Pre-4e tieflings were diverse, no two were alike...

It does mean however that Aasimars and Teiflings are utterly without theme in the end as they can be basically anything.

It's almost as if "Tiefling" is a descriptor for those with fiendish ancestry and not a species.

>The mythology of every real-world culture is just a starting point

On the contrary, the vast majority of the Great Wheel's many archons, guardinals, eladrin, modrons, slaadi, baatezu, yugoloths, tanar'ri, and so on are decidedly *not* based on any mythologies in particular.

In fact, various real-world pantheons such as the Babylonians and Sumerians (separate pantheons in Planescape), the Celtic Tuatha Dé Danann, the Chinese Celestial Bureaucracy, the Egyptians, the Finns, the Greek Olympians, the Japanese kami, the Norse, and the Vedic Indians are neatly segregated away into their own little corners of the setting, despite all of these being "multi-sphere powers" spanning numerous crystal spheres.

They are very much a distinct species in 4e: the descendants of those members of the Bael Turath empire who had forged a pact with Asmodeus.

Well, the idea is that a tiefling or the like is a small number of generations removed from the fiend, whereas the descent traits are for people further down the line.

I was referring to pre-4e Tieflings

>roll on all those AD&D tables for tiefling traits
What if GM allows to just pick them?

>FrankTrollman and K's Tomes 3.5 offered something similar as well, but they were much too front-loaded, granting absurd benefits for a single feat at 1st-level and then refusing to scale at higher levels. Product of Celestial Dalliance (angel or archon) are the most flagrant offenders of this.

Later versions of Tome racial feats used scaling to pretty good effect.

I imagine that you are referring to feats such as these:

dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Angelic_Appearance_(3.5e_Feat)

dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Demonic_Appearance_(3.5e_Feat)

The issue with these feats is that they never made it into the compiled Tomes PDF (which has never been updated in a long time), so they are effectively "secondary canon" in Tomes games, or perhaps "third-party even by third-party standards."

>Utter chaos for balance
Just like rolling for stats, right? The random tiefling feature were never anything game breaking, and made the game more interesting rather than zoning off tieflings as generic red people.

Oh fuck off. You know very well that lots of people have a problem with 4e tieflings, so quit being such a cunt by pretending this is isn't a fucking dead horse you're beating on, shiteyes.

4e came out the better part of a decade ago and you're still whining about this? Get a fucking life. 4e tieflings aren't even the same thing as the old teiflings. Old tielfings were a specific thing with a specific origin existing in Sigil. New tieflings do not replace them , they are a new thing with a completely new and different origin.
Stop posting, you autistic troll.

What these guys said.
4e and 5e's default setting had Asmodean tieflings as the default, because of details IN those settings. In 4e, it was the result of an ancient empire that made a pact with Big A, and were subsequently cursed.
In 5e FR, they wrote in that during the Spellplague, Asmodean cultists and the big guy himself prepared a ritual which used the broken magic to brand ALL tieflings (at least devil-blooded tieflings) with his heritage, transforming them into his brand. The red, horned, tailed ones. However, the same book that adds this detail in 5e lore continues to note that tiefling bloodlines sired since that incident are still widely variable, and provide a selection of variant traits. Not nearly as expansive as the old lists, but it's there.

Completely agree.

>>"Hey, DM, can I use the old random tables for my tiefling?"
Problem is most new players don't have access to those tables and are not even aware that old tieflings existed. That the "poor design decision". If both choices were presented to new players, I wouldn't care if people chose new or old.

>Le casual maymay
Don't want to break it for you, but D&D by default is for casuals. Especially the modern editions of it. So get your shit together

Also - random char-gen is shit. Instead of playing character you want, you wind up with something few dice rolls asigned to you.
What for?

I like 4E Tieflings. They allow for a infernal connection with some of the wariness that comes with, without needing to go full special snowflake half demon who turns nearby glasses of water into blood or whatever.

At a guess, dragonborn were added for a similar reason, to allow for draconic characters without having to do the whole.. reborn in an egg thing to become a god's chosen instrument who farts peace and rainbows.

Instead it's demon-man and dragon-man. Which does have it's own downsides.
If they'd kept in the old style races in as options they might have gone down better. Have it so you can be DemonLite or go full ye olde Tiefling with added demon stuff and added demon drawbacks.

>and are not even aware that old tieflings existed
Out of sight, out of mind.

The only people that have any issues with this whatsoever are pseudo-grognards that caught up with D&D during the 3.5 hype-train ride. The real grognards simply don't play anymore, as they are close to 50 or passed it.
And if you want to role-play instead of killing things, picking D&D is not exactly the best choice for game system.

>Randomly generating character appearance
But why?
Just pick the traits you want to have and get over it. It's not some sort random mutation acquired during game-play, but character made from a scratch. Why then rolling for the weird elements in the appearance?

Sense of realism? You don't get to pick traits you are born with.

You don't get to pick where or what year you're born, either.

Yet you don't randomly roll class, race and background

>Filename related
>Complaining about editions you don't play

>Making a horned, tailed and goat-legged character in a fantasy-themed game
>Talks about sense of realism given by randomly assigning where and how much the character looks like a folklore devil

Mate, I think you might be shooting in the wrong direction.

isn't hydrophobia rabies?

Mistake was made.
Turathi are a specific type of Tiefling.
But, it has been corrected now, so no worries.
Once may play the cursed descendant of devil worshippers or a cloven gives, winged whatever.

>Black people have rabies
That's racist

D&D is the CoD of tabletop, so everyone who plays it is a casual yes even you

It's a major symptom, but you can be hydrophobic without having rabies.

Speaking of rabies, here's an excellent example of symptoms and the disease progression.

youtube.com/watch?v=BgEfcV1DE-c

I prefer "The McDonalds" of tabletop. But whatever.

Few analogies can really be perfect for it, as it's somehow both the worst example in its category quality-wise, while also being the most expensive. Which doesn't happen very often.

Is there anything at the opposite end, i.e. best quality and least expensive?

I like the newer Tieflings as the older ones had technical issues. Crazy mutant part-fiends with all kinds of different traits is great if you're playing, say, GURPS, and you can account for and balance those odd traits. In D&D it's just kind of a mess though.

"I'm a tiefling with hoofs!" Ok, can you still wear magic boots? can you kick the same? climb? These are all things that should matter.

A bit of credit to Pathfinder for kinda addressing this.

If the ones in red ar Tiefling,...they seem a tad "angelic."

"Chants Holy Verses When Sleeping"?

Motherfucking crab truckers

All of those are Aasimar traits, I believe. That image is mislabeled.

Good sir, I am under the distinct impression that you may be pulling my leg with that recommendation.

Wondrous items are explicitly described as conforming to the wearer. Kicks are kicks. Ever see a goat on a steep hill?

Exactly, there's a reason point buy and arrays exist.

There's got to be a limit to how much magical items can stretch though. If I'm an intelligent octopus can I wear trousers? Do wear four pairs? Or do I get eight ring slots?

Once you diverge from standard humanoid form and it's no longer a question of just resizing but reshaping,
And really, just handwaving the shoes you found on a giant shrinking down to become tieflings foot warmers is a little dull.

Most people try to forget the fact that 4e ever happened.

>Most people
user please. Dislike the system all you want, that's your right as an anonymous line of text on the internet, but don't just outright lie like that. 4e didn't do anything to you.

Why everyone in Torment had such huge tits? Like, some of the pictures in the journal were blatant fapbait.

The late 90s and early oughts were the era of huge stonkin tiddies on this side of the pacific.

Huge tits are fun user, you should get some, ask your doc for surgeon recommendations

Goat hooves aren't the same as the more traditional horse-like hoof shown on fiends/tieflings.

Yes friend, that is exactly why there is a 4e general on the board, because it is just as popular as 3.PF and 5e!

>Lack of popularity and utter revulsion are the same thing
Okay there pal. Here's your (you). Your e-peen is clearly bigger than mine. You win.

That and more distinctive. If they're going to be a core race, they're going to show up in a lot of illustrations, on pages that may not be about their race. They can't all be unique because then it wouldn't be obvious what race they are, which the bosses consider a bad thing.
I'm just a messenger, I decline to state my own opinion on the matter.

I try to forget the fact that you exist, but I am not revolted by your very existence. There is a difference.

There is quite often a 4e general. It doesn't turn up as much as 3.P and 5e (Aka: Games that are currently getting support but it does turn up)

Don't get me wrong, I like huge tits. It's just that it felt so... disconnected from the rest of the game. You get the whole planar feel just right, ponder about the nature of man, decide to open your journal and then BAM, suddenly boobs.

Nine-party?

>There's got to be a limit to how much magical items can stretch though.
Based on what? They're magical, that can do whatever the writers want.

So what's the difference between tieflings and dragonborn now?

small monitors were common at the time, so huge tits made it easier to tell who was a woman.

I'm not joking.

And most people that know about the Tiefling tables don't know about the Aasimar tables from Warriors of Heaven.

In-universe, Polymorph Other is permanent, and you only have to be a 7th-level wizard to cast it.

Older editions of D&D have a hard on for randomly rolled stuff.

Personally, I don't mind the option, but for something as important as what your character looks like I'd rather pick from a list most of the time.

>I'd rather pick from a list most of the time.
It's normally roll 1d4 times, but pick 1d4 times (with the 'roll twice', etc. options forbidden) should work just as well. I wouldn't allow picking from the abilities list, because you have the option of just taking the ordinary tiefling ability package or rolling on the table 5 times, and picking would be too easy to min/max.

Was about to post this

>providing options that should be in the basic game in splatbooks
>again

Hell, they even put most of the diversity options into the Basic PHB this time around. All the regional human types, and at least two racial profiles for the common core races. Meanwhile Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Half-orc don't get a thing unless they get splatbooks.

Don't lie, user. Half-orc and Dragonborn have no material out of the PHB. And Dragonborn have the whole rainbow in there anyways, so whatever.

>Character appearance
>Min/maxing
Kill yourself

Nice way of showing you hadn't even touched 5e

Tell us more about the funky smell, Spoony :-)

Christ, what did I walk into?
That's my point? Tieflings didn't either until splatbooks added content.
There's no substance to this post.
Who? Again, what did I stumble into?

The point is that these racial alternatives that other races have, like pic related, only exist for the so-called "base" races that didn't show up in the PHB until 3.X. WotC will of course add these alternatives for the races without, as we see they did for tieflings in What are you all on about?

I'll concede that the variant tieflings being in SCAG and not PHB is stupid, but what reason would they have to add half-orc or dragonborn variants? Oh look, it's an Eberron book and orcs here are sometimes peaceful druid-ish sods, swap out for a Wis and Con bonus. Oh boy it's the Dragonlance book yeah rightand here's how to replace your breath weapon with a spell.

Furthermore, how do you not consider half elves and orcs 'base races'? Wasn't there a shitstorm when 4e put half-orcs in PHB2 or something?

Gnomes, actually. People were pissed that Tieflings and Dragonborn were in the PHB while a "core race" like Gnome got punted out into splatsville.

Which in reality was just people bitching about editions they don't play. because in 4e the philosophy was that "everything is core."

Except for monster manual races without official write ups in other books or dragon magazine articles

As much as I love them, there is no way that 4e bugbears are core

>lizardfolk will never be core
I didn't play 4th. Tell me I'm wrong

Lizardfolk are not a playable race in 4e at all.

Lizardfolk are one the few options that were not playable.

On the other hand: There is an option to trade out the dragonbreath on Dragonborn for 'Being a scary motherfucker'. At which point you are a big lizardman.

4e was designed to be VERY refluff friendly.

>as we see they did for tieflings
WotC didn't write SCAG, it was written by Green Ronin. Or at least, *mostly* written.
They're all about contracting things out this time around, because the actual tabletop design team is only like 4 people. All the rest of the D&D staff is focused more on multimedia stuff outside of tabletop.

Purple elephant in the fucking room -
Post-4e Tiefling aesthetic looks suspiciously like Draenei. Just more red than blue.
I know that when people use the MMO word it causes 4E to freak out and stomp its feet and get really offended, but maybe, MAYBE, if they didn't want to give anyone that impression, they wouldn't have radically changed the art for one of the races, and then made a stupid cartoon where said race is represented by somebody who sounds a whole lot like the draenei.
Just fucking saying.

I didn't get that impression from it, though maybe that's just me.

I also like both Tieflings (4e ones slightly less so) and Draenei, so that may factor into it.

No they don't

No great big crest on the male's head, no tentacle beards or tentacle sideburns, hell, 4e tieflings don't even have hooves.

Alternatively: Draenei look like blue demon people so Red Demon People look a lot like red Draenei.

Not him, but I'm seeing it. Admittedly, my knowledge of WoW doesn't go much beyond WC3 and smut, but I do see the general similarities.
Similarly, I didn't play 4e, but 5e tieflings do explicitly have hooves as a possibility. >goat-like legs
>cloven hooves

There isn't really any similarities that go beyond 'They both look demonic'

"demonic" is a sum of many parts. Let's count:
>blue to purple skin
Check
>cloven feet and goat-like legs
Check
>horns
Check
>tails
Check
With the differences being
>head crests, facial tentacles

I don't know why you're attempting to deny this. The two races have enough in common that the accusation against WotC that they turned Tieflings into a Draenei knock-off is valid.
Pic related. Fanart. Which setting does it belong to? We can't tell because they look too much alike.

4e tieflings don't have cloven feet/goat like legs.

>cloven feet and goat like legs
Not check, not in the image shown, only in a possible demonic trait list from a 5e book when we're talking about 4e tieflings.

That gives us three similarities, odd skin tone, tail and horns

and oh wow, odd skin tone, tails and horns are exceedingly common demonic traits when both of them are designed to be demonic-looking

Fancy fucking that

I don't know why you're pushing this so hard, there is a valid claim to tieflings being draenei knock offs, but it's their lore, not their appearance, that defines it. Except the 4e tiefling lore is much better written and handled than WoW draenei lore, so maybe you didn't want to bring that up?

>blue to purple skin

4e Teiflings have red generally.

>cloven feet and goat-like legs

4e Tieflings don't have

>Horns

Yes, both have horns

>Tails

Yes, both have tails, though 4e ones tend to be a lot thicker

So 2/4?

>Post-4e Tiefling aesthetic looks suspiciously like Draenei. Just more red than blue.
>I know that when people use the MMO word it causes 4E to freak out and stomp its feet and get really offended, but maybe, MAYBE, if they didn't want to give anyone that impression, they wouldn't have radically changed the art for one of the races, and then made a stupid cartoon where said race is represented by somebody who sounds a whole lot like the draenei.

>in short, tieflings look like draenei now and bringing this up will cause a shitstorm for reasons

Amazing how the thread is proving this guy more and more right.
Also
>post-4e

You're also casually ignoring the literal millenia long tradition of depicting theJudeo-Christian devil as "Red Skinned man with goat-like legs, cloven feat, and a horned head."

Now consider that Asmodeus is heavily based on that same entity, and is the Progenitor of the "Turathi" or 4e tiefling.

But no, yeah, it's totally just WotC aping Blizzard's mad style. For Sure.

Read that post again and realise he was talking about the random abilities, not the appearance, they think about how silly a goose you are.

The big question I have is why WotC decided to make such a dramatic change to Tieflings.

What was wrong with this?

When you go 5 years with people moronically parroting how 4e is "WoW edition" over and over again in order to avoid discussion, it tends to become something of a sore spot

You mean...a horned woman with a tail?

Seriously, people talk about all these 'Weird' Tieflings but the art was almost always 'Horns and tail' even before 4e.

Pre-4e Teifling weren't really a race.

I'm pretty sure it was the skin-color change that got people riled up.

Did any 4e books actually show us what bael-turathi tieflings looked like before they were corrupted?

Weren't they just humans?