Are Tieflings overrepresented in DnD media? Despite Humans and Half-Elves constituting the majority of "played" races, Tieflings seem to be everywhere; every time a "group shot" is posted, there's at least one Tiefling, sometimes two. Whenever you flick on a Let's Play of Baldur's Gate, they're running a Tiefling. Every time somebody's gushing about their character or a situation that happened in their game, a Tiefling is mentioned. They're extremely common, if we went by the people that talk or draw their campaigns. What's with that?
Tieflings are the easiest recognizable DnD "house race". See a human, an elf, an orc or a dwarf? Could be literally any franchise out there. Tieflings? How many brands have Tieflings? So if you´re playing DnD, why not go for the thing.
>>92681954tieflings are literally the "special snowflake" race for when you want to play someone thats "discriminated" agaisnt. Modern DnD/pathfinder have none of the racial conflict that older editions and warhammer fantasy have, Humans elves, dwarves halfings all get along swell and never stereotype or have any grudges with each other. so teiflings are the token "hated race" which is very weak because every other teifling is a neutral good paragon of goodness and are never influenced by their supposedly demonic hereitage to act evil. so the whole "aieee they look evil" thing doesn't work because of how high fantasy modern dnd is and how populated by weird looking races it is
>>92681986I guess the thing I'm finding unusual is that the popularity of Tieflings in "visible" media is just as much fan-based as it is official. For every WOTC-approved poster featuring a red-skinned Tiefling, there's twice as many twitter posts where somebody showcases their "cute new Tiefling PC," or party which contains one or more Tieflings.Maybe I'm overthinking it? Maybe it's just the type of people attracted to Tieflings are the same kind that would pay for commissions? That's an interesting theory in and of itself.
>>92681986fpbpBoth them and the Dragonborn race fill in two nice niches, that being playing a "Devil" and a "Dragon" without having to worry too much about the mechanics of playing an actual Devil or DragonPlus Tieflings are super customable and you can make an argument to your DM to let you play any race with the Tiefling affliction
>>92681954Tiefling is the race the "DnD as lifestyle brand" crowd latched on to, so it's the race WotC is going to push in order to milk those cows.
>>92682019Tieflings look cool. Thats it. You look pretty much like a human or an elf but with horns, a tail, demonic eyes and cool skin colors. Warcraft Draenei give you the same vibe without the demonspawn. Doesnt matter. Neither do the goat legs or the holy paladin background. People love the visual aspect.
Beyond what has been said already, Tieflings also give you a wide variety of appealing character options. Want to be Shadowkiller Icedark, the edgy brooding loner? You can. Want to be the guy fighting against (undeserved?) opression. You can. Want to be the shining example of "we arent all bad, you know."? You can. Its very easy to get a bit of special snowflake without going off the rails totally. Want to use the dark magics of your demonic heritage while fighting for good? You can. Want to be the Tiefling born to a noble family who catches all the attention from the get go? You can. And so on and so forth. Chances are, your "safe special snowflake" background is commonly accepted. And lets be honest, who doesnt want to be a bit edgy and special from time to time?
>>92682190>Tieflings also give you a wide variety of appealing character options.You spelled "appalling" wrong
>>92682008
>>92682190Tieflings were the watershed moment where Dungeons and Dragons went from a pastiche of Medieval Fantasy to Modern Superheroes with a Medieval coat.
>>92681954Personally I’d love to see Genasi be more popular, even half so much as Tieflings are. Besides making them discriminated against like >>92682008 mentions for Tieflings, how might that be pulled off successfully?
>>92682051This basically.You can pimp out your character design how you please, and there's a little bit of edge that gives you something to start with for a character story.Dragonborn would be just as popular, but WOTC fucked the stat-line and made them just a little bit weaker than vanilla races despite the breath weapon.
>>92681954>Whenever you flick on a Let's Play of Baldur's Gateno one does this
>>92681954Women like them. They’re exotic but not very, edgy but not too much.The average woman plays a tiefling ranger with a wolf companion
Horned demon girls have always been popular. Even nwn1 persistent world servers were full of tieflings. Long before critical role or hlbtiq and your culture wars.
>>92682640The average woman plays a half-elf with a wolf companion. Critical Role might be a cringe fest but Season 1 was a near-recreation of every gamer archetype’s first DnD character.
Yes but it's not because of the retarded shit you're on about. It's because they're one of the very few things that WotC can reasonably defend as unique intellectual property. Some guy in armor or another stupid fucking elf is interchangeable with a thousand other companies, stories, games, etc.
>>92682920>It's because they're one of the very few things that WotC can reasonably defend as unique intellectual property.They can't actually, tieflings are OGL content. And even if it they weren't they would just have the name, it's not like they came up with the concept of people who are part demon.
>>92683181The particulars of a tiefling are absolutely defensible. That's why they bang on about the planes cosmology so often.>tieflings are ogl contentPaizo already lost that lawsuit.
>>92682190You can do all that with an Orc character. Or even a Human one, given a context.
>>92683453What lawsuit? You're just making shit up now.
>>92681986Exactly.The standard races just give too much of a "bootleg lotr" feel
> you have summoned the schizo
>>92681954Tieflings are the '20s equivalent of the '00s DrowsEither are "le super evil" or "le discriminated minority of good guys who look evil"
>>92683550Not really. Orcs are limited by just being ugly green brutes. Tieflings can have horns, glowing eyes, hooves, tail, weird skin patterns, extra eyes, vestigial wings, or any odd sort of mutation. Humans only get such features if a class applies them or via curses and corruption.
>>92683550Orcs are not hot.Unless you go the classic coomer way of making them just green humans
>>92683903Tieflings are not demons they are devils first off. Similar to one of us they contain just an ounce of original sin, enough to damn them unless (You) can save them from eternal suffering away from Our Lord's light. Weak cope trad secondary bitch, try going to religious schools for 16 years like I did before trying that argument again.
>>92681954Yes.
>>92684122>Tieflings are not demons they are devilsDevil is a title for the leader of the fallen angels and disembodied spirits. It's like making a race of fuhrer's. Who came up with that, making devils a race and making them distinct from demons?
>>92682270I'd also like to see more Genasi.
>>92684122>Tieflings are not demons they are devils first off.In 5e maybe, are you aware that other editions exist you dumb bandwagoner?
>>92681954Self selection bias.The kind of people who play Tieflings are the kind of people that commission art and do videos on youtube and talk about things loudly in public.They are attention seekers, and so they do things that draw attention, which increases their representation in the media associated with DnD.Its really that simple. Tieflings have been known to be the special snowflake race since before 5e even launched.
>>92682270Genasi represent.
>>92684695There is no way this is real.The flamboyant tiefling, sure, but the fat wheelchair bound xir is just too on the nose to be believed.
>>92687318I am so sorry brother
>>92682008I like the original concept of tieflings
>>92681954I play a tiefling, but rather than mope about how everyone hates him he just hunts the fiends he's descended from
>>92681954What I hate is how all the tiefling art is like that, some technicolor freak with a tail and horns. I remember reading an old sourcebook that had a little table of mutations, like a mouthful of needle-like teeth, vestigial wings, huge black eyes and burn marks like chains up and down their arms. Sure the new material says tieflings can have massively varied appearance, but the art that comes out has virtually none.
>>92682348>Dragonborn would be just as popular, but WOTC fucked the stat-line and made them just a little bit weaker than vanilla races despite the breath weapon.It's insane how hard they fucked up the Dragonborn just because they thought they could get away with playing as a "Dragon" as a selling point and not whether or not it would be funAlso fucking up their design, I figure most people who get told about Dragonborn imagine a big guy with wings and tails and then get met with this extremely watered down, barely meeting halfway race design
>>92682270Genasi really suffered from a combination of bad decisions when they debuted in Planescape:1) Didn't show up until the Planewalker's Handbook, so fewer people saw them.2) Never got an official trait customization table the way tieflings did - aasimar may have had theirs hidden in Warriors of Heaven, but at least they GOT one.3) Dull and underwhelming mechanics, far weaker than either tieflings or aasimars.4) Insistence on treating them as four races further divided writer effort and both writer and player attention, reducing the amount of individual interest.Add to it that they weren't even deemed good enough to get into the Monster Manual like their tiefling and aasimar cousins, instead getting stuck in the Forgotten Realms splats, and that further kept people from noticing them.Also, 4e genasi = best genasi.
>>92688925In fairness... none of the OG tiefling artwork ever leaned into the chaotic variety promised by the variation table in the Planewalker's Handbook. If you look at it, it's all just different styles of horns, tails and maybe hooves.
>>92689056And the killer is that 4e dragonborn were FUN to play. They were literally Paladin or Warlord: The Race, but also pretty solid Dragon Sorcerers too. They had a cool blood rage thing going on, could build up to doing some crazy shit with their breath weapon, had fun racial utility powers, and they had cool racial paragon paths. 5e was a mistake.
>>92689169Yeah, that’s what I said. Tiefling art doesn’t represent the full variety the books say they can have. Maybe I should have tacked on that it never had the actual art representation, but at least the older stuff had the tables there to spark the imagination.
>>92681954It's pretty simple: WotC saw how popular TBC's draenei were, and decided they wanted a slice of that pie. It largely worked, though it took an edition before it paid off.
>>92689219Spot on anon.
>>92688925Well, you are free to commission whatever kind of Tiefling you want, anon. But that wont change the fact that people desire hot demon girls, not some freak with needle teeth and mutations. No one but a tiny minority cares about actual hideous looking PCs.
>>92687318>the fat wheelchair bound xir is just too on the nose to be believed>Based in Bristol, UKBelieve it.
I wonder why fey-ri never caught on as much as tieflings didthey're basically the same thing, but I bet only like 20% of the players even have the faintest idea something like that even exists
What went wrong?
>>92689632They are ugly and repulsive for most peopleSimple as
>>92682008What about half-orcs?
>>92689692World of Warcraft mutated Orc and their half-breeds into noble-savage stereotypeBasically green men with big teeth
>>92682208You don't know what Planescape is, do you?
>>92689641Planescape had tieflings be a loose category of what were essentially mutants, each one virtually unique in exactly how their fiendish heritage manifested itself. And the most important thing about tieflings was not their edgy fiendish backstory, it was how little anyone in Sigil *cared*, what would make you an edgy loner on the material plane was so commonplace in Sigil that no one could be bothered to give a fuck. Turning tieflings into a single thing, one defined race who all have the same demonic traits and look like those guys from warcraft but red essentially gutted the concept.
>>92689641Left looks like shit and no one wants to actually play a freak like that. The only people who claim to do so are contrarian trad larpers
>>92690611you can't imagine people have different tastes? I love the lady's design. the guy is a bit funny looking but that'd be great for some characters. oh no I can't play a freak!! what? some people routinely play the weirdest shit they can. whatever your problem, I think you've misidentified it
>>92690644I can imagine people having different tastes and i have seen enough OCs of all kind to notice a pattern
>>92689632Obscurity, hyper-specific connection to a single specific setting (even if that WAS the Realms), and mechanics that were just too OP, would be my guess.
>>92690716What kind of places do you visit? Of the trannies i´ve seen, one always plays gigachad guys, one goes for musclegirls and one for tomboys. But ive never seen them be non binary or something.
>>92690793NTA, but I ended up running some games in college that included one trans person regularly, and briefly included another trans friend of theirs. The one who only played a few times wanted to play a Bugbear.The longer playing trans person was a barbarian gigachad the first time, and the second time was an extremely flamboyant elf where it was a joke that he was extremely obviously gay but was heavily in denial about it. Or that they really weren't gay but thats just how elves come off to none elves. They sort of waffled back and forth between the two depending on whatever they thought was funnier in the context of the current scene.
>>92682270Make them not utter shit mechanically. Also, make elementals themselves interesting.
>>92684748You missed this discussion by about four decades, dipshit autist.
>>92681954Too many people are impregnating tieflings causing their population to increase dramatically
>>92689632>AD&DThere weren't enough in existence to have them be a player race and the ones that did exist were all stupidly strong>3eThey're in a splat that didn't sell particularly well and had LA +2 due to all of the buffs they had, also they were now all inbred, which this was before the incest fetish took off>4e and laterIt's not core, so no one cares.
>>92681954They're the tragic snowflake emo race. Back in the 90s and 00s, it was the dreaded Drizzt clone. At one point, it was gnomes of all things.
>>92689641Aren't forehead horns only a single type of Tiefling? Tieflings can range anywhere from near-human/elf to utterly monstrous depending upon where they get there daemonic lineage and how far removed they are from that lineage.
>>92692956What subrace of tiefling is Doric, anyways?
>>92692984the cute kind?
>>92682270People just end up playing Shantae when they pick Genasi.>>92692984General rule is:>horns on top of head and/or animal parts = demon lineage>horns on forehead/nose/face = devil lineageNot sure about yugoloths though.
>>92681986There was one in the movie too I think
>>92681986I think drow are the most iconic to be honest. They basically defined the modern dark elf.
>>92695496I think Drizzt had a lot to do with it. Before him, they were just mysterious and xenophobic underground elves.
>>92681954For my setting I want to make a nation ruled, and primarily composed of, Tieflings, but I'm stuck on ways it could have formed, besides a history of infernal cults in the early days, what would you suggest?
>>92695636Camps of refugees and outcasts fleeing persecution in other places banded together into a few small colonies, worked together and over time as their populations grew and they expanded, institutions formed as local leaders had their informal authority formalized, and the other colonies either banded together under one body willingly for efficient coordination or were forcibly brought under that banner, likely in the face of external pressures from the fledgling nation’s neighbors. One might imagine a large emphasis on martial service, as mutual self defense would have been required for early enclaves to continue to exist.
>>92695636Dominions series has few ideas. Besides the pic related, there's also a nation of fire elemental beings that experimented with demonic crossbreeding to improve their powers (and being tricked by disguised archdemon to do that), and a formerly holy nation that found itself on a losing side of a war with endless hordes of undead, made deal with the demons to stop the undead, but in exchange, they had to start worshipping them... you can easily make the deal include tieflings.Another option doesn't involve any half-breeds, some sort of archdevil was imprisoned under the kingdom, the seals deteriorated (or got broken on purpose), and the people got corrupted by the leaking infernal energies and turned into tieflings, slowly replacing the original population.
>>92691114I mean just Elemental Air alone has djinni freeholds, invisible kingdoms of the stalkers, Haalifith the would-be Wind Duke, the Vaati, Akadi and her demesne being a typhoon that could swallow Earth, Yan-C-Bin's scheming, and fucking awesome alternate rules for physics, specifically gravity (things fall in the direction they perceive "down" to be - which means that nonthinking things don't fall at all. Let go of something and it just stays in place, motionless. Fired arrows don't arc, they move in a straight line until eventually they slow down and stop from air resistance. etc., etc.).If none of this sounds appealing to you, then you suck.
>>92692956In 4e they made all tieflings look the same with the big forehead horns, and they just carried that over into 5e. Not like you'll ever see it in fanart like OP though, can't have their precious manic pixie dream girl look "ugly".
>>92695636Nothing wrong with infernal cults. In my setting the not!Carthage is full of tieflings due to demonolatry being accepted, so of course people are fucking demons at orgiastic rites and the resulting hellspawn (who are not pink snowflake people) are revered.
>>92681986Tiefling is just generic coomer demon with colored skin.
>>926819541) Tieflings are easily identifiable and basically a D&D trademark. Of course they're going to be the face of the game.2) They're far and away the most popular race with the weird loser demographic D&D has been pandering to and trying to cultivate for over a decade now. Why are people still complaining about D&D? You know it's a stupid fag normie setting for stupid faggot normies. It's like going to a pride parade and getting upset there's a bunch of gay dudes fisting each other.
>>92696639>If none of this sounds appealing to you, then you suck.Not that anon, but the problem is that a lot of that lore isn't readily available. Now, I'm the kind of grognard who loves digging into second and third edition sources whenever I get the opportunity, but most players are only familiar with 5E, and 5E's take can be boiled down to stock mindless elementals and "genies lmao". The Elemental Planes aren't even distinct planes anymore, you can travel between them physically. The Plane of Water is DRASTICALLY different, now being an actual sea with a surface, islands, and weather.
>>92695636>country X has been rocked by infernal giga invasion in the past>giant demonic gate that corrupted the land and all>huge crusade fought back the demon invasion>land is resettled>turns out the giant Worldwound level demonic gate corrupted the land to such a degree that more and more Tieflings are born to essentially everyone>Peseants, nobles, crusaders, everyone>people are unwilling to give up on the land they bled so much to reclaim>they also dont want to murder their own children>church of good says the greatest victory over the demonic is to raise these children into good citizens, proving the superiority of their ways to everyone>fast forward X amount of years>still a 80% chance of children being tieflings>tiefling numbers became higher and higher with each generation>you have a tiefling dominated nation now
>>92682008>Tieflings>demonic hereitageNGMI
>>92689641>Seething hornlets
>>92699998It's funny how WotC is adamant on having water buffalo style face horns for all Tieflings when everyone else seems to hate em. Whenever there's some sort of DnD adaption or fanart, the Tieflings have their horns shifted upwards and apart.
>>92692956Only in Baldur's Gate. In 5E, they all have the same type of horns and flesh beards.
>>92690611They just look like fucking satyrs. In what world is that too freaky for D&D players?
>>92701198>>92692956I'm not a huge tiefling fan in general, but I think I like weird water-buffalo tiefling better than "I'm a sexy anime devil" tieflings. They should be ugly, otherworldly, unsettling, not Timothee Chalamet with horns jutting primly out of his bouncing curls like fucking Pathfinder.
>>92689219Wrong. WoTc had already begun working on the unified Tiefling design before TBC released. And besides the horns the two basically loomed nothing alike. Draenei had blue skin, short tails, goat legs, facial tentacle bits, and rather WoW-ish sexual dimorphism. Tieflings, meanwhile, were red skinned, long-tailed, had human legs, and no face tentacles but rather "jaw horns" (if anything on their face at all). Never mind the Draenei were "holy" and meant to be a race onto themselves while Tieflings in 4e were meant to be "edgy dark" if not outright unholy and a descendent race of humans who cavorted with Asmodeus/devils.
>>92702600>WoTc had already begun working on the unified Tiefling design before TBC releasedGonna need a source on that one, anon. And sure, nu!tieflings aren't carbon copies of draenei, but the decision to prominently feature a core race with horns, tails, brightly coloured skin, and a backstory involving demons/devils, is more than a little conspicuous.I'd also point out that 4E heavily emphasized that modern tieflings aren't devil worshippers (at least, no more than other races), and in fact have a well-known paladin order dedicated to fighting fiends. Which does parallel how the retconned draenei split off from the eredar after the rest of their race made a pact with Sargeras and started using fel magic.
>>92681954I’m also more than a bit annoyed by how red Tieflings seem to be the only ones that you see. Mix it up a bit more, WotC! Or at least emphasize other features that they can have more.
>>92703161It's cause 90% of Tiefs are Asmodeus blooded.
>>92702945They chose to have tieflings in core because the read the forums and other sites and how tieflings were being played in higher numbers than half-orcs and gnomes, thus making them core made sense (same with adding Dragonborn, since people played half-dragons more than the aforementioned half-orcs and gnomes as well). Also, I can't find anything about 4e having a Teifling paladin order. I find there is a paragon path for tieflings of divine classes focused on locking away citizens of the Nine Hells called "Hell's Keeper."As for the tiefling design being worked on for some time before TBC, Bruce Cordell in the Races & Classes 4e preview book mentioned that the Tieflings designs had been worked on since the very first Orcus playtest, which was around early-to-mid 2006 if I remember right (I think it was Heinsoo who said the system had been in some form of playtesting internally at WotC for a little over year at Gencon 2007 where 4e was announced).
>>92703944Sorry, I think it was actually Perkins
>>92703944>Playing Tieflings more than Half-Orcs and GnomesSee, I have a theory on this, and now we're locked in because of the perception people mentioned in the rest of this thread, but I think a huge part of it came mechanically. Tieflings had good enough stats and slight LA if you took the stronger variety, so people gravitated to that. Then, for 4e and ESPECIALLY 5e, when more Charisma classes got popular/created, they could get Charisma bonuses. Especially for 5e before Tasha's - they were one of the strongest options to synergize with some of those before you could just ignore that and play a race you wanted. I don't even love them and considered it a few times for that.Combine that with the downsides and flavor-dislike of Half-Orcs and Gnomes (Which should be obvious, especially Gnomes being annoying little punt-fuckers with no narrative or visual benefits over Halflings which people like because Hobbits outside of their very interesting 4e version that was since ignored/thrown out), it makes sense.Now we're where we're at, but I think a lot of it was mechanical and newer art. Because Jesus the water buffalo horns were ugly. BG3 especially now made them reasonable visually and actually showed non-Asmodean Tieflings and that's gonna sit in secondaries' heads.
>>92682102tieflings look stupid and faggots and retards like them because they can pretend to be special snowflakes instead of the pathetic, soulless, flesh automaton bores they are in real life (in all fairness most people similar)
>>92681954>>92695496Aren’t tieflings and drow wotc copyright property as well? Only thing that made me think otherwise was seeing some reaper minis marked as drow.
>>92704461Drow, also trow, is a term taken from mythology. It can't claimed. However, straight up copying D&D's specific version of drow would land you in legal trouble.Tiefling seems to be a term invented by Baur and therefore D&D original, but you can't really copyright devil people. And if I'm not mistaken, they recently became part of a creative commons agreement anyway.
>>92682348Why dragonborn are weak? They look like your generic race spread.
>>92684091I feel like tieflings would be a good variant of godlike from pillars of eternity since while they do have good potential physical variety they are also limited to oh so many variants of mutant humanoid appearance kinda like a godlike and they would fit in with all that freakshit just fine>>92682270I unironically think one of the problems with genasi is the name doesn't roll off the tongue very well.
>>92696616sounds like really stupid, shitty worldbuilding
>>92704821>I unironically think one of the problems with genasi is the name doesn't roll off the tongue very well.Okay, so what would you call them instead then?>>92689161>4e genasi = best genasiWhat specifically made 4e Genasi the best?As for the trait customization table, why don't we just MAKE one?
>>92700109>coomerThey're just depicted as weird but not grotesque humanoids.You're the coomer
>>92681954I'm honestly surprised there aren't more winged Tieflings. They look epic as hell, and the innate flight + fire resistance makes them powerful in pretty much every scenario you could typically come across.
Opinions on horn decorations?
>>92706089I like them
>>92706089I thought tieflings were rather poor and discriminated against (thieflings exist for a reason). All that jewelry implies wealth. Also, I think most tieflings (outside of those in fiend aligned nations) would be ashamed of their heritage and want to cover up forked tails and horns as much as possible, not show them off. Basically, if you're a tiefling, you'd want to lay low, even if you were an adventurer.
>>92706119Depends on the edition and setting, anon.
>>92705982They're automatically banned at most tables for the exact same reasons.
Tieflings are demon spawn and should be destroyed.
>>92706551Alright, the villagers will chase you down, anon, and string you up since you show such obvious signs of being demon spawn yourself.
>>92706119>I thought tieflings were rather poor Tieflings can be born to anyone, anon. The smuggler who deals in infernal artifacts, the paladin who ventured into the hells, the prince who led his knights against the cults lair. Where or not you have a rich parents depends>and discriminated againstDepends on society>Also, I think most tieflings (outside of those in fiend aligned nations) would be ashamed of their heritage and want to cover up forked tails and horns as much as possible, not show them off. Also depends on society>Basically, if you're a tiefling, you'd want to lay low, even if you were an adventurer.Again, depends on the society>Tieflings are demon spawn and should be destroyed.You must be of evil alignment to think so. I will smite you, villain.
>>92706089Ribbons and bows woven into hairstyle or goofy nailpolish-like paintjobs? Excessive, but whatever.Pierced horns? Absolutely not. Get out of here with that hideous ridiculous shit. I've never had a player describe a tiefling character with that slop, but I'm ready to discourage it with "okay, you have to make daily infection checks" and "your fellow tiefling looks at you in horror and asks what bastard did this to you". I mean, a tiefling horns can be described as naturally weird as a player wants and all some manage to do is write up "normal but pierced". It's like some people are innately fantasy-resistant.
>>92681954Yes but half elves are the truly egregious representation. There should be like a handful alive at any given moment in most settings, it’s not like elves and humans are constantly banging. Yet every game I’ve ever players has had one or more half elf PCs and they show up all the time as NPCs or in media based on the game
>>92682871>the goth kid with the edgelord character that hijacks half the story>the earnest newcomer thinking he’s the main character hijacking the other half of the story>the two dudes showing up with joke characters who are just there to dick around >the creepy dude hitting on the DM’s girlfriend both in and out of character who is forced to leave >the shy girl who can’t act making her character shy to compensate >the slutty girl making her character sluttyYeah that checks out
>>92681954Seems pretty clear to me. Tieflings are visually distinctive, moreso than any other core D&D race, and come in multiple flavours with potentially infinite small differences that allow for lots of different visual variations (this also means people that make or commission art will gravitate toward them).They also have a very strong central theme and fantasy. Kinda like how drow are popular because there's a clear archetype, conflict, and arc associated with them. Overall they're fairly well designed.>>92707172I kinda think the 'depends on the society' thing is a little unnecessary. We all know there can theoretically be some kind of hyper egalitarian fantasy society in a homebrew setting where there's no stigma at all surrounding tieflings, but the assumption is that most aren't like that, and tieflings are usually viewed unfavourably. There isn't much point in playing a fiend-blooded creature otherwise.
>>92704352You need to be 18 or older to post here.
>>92707525>We all know there can theoretically be some kind of hyper egalitarian fantasy society in a homebrew settingThe are official settings where tieflings get on alright, anon.
>>92707423Out of interest, why pierced horns indicate resistance to fantasy? Hell, why would they even necessarily be more infection prone than other piercings? Seems like a fairly arbitrary line.
>>92707423If tieflings were real there'd absolutely be horn piercing.
>>92707437>it’s not like elves and humans are constantly bangingWritten like a man who's wife is getting fucked by an elf right now.
>>92707492>the two dudes showing up with joke characters who are just there to dick aroundEven if you extrapolated their characters out it would make sense. The big buff Texan played the biggest, buffest "dude" race in the game, named him the most popular big buff barbarian name (Grog) and asked to give his character a big burly beard. Meanwhile the snarky shitposter made a horny Gnome Bard on a dare, and then made... What was it, a pompous noble? Season 1 of Critical Role is like a snapshot of first-timers tasked with making characters they want to play. Fuck man, even the bit with the bisexual half-elves is hilarious because, like any roleplayer, they incredibly downplayed the same-sex relationships and emphasized the hetero ones.
>>92707567I can't think of a single official setting where there's no ambient level of prejudice against tieflings. Even in Sigil lots of people have an axe to grind against them.
>>92707437It's the Star Wars problem. You see one example of the relationship in fiction, and ignore how it's implied or even outright stated to be incredibly rare within the canon. One in a million to an American means 50%. Tieflings should be exceedingly rare but they show up quite often in adventuring parties, and therefore more people want to have Tieflings "around" and now you've got a prominent minority instead of a magical curiosity.
>>92707575>Out of interest, why pierced horns indicate resistance to fantasy?That is not what I implying. I meant that when a player has an option to design a character's horns to appear naturally however the player wants and he or she decides to emphasize piercings over literal horns on head, that player is trapped in modernity and cannot appreciate fantasy.>Hell, why would they even necessarily be more infection prone than other piercings? Seems like a fairly arbitrary line.Look, excessive piercings are hideous under normal circumstances and aesthetics influence my games' mechanics. Horns are not hollow and piercing them ranks right up there with piercing teeth.>>92707582If tieflings were real there'd absolutely be horn piercing.The question is not whether something is or is not possible. The question is "is this action fucking retarded and what are possible consequences".Unless you meant this as a double entendre in which case I'd agree.
>>92707760>that player is trapped in modernity and cannot appreciate fantasyYeah, I knew your answer would be something retarded like this. Piercings are not a modern invention. Having a person preference against them is fine, but don't try to pretend there's a solid, principled reason for it that has to do with levels of fantasy.
>>92707783>Piercings are not a modern invention. Having a person preference against them is fine, but don't try to pretend there's a solid, principled reason for it that has to do with levels of fantasyYeah I'm sure the player was thinking about the storied history of piercings when they made that design decision.
>>92702945It's just not the same without the goat legs. Tieflings really are just a pale imitation.
>>92707783>but don't try to pretend there's a solid, principled reason for it that has to do with levels of fantasy"Principled reason"? I'm bitching about something stupid I see in character art while taking time to mock fans of that style.
>>92707809Thinking they look cool probably. Same reason someone would get a piercing. Or do you think an adventurer would never do something purely for vanity? Honestly disregarding aesthetics and only considering practicality is far more telling of a modernist mondframe than any aesthetic choice for a player character could ever be.
>>92707623>Tieflings should be exceedingly rare but they show up quite often in adventuring partiesYeah because adventuring parties are outliers and not beholden to being proportional representations of their settings. What you're advocating for is>Sorry guys, we have to play 10 campaigns of you all being human commoners with no levels. After that you can be adventurers and roll for a chance at being a non human>It's not my fault, adventurers and people with levels are supposed to be rare so we can't have them in every party
>>92707898>What you're advocating for isYeah and I've played those games, they're fun.
>>92707760>there with piercing teeth.Player Characters get impaled and set alight on a daily basis. Given that people do stupid shit with their teeth in real life, I don't think some tieflings being weird with their horns is that notable.
>>92707915>Given that people do stupid shit with their teeth in real life, I don't think some tieflings being weird with their horns is that notable.If this is so normal and ordinary, then there's no reason not to make fortitude saves for infection (for at least a month or so) and then take into account a weakened horn when rolling for injuries. It's like some players want modern silliness without any possible drawbacks.
>>92681954You're always going to have the current invogue race OP. Before this it was Dragonborn and before that it was Drow. But it doesnt help that almost every Tiefling player has this story>First time I played a Tiefling I just did a Draenei voice as >Close as I ever got to playing a Warcraft TTRPG
>>92708011>modern sillinessModern silliness is only caring about function and completely disregarding form. Also I'm pretty sure horns are kerotin and don't have blood vessels in them. You might be thinking of antlers.
>>92708011>there's no reason not toBecause it doesn't make any sense to. If a person can get their dick pierced with almost no risk of infection I'm pretty sure a properly maintained horn piercing wouldn't be a problem. It's not like they are hollowing the whole thing out or something.
>>92708011>make fortitude saves for infectionSure, if you do the same to any character with any form of piercing or tattoo. Otherwise you're just being a whiny bitch>modernPiercings are not modern.
>>92708059From everything I've seen in livestock and hunting, horns always have a fleshy core after it reaches a certain width. The furthest third of the horn (the tip) is often solid, but if it's pierced it will eventually snap off from that hole. Artists often don't research this stuff and draw horns pierced at the base to pair with ear piercings. By all means, let tieflings have completely solid horns at your table, but consider the dangers of combat. A tiefling would have to be a turbo masochist to want pierced horns.
>>92708101>I'm pretty sure a properly maintained horn piercing wouldn't be a problemAdventurers dive into sewers, undead infested crypts, monster lairs, cult sacrificial chambers, and other areas teeming with disease. Some asshole that pierces his or her genitals likely isn't fighting off dangerous and filthy things while standing knee deep in shit and gore. Adventuring has risks that make unnecessary body mods less appealing.>>92708132Sure, if you do the same to any character with any form of piercing or tattoo.I always do until the character heals completely and a pierced horn will take longer than epidermis to seal around the puncture area.
>>92707809Honestly, they probably were. When you look at images of pierced-horn tieflings, it looks more like some kind of weird spin on Roma or Turkic aesthetics, not anything modern.>>92707862You're trying to pretend this has something to do with some kind of inability to invest in fantasy without applying modern stuff to it. That was your original argument, just two puts up from the one I'm quoting. And it's a dumb rationale.
>>92708011You need to stop listening to podcasters and go outside more. You're deranged.
>>92707612In Eberron, nobody especially cares. Manifestation zones where spontaneous planar influences happen are not uncommon and the demons most people would be familiar with are shapeshifting cat furries with AI hands, so horns, tails and colorful skin isn't the first thing people associate with them. Almost nobody knows about Venomous Demesne or what's going on in Demon Wastes. Add the availability of cosmetic illusions and the presence of races like changelings (who are suspicious due to their shapeshifting) and warforged (who were made for war and now they take jobs from honest people), and national rather than racial prejudices, and tieflings don't raise many eyebrows.
>>92681954What classes do you feel work best for Tieflings, especially magic-using classes besides Warlock and Sorcerer?Also, post images of Tieflings casting spells please.
>>92709987Tieflings are kinda a super rare afterthought tier race in Eberron - the setting didn't really have much room in it for them when it was first conceived, and they were added in later in a very unembellished form. They seem to be about as well-liked as changelings, though - i.e. not kill on sight, but certainly distrusted.It's kinda like how in Nentir Vale there was no particular decrees of death or religious zeal against tieflings, but they were definitely considered freak weirdos with a suspect connection to supernatural evil.
>>92710091>especially magic-using classes besides Warlock and SorcererOnce you rule out those two, it's not like there's many full caster classes left.Rogue is probably in contention with warlock for the most apt class. Though, tiefling paladins are an absolutely divine choice.
>>92705294>As for the trait customization table, why don't we just MAKE one?I say go for it! Why should Tieflings and Aasimar get all the good stuff? Where should we start?
>>92683453Its right here.https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/featured-races/arg-tiefling
>>92710932Anon, you clearly made up that page. Pathfinder doesn't have and never has had tieflings.
>>92711265
>>92711429ChatGPT help you with that one?
4e tieflings were betterbeing the cursed spawn of a fallen empire of devil worshippers is way cooler than just being 1/8th demon
>>92711577I have to agree with you there. If you're going to make them "uniform" in look, there should be a unified story for their coming into existence.
>>92710091I could see cleric, with the reasoning that a lot of tiefling babies probably get left on church doorsteps by ashamed parents.
>>92710471Well, besides things like elemental hair, and eyes the color of their element, what about minor features from animals associated with the element, like fish scales or fin-like ears for Water Genasi?
>>92707602Damn ye gnome, I snorted me ale!
>>92702103>In what world is that too freaky for D&D players?modern /tg/ obsessed with "freakshit"
>>92682051Dragonborn are more deserving of being the mascot race IMO. The series is literally called "Dungeons and Dragons." Having dragon men be an active force in the world doing stuff in dungeons with your human blokes is the most straightforward way to illustrate that.
>>92711551If this is some retarded joke because Paizo lumped Aasimar and Tieflings into one versatile heritage in PF2e, it isn't very funny.
We live in the age of decadence where the devil's worshippers (not conscious ones) roam the net and manufacture games where they overrepresent themselves - the decadent people as GOOD hearted but broken (because of the race\parentage\fate\whatever) half-fiendsWhile those that has sort of an angelic\pure form are shown as evil nazi zealots or as fallen even more wicked kindThis is actually the same trope as the "the lame unpopular school boy is good \ the succesful guy is bad" - tropePoor fuckers don't know that in reality it's always on the contrary
>>92681954no teiflings are great and the best thing about them is they are the litmus test for weather a GM is going to be a person worth spending time with.all you gotta do is suggest playing one and if the GM spurgs out then avoid them and find another group.
>>92689632They're sidelined as mooks in yet another elf supremacist series of books. Pity, because Fey'ri are completely fucking rad
>>92705982literal skill issue. Shit DM's can't handle flight
>>92714500>naziIf anything, the reason why the Nazis are so demonized compared to other warrior societies was because of their staunch refusal to adopt Judaeo-Christian social norms in lieu of acting like old-school pagan warlords long after such actions were considered savoury, if they ever were.Racism was a vehicle for them to act like vikings plundering for their neighbours' resources to prop up their own economy that wasn't self-sufficient. Their brutal cycle of annexation and culling makes dark economic sense if you don't consider the sanctity of human life, which the examples of the "evil divine" you speak of are often accused.If a soul is compromised by evil and finds itself more at home in the darkness than in the light, killing it only ensures they have no chance to reconsider, while to actively debate their actions and bring them the realization their vices are a negative influence on their being is a much harder task; thus, it would seem easier to simply slaughter the sinner and let God sort their lots, yet you've irrecoverably bequeathed their beings to damnation, rather than reduce the amount of the damned under evil's dominion.And on this unrelated tangent, I wish there were more Tieflings who embraced LG and acted in stark contrast to their familial heritage. Having a prudish Tiefling Cleric spreading the gospel of Saint Cuthbert would do much to dispel the notions that they're demons there to corrupt the rest of the party.
>>92714917don't lie anon. You only want this because you crave an outwardly prudish tiefling GF who will tongue your shitter and beg to be impregnated every night.
>>92714917>If anything, the reason why the Nazis are so demonized compared to other warrior societies was because of their staunch refusal to adopt Judaeo-Christian social normsThe Nazis were highly Christian. Almost all their hatreds were derived from norms established or encouraged by Christian religious figures across the span of European history, and very much in vogue at the time of their ascendancy. Their hatred of Jews, of blacks, of non-straights, etc, were all popular Christian memes at the time, they just took them to their logical extreme.>Racism was a vehicle for them to act like vikings plundering for their neighbours' resources to prop up their own economy that wasn't self-sufficient. Their brutal cycle of annexation and cullingIndeed, but this wasn't unique to them. They literally got the idea for how to do this from imperial Britain and to an extent the USA. Again, they just took existing paradigms to their logical conclusions. This wasn't some special departure from how other nations were acting, it was just the obvious next step. Luckily, that step was so horrendous that when people saw it enacted, they instinctively recoiled in disgust.>I wish there were more Tieflings who embraced LGThat is indeed kino.
>>92708198>I always do until the character heals completely and a pierced horn will take longer than epidermis to seal around the puncture area.You have to actually play a game to 'do' these things, you insufferable autist
>>92681954They've become a template character that bad roleplayers will copy wholesale onto their character sheet. Same with the "me but sword" human fighter and the Literal Only Dwarf Personality. The main difference is the type of people who gravitate to the sparkledog tiefling will probably deny they're playing template characters and insist "my tiefling is a special snowflake, just like all the others", whereas most template players know they're being generic abd just don't care.
>>92717422Oh, and that the tiefling template players are exactly the type of people who WOTC wants to pander to right now, almost firgot that part.
>>92717422Describe the exact template character that all these tiefling people play.
>>92700225>you can travel between them physically.That was explicitly possible in previous editions too, Anon.
>>92708059>Modern silliness is only caring about function and completely disregarding form.This is my biggest gripe with the whole anti-boobplate argument as well as if codpieces weren't a thing and the Queen of England wasn't walking around London with her tits hanging out of her dress.The problems with horn piercings can also be avoided by just gluing jewelry to them on a permanent basis instead of actually piercing them.
>>92681954I’d like to see more Tieflings with a mortal heritage from some race other than humans. After all, logically speaking there’s just as many, or likely more, individuals of those races as there are humans in most settings, so it makes sense that such Tieflings (or Aasimar or Genasi) should exist.
>>92720347Pathfinders setting has this, in 2e it's just an option you can take with any race.
>>92681954People want to be an edgey demon or act uwu cute while being a monster. The fact they're demonspawn never really maters in the games though
>>92705294tbf I don't know what I would call them and would need to ponder for a bit but maybe I'd try to cut out a syllable while keeping it similar so genai/gensai/genna or somethin'. I had similar problems with naming elemental people in my homebrew and it ended up being [element] -blessed or just blessed in general, which I didn't like too much.
>>92707546sorry, my bad
>>92715632"Luckily" lol bunch of cowards who damned the world to drown in shit because they couldn't stomach what needed to be done, and now we're here. Lucky us.
>>92717976There's two big ones, actually. The classic Dark Elf "I'm an edgy gurl from an edgy race but I'm actually good and I'll prove all the haters wrong" got transplanted onto tieflings in the new edition, there's also the "what's the opposite of human fighter" sparkledog build where you try to be as "diffrent" from (what you believe to be) the generic dnd player as possible, and thus pick tieflings for being as far removed from humans as a lack of sourcebooks will allow, usually paired with rouge to be opposte of fighter. In a quest to be diffrent they became like everyone else. Of course, those two can be (and often are) combined, what's more "diffrent" from the generic hero story of a human fighter than a tortured soul from a race seen as evil, often fairly, trying to be good? Short of an outright evil characger, not much. I should probably at least mention the Nimpho Tiefling, but it's not actually that common. More meme than reality, same with the Nimpho Bard. You can fit about 80% of Tiefling players into one of those 2 groups, and if you narrow down to bad players specifically it jumps to 99.9%. Tieflings attract a certan group of template players who want to be "diffrent", but cannot actually do so due to lack of roleplaying skill or creativitiy in the general sense. Thus they gravitate to the "diffrent-est" race and use it as a replacement for being actually creative. Every edition has a race like this, really, but WOTC actively advertises to people like this now, so it's become a larger phenomenon than it would otherwise.One side note, a good roleplayer can take a template like these and turn them into great characters by the power of being good at roleplaying. A template itself is not inherently bad, but they become templates in this sense because the ideas within attract people who are incapable of making it be anything but bad.
>>92721947Latin words which inspired Genasi name.Genus (meaning birth, origin, a race, sort, kind). Also ancient Roman word gēns (people, tribe). Germanic words kind and kindred are doublet words of gēns.A cognate word to genus is an Ancient Greek word Gígnomai, meaning (“to come into being, to be born).In all earnestness I hope it's that and not just a brain fart of some uneducated fool. Forgotten Realms lore is a fantasy kitchen sink full of hodgepodge gruel diluted of meaning and respect, brought down from it's lofty origins. Indeed the greatest crime of FR lore is the naming of things, usually characters. Language is everything for the imagination.
>>92729667Interesting, what inspired the names of Tieflings and/or Aasimar then, if that's what happened with Genasi?
>>92725308what if I just think demons are awesome?
>>92729667I thought the etymology of Genasi stemmed from "genie" or "djinn" since they're descended from them.
>>92729667>>92732985>>92732932Genasi comes from genie, with a fantasized vaguely arabic ending on it. Djinn-i, genas-i. Tielfing comes from the German tief, deep, as in the depths of hell and the abyss. This is word of god from the actual dev who made it.aasimar is probably a D&Dism. Within the game its derived from the term aasimon, the official Celestial language name for angels in D&D. Now where the name aasimon came from is altogether unknown.
>>92733607>This is word of god from the actual dev who made it.Where do they say that?
>>92738746https://web.archive.org/web/20170509033800/https://www.unboundworlds.com/2014/10/a-short-history-of-tieflings/
>>92739940So that's why we keep getting tiefling communities with strong internal bonds, right?
>>92733607What are some alternative names for Tiefling or Aasimar equivalents besides "Cambion" or "Nephilim", respectively?
>>92740570>NephilimWell. As far as D&D is concerned, Nephilim would actually be one alternate name you could use. Since nothing published modern or all the way back to oD&D have used that word.>Maybe used once or twice in some weird one off adventure, but it's not in any of the core books or setting boxes.
>>92681954JFC every single critrole staffer and creative got their job via nepotism, that (amd every other) artwork from them is terrible. Their contractors, freelancers even guests are all shitter bums who got the jobs because of connections to the main cast.
>>92740570>>92740662Well cambion is used to denote a type of half fiend in D&D, and PF2e calls all planetouched Nephilim now, whether fiend, celestial, law, or chaos. Honestly, there really isnt any other good terms and what I've seen in 3rd party settings is often just middling at best and downright silly at worst.
>>92692511Don't use my art like that.
Blame all the faggots 5e panders to
>>92740908you don't know what nepotism means.
>>92741946In what ways is it okay to use your art?
>>92743230smug
Why are all tieflings infernal/baatezu anyway? What happened to tanari tieflings? Every single tiefling in 5e looks the same now.
>>92747619Blame 4e. That's when the artstyle became bland with all horns standardized and obese dinosaur tails grafted onto each tiefling. PF1 had a d100 chart to randomize appearances and rules for subtype ancestry. I think the old Planescape books also had similar writeups.
>>92747619As >>92747734 said, blame 4E. Nentir Vale's tieflings are all descended from an ancient empire that once made a pact with Asmodeus, and in the Forgotten Realms they justified the retcon by having a cult of Asmodeus perform a ritual that mutated every single tiefling, regardless of bloodline, into looking like that.
>>92747734>>92747782Gross. Even tieflings from the outer planes? Like, every single one? Every material plane too?
>>92747894You tell me, anon. This is from SCAG, which is 5E lore. Though according to the FR wiki, the ritual predated Asmodeus' divinity, and was in fact done in order for him to gain enough "followers" to qualify as a deity.
found this in the early access days of BG34e and its consequences have been a disaster for the tiefling race.
>>92748165>was in fact done in order for him to gain enough "followers" to qualify as a deitysounds like headcanon
