Poll: Poll: How evil are Tieflings?

[thewaever]

Hi! I'm curious. I know what tieflings are to me, but I wondered how other people felt about them. What do you guys think?


PS- Sorry if this is in the wrong forum. I looked at the Role Play Forum, but it didn't look like a discussion forum, more of a gaming forum. I didn't think this post was a good fit.
Thanks!

 

[Asita]

Tieflings are mortal, with all the virtues and vices that entails. There's certainly an argument to be had about how much of the tiefling tendency towards evil is due to how the rest of society treats them and how much is a biological predisposition to it (considering that a tiefling is literally a descendent of a fiend and all), but at the end of the day a Tiefling might be counted among the most virtuous of Iomedae's paladins or among a cult of sorcerers intent on summoning Rovagug himself to destroy all of creation.

As to my personal feelings...eh, I lean more towards "if you treat people like monsters don't be surprised if they start acting like them", but I feel the characters work best with a weak predisposition towards evil that is amplified by their marginalization and the prejudice they face.

 

[Gray-Philosophy]

Asita explained it very well. As far as I know, Tieflings do have a tendency to lean towards the darker paths in life because of their fiendish blood. But they are very capable of being purehearted heroes all the same.

As far as Tiefling personality and psychology goes, they're largely influenced by whichever society they grow up in, but may inherit characteristics from their ancestors.
I'm currently roleplaying a Tiefling of human and infernal heritage in a D&D game. He acts mostly like a regular human, but has a few quirks and traits from his devilish side, such as being unusually deceptive in his speech, and having odd eating habits.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

If you are half demon I think you should have a hard time resisting evil impulses myself, if its at not at least considered a curse by a good character I think its a bit cheapened.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

It depends on the Tiefling.
They may have urges to do bad things, but some choose to resist it.
You may descend from a demon, but you also descend from at least one generation of mortals (including the one that mated with the demon).

I was playing a CN Tiefling myself (At least until the campaign sort of stopped. I still hope it'll continue someday.). Probably would have chosen evil if the DM allowed it, though.

 

[BeerTent]

This is kind of an interesting topic, and interesting discussion. Sadly, I need to get ready to leave soon, so I'll leave with this.

In school, we've been discussing the concept of "Nature vs. Nurture" along with the big grave important fact of "You can't choose your parents." If the latter was false, we'd all probably be Bill Gates' illegitimate son instead of just a sad lonely Tent in the graveyard province.

The thing with anyone in the DnD setting is that they're just normal people. Some of them are destined for greatness, and can be amazing adventurers (You, the player.) and some of them can die upon immediately finding a band of adventurers to side up with. (You, the player. DDDAAAALLLEEEEE!) The only thing that say, makes a Dwarf that much different than a human is the rich culture that person grows up with. I figure that if a Teifling was adopted by dwarves, or vice versa, than that individual would be exposed to a completely different culture. Terry the Teifling no longer is being taken care of by a single parent that immediately regrets their decision. Dave the Dwarf is no longer going to follow in his father's footsteps to be a master blacksmith.

Are Teiflings inherently evil? I don't know. Are Teifling babies like Human babies in the sense that they don't know deceit until a certain age? I think if we're going to find out the question to this, we need to find that fact out. What are the little bastards like for their first few years?

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

It depends on the individual. I hate in fiction if you can sum up who a person, a sapient being is by saying, 'Well, they're a [Insert Race Here].' We'll they're an elf, they act like an elf, that's all there is to it. That's nonsense. I hate when an entire race has a single culture and everyone in that culture has exactly the same values and acts the same way. Tieflings can be good or bad. The same is true of Aasimar.

SNIP

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't Tieflings be from basically any race?

 

[the December King]

Since they have their own agency and can select any alignment, then technically they can be as evil as players want (or DMs in the case of NPCs). This can be curbed by social restraints or cultural values.

Personally, I like making sure that no Tiefling can ever be quite as evil as the lower planar fiend that sired it(the fiendish component of it's bloodline, in other words).

This is because I think people who play only 'half-monsters' are cowards.

I kid! I kid.

Mind you, a case could be made for a Tiefling being spawned by a fiend type, or rather a denizen of the lower planes, that wasn't so tied to pure evil. Always an interesting thought. The same could be done with a Technical Assimar having merely an upper planar parent, and thus not necessarily being partly infused with benevolence.

 

[thewaever]

I had a 2E Planescape Tiefling character whose mother, Tyburne, was abducted by devils and, well, let's say "poked & prodded" by various instruments of torture. 9 months later, Elias (my Tiefling character) was born. Some years later, during which time the devils were raising the boy to be as horrible as he could to his mother, a paladin rescued Elias & Tyburne, & took them to Mount Celestia to recuperate.

There, the divinely inspired clerics healed Tyburne & Elias of their physical & mental scars, & the young family created a new life on the slopes of the Celestial Mountain. Life went on & Tyburne fell in love with an einhariar. As what happens with these things, Elias eventually had a baby brother, an Aasimar the proud parents named Minnaloushe.

By this time, Elias was as bright & as healthy as any child raised in heaven could be, but there was always something he resented about 'Loushe, the Aasimar golden child. Elias loves his little brother & always will, but sometimes he just can't stand the sight of him.

 

[Asita]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't Tieflings be from basically any race?

Yep. Pathfinder's Blood of Fiends supplement pretty much codifies the idea. The creatures of the outer planes aren't exactly picky in how they affect the world. Anything can give birth to a half-fiend, so pretty much any breeding creatures in the world can - in theory - have demonic blood running through their veins. That said, it also makes explicit that tieflings only occur in humanoid races (so no bear, sphinx, or dragon tieflings, for instance), and that tieflings are distinct from half-fiends[footnote]A coupling with a fiend results in a half-fiend. A tiefling is descended of a half-fiend, whether that means they're the half-fiend's kid or their great-great-great-great-great grandkid who didn't even know that their great*6 grandparent did the nasty with an evil outsider[/footnote]. Short version is that any playable race (and several non-playable ones, at least barring a monstrous campaign) can be used as a base for a tiefling character, with the only mechanical difference between a human tiefling and a halfling tiefling being the size (tiefling stat modifiers and racial abilities override those of their racial heritage).

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

'Usually' ... as per 3.5 monster manual.

 

[ccggenius12]

If you are half demon I think you should have a hard time resisting evil impulses myself, if its at not at least considered a curse by a good character I think its a bit cheapened.

Half Demon and Half Fiend are their own things, a Tiefling is 1/4 or less that species. Like those white people who had a Cherokee ancestor seven generations ago, but still identify because they get to dodge taxes if they do. (without that last part.)
Basically, they can run the gamut of alignments for humans, but I'd argue it's weighted towards evil based on the ammount of actual demon blood they have in them. ex. a second generation tiefling is more likely to be evil than a fourth. It''l never balance with humans, but it will eventually get to such a small percent as to be negligible.

 

[Drake the Dragonheart]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't Tieflings be from basically any race?

As far as I know tieflings and aasimar are human but with fiendish/celestial ancestry. But I suppose there could be dwarven aasimar or elven tieflings, though such would make those two templates more than a stand alone race.

On an aside, why no love for the aasimar, and why all the love for the tiefling? Seems like whenever a game or campaign has "non-standard" race options, those options are drow, and tiefling, but never aasimar.

Just out of curiosity, what would the child of a human and aasimar parent be? Half-aasimar?

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

On an aside, why no love for the aasimar, and why all the love for the tiefling? Seems like whenever a game or campaign has "non-standard" race options, those options are drow, and tiefling, but never aasimar.

In the longest-running campaign I was ever part of (we managed to keep our group together for a few years), most people were the usual human/elf/halfling/etc., but we had zero tieflings, one aasimar, and I was an earth genasi, of all things. We liked to keep things interesting.

 

[Asita]

On an aside, why no love for the aasimar, and why all the love for the tiefling? Seems like whenever a game or campaign has "non-standard" race options, those options are drow, and tiefling, but never aasimar.

Just out of curiosity, what would the child of a human and aasimar parent be? Half-aasimar?

Only reason I don't have one in the wings is because I haven't settled on a concept to work around yet (I toyed around with a garuda-blooded druid, but it never really 'clicked' for me). Funnily enough, a friend and I worked out a bit of a joint concept: his aasimar cleric would be my tiefling inquisitor's handler (and boy does he need one). Haven't gotten to use them yet, but hey, a guy can hope.


And to the question of heritage: Much like with tiefling, you either are or aren't an aasimar, with the question pretty much being determined by whether the good outsider heritage is expressed or not.

 

[Towowo]

Well if you want to be technical, a tiefling and half-fiend are completely different things, Tieflings are simply born from when a mortal bloodline is tainted by a devil/demon/daemon, generally a half-friend is created not born. Anyway I think they might get urges to do evil things but they also have a choice like any mortal does.

 

[The Madman]

I always tend to think of Tiefling as being inherently more chaotic due to their nature but not necessarily evil. Most of them probably falling under the chaotic neutral style 'I do what I wants' alignment with a few chaotic good and evil exceptions.

 

[Auberon]

More nurture than nature, given that Sigil has plenty of variety in Factols and street runts. But when Triad is around, most of them probably end up not on the Good side of local law.

 

[scotth266]

Tieflings are as evil as the players or DMs playing them.

Some people like to play tieflings as charming rogues, others as particularly evil villains, some as antiheroes, and plenty as the misunderstood good guys with a bad rep. Ultimately all of these interpretations are correct - in RPGs you can justify almost anything with the right backstory, which is sort of the point (given that RPGs are the grown man's game of make-believe).

Hell if you want, you can make all elves worship Satan. Turn the stereotype of elves being perfect right on its head by making them guard the most metal forest possible (see Brutal Legend for inspiration).