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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4569789" data-attributes="member: 5143">In answer to the original question:Tieflings have been around for a while.  I think it was either one of the monster manuals or planescape in 2e that introduced them.  The idea being that they were humans who had a distant ancestor who was demonic/infernal.  They were found more often in Sigil(the city that was the nexus of all the planes) where planar travel was easy and therefore people came into contact with demons and devils more often.  They were allowed as player races back then.  They didn't see much stuff about them in 3e, but they were brought back as a race in 4e because the designers felt there was no race that embodied the "I'm a dark, brooding, partially tainted with evil" character which a lot of players liked about Tiefling in 2e.Dragonborn are kind of a composite race.  People like dragon-like races.  This is pretty much shown by all the dragon-like races in existence.  There have been Draconians, Dragonborn(the original kind), Half-Dragons, Spellscales, and some more I'm not thinking of.  When the designers were making 4e, they sat down and decided that dragon-like races were popular enough that there should be one in the core rulebook.  But almost all of them come with story considerations that made them hard to play them as a player race.  Draconians were magically altered dragon eggs who were almost all evil.  Half-Dragon implied that one of your parents was a dragon and an entire PC race who all had a dragon as a parent seemed unlikely.  Dragonborn required that you start human and then undergo a magical process to become a Dragonborn.  Spellscales were magical in nature and aren't really what most people think of when they think "dragon".  So, they came up with a new race that was strong and tough and made good paladins.  They liked the name "Dragonborn" enough that they called it that.Eladrin are basically Grey Elves who have been around at least since 2e(maybe 1e, but I'm not entirely sure).  They've always just been "The type of elf that is smarter than other elves".  But many people complained that there were too many types of elves, each with different stats.  But still, a lot of people like the "smart elf" as a concept.  So, they decided to officially call them by 2 different names and give them more to tell them apart than just different stats.  So, they came up with a background story that says that elves originally came from the Feywild, and some left to live in the real world and over time they became creatures of the world, adapted to nature and lost their magical abilities.  The ones that stayed behind kept their connection to magic and their home plane enabling them to step briefly into it and then back into the real world.Each of the races appeals to a different type of person or different parts of people.</blockquote>

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