Why all the fiendish love?

[Patlin]

There's a lot of talk about D&D characters being heroes, but usually they're basically cold-blooded killers and thieves engaging in sanctioned violence.

Depends on the player and the character. My characters are heroes, but there are definitely some purely mercenary characters in most adventuring parties my characters find themselves in. Also, Barbarians tend to be hot blooded killers.

 

[Slife]

A friend had an idea for a campaign. There exists a religion devoted to the battling of supernatural evil. But sometimes, when battling evil, you must do Bad Things, unspeakable things. And sometimes, the best opponent of evil is more evil. The church of this religion would have a small sect that controls a group known as The Unmentionables, who are fiends, undead, and other "Nasty things" who for whatever reason (Geas, Conversion, Debt, Personal Gain), fight forces of evil/the church's enemies, or whoever their handlers point them at. Much like Alucard from Helsing.

Who do you think makes all those helms of opposite alignment?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Why all the fiendish love?

Because fiendish hate is a cliche. I say, down with that sacred cow! 4th edition should be about fiendish flower power!

 

[Aus_Snow]

Because fiendish hate is a cliche. I say, down with that sacred cow! 4th edition should be about fiendish flower power!

Hehe. I love the image of great big honkin' hoofed, horned hippies trying to rally the motivation and linear thinking sufficient to overthrow the oppressive regime, or whatever.

Thing is, with some RPGs, I can totally see that.

 

[hopeless]

Hello...

Just a thought but given by the time the phb comes out the only games available will be the shadowfell scenario and whatever is on the insider maybe the tiefling is being added so players will have an automatic enemy to fight against namely tieflings and whatever race warlocks...
Well unless they release a version with a monster manual style preview at the back of the phb as they did with the first release of the 3.0 phb perhaps that is what they're thinking after all the only other option is that they've been spending the last decade gaming with munchkins, powergamers and supposedly planescape fans except if they were fans of planescape they'd have added more than the tiefling to the core rules...
Now warlocks foes would make sense... well to me anyway.

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

Because fiendish hate is a cliche. I say, down with that sacred cow! 4th edition should be about fiendish flower power!

Groovy man!

I can see it now:

J'nisjopl'n, a bandana-wearing Erinccubus with unshaven legs and flowers painted on her cheeks, singing, "Let me take another little piece of your heart now, baby!"

 

[KarinsDad]

They may not be 14-year olds, but they have them as their target audience (What time did most of us begin to play D&D?). So, if they want their game to be sold, they have to put things these 14-year olds would find 'kewl', not things us old grognards would find 'upholding the traditions'.

Except that this is not going to happen.

14 year olds are not the target audience. There are too many other entertainments for 14 year olds. Yes, it would be great to get a bunch of 14 year olds into the game and have it be their hobby for the next 50 years, but doing this en mass really is not realistic.

Their target audience should be 21 to 30 year olds. They have to get young adults interested. People who can devote 5 hours on a weekend day (e.g. young adult males or married couples as the main target audience), but who cannot devote 5 hours a night to WoW.

If they can continually get and keep young adults, they can grow. Not probably a lot (there are a lot of other entertainments for young adults as well), but enough to keep the industry going.


The other issue is that "kewl things" are not going to appeal to anyone unless they can manage to advertise those "kewl things". Very few people are going to pick up a core book and read it for themselves in a bookstore. So, "kewl things" like Tieflings are not going to sell product because nobody's really going to know about it outside of the current grognards.

 

[Wormwood]

So, "kewl things" like Tieflings are not going to sell product because nobody's really going to know about it outside of the current grognards.

What about tabletop roleplayers who simply don't play D&D.

Perhaps broadening the image of D&D beyond of "you play members of the Fellowship of the Rings" could appeal to a segment of that audience?

 

[variant]

The Tiefling in the PHB will make me think twice before I invest my money in 4e. I see it as a complete waste of space.

 

[LordVyreth]

But but but no, that is not my position. I don't believe that tieflings, as written, are only cool to 14-year-olds. I believe that tieflings, as currently conceived, are less compelling to 14-year-olds, or anyone, than just about any other monstrous badass option out there. Does your inner 14-year-old want to play a tiefling, or a drow? A tiefling, or a werewolf? A tiefling, or a vampire? A tiefling, or a m-@%$ing yuan-ti? It is my hope that the 4E designers make them into some sort of Melnibonean analogue at the very least. But it says something about the weakness of the current concept that when setting designers look for a way to insert a Melnibone into their worlds, elves are the go-to race, and tieflings just sit there in the Monster Manual, losing at dominoes to the aasimar again.

As written, sure. But remember that playable races in 4th ed are supposedly much more detailed and get better as you go up in levels. So even if tieflings start at 3rd ed caliber, they could grow to better resemble, say, modern half-fiends. And if you asked if there was an audience to play half-fiends with no level penalty, I'd have to say that's pretty likely. And I don't get the yuan-ti thing at all. I almost never use them as a DM, even.