Tieflings as we've seen them thus far are pretty interesting to me. I have an issue with the idea of any tiefling/human mating will always produce a tiefling child though. When this fact is combined with the idea of their appearance being a form of taint or a curse for their ancestor's trafficking with devils I find it difficult to believe that tieflings wouldn't simply be hunted to extinction. If nothing else, a fear that they'll destroy normal humans by breeding them out of existence.
So I decided to make an adjustment to precisely what a tiefling is. Being a tiefling is the result of a mutation of normal human DNA, and it is a recessive trait at that. This means that any child of two tiefling parents will always be a tiefling, they'll inherit both "halves" of the tiefling gene. However a child of a tiefling and a human without the gene will always be a normal human... just a human who is now a carrier for the tiefling gene; essentially a "half-tiefling" that is indistinguishable from normal humans and uses the same game rules as normal humans.
Half-tieflings who mate with other half-tieflings will produce a tiefling child 25% of the time, a normal human 25% of the time, and 50% of the time will produce a half-tiefling. Half-tieflings who mate with humans have a 50% chance to have a half-tiefling child, and 50% to produce a normal human child. Half-tieflings who mate with tieflings will produce a tiefling child 50% of the time, a half-tiefling child 50% of the time. Again, "half-tiefling" here is not a new race but is instead just a means of identifying a standard human who carries the tiefling gene.
Tieflings when born only look like tieflings if their mother was a tiefling. This means that the tiefling child born of a half-tiefling mother will start its life off looking as human as its mother did. Tieflings born of half-tiefling mothers will start developing their tiefling racial traits with the onset of puberty.
With this ruling, being a tiefling is still seen by the general public as a bad thing. It is seen as a mark of disfavor by the gods, or a sign of the child's parents having angered the gods perhaps. Tieflings would still find themselves a persecuted minority in most cases, but there is less of an outright fear of humanity being "bred out of existence". In some cases tiefling children would be cast out and banished, in some cases they might find some level of acceptance or at least tolerance. Conceptually this allows tieflings to play out in the larger campaign world a bit like the "orks" and "trolls" of the Shadowrun setting did: less as monsters and more as "cursed and deformed people".
So I decided to make an adjustment to precisely what a tiefling is. Being a tiefling is the result of a mutation of normal human DNA, and it is a recessive trait at that. This means that any child of two tiefling parents will always be a tiefling, they'll inherit both "halves" of the tiefling gene. However a child of a tiefling and a human without the gene will always be a normal human... just a human who is now a carrier for the tiefling gene; essentially a "half-tiefling" that is indistinguishable from normal humans and uses the same game rules as normal humans.
Half-tieflings who mate with other half-tieflings will produce a tiefling child 25% of the time, a normal human 25% of the time, and 50% of the time will produce a half-tiefling. Half-tieflings who mate with humans have a 50% chance to have a half-tiefling child, and 50% to produce a normal human child. Half-tieflings who mate with tieflings will produce a tiefling child 50% of the time, a half-tiefling child 50% of the time. Again, "half-tiefling" here is not a new race but is instead just a means of identifying a standard human who carries the tiefling gene.
Tieflings when born only look like tieflings if their mother was a tiefling. This means that the tiefling child born of a half-tiefling mother will start its life off looking as human as its mother did. Tieflings born of half-tiefling mothers will start developing their tiefling racial traits with the onset of puberty.
With this ruling, being a tiefling is still seen by the general public as a bad thing. It is seen as a mark of disfavor by the gods, or a sign of the child's parents having angered the gods perhaps. Tieflings would still find themselves a persecuted minority in most cases, but there is less of an outright fear of humanity being "bred out of existence". In some cases tiefling children would be cast out and banished, in some cases they might find some level of acceptance or at least tolerance. Conceptually this allows tieflings to play out in the larger campaign world a bit like the "orks" and "trolls" of the Shadowrun setting did: less as monsters and more as "cursed and deformed people".
