Otherwise known as the Manual of the Planes?![]()
IIRC, in the playtest document 2e's Tieflings were renamed as "Planetouched" and are a blanket category for "humans with extraplanar blood". The Tieflings in the PHB will be probably 4e ones.What's going to be interesting to see is how they define tieflings, and if it favors the classic 2e/3e version or the rather different 4e version.
They aren't my favorite (And why isn't Aasimar a base race if Tiefling is one?), but it's just fine since they didn't exclude former base races to include them.
I agree you can do a lot with them, if you imagine them more thematically and less as a brutally oppressive "AHH, I'm (burning/buried/drowning) alive!". Caverns a mile high, filled with iridescent rocks and glowing fungus for the Plane of Earth, for example. Or cloud palaces, connected by soaring golden bridges for the plane of Air.Also known as "My Favorite Book of All Time Ever". The original one, at least. I also think that the Inner Planes and demiplanes influenced by "classical" elements are underutilized. But I know that's not a popular opinion.![]()
IIRC, in the playtest document 2e's Tieflings were renamed as "Planetouched" and are a blanket category for "humans with extraplanar blood". The Tieflings in the PHB will be probably 4e ones.
Because one of the goals they had for the races (as stated way back in 2012) was to have all races that were present in every edition's first Player's Handbook playable right out the gate.
And this prevents them from writing up Aasimar as a playable race in the PHB how?
I know, I'm just hoping that they don't make that mistake. It's just a lot more respectful to the history of the game to keep the classic tiefling as the default one.
The 2e/3e tieflings have a longer history and larger amount of material written using them than the 4e versions, the 4e versions are very different, and "Planetouched" has already been used in the past to mean something very different than the proposed 5e meaning (it collectively referred to any mortal with a fraction of outsider or elemental blood: tieflings, aasimar, genasi, etc).
Now that it's been brought to my attention that the "Tiefling" race in question will most likely be the 4E version, (one that breeds true with huge horns and cloven feet) I'm kind of glad that they didn't make an Aasimar version of that.I'm just stating the reasoning for providing the races they did in the PH, and why AAsimar weren't on the list. They had a clear content goal, and they met it. I'm somewhat disappointed that Aasimar aren't there, since I like them a lot, but I also know they had to stop somewhere and PH space is at a premium.
While another subrace has a less known origin, the mongrels.