Wizards owns the concept of tieflings, right? That shit doesn't fall under the "you can't copy right games' rules," -rule, right?
If wizards owns tieflings, what would be the best; least-cringey way to include a tiefling proxy in an rpg that isn't D&D?
They weren't strait-up half-demons in Planescape right? I'm afraid my experience in the planes is restricted to one brief play-through of torment about 5 years back.
Other urls found in this thread:
Just call it a cambion or something.
Make then a mutt of sorts where each one is a unique mix of fantasy species that somehow produces viable offspring (magic?)
>Wizards owns the concept of tieflings, right?
No, not right. They're not copywritten.
You can't own the concept of a tiefling, op. Its just a human(oid) with demon ancestry.
In AD&D, they are individual descendants of mortals and demons, in newer editions they are a stable race spawned as such.
Also note that they aren't half-demons. Half-demons are different things, and are much stronger than tieflings.
Weren't all tieflings random amalgamations of parts before 5e?
Right, so they don't own the concept but they do own the word. Cambrion is a viable alternative, but that also makes it the first race you see when you start character creation; which half-demon being the first thing sort of puts a certain angle on it.
I was going to have them be more like what they were in Planescape; they're humans who's ancestors fuck a non-mortal being at some point and now 0~2 generations down the line; pop! yo' baby got horns! -and a random magical ability based on the thing that fuck who.
No.
4e changed it.
Tieflings came about when a Human empire at war with the Dragon born made a deal with a Devil/Demons. All their Nobility would get demon powers. The modern day Tieflings are their descendants.
Note that I skipped a lot of stuff, but that's the fast way of doing it.
Just use something simple, like Porcion. It's easy enough for your readers to catch on what it means when a part demon person shows up.
They were never an amalgamation of races, they were a person fucking a fiend/cambrion/alu-fiend and then a tiefling poped out. The difference you're being confused by is they didn't all have horns and a tail, but one random physical trait in addition to their otherwise normal physiology, based on what sort of fiend fucked their nan.
dungeon crawl stone soup just calls them "demonspawn"
Before that, though, they were mortal races with some fiend blood in their veins, but what kind of fiend and what characteristics they displayed varied wildly until Asmodeus "claimed them all his own" and they all became the red skinned, horned, tailed tieflings used in modern editions of D&D. There are a few that escaped that, or were tieflings not because they were descendants of those tieflings but were instead made from recent mixing of blood, which do possess wildly different traits.
The traits had no relation to their ancestry.
I can't believe anyone cares about fluff after 2e/OG Planescape. There's literally nothing that was improved, and almost everything got worse.
To be honest, I prefer the 4e and 5e versions. You should at least look the part if you're going to play a Tiefling, otherwise it feels like one of the billion other Elves, or a Satyr type.
> I prefer the newer editions because my definition of the race is defined by the newer editions
That's all well and good, and a valid option, but your syntax also carries the implication that the originals are actually inferior, because do not look like the new version of the tiefling.
There's been a real lack of Al-Qadims and Everton, but part of the issue has to do with economics. It's much more efficient to put out Adventure Paths than new settings.
Purely personal opinion, I just feel that monster races should really look the part. However, I totally understand why people would pick the previous version, and I do like the random trait table they had.
>Right, so they don't own the concept but they do own the word.
No nigga they don't. Paizo uses it all the time. They've got like five words copywritten.
As far as I know, Wizards only owns "illithid", which is why Pathfinder calls them "mind flayers". What are the others?
They've got a few things they've kept out of the OGL for brand identity whatever
d20srd.org
We should have both but with different names.
Like trueborn tieflings and chaosborn tieflings.
I called them 'Grigori' before for a homebrew. Could use that.
Beholders
No, PF has tieflings for example
Can't copyright a word.
Wrong