If that's the central question, the answer is "Obviously not. Unless you have a time machine. And that can wait until Paragon tier."
Well, maybe you are. Maybe as a Turathi tiefling that sin still defines you. They do make good infernal warlocks, after all -- maybe your character is one of those, and has no issue with engaging in the family business. Maybe the same sin that your ancestors are guilty of, you are too. So maybe when the dragonborn needs to take you down, too.
Which is what I imagined that question to mean (as opposed to your more literal take, I guess).
Or maybe not. That's something that you can play with as a Turathi tiefling.
As opposed to clearly NOT being responsible for those sins because you have a perfect alibi. They happened before you were born. If anything the Planescape Tiefling is more likely to be responsible for the sins that made them a Tiefling than the 4E one is. There are a number of ways where the Planescape Tiefling could be responsible for their sins despite being not conscious of them (reincarnation for one) - and these ways do not involve ridiculous contortions to the very nature of causality.
Which is exactly the question in 4E. At least once you've stopped twisting the nature of causality into a loop.
This is just an overly-literal response to an argument no one is actually making.
Indeed. Unlike in Planescape it gives an actual reason for people to be hostile to you because of what you are. In Sigil that you are a Tiefling should not matter. It's a city where an angel and a demon can have a drink together. There are weirder things seen on the streets of Sigil every minute than Tieflings. The core question you claim for 2E not only is central to 4E, it's one that works ridiculously better in 4E because it gives a reason.
That reason frames the narrative differently, it makes it a different story.
Mysteriously being very different from you are the corrupted spawn of people who made pacts with demons and have demonic influence on you but aren't necessarily evil. Which kinda destroys your point about not knowing anything about your background.
My claim of distinction is not one of exclusivity, of course. But I don't see how the "generally assumed to be lower-planar" bit of the PS tiefling contradicts the fact that they are largely ahistorical.
PS focuses on urban centers because PS antagonists are primarily other civilized people, so places where lots of civilized people come together make up many of its points of interested, which means that if you're someone who doesn't fit into those civilizations because your nature makes people uneasy, it gives a particular tone to that conflict that otherwise wouldn't exist.
Which is one of the ways it's a little different from, say, drow in FR. Drizzt goes and hangs out in the wilderness with his cat and it's cool, he can have adventures out there, nobody judges him, he gets away from being the outcast. PS concentrates on people and politics and philosophies, all of which involve interacting with those hostile folks, and usually in ways that don't involve simply beating them into submission.
Just like most other adventurers.
But on a much grander scale, given the planar metropoli.
And, again, not saying it's better or worse than the Turathi tiefling, just saying it's distinct. These stories are not the same stories. "I am an outcast in this world" is not the same story as "My people come from a fallen empire."
It hits your first raised points far better than the 2E one ever did. Literally the only point it doesn't is the "orphan of the planes".
So your proposition is that the Turathi tiefling is simply a *better version* of the PS tiefling and that this should thus be acceptable to every rational person who liked the PS tiefling?
Or am I misconstruing your claim that the Turathi tiefling hits my raised points better than the original did?
Something that makes almost no sense in Sigil.
A lot more sense than you might think, really. ESPECIALLY with the ambiguous history. Knowledg eis power Don't know facts about someone, can't control them, that's scary. Clear parentage, clear history, that's reassuring. You always know where you stand with a vrock, but a tiefling could be hiding anything beneath that face -- and that's intimidating. Plus, there's the whole Dickensian vibe where being a tiefling is the fantasy version of being born with a deformity or handicap that makes you instantly one of the dregs of society.
Which is, I'd say, the sum total of the niche you've outlined for your favoured take on Tieflings. They've always IMO been broader than that.
PS tieflings aren't the entierty of tieflings, but they are the original tiefling and their story is one I like to play out in my D&D. Turathi tieflings I'm not as interested in personally (too many Proper Nouns gives me a headache).
In short Tieflings in Sigil are only there because Sigil Is Different?
They're there because they reinforce a lot of the ideas that the Planescape setting plays with (identity, morality, social division, questions of authority).
You're wavering between Tieflings being a race and not. And the space of social outcasts and rejects is not one you actually need a race for. Almost the reverse.
If we are only basing what fantasy races we have on necessity, then we needn't have any. The race mechanic in D&D is a way to describe these plane-touched unfortunates, and it's a way I don't really have much of a problem with. You could probably do it in other ways, too, if you wanted, but I don't see any compelling reason to mess with it aside from just messing with it.
Possibly so. But for me the 4e Tieflings hit all the high parts of the Planescape Tieflings, and refine the awesome while dumping the parts that make no sense and actively harm the narrative.
*shrug*. I'm not here to convince you that one is better than the other. I'm merely saying that they are different. One is not the same as the other. I find them both totally acceptable player races, but they should be distinguished, because the play experience of one is different than the play experience of the other.
