlippoth and Rakshasa.)

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

and the Chaotic Good whatever-creatures-come-from-Ysgard-anyone-really-know

I'd go with Einhenjar and Valkyriesm good-aligned spirit of war, something like this

 

[The Shadow]

Then again Slaad are a really poor 'chaotic' planar species too. They're not chaotic. They're just evil.

Damn skippy! I've been saying this for decades!

Supposedly the Chaotic Neutral outsiders, from a plane of shifting chaos (which is laughably called Limbo, but leave that for now):

1. Always look like frogs.
2. Are neatly color-coded for your convenience.
3. Reproduce by lethally parasitizing intelligent beings.

They'd be completely convincing as a kind of demon. There's nothing about them that suggests "chaos" at all.

 

[Incenjucar]

Slaadi do get actually chaotic traits in Planescape materials, though they still trend chaotic evil.

 

[Corinnguard]

Protean – d20PFSRD The Proteans from PF1 are a better representative for Chaos than the Slaadi. They're Chaotic Neutral.

 

[Mecheon]

My favourite thing with the Proteans is their retroactive application of the Ogdoad to them and the slaadi. Good ol' primeval creation deity vibes

But yeah, I've stuck with 4E's "They literately eat reality to try to return it to a swirling maelstrom of possibility" slaad because it gives them something to differentiate them from the competition

 

[MechaTarrasque]

With slaadi, when they do bad stuff, it is just business (pretty much an operational definition of N on the good/evil axis). You never see slaadi going "look at the pop when the tadpole burst through that sucker's chest" or "I'm going to hunt down your family and burn your village to the ground" if you escape it. It just goes on the next potential baby daddy or mommy.

On a practical level, most chaotic types are motivated by fame, and it is easy to reframe slaadi that way. Two small changes: 1) slaadi can detect the CR level of whatever they encounter, and 2) slaadi are only interested in having the glory of infecting a being of their CR or higher. Lesser beings are beneath their concern, so your commoners, cows, etc. are safe.

 

[Minigiant]

I have a custom monster as my chaos planar- the Chaotacon
It has morphing limbs. It grows one arm per opponent. I hand all the players a d12. Their rolls determine which attacks the Choatacon has.
I hand them another die. Their rolls determine the Chaotacon's resistences, immunities, vulnerabilities.

"Don't blame me. You rolled a 10"

 

[Vaalingrade]

I feel like in the entire previous conversation, no one was talking too much about cosmos, and more about having an animal people species with not animalistic abilities commiserate with species. Like, really just a big mascot head on an aasimar's body.

It's not like us modern-style tiefling players give even the slightest microscopic damn about the cosmology of D&D's naughty planes. We like playing weird devil people. If you want to play an animal person, you want to play a weird animal person.