D&D 5E What kind of subraces should tieflings have?

[Grimmjow]

This second Open Playtest packet brings specific sub-races back to Dungeons & Dragons such as the lightfoot halfling and wood elf. This is great to give players more options to choose from but is the plan to still include all the races that were included in the Player’s Handbook at the beginning of each edition? If so will we see sub-races for tiefling and dragonborn?

We may include the races from the Player’s Handbook(s). I’d like to tie dragonborn into our lore of dragons, Tiamat, Bahamut and such, and I think that I’d also like to bring tieflings back closer to their origins in Planescape and tie them to several possible planes, rather than just the Nine Hells.

I looooove this idea...in a way. I think that the tiefling should stay from the nine hells, and that teiflings should be a sub race. There should be a bigger planner race that covers the rest (such as from the shadowfel, feywild, elemental chaos, astral sea ext)

The only thing that bugs me about this is that i thought it would be cool for genasai to be there own race with their sub races being different elemental manifestations.

what do you guys think?

 

[Mattachine]

No subraces. Simply have a short list of racial traits that each tiefling can mix and match from.

Tieflings aren't half one outsider, half human. They are humans with a bit of something fiendish in their background. Let the racial features reflect that variety.

 

[slobster]

No subraces. Simply have a short list of racial traits that each tiefling can mix and match from.

Tieflings aren't half one outsider, half human. They are humans with a bit of something fiendish in their background. Let the racial features reflect that variety.

Agreed, and leave the door open for later expansion tables to offer more choices to the obsessive tiefling player. Maybe offer a racial feat that lets you choose twice from the table instead of just the once.

Tieflings work best for me when they are an odd grab-bag of racial features inherited from their fiendish past.

 

[aco175]

I can see more 'Complete' books coming out on all the races. I would not mind a choice for the race between a few powers or abilities. How would this differ from the other races, with say a hill dwarf vs. a mountain dwarf or deep dwarf. Should each dwarf be allowed a choice in the same way and just do away with sub-races as a set of rules but have it only in flavor. How would this affect the change in 5e with race playing a more important role in character advancement. I fear each race will have subtype geared towards each of the classes with a mind dwarf being a better choice for wizard and a desert dwarf being a skirmisher type instead of their core classes.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Pathfinder's Blood of Fiends book has covered the topic of tiefling subraces quite well. I think one only needs to look there for some ideas.

My favorite is the rakshasa tieflings.

 

[Remathilis]

Option A: Planetouched.

Hellborn: Fire resistance, +1 Cha
Abyssal: Acid resistance, +1 Str
Chaond: Thunder Resistance, +1 Con
Shade: Cold Resistance, +1 Dex

Option B: Devil Affinity
A Tiefling gains an ability based on his sire/totem devil. An ice devil grants cold resistance, a bone devil a poison attack, a eyries feather fall, etc.

Option C: Lineage
If we go back to tieflings being fiend + humanoid, we could introduce some variety based on the mortal lineage. Realms already had Fey'ri (elf) and Tannaruk (orc). I think I recall a duergar/devil mix and a halfling onel in the MM's as well.

 

[Mattachine]

I don't think even specifying ability x for fiend/alignment/plane y is needed.
Many tieflings would have no idea of their particular heritage.

 

[RangerWickett]

There should be an option for a tiefling 'race,' like the 4e concept of "some guys a long time ago made a pact, and now their empire has collapsed, and all the descendants are tieflings."

Then the other subrace is the 'randomly influenced by planar magic' tiefling. Your mom wasn't a tiefling, and you're lucky you weren't killed at birth.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Planetouched: celestial (archon, eladrin, etc), demonic, devilish, yugoloth, and others.

 

[Shemeska]

Options and variety are at the core of what tieflings were in 2e, in 3e, and in Pathfinder. They're mortals tainted by some fraction of fiendish blood, and it isn't restricted to any single type of fiend, and a given tiefling isn't even restricted to a single fiendish bloodline tainting their essence.

Tieflings could be generations down in descent from demons/tanar'ri, devils/baatezu, yugoloths/daemons, rakshasa, demodands/gehreleths, etc or even no specific lineage at all if they're tainted by unholy magic, infernal experimentation, or the will of an evil god or archfiend without bringing breeding with fiends into it.

4e "tieflings" are homogenous in both appearance and default origin, and 5e needs to move about as far away from that as it possibly can, given how much of a deviation it was from the origin tieflings' nature and origins. It would show a lot of respect for D&D's roots if they did.

They can preserve the 4e creatures as a specific subrace (if they did a PoLand supplement) I suppose, but they need to present the classic tiefling as the default (and a default with crazy potential options by its very nature).