Tiefling and half-orc should not be in the PHB

[Tovec]

I can't believe people complain that Tieflings got "changed" because some art shows them with bigger horns and tails.

Imagine these humans:

Elderly Australian Aborigine Woman
Young Japanese Girl
Middle-aged Finnish Man
Adult Nigerian Man

These are HUMANS.

Our Tieflings ought to be able to have some variety, shouldn't they?

We're supposed to have imaginations, us gamers.

Not that I am one of these people complaining but...
They went from ALL looking vaguely like adult nigerian men to looking like young japanese girls. It wasn't that some of them started looking a certain way, it was that they ALL started to look this way and there was no longer any that represented the old look anymore. Indeed what little fluff we did get seemed to suggest that ALL "japanese/black" people were from this one destroyed country and that was hundreds of years ago.

Excuse me if this point has been made. I was just dropping through.

 

[avin]

I thought MAGE was frigging awesome personally and not a headache at all.

Mage is frigging awesome, no doubt about it.

But that magic system was made for that, even so, in the wrong hands, unbalance and QQ happens. Mage is a game for, well, Mages, everybody has spells. GURPS is so lethal that a knife can kill easily, providing some balance for melee classes.

D&D is a game where melee suffers. Providing freedom of magic creation would open a can of worms and make non caster classes look even more like sidekicks of Wizards, Clerics, etc. Unless you allow Fighters using "creative" ways to kill.

As for "dumb" races, well, include halfling and gnomes on that.

 

[avin]

I can't believe people complain that Tieflings got "changed" because some art shows them with bigger horns and tails.

Imagine these humans:

Elderly Australian Aborigine Woman
Young Japanese Girl
Middle-aged Finnish Man
Adult Nigerian Man

These are HUMANS.

Our Tieflings ought to be able to have some variety, shouldn't they?

We're supposed to have imaginations, us gamers.

On AD&D2E not every Tiefling has horns, not every tiefling has a tail... some have a different scent, some have bizarre eyes, some have claws instead of hands...

You described humans breeding humans.
AD&D Tieflings were a cross between humans and some sort of devil.
A 4E tiefling is a race where everybody has a tail and a horn... there's a huge difference between 2E and 4E.

 

[Hassassin]

Which has zero effect on a campaign without Bael Turath. The fiery theme of the tieflings can be attributed to any number of Lower Planes, and a simple notation changes it to cold (for Caina) or thunder (for Pandemonium), for instance.

They did feel the need to retcon them in at least FR.

In 3e they "in most ways appear completely human" and "rarely form communities" "because of their rarity and varied backgrounds" while in 4e they "cannot escape the skin and physical features that indicate [their] heritage" and while their settlements are said to be uncommon that is because they are "rarely content to lead provincial lives" and there are large sub-populations in some areas.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

In 2e in the Planewalker's Guide they had a table you could roll for their appearances. They also had a table for special abilities. While I don't think it would be a good idea to have a table of random abilities for their first appearance in any edition. Rolling a table for features from the sidebar for their appearance or not, and just picking them would be the ideal way to go.

After all they want to bring tables you can roll stuff for back in the new edition. And even if the table is something like: 35-45 horns, 45-55 tail,
it'll have smaller things like 72-75 six fingers, 76-78 vestigial wings, 79-81 menacing shadow and other more interesting features.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

On AD&D2E not every Tiefling has horns, not every tiefling has a tail... some have a different scent, some have bizarre eyes, some have claws instead of hands...

You described humans breeding humans.
AD&D Tieflings were a cross between humans and some sort of devil.
A 4E tiefling is a race where everybody has a tail and a horn... there's a huge difference between 2E and 4E.

My point was more along the lines of : YOUR Tiefling does not need to match their art, (which are drawings of often named characters belonging to WotC staffers or playtesters) and can look like whatever YOU want them to, so why bother caring how they draw them?

Even if you want to use stock-art for your character sheet, you can still use a 3e Tiefling on your 4e character sheet.

Heck, *I* played a Tiefling that looked like a large bearded human (no horns, no tail, looked more like a typical Barbarian) who's eyes went red when he got mad and he breathed fire.

Never bothered me that other people's Tiefling's (Like Shelly's) looked different.

 

[boredgremlin]

Mage is frigging awesome, no doubt about it.

But that magic system was made for that, even so, in the wrong hands, unbalance and QQ happens. Mage is a game for, well, Mages, everybody has spells. GURPS is so lethal that a knife can kill easily, providing some balance for melee classes.

D&D is a game where melee suffers. Providing freedom of magic creation would open a can of worms and make non caster classes look even more like sidekicks of Wizards, Clerics, etc. Unless you allow Fighters using "creative" ways to kill.

As for "dumb" races, well, include halfling and gnomes on that.

Shrug, just cut HP so that warriors kill easily as well. Make everything gritty and everyone is pretty much equal.

 

[Grimmjow]

as long as they show up i don't mind if they rant in the first one

 

[prosfilaes]

I'm all for tieflings and half-orcs in the main books, though I think half-orcs should be called orcs. (A quick and dirty solution for dealing with preexisting half-orcs is to say they take after one side or the other close enough to use that racial template.)

As for dragonborn ... I recall a review of fantasy heartbreakers that most of the new ones had some sort of dragonborn like PC race. Between this popular support, and the fact that we don't want to alienate the 4E players, why not.

 

[thewok]

I'm all for tieflings and half-orcs in the main books, though I think half-orcs should be called orcs. (A quick and dirty solution for dealing with preexisting half-orcs is to say they take after one side or the other close enough to use that racial template.)

I actually did this in my homebrew campaign world. The half-orc stats are use for a race called "orcs," who are your standard barbarian-type tribal society. The orcs that are monsters are those who worship Gruumsh after his turn to evil.

It's kind of a Warcraft thing, actually. Orcs are "peaceful," in that they don't really go after new land all the time. Orc monsters are warlike, and they attack without provocation.