D&D (2024) Youtube Reveal: Tieflings


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I'm broadly a fan, and very glad that they retreated from the "widespread acceptance" angle (for reasons similar to Pointy Hat!).

I do lament a continual loss of diversity in the tiefling since 2e. "Something else" is a broad category, and ties into the social shame angle - something too awful to know about or mention. The random tables of flavorful traits are so much more compelling than three distinct versions with consistent aesthetics. If you can look at a tiefling and tell exactly where their ancestry lies, that's a weak design choice, IMO.

But since the issue is only really "flavor," it's pretty easy to fix, and the fact that each lineage is built from a common template makes it easy to mix and match and add and subtract. So it's an annoying kernel stuck in the teeth, a little bother that I need to extract, but ultimately not the biggest of deals.
 


I generally still don't like they're showing all varieties as all being standardized, but it's at least brings more room in mainstream ideas of Tieflings of them being more varied now.

I'd go still go with features like cloven feet instead of horns, or weirder ones like having an extra pair of tiny arms.
 

... I still like the weird 2e tiefling aesthetic from Planescape.

You know, I guess the best way to have both would be having devil tieflings be the 5e 4e/5e "conformist" versions, and demon tieflings be the 2e "weird random" tieflings.
Is this already established? It seems so obvious it has to be the case.
 

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