Tuesday, June 9, 2020

5e Races for S&W: Tieflings

Tieflings

B/X BLACKRAZOR: Tiefling Sorcerer: New B/X Class

Tieflings are the descendants of those dark spellcasters who made pacts with creatures of the lower planes. That touch of hell has marked their bloodline for generations. The word 'tiefling' means 'deepspawn', and popular opinion around them wavers. To some, tieflings are the innocent victims of their ancestor's mistakes, and should be allowed to redeem themselves. Others consider them a blight, and a possible vector for infernal influence. In all cases, tieflings are the first and easiest scapegoats for suspected demonic activity. They are often drawn subconsciously to places of heavy magical or infernal activity, and are thus over-represented among traveling adventurers. The appearance of the tiefling may vary wildly, with diverse mutations and infernal stigmata. 

A Tiefling's fiendish blood makes them more at home underground, and they gain 60' of darkvision. Additionally, they all have some innate spellcasting. Regardless of class, they have an additional 1st level Anti-Cleric spell slot. The spells are appropriately reversed when possible: Cause Light Wounds, Detect Good/Law, Detect Magic, Light, Protection from Good/Law, Poison Food and Drink.

Tieflings may advance to 4th level as fighters, to 6th level as Magic-Users or Thieves (to 7th or 8th level of each with an INT or DEX of 17 or 18 respectively) or indefinitely as an Anti-Cleric. If they take a level of Anti-Cleric, they must be Chaotic in Alignment. Multiclassing is possible between classes with the above limits. 

Summary
60' darkvision, innate anti-clerical spellcasting
Limited to Fighter 4, Thief 6-8, MU 6-8, may level as an Anti-Cleric without limit.

--------------------

Of the current edition's 'core' races, tieflings stand out as being both unconnected to the pseudo-Tolkein flavor of the classic races, but unlike, say, Goliaths, they have some thematic oomph about them. The curse of ancestry, a connection to the lower planes, the temptation to give in to expectations against the desire to reform and overcome the deeds of their forebears. All of this makes for great roleplaying opportunities. 

Unfortunately, this is pushed aside sometimes when we forget the origins of the race. It first came about in 2e as a race specially made for the Planescape setting, where the idea of planetouched humanoids with bizarre appearances not only made sense, but was expected. The other planetouched races didn't catch on quite as much, but tieflings stuck, and by 4e they were a core race. But this time, the core setting was FR, and tieflings didn't make quite as much sense there. Their appearance went from wildly diverse to 'stereotypical devil-person' and much hand-waving ensued to justify their existence.

A lot of the modern tiefling treatment rubs me the wrong way, especially the exoticism that reduces them to just 'humans but with tails and weird skin.' Losing that drama and character dynamic just makes the whole thing feel empty. 

For tiefling characters in Swords and Wizardry, I'm fond of increasing their rarity and making it explicit that they gravitate to adventuring, since this often brings them closer to demonic interaction. They're not very potent melee fighters most of the time, but can advance quite far as MUs or Thieves, but to gain real power, the only path for a tiefling is to give into their demonic heritage and become and Anti-Cleric. Heck, they get the extra spell just to make that more tempting. 

Ideally, this transfers the character's struggle over to the player, "On the one hand, I can be a good wizard or thief and deal with the same level restrictions as other demihumans oooooooor I can dive right in, become a chaotic anti-cleric and gain UNLIMITED POWER. 

If you want to generate an appropriately crazy looking tiefling, I recommend the Tiefling Appearance and Side-Effects tables in the 2e Planeswalkers Handbook. 

No comments:

Post a Comment