Tiefling as a core race?

[Hjorimir]

The iconic cleric in Dungeon magazine was a tiefling. With horns.

Are you sure? I thought the Dungeon iconic cleric was a human female cleric of WeeJas; the Tiefling female always had a sword in hand so I assumed she was a fighter.

 

[Klaus]

Are you sure? I thought the Dungeon iconic cleric was a human female cleric of WeeJas; the Tiefling female always had a sword in hand so I assumed she was a fighter.

I may have messed the classes, but one of the Dungeon Iconics *was* a tiefling, which is the point. Tieflings seem to be popular among the designers.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

I do not have a problem with aasimars or tieflings, but I hope they come up with better names cuz' those names suck.

 

[Oryan77]

You heard it here first! Planescape is the Core default setting!

HAH! Now everyone is being tricked into running planar campaigns...I love it!

First it's Tieflings, next it's Mercykillers as a core class!

I hope the 4e DMG mentions that most commoners are petitioners....

 

[Darth Shoju]

Well, its fairly obvious many just weren't played much compared to others.

Besides, its not like its hard to say "Nope, not in my game" to anything at all, Core or not.

Well that's a pretty convenient way to dismiss any criticism of the new edition. If the tiefling as a core class is the worst part about 4e then I'll likely pick it up. But the more things I have to say "Nope, not in my game" to, the less worth my money it becomes.

Time will tell, I suppose.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Draenei and tieflings are VERY far apart, unless these tieflings are very, very different than they've been historically.

And unless there are a lot more WoW players running around saying "I'll play anything with a tail" -- and I haven't run into any on my RP WoW server, where you find the people with such interests typically -- I can't imagine it was part of some sort of sinister market-to-the-WoW-player plan.

I was referring more to the way the design of the tiefling switched from subtle little demonic features (small horns, eye colour, etc), to huge horns, big tails and hooves (possibly). To me, that struck as a similarity to the Dranei. I'm not accusing WoTC of utterly aping Blizzard, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the occasional influence here and there.

YMMV, natch.

 

[ptolemy18]

WTF?

That's screwy, and I can't say that I like it. Why are demon-spawned children suddenly as common as elves and dwarves in the "default" world of D&D?

I have to admit, this is something that sounds good to me about the new edition. I've always thought tieflings were a cool idea (although I don't particularly care for the 'official' appearance of them)... there's soo many myths & legends & story ideas about the offspring of demons (or gods) and humans, and on a more pop-culture level, practically every anime and manga fan in the world has a fan art page full of people with devil horns and bat wings and feathery wings and whatnot. So it seems like a potentially popular race.

Jason

P.S. (Now, if WARFORGED were a core race... grrr! >:/ Ugh! I hate science fantasy!)

 

[ptolemy18]

That's exactly why I welcome them.

My game's setting is much more human-centric than most. Dwarves, Elves and the like aren't really options that I encourage. Some human tainted by the foul touch of the netherworld, though: that's cool, because it's still mostly human in outlook, age category, etc. Much less silly than an Elf.

Cheers, -- N

Preach on, brother Nifft!

(Of course, I don't know if I will like the campaign world/background that D&D4.0 builds around the tieflings, but in theory I think they're pretty nifty.)

 

[variant]

I swear if they actually include the Tiefling, they better put it on a page of its own because I'm gonna rip the damn thing out of the book. I am sick of half-races. I hated when they included half-orcs in 3e core book and the only reason tolerated either half-orc or half-elf was because they weren't worth playing so no one tried to play one.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

I, for one, am perfectly okay with tieflings in the PHB. Humans whose ancestry has been tainted somehow, leading to them having to deal with ? Right on! They're a race of antiheroes, outsiders, people struggling with internal contradictions and how they're perceived by others; essentially, much the same conceptual territory as half-orcs, except (hopefully) they don't suck mechanically.

Gnomes . . . I'm not really sure what their niche is, really. If they make it into 4E, I'm really hoping they get a serious revamp. Something to play up the whole "inherently magical" bit, I think.

Originally, gnomes did not have any niche that I can think of; they were, at best, the "magical dwarfs", because for some reason dwarfs and wizardry didn't match. Then along came Dragonlance, and the abominable tinker gnomes (a whole race of jokes and comic relief does not work), so the gnomish niche became "slightly nutty trickster-tinkerers". Better no niche than a sucky niche, I think...