Tiefling as a core race?

[I'm A Banana]

No, it comes out of anime.

They exist in anime...

....but the idea of demonspawn antiheroes existed long, long before cartoons, and has had a vibrant history in scads of Western fiction as well.

Not everything that is disliked can be blamed on Anime.

Some have to be blamed on, say, classical myth or fairy tales instead.

 

[green slime]

I'm all for including changelings, warforged, teiflings, aasimaar, lizardfolk, centaurs, etc as races in the core books.

IT is far easier to say "Only humans IMC" or "Only humans, elves, & dwarves", than try and accomodate other races after the fact, and have character races spread around in 5 different source books.

 

[trancejeremy]

Elric is really an elf, not a tiefling. He just had a Demon Lord (well, Lord of Chaos) as his patron. But Moorcock makes it pretty clear that in just about every "plane" there is an elder race of elf-like humanoids, who were originally descended from the Vadhagh. Who on Earth would be faeries, aka elves (he mentions this and the faerie/elf connection in one of the Eternal Champion books).

Besides Merlin, there was Caliban from William Shakespeare's The Tempest. And of course, the whole Rosemary's Baby/Omen stuff from the 60s-70s.

 

[frankthedm]

When WotC posted stats for pregen PCs to put against the Colossal Red Dragon... you guessed it... a tiefling. Based on a miniature. With horns.

Oh great, the pregen is one level down in a fight where he needed every level he could get..

 

[jdrakeh]

They're taking away any traditional fantasy 'core' setting aspects of D&D and turning it new age sci-fi like fantasy to go along with all the video game themes :\

Note that sci-fantasy actually predates Tolkien-esque high fantasy in fiction (witness The Dying Earth or Lord Dunsany's weirdness). Original D&D also included things such as laser blasters and electronic data rings (see Temple of the Frog, White Plume Mountain, etc).

The focus on what you refer to as "traditional fantasy" elements is not, by any stretch of the imagination, traditional in the context of D&D (or, arguably, in fantasy fiction). All of that stuff came later, not first in these mediums. In folklore, yes, this stuff was pretty traditional. In entertainment mediums? Not so much.

If D&D 4e were to include rules for robots and high tech weaponry, it wouldn't be moving toward video games, it would be getting back to its roots.

 

[jasin]

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

Isn't the Dungeon iconic a human cleric of Wee Jas?

Edit: But now I remember there is an iconic tiefling in Dungeon, the barbarian with the sword and the sickle. Were you thinking about her?

 

[KingCrab]

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.

So I guess you're not gonna be too happy when they announce the new half-tiefling race.

 

[Moonshade]

Isn't the Dungeon iconic a human cleric of Wee Jas?

Edit: But now I remember there is an iconic tiefling in Dungeon, the barbarian with the sword and the sickle. Were you thinking about her?

The way I remember it, their iconic tiefling shown on this cover (with a sword and a sickle, like you said) is a fighter and the iconic barbarian is a dwarf.

 

[Klaus]

Isn't the Dungeon iconic a human cleric of Wee Jas?

Edit: But now I remember there is an iconic tiefling in Dungeon, the barbarian with the sword and the sickle. Were you thinking about her?

DUDE!

The class is *beside* the point!

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

No one said it had to be sexual. Tieflings could easily be rebranded as the product of evil sorcerous experiments, blending humans with demons, who happened to break free of their masters and propagate the species on their own.

That would require a serious rewrite of the tiefling, would alienate existing fans, and would be less "cool" to new fans... so I can't really imagine them going that way.