D&D 5E Tiefling preview!

[Incenjucar]

The "torches and pitchforks" response is entirely up to the setting and the DM, and really doesn't reflect on the racial option itself.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Where is this Planetouched race everyone is bringing up? Do they really think one race can encompass aasimars, tieflings, five different genasi, chaond, zethythri, shadowswyfts, and dozens of other variants?

One heck of a busy race.

Humans ARE busy.

Kinda why I decided to go with "Nephilim"- the catch-all term for the offspring of humans and any Outsider in one homebrew campaign- with all the official names being more like slang for broad subgroups. Unlike Planetouched, Nephilim racial abilities were more variable, so the names were more about phenotypes than genotypes.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The biggest problem with the Tiefling depicted in the art and the 4e Tieflings is there's no subtlety in how they look. They should have just included the table of random Tiefling traits back in the Planewalker's Handbook, with some having tails but no horns, some having horns but no tails, being odd skin colours, having 6 or 4 fingers on each hand, having cloven feet, or vestigal wings or other vestigal limbs. I'm disappointed because they brought all these random tables back for things like wild surges and mixing potions but couldn't spare 1 page for random Tiefling features.

I don't have a problem with the stats of Tieflings as it's an acceptable stand-in for how Tieflings were in past editions. They could have brought back the random (or pick a bunch) Tiefling ability table, but I know there'd be issues with it and they'd probably need time to refine it.

 

[Zarithar]

The lore doesn't bother me, as tieflings aren't really a race I pay much attention to in any case... but like many here, I don't care for the art.

 

[pemerton]

The issue only really occurs because the 4e/5e critter uses a word that already had an established meaning and lore before it came along.

It would be like if I said "Halflings are meachanized tenatacled elder gods that sleep beneath the world and wait to be awoken by mad cultists."

This is seriously overblown. It's actually more like changing "orcs" from LE, pig-headed to CE, primate-headed-but-tusked savaged humanoids. Or perhaps like changing "wizards" from name-level users of magic to a class that can have even neophyte members. Or changing "warriors" from sturdy, 2nd level members of the fighter class to a second-tier NPC class.

4e tieflings still have a fiendish heritage, and carry a taint (both physical and metaphysical) as a result. They are a development and evolution of Planescape tieflings. They are not an utterly foreign entity heedlessly given the same label.

then insisted that this is the sole halfling narrative in my big-tent D&D game.

Then you don't need to call whatever these things are tieflings, if that's not what they are.

You are the one who seems to be insisting on what a tiefling is not.

 

[Quickleaf]

You know, the tiefling has lots of potential for homebrewing DMs, especially this version with the Thaumaturgy Cantrip...

For example, when I was brainstorming a 4e Al-Qadim game, I briefly described them as "Teef ul-Lah", which roughly means "people of god's kindness", and they were a cursed race once enslaved by devils (shaitan genies) in hell who attained their freedom - thanks to the breaking of the Seal of Jafar al-Samal - as promised by the First Caliph, and returned to the Haunted Lands, albeit changed. It was a really fun twist.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

From the point of view of someone that really doesn't like the tiefling being in the PHB, this preview just exemplifies why I don't like it. No one that looked like that art would ever be tolerated in any part of a civilized world.

That position makes very little sense to me, because it seems to be based entirely on the assumption that everyone everywhere in all "civilized" places is in fact a superstitious medieval Christian peasant who has been exposed to medieval European Christian images of the medieval European Christian Devil, and has never seen non-human races before. Also, true "civilized" places tend to be cosmopolitan and at least outwardly tolerant, rather than full of overexcited witch-burners (that's more of a rural/colony thing).

 

[variant]

That position makes very little sense to me, because it seems to be based entirely on the assumption that everyone everywhere in all "civilized" places is in fact a superstitious medieval Christian peasant who has been exposed to medieval European Christian images of the medieval European Christian Devil, and has never seen non-human races before. Also, true "civilized" places tend to be cosmopolitan and at least outwardly tolerant, rather than full of overexcited witch-burners (that's more of a rural/colony thing).

The position makes no such assumption. The only thing it assumes is that the campaign world uses a cosmology that resembles what the core D&D rules with an evil lower planes (Nine Hells, Abyss, Hades, etc).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The position makes no such assumption. The only thing it assumes is that the campaign world uses a cosmology that resembles what the core D&D rules with a evil lower planes (Nine Hells, Abyss, Hades, etc).

It goes hugely further than that.

It assumes:

1) Most "civilized" people know what devils/demons look like and associate Tieflings with that look (which is a bit of a stretch).

2) "Civilized" people are willing to cold-bloodedly murder others based solely on what they look like (not a ridiculous assumption, but not a normal D&D one), and not themselves face justice. Some "civilization", particularly given magical-looking beings are often Good. I guess they are instantly forgotten/ignored?

3) That "civilized" people are neither cosmopolitan nor tolerant by default, despite living in a complex world full of magical beings of all alignments.

 

[Klaus]

I had an idea for a subrace of Tiefling. The Vyrlokas. Yep, if you look at the Vyrlokas back story, its very simular to the Tiefling, a group of power made nobles/or mystics makes a deal with a powerful enitity to be infused with thier essence.

In the 4e Tieflings case it was Asmodeaus and power of hell, in the Vyrlokas case it was the Red Witch, and the power of Vampires. The Vyrlokas intergrated into other societies easier and at a higher level, but at a practical level thier vampiric instead of Infernal Tieflings. i actually liked the Vyrlokas better in 4e.

An analogy would be PS Tieflings would be like Dampires, mortals with Vampire or Infernal Parentage.

The 4e Tiefling would be like the Vyrlokas, infused by a powerful essence, and mutated by it, possibke for simukar purposes.

I could see that. The Red Witch was conceived as an aspect of thew Raven Queen inspired by Greyhawk's Wee Jas, so it'd be entirely appropriate that she'd take the place of Asmodeus in a variant. But the racial bonuses would have to go to Str or Dex, plus Cha.