Something I've noticed from Wizards of the Coast is that, for a decent number of species, instead of providing them with original features, ones that paint a picture of how the species fights, or handles social scenarios, or traits that hark back to their backstory and lore-
-They just give them spells.
Examples include one certain species from the Player Handbook, in both 2014 and 2024, as well as 2014's Fairy, all 4 Genasi (but especially Fire), Yuan-Ti (They have Magic Resistance, which is good, but other than Poison Resilience, they don't have any other notable traits besides said spells, which hurts considering they're supposed to be snakelike), Triton (similar to Yuan-Ti, but they at least get some aquatic features for flavor, situational or not), Aarakocra [MotM] (They nerfed its fly speed and then realized it only had flight and talons so they slapped some spells on it and called it a day, PEAK laziness imo), 2014's High Elf and Dark Elf from the Player's Handbook (High Elves got done especially dirty because they only got a cantrip and nothing else), and 2024's Elves, their lineages specifically (the ONLY difference between them beside their one trait is their spells).
Now, there's nothing wrong with giving species spells, but that should come with some originality in how it plays and feels, not without.
This represents a real lack of effort from, let me remind you, a billion-dollar company. And no other species has suffered from this issue more than Tieflings.
The Tiefling in the 2014 Player Handbook got resistance to fire damage (which is good, don't get me wrong), a cantrip and two spells. And that's it. (There's also Darkvision, but everybody had Darkvision.) And this was before spells granted to a species could be cast using spell slots, and until 2024, aka, for ten years, Tieflings could only use their leveled spells once, even if they were a spellcaster. And these spells were Charisma locked, meaning any Tiefling that didn't play a Charisma caster or a subclass that relied on Charisma (like Swashbuckler Rogue) couldn't use these spells effectively.
The variant Tiefling released in the [SCAG] didn't help this issue at all. Two of the options just substituted either one or all of the spells they already got with nothing else. (Winged did make them good tho, but imo it's a little boring because they were bare bones to begin with, kind of like Aarakocra, but again, it was good)
Tieflings, lorewise, are either the children of those from the Lower Planes, or those who receive a curse placed upon them because of their family dealing with fiends. And that's awesome. There's so much potential for flavor given the large variety of fiends there are. And yet, when [MotM] came out, Tiefling wasn't revised or given polish like other options, and all it got were several lineages that, say it with me everyone, just gave them spells! And all of these spells were Charisma locked, too! (To say something positive, this did give the species a large variety of options that could provide some useful utility, but given the Charisma lock, this is dependent on if the spell doesn't rely on your spellcasting DC which only about half or a third of them did.)
Tieflings got the bare minimum in the 2024 Player Handbook. Their spells are no longer Charisma locked (which other species have had since before 2024), they can be Small (good for Imp flavor at the least), they can cast their spells using any spell slots they have (which, again, has been given to species before 2024), and Thaumaturgy (which, fun fact, 4 out of 9 Bloodlines got back in 2014). Other than that, again, all they get are a damage resistance, a cantrip, and two leveled spells. Nothing interesting flavor-wise or feature-wise other than the damage resistance changing depending on what Legacy you chose (and even then, that's the bare minimum.)
In the interest of creating a better Tiefling (or at least running some ideas against people with more experience than me), I've brought this topic up to the community. But I'm also curious about opinions on some of the other species I mentioned at the start, so don't be afraid to mention those either.
I've got two features for Tieflings as examples:
Some Legacy ideas I've had are a Celestial Tiefling (Arisen Demon type beat), a sort of Fey/Twisted Nature Tiefling (being descended from Hags and the like), and a Stygian Tiefling (imagine a full take on the Levistus Tiefling from [MotM]). There are far too many potential ideas to not expand upon them.
