Posted By greyhaze on 10/15/2007 1:16 PM
Uhm, the renegade warlock is a human.

Posted By Puggins on 10/15/2007 12:19 PM
While everyone is certainly entitled to choose to stay away from 4e, I'd say that staying away because a class is potentially evil is a bit strange, given the fact that every class in the game (save the paladin) can be evil. A few points:

Posted By Hejas on 10/15/2007 2:39 PM
"4th edition sucks, because it has tieflings as a core race and tielfings are evil"

That's just funny. :P

Tieflings are not even HALF-fiends, you know? But I guess you wouldn't allow your player to roleplay the character who's grand-grand-grand-grand-father was a thief or a sadist, either? :P

And why would an evil race in core book hurt anyone? As a GM you can tell your player that you it doesn't fit your campaign and it doesn't matter if it's in Player Handbook, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or a Complete Munchkin.

Posted By Puggins on 10/15/2007 2:01 PM
...And here's where you'll get no argument from me. The "official" Tiefling is not inherently evil, but the version you want to use in your campaign IS evil. It's certainly not the official version, but it's a perfectly valid version.

You and I have a very different definition for the word "inherant" and a different ideal for the term "inherently evil" it would seem. To me a demon/devil is evil, it embodies evil. To be tainted with evil by being the distant offspring of a demon/devil makes you something inherently evil, you've inherited from your ancestors.

The biggest problem with tieflings is they shouldn't exist, demons/devils should not be able to breed with mortals - but because they can in game we have tieflings, shouldn't everything be a tiefling by now? I mean when the first few mortals were around how could they really stop a few demons/devils from just outbreeding them and tainting everyone. Also, if they're outside has such radical features like bone foreheads, long pointed tails and red skin, imagine what their insides are like. I don't classify them as part human, they're something entirely different.

Posted By Puggins on 10/15/2007 8:15 PM

And frankly speaking, humans shouldn't even exist- elves probably would've hunted us to extinction by now. What do you think happened to Neanderthals? Our ancestors didn't exactly take much pity on potential competitors. Why would the elves, dwarves or orcs, all of whom have substantial advantages over us?

Your list of Hellboy, etc. as examples is not a list from previous core D&D books, but from pop culture. It doesn't justify anything to me. I don't care how compelling Drizzt is to you or anyone else--there aren't "reformed" drow running around my campaigns. Eberron is not a good example of where to find good tieflings since the entire Eberron campaign setting throws alignment on its head and you can have a good Red Dragon and an evil Silver Dragon. I don't like Eberron at all. Forgotten Realms is also a campaign setting which has Drizzt in addition to your other example of a good tiefling.

The concept of the warlock is an evil concept. Having tieflings be a core race, and then having warlocks make pacts with evil outsider types to gain their powers is something that I do not like in the least. D&D player characters have historically been less tied directly to evil--unless the player intentionally chose to have their character's alignment be evil. Having a core class be inherently evil tells me that this is not a game I want to play.

Any warlocks in 3.5 or earlier don't really count as leverage for putting the class they are describing in 4e, since the class has changed to include the pacts in 4e. As has been pointed out, good outsiders don't form pacts. They want to do good and help good people. They don't need to be bound by pacts to grant magical powers.

Posted By Thenameless on 10/15/2007 8:50 PM

But aren't elves, dwarves, and humans relatively equal in terms of overall power?  I always had the impression that most core worlds were, if anything, human dominated in terms of the humanoid races.  I'm not an expert on such things, but I have been playing D&D for a while now.

Posted By Corim Danex on 10/15/2007 8:48 PM
D&D isn't famous for closely following Christian theology in its development in any fashion.

In D&D, there are races with inherent alignments. That is fundamental to D&D (well, not Eberron, but I am talking core D&D). Aasimars are rarely not good. Tieflings are rarely not evil. It seems odd to me that people like making the exception the rule. Drizzt is an exception--and suddenly there are all these people wanting to play good drow. Good drow are very rare. Tieflings are generally evil. They descend from beings who are not of evil alignment only, but of an evil more powerful than an alignment. There aren't good devils/demons in D&D. They are simply evil. It's part of the fibers of their beings--saturated you might say. Yes, they have an evil alignment. But it's stronger than that--alignments have a bit of flexibility when players have alignments. But evil outsiders don't have a lot of flexibility in their existence. It makes more sense to say that tieflings are enough generations removed that they are now typically evil instead of simply evil. But I don't think it's that likely at all to run across a good aligned tiefling. I don't think it makes much sense at all. They are more likely if they depart from an evil alignment to depart into neutrality (and probably a neutrality that flirts with evil instead of a middle of the road neutrality) than to jump to good. I don't expect to see evil aasimars or eladrin running around, either.

Posted By Corim Danex on 10/15/2007 8:48 PM
D&D isn't famous for closely following Christian theology in its development in any fashion.

Posted By guacamole on 10/16/2007 6:44 AM
IMO, the heroic tiefling, trying to overcome his inherent wickedness (original sin?), is perhaps the most closely in line with historic Christian theology. St. Augustine would have approved.

If you don't want an evil tainted character called a warlock who makes pacts with evil outsiders, rewrite the fluff so that you have a good aligned character who gains power by making vows to good outsiders; poverty, eat no meat, drink no alcohol, don't cut your hair... In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Nazarite vow was a sort of religious obligation taken up by a strict adherent who would withhold from certain activities to better devote himself to the service of God; the most famous being Sampson who looses his supernatural powers after his vow to not cut his hair was broken because he bragged to his wife about it.

If you don't want an evil tainted race called tieflings, then make them the descendents of a long dead race that intermingled with humans as a last ditch attempt to save their civilization. There is a pretty good Biblical antecedent for the tiefling as well, however. At the beginning of Genesis, the "Sons of God" come down to earth and intermingle with human women who give birth to "the heroes of old, men of reknown". Keep the mechanics, change the fluff. It's just not that hard.

If you don't like 4e, I get it. But if your complaint about 4e is things already in 3.5, I don't get it. Core or not core, you still have "warlocks" and "tieflings".

Posted By Puggins on 10/15/2007 8:15 PM
See, I can't picture that, mostly because there is no living creature in this world who is evil by its very nature. Even in religion, the Adversary is one by choice, not nature. Satan chose to violate Jehovah's laws.

Posted By greyhaze on 10/16/2007 9:10 AM

Someone asked what this has to do with DDM?  Oh, I dunno, how about a set where we get 6 different Tiefling sculpts to round out the character classes (like we did with warforged).

Posted By wicked cool on 10/16/2007 8:33 AM
 For me it takes a lot to offend me and i havent found anything in 4.0 that does.

Demons aren't from this world, neither is Satan, and he chose his fate as an angel - not as a demon.  I don't think that demons have a choice.  Think of the old proverb about the frog and the scorpion.

I just think it's a bad move, and is akin to having characters that are like hellboy in D&D.

Drizzt and Lestat are not inherently evil. Drizzt comes from an evil society, while Lestat used to once be a man, they are both redeemable and have opportunities to do so. Demons don't.

having a part-demon as your kids hero - just a bad idea. Hellboy is a cartoony look at that, and I still wouldn't want my kids playing it.

Posted By Puggins on 10/15/2007 9:20 PM


Well, it really does follow Christian theology.  Just because there's no Jesus or monotheistic god in the game doesn't mean the presence of Christianity isn't felt.  Practically every religion described in the game is essentially a Christian-style church following a different god.  And some of the time even the gods are reminiscint of Jehovah.  Take the Tyr-Torm-Ilmater Trinity.... excuse me, triad in the forgotten Realms.  Or the Sovereign Host in Eberron (seven gods in one... nope, nothing like Christianity), or Heironious or Pelor in Greyhawk.

I might even agree with you that good Tieflings are pretty rare... but then again, so are player characters.  By definition paladins are very, very rare- the exception to the exception to the rule.  Whereas finding a good tiefling NPC might be rare, finding a good Tiefling as a good PC isn't likely to be all that rare.  Good Half-Orcs are also supposed to be rare too.  Doesn't stop bunches of Half-Orc players from becoming good Druids and Clerics.

Posted By greyhaze on 10/16/2007 9:10 AM
Someone asked what this has to do with DDM?  Oh, I dunno, how about a set where we get 6 different Tiefling sculpts to round out the character classes (like we did with warforged).

Posted By Dordledum on 10/18/2007 5:19 AM
Interesting though it is, shouldn't this be in the RPG-section? I keep scanning the thread for Mini news, but there doesn't seem to be any.

D.