Damn, that's some tasty lore

Shit that's genius!

@dplonker6140 Thank you. I just thought "He's THE Devil. If it doesn't make sense at first glance or feels like a mistake on his part, that's part of the trap." From there it was just working out what the trap was to snare people. "What is the maximum gain from the minimum effort that he's putting in here?"

How many more "sins of wrath & violence" could be committed if he just skipped all of that mumbo jumbo and made Tieflings devious & sinful by nature (which they are, btw). Asmodeus does not care to make any sort of "grand point" to mortals or the other realms lol, he knows he's right and the pleasure of seeing mortals sign their souls away by the millions daily is enough for him; he is primarily interested in power for power's sake over everything that exists, and he would never nerf his plan just to make a point. Fact is, Tieflings are devious by nature. This doesn't mean they can't be good, but Tieflings will always be predisposed towards self-interest & ruthless cunning. They will be drawn to power far more easily than other races, and will be far more capable at attaining it as well. What they do with this power is up to you, but I believe the lore kind of establishes a fundamental theme of Machiavellianism for the race which should never be ignored. Otherwise, they're just humans with horns.

"shouldnt have become a warlock then, damn demon ilk! Reddie!"

Went on a whole rant about this and then read this comment, glad you understand 🤝

The cambions are effective agents. Teiflings should be way below them on the infernal hierarchy. Teiflings is what happens a cambion check in with a cult of mortals doing their own version of Rosemary's baby.

Cambions are demon bred (emphasis on "bred") while tieflings are devil cursed. Cambions don't belong to Asmodeus. They belong to his enemies.

I would agree with that. With the diversity of fiendish appearances and yet the people who have the blood of fiends, yet they look like the stereotypically depiction of the Devil? They should be very different from each other. A tiefling hailing from the Demogorgon should be very different from the one hailing from Asmodeus.

Most recent lore (appearing in SCAG and MTF) suggests that with time, new tieflings have spawn from other fiends, including demons. It even has sub-races for each type of fiend.

@@azzaelulbrinter bring back ugly tieflings

Nah, the rebranding is what made them so popular. You know exactly what a tiefling is when you see one, can’t say the same for the aasimar

The first time I encountered tieflings was in the video game Neverwinter Nights 2, which is based on 3.5 edition, so it is from before the rebranding. It is this earlier lore that imprinted on me, so the rebranding has always felt awkward. It seems like it has been drifting back in the direction of having multiple kinds of tieflings. Baldur's Gate 3 has subraces besides the Asmodeus tiefling. I'm playing a Zariel tiefling in that game. The smites that these tieflings get as a racial bonus are useful.

Your Tiefling sleeps like a cat.

That's some really nice worldbuilding!

Old Netheril could provide plenty of leaky ruins. Celestial, fay or elemental powers should work exactly the same. Planetuched should be a condition caused by exposure. People could even be unaware that they are effected. I can definitely see some far out there village where the locals are totally cool with horns, tails, hooves etc. There is a condition that create crablike feet and sometimes hands. Look for "crab people". Exist in some region of Africa. Most do not have this condition but it is seen as normal.

Technically you can play a skeleton, slime person, some "fur-ry" abomination, multiple limbed and mouthed blob, metal person or fire person (no burning, no light, its just looks like you're on fire)

That is the angle I like on them

Which is funny that they think they're going against the norm by literally being the norm

Uh... Uhm... Good point.

@@punishedrab9364 Yep. I mean, this is 2023. Teenage Rebel: "I am going to Chruch and there is nothing you can do to stop me!" Parents: "Don't you DARE go out that door!"

@@punishedrab9364 Standard outcome of obsessive rebels. To be defined by reaction to convention is to defined by convention.

Lol

Even then, the main conflict of act 1 is literally a group of druids wanting to toss a group of tiefling refugees into the arms of a waiting goblin horde because of their inbuilt racism. Refugees who were made refugees by being unfairly blamed for an infernal conspiracy.

@@genghiskhan6809 I thought it had less to do with them being tieflings, and more with the druids just not wanting anyone, period.

@@TheHornedKing It’s part of it but that sentiment is being ramped up to 11 because of the fact that they are tieflings. One of the druids can literally just kill one of the tiefling kids and feel nothing because she killed a “devil”.

@@genghiskhan6809 Oh, I missed that.

If your username is an indication, then it looks like we were born in the same year. I'm curious, where are you meeting the players that approach D&D like a therapy session? Are they friends of yours that have shifted the way they interact with the game, or are they newcomers that you meet at a gaming store or somewhere online? I have some observations of my own on this topic, but I'd be interested to hear how it is that you're coming across this issue.

​@@esperthebard I'll do my best to obscure things as much as possible without twisting the crux. The things that happened are true, some of the details are purposely not. When it happens once per decade, it's not good but it's hardly an issue. I do have a friend that used to treat any PnP roleplaying game as a therapy session. He was never fully in control of his life and use to compensate by GM/DMing. Long story short, a lot of not good stuff happened over the years that even made some of the players quit playing with him. Once he got his life in order, he stopped playing. The other friend that used PnPRPGs as a therapy was the one who was always on the margin of the hobby. He was always orbiting but was never interested enough to try. At one time, he had some family/marital issues and, to my mistake, I persuaded him to join in, to get his mind off of things. Again, without going into details, some of the players took roleplaying way too far and a lot of mistakes were made by grown adults that jeopardized two marriages and sour two friendships. That friend, and two others involved, never played again. I've been DMing DnD 5e online for almost full two years and in that relatively short time span I've met a lot of people that are in need of professional help. I met quite a few people who either knew of you or were your fans, by the way. Here's probably the most serious example from one online game I ran. Mind you, I'm not a professional DM, I do it because I enjoy it and I will never DM for money. When lockdowns started, I decided to give it a go and see how this online thing goes. I joined a Discord of a certain DnD content creator and one of the channels was for group-matching. After playing a few games(one of those is a good candidate for your question as well) and DMing a few homebrew one-shots, I got a group of four players who were willing to play my latest nothing-one-shot. Two guys and two girls, all in their twenties. The girls used the same rig and camera but that's a whole nother story. They created their characters beforehand, nothing special; fighter-sorcerer-warlock-ranger. One-shot went really good - they managed to save the lord's daughter from the hobgoblins and they were clicking on all cylinders as a team. Except from one of the two guys who was kinda withdrawn a bit but still, he participated as much as he wanted to. They liked my style of DMing, I liked how the session went, two weeks later we agreed to continue the adventure to get to the bottom of the mystery behind the kidnapping. Soon after, they sent me their backgrounds - nothing epic but still very cool and manageable. The warlock sent me a two-page essay. In short, parents sold his character to in-game lord's older brother who molested and abused him until a devil came to him in his dreams and became his lover. The same devil granted him powers to kill his abuser and free himself. The goal of his character is to free any victim of abuse and to keep an eye on the family of the local lord, around which the story kinda revolved. No, he wasn't playing a Tiefling, he was human like all of the others. The backstory was actually written pretty well, a bit to graphic for my taste but still good, and I figured that the guy was either a writer or aiming to become one. Either way, it was something that I could work with, I planned on them vanquishing a vampire who had enslaved some of the villagers so his backstory played into that perfectly. Also, I could drop some dubious hints about the lord and his daughter every now and then, just to keep him on his toes and see where that goes. A few sessions into the campaign everything was going smoothly when, while chatting after one session, one of the players dmed me and asked if I had noticed anything strange about the guy playing the warlock. She claimed he got up after every combat to hit the john. I didn't notice it but the very next session he did exactly that. After the combat was over, he muted himself and just went offscreen. The guy probably had a week blather, whatever. A few sessions after that, they fought some cultists and right after the combat, like every time before that, the warlock took off his headset, stood up and went offscreen. Except this time, he didn't mute himself. While others were chatting, suddenly, someone started screaming. We were all surprised and stunned. As the screaming went on, we started asking each other were was it coming from. As it continued, everyone silently came to the same conclusion. When the warlock came back, the other guy told him that we heard the screaming and asked him if he was OK. A few moments passed in silence when the warlock player's screen went black. He quit. Everyone was trying to dm him only to find out that he blocked us all. We talked about what happen for a bit and reluctantly came to the conclusion that he was probably just embarrassed. They decided to pause the adventure until they find a new fourth player and I really didn't mind because of what happened. A few days later, one of the girls contacted the moderators of the Discord channel to ask about the guy, they said he hasn't been active since. After that I was kinda panicking. What if he didn't just quit? What if he had actually done something very, very stupid? What if he hurt himself? There was obviously something wrong in his life and was this the tip that had pushed him over? The more I thought about it the more it dawned on me, how smart is it to DM to a bunch of people you do not know? It's easy to DM for the guys in my local game club, we've know each other for years, some even their entire lives, we know where our boundaries are and how much we can stretch them. But online? I had no idea who that guy was. I had no insight in why he was playing DnD. And then I started looking at it from a different angle. As a DM, I'm responsible for the majority of things that happen in an adventure therefore, I bear the most of the responsibility for player's experience. Am I capable of doing that? Should I be doing that? Do I want to do that? The answer was - no. I should not be nor do I want to be responsible for other people's mental wellbeing. At that time I decided to stop DMing online. Unfortunately, soon after they found a fourth player then spent weeks talking me into continuing the adventure. Time did its thing, the incident faded away and I accepted. But not without changes. Now, I always explain what to expect in my adventures so that the players can take responsibility for themselves. I have more examples that I could probably share but I would rather not write a book about it. I have no idea why some people decide to do what they do when playing DnD. To me, DnD and PnPRPGs in general are a refuge from reality, a cry for something that will never come to be, a haven for fantasy. It's a place where I can leave all of my problems behind and just enjoy being Duron Megahertz, a proud scion of a noble dwarven family, sent on a quest by his grandmother to retrieve his great-grandfather's favorite mug. Why some players choose to bring their real-life issues into it is beyond me. As for the warlock - it seemed he was fine. About two months later he became active again on the same Discord.

And here's your answer. "To me, DnD and PnPRPGs in general are a refuge from reality, a cry for something that will never come to be, a haven for fantasy." But what if they're playing for the very same reason? What if what you consider fantasy is safe vanilla stuff, a bit of tongue and cheek one liners and bashing gobbo skulls, but others exclusively have darker fantasies? We all play for fantasy's sake, it's just that NONE of us can separate and divorce our backgrounds and lives from it. Neither can you, you just think you can cause you're your own status quo. Proof: Book of Vile darkness was made for a reason. Source: I've seen some wretched shit in DnD discords, I like my fantasy gritty and grimdark. I will not put trigger warnings in my campaigns, quite the opposite, I relish in seeing people's horrified reactions to a beloved NPC having mango fly infestation. I'd even go a step further, I'll send them a video of those maggots being popped from the skin. And my players like me for it, inspiring, weird, bizzare, all acceptable adjectives to hear about my DMing. But "fine", or "good enough" are words I dread. As a player too, I refuse to play in campaigns that are unicorns and rainbows. The difference is, I know that, so I say that in advance and don't sabotage other people's games if they want it that way. But a crime syndicate campaign? Playing as cultists of Bane trying to establish new world order from beneath the unsuspecting cities? Human sacrifices and demon conjuring? I'm dooooown for that (And I'm the reason why Christians were actually right about DnD being dangerous for one's soul, your type got caught in the crossfire). But even I have some limits, one of them and most important one of them, for the LOVE OF GOD I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME. Across my voyages in cesspit of degeneracy called Discord, I've encountered so many people straight up not even playing the game, but using it as medium for erotic role play. Like man, I'm down to establish a murderous cult, gaslight NPCs (and be paranoid about being gaslit), seduce, lie, trick and deceive. But the moment you start moaning on that mic is the moment I'm out. The amount of people trying to play online DnD just to share their kinks is staggering. There are far more productive mediums on the internet which would allow you to do the same, however, there's plenty of people who already DID that on various forums and the thrill ain't enough, they have to involve people trying to play the game. After all, we all yearn to be accepted, the thing they miss is that one must present themselves acceptable in order for society to accept them. tl;dr Touch grass, don't play DnD. @@MI982

@@MI982 Thank you for taking the time to recount to me some of these concerning things you experienced. I had wondered if you had encountered some troubling incidents via online gaming with unknown persons. I'll definitely be taking this as a word of caution. With a certain frequency, GM games in which the players really channel themselves into their characters, real life problems included. While I am no psychologist, I do accept the role of a guide and storyteller, which can indeed aid people in their personal journeys by way of the mythic world of fantasy. What I try to avoid though is a tone or worldbuilding that is too modern, too real world. That just clashes in my mind. I prefer to keep things immersive, and with a style that is inspired by a medieval and ancient world (or even timeless).

@@esperthebard DnD has gone the same way as Vampires(twilight). This is what happens when the game is feminized. Look at the illustrations at 1:45. Do those guys look like de monic bad guys, or more like gay dudes cosplaying?

A niche that makes up the fourth most played race in 5th edition LOL

I have some mixed feelings about it. I don't mind certain races being inherently a specific alignment, but at a certain point I find it hard to justify certain races that lack true free will being player races.

You are an astute observer. The name of the artist who did this classic painting is unknown. He was either a student of Bosch's or a contemporary who closely followed him.

Best race, I love gnomes

Sad truth: The opposite from why Tieflings are overrated. They're not fucking hot. And good riddance honestly, we started with dwarves, added halflings and kept going. When you got 5+ races being small, then being small isn't even really a special thing, similarly how "dark visions" power creep also fucks balancing, to the point that there's plethora of people who will not play a race without one. You play Tieflings exclusively if you're LGBT or have sexual perversions. You play Gnomes exclusively if you like to be a min maxing wizard. These are the rules community itself made, I'm just pointing them out.

@@MrMrtvozornik Bro I just like Tieflings because they are the most Chaotic Good race.

We need more Gnomes to punt.

That's a really interesting approach. As I said in the video, I also have used tieflings a bunch as a GM and find them great for NPCs and villains.

Funny because most members of the community I know just use the blanket term of queer and it’s only straight people, the government, and corporations that use the ever expanding acronym that seems to also annoy them.

Metal is completely neutral, just inorganic matter. Lust is excessive, inappropriate, or unbridled sexual impulses, which brings a slew of problems, some of which are limited in scope, others of which are utterly devastating and life-altering.

@@esperthebard Lust is also completely natural; so natural, in fact, that it's shared by literally everything under the kingdom animalia that's capable of sexual reproduction.

@@purplehaze2358Lust isn’t the desire for sex, it’s the excessive and consuming form of that desire. Lust very much can and will harm you and those around you. Also he wrote “neutral,” not “natural.”

Lust is not sexual desire it is rampant sexual behaviour. The sin of lust is cheating, adultry, sexual assault, rape, child molestation. It isn't just being horny, it's being a cheat, or predator. Gluttony is not liking food, and drink, it is eating & drinking to excess. This same logic applies to all the seven deadly sins. Nor is sin some magical force, it is a term that means error, and that is still it's meaning in a religious context. It is natural to get angry and strike a man who insults you, yet it is still a moral error, and thus a sin.

Personally, I think the original lore that somewhere down the line there was a Demon, Devil, or other fiend in their family tree explains this better... Although regardless you still touch on why they might be feared or mistrusted: They look like Devils. Now I brought this up on the poll and was told "but Minotaurs exist," but that's missing the point... They look like devils! Incarnations of evil. If minotaurs are so common in the world that one can walk into a tavern and nobody bats an eye, people are going to know what a devil looks like and if person who looks like that walks in you might be a bit weary. But with this new lore, why would they even be mistrusted at all? I assumed that the lore didn't change, really, but I was mistaken... I guess there is some aspect of "You look like a fiend," but if this war thing happened the only people I would think who are naturally inclined to reject them would be dragonborn... You know, because of tail envy.

Also their minds and culture are different Just look at ants.. we could never blend in with them so easily, we can't copy them. Their brain or nerves are too different from ours. We have become so afraid of eugenics and racism that we have started moralizing evil DnD races. Just look at mindflayers.. regardless of morals or how mch they try, they are forced to eat and kill intelligent life forms. Orcs are naturally violent, as If on testosterone and steroids (making them more agressive, not exactly violent but it can lead to it).

You can see this in Frieren (If i remember the anime name correctly) We are just too different to co-exist with demons in that world (If they were just emotionless we could to some extent) Accepting different people is good but sometimes there is truly nothing you can do. You can't accept everything and everyone, but you can respect them or their culture.

In general, D&D races/creatures are never described as being lustful. WotC steers clear of that subject. Here and there you can find a sexy illustration, but even that is rare. There are a series of taboo subjects, and they involve lesser forms of harm than the main thing that happens throughout the entire D&D experience: violence and killing. I'm still pondering over why it is that less bad things are so forbidden/controversial, while slaying and brutality is fine.

That could be interesting to investigate. I'm Asexual myself (took me ages to figure out, because I'm still romantic, I just don't experience sexual attraction) and Tieflings are interesting. However, I would probably want to play a Satyr or something else Fey related my first time (struggling to get a group together), because I'm on the Autism spectrum and autism has a lot of association with Fey stuff. For example, descriptions of "Channeling Childs" match up quite well with children with autism.

Forgot the question mark at the end

I think my favourite Tiefling character might have to be the one I made because my brother and I wanted to make characters that shared backstory so we ended up going with Aasimar and Tiefling twins that would be a warlock and a cleric (because technically both can pop up in human bloodlines) he wanted to play a cleric and decided to be the Aasimar twin and I love warlocks and Tieflings so I was also very happy with that arrangement we then went back and forth a bit about whether we should subvert expectations and have a death/grave/war domain cleric and a celestial warlock but we ultimately decided on having the classic Life cleric and Fiend warlock and I think the funny part is the twins have relatively similar personalities the Aasimar is sick of being expected to be good and pure and caring all the time so they're quite sarcastic and often complain or roll their eyes at having to heal people for stupid things and my Tiefling is sick of being compared to their perfect twin she's cynical and sarcastic and runs on pure spite a lot of the time but they take great joy in exterminating enemies and scaring people (their twin learned pretty quickly to stay behind them or else they may be hit by a rogue fireball) the other fun part about their dynamic is the High cha/int lower wis and high wis/cha low int characters my warlock will figure out a puzzle whisper the answer to their twin then misty step over the puzzle to join the other character who just did the same thing or purposely using thaumaturgy to change the colour of the torches and then boom her voice to say something threatening while the party is exploring an ancient dungeon for shits and giggles while their twin just facepalms in disappointment

Don't limit yourself to the Hells, Tieflings include folks with blood from the Abyss as well. It's Fiendish blood, not just Devilish blood that makes a Tiefling.

@@patrickbuckley7259 I like the way you THINK, friendo! Also, does illustrate my point even more extremely 😂