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[delphonso]

They're just so /hot/.

[Cthulhu]

I'm attempting to short circuit the tiefling problem in general with my campaign, in that it's recently post-chaos-invasion and demonic corruption is like radioactive fallout. A generation out almost 10% of the population is tieflings and by necessity it's become normal.  No hard life for you, no misunderstood hero for you, congratulations, nobody cares that you've got red skin and horns.

No demonic parents, demons aren't interested in such things and don't have the capacity anyway, demons are a single entity that occupies the void between the planes and grows bodies around itself when it penetrates into realspace.  Devils can make tieflings, but devils aren't evil so hopefully less allure there.  Devils are dicks, but they perform necessary soul hygiene to keep reincarnation going.

[Maximum Spin]

No hard life for you, no misunderstood hero for you, congratulations, nobody cares that you've got red skin and horns.

Oh, that. So far, without at all intending it, my solution has quite consistently been insisting on having all players be actual for-real-guilty criminals.

[scriver]

Jesus Christ why are tiefling players always so fucking horrendous. Every time I give the benefit of the doubt I always come to regret it

I'll play a tiefling with you. He's looks exactly like an ordinary human but every time he farts it smells of rotten eggs. He's very embarrassed by it of course, like any normal person would be, so he tries really hard to avoid gassifying food. He keeps in contact with his childhood sweetheart, and both his parents are alive (he writes to them often), and he visits his completely unburntand unpillaged home village where he was raised by his uncle as often as he can although not as often as he would want -- standard grown up responsibilities and the like of course.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This is funny to me, because I've never had any problem with tiefling players.

[scriver]

I you can't smell it...

[MrRoboto75]

Back in my day we only had half elves and half orks for our racial what am I angst.  We took our -2 cha and we liked it.

[Kagus]

My associations with the race are just as being the second biggest Mary Sue bait behind Drow, but not necessarily "problem players" beyond that minor little hiccup...

Personally, I kinda liked the idea of a Tiefling Celestial Warlock... Someone so guilty and shameful over their fiendish heritage that they'd bind themselves to a celestial entity and devote themselves to "good deeds" in an attempt to gain redemption.


In unrelated news, Portent is great fun.

"I cast [debilitating spell] on the big bad guy. He fails his save."

[Loud Whispers]

What are they doing?

Every fucking time I let any of them play a tiefling they start filling out a bingo card of the worst characteristics possible. It's like something about the race just opens the floodgates to every single stupid idea that should never have been allowed to flood the poor town of carefully constructed campaign sessions.

The greatest sin: session ending edginess
Great sins: a focus on the superficial instead of character. A yearning for broken power instead of teamwork. Complete verisimilitude breaking anal focus on useless details like Aragorn's tax policy.
Moderate sins: self-declared self-inserting instead of the character having a character.
Minor sins: Not knowing the rules to their "broken OP build."

They keep gravitating to so called "broken" builds, which they clearly scrounged from reddit and giantitp, instead of doing the groundwork of reading the rules & character building their own character. These broken builds are ones I discover that are all usually much weaker than a straight class of their calibre, and all weaker than straight wizard, but they don't stop going on about how broken they are to the point where they've infected all of my players with the idea that multiclassing is a gateway to sinful power. This shouldn't annoy me as much but I love making ridiculous character concepts (characters with expertise in all skills & tools, characters with insane movement speed, characters that are really good at cooking food or have the fastest reflexes mechanically possible) that are fun but weak. Yet now all of my players believe I am walking around with OP as fuck doom nuke multiclasses when I've only ever played straight barbs and rogues. It's turning me into forever DM.

They keep skipping every opportunity to actually develop their character, to the point where when they were speaking to an important NPC they repeated "I'm a tiefling" three times in a row. Tiefling is not a substitue for a personality. Notably I forced my other players to play human characters before they played exotic and monster races so they learned how to develop personalities that weren't dependent on what you are. Despite all my best efforts to prompt them to come up with character traits, ambitions, aversions, both in character and out of character - they respond out of character by saying their personality is the tiefling's personality and respond in character by saying that the "socioeconomic conditions of being a persecuted minority means I have to be a hired killer" despite no one even asking what their occupation was.

The best for last; they keep being so overpoweringly edgy. Which is doubly damning when this character is supposed to be chaotic good and supposed to have their personality in real life. Raping children is not a chaotic good act, and I don't care if it's what your character would do: make another character.

FUCK

I didn't even invite them into the group. I'd kick them the hell out if they didn't recently suffer grievous loss. But they strike me ass one who is using irony as a shield to engage in creepy fucking behaviour, this doesn't strike me as someone making a dead baby joke in poor taste.

And it's always the fucking tiefling players.

I'll play a tiefling with you. He's looks exactly like an ordinary human but every time he farts it smells of rotten eggs. He's very embarrassed by it of course, like any normal person would be, so he tries really hard to avoid gassifying food. He keeps in contact with his childhood sweetheart, and both his parents are alive (he writes to them often), and he visits his completely unburntand unpillaged home village where he was raised by his uncle as often as he can although not as often as he would want -- standard grown up responsibilities and the like of course.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I long for the day any of my players use the tiefling snowflake chart. There are legitimately a lot of interesting mutation choices, especially given how the special effects interact with social situations (imagine not being able to go to the cathedral with your dudes). But no one, not even my tiefling players want to use them.
But your character idea is amazing. I might steal parts of it to incorporate with my character idea for an edgy lone wolf who only works alone, but just so happens to be emotionally dependent on their companions colleagues people they happen to work alongside.

I'm attempting to short circuit the tiefling problem in general with my campaign, in that it's recently post-chaos-invasion and demonic corruption is like radioactive fallout. A generation out almost 10% of the population is tieflings and by necessity it's become normal.  No hard life for you, no misunderstood hero for you, congratulations, nobody cares that you've got red skin and horns.

No demonic parents, demons aren't interested in such things and don't have the capacity anyway, demons are a single entity that occupies the void between the planes and grows bodies around itself when it penetrates into realspace.  Devils can make tieflings, but devils aren't evil so hopefully less allure there.  Devils are dicks, but they perform necessary soul hygiene to keep reincarnation going.

Lmao this might be the only way. Trick my player into thinking they're playing an actual person instead of a walking stereotype

My associations with the race are just as being the second biggest Mary Sue bait behind Drow, but not necessarily "problem players" beyond that minor little hiccup...

Incidentally in the game they're DM'ing, we're currently being herded from Drow city to Drow city in what was supposed to be a "grimdark" campaign. What that means is we started off as slaves herded on a sky prison, to fugitives herded to the desert, to railroaded away from the desert into the city full of slavers we just avoided, to being pursued by the entire city, to becoming gladiator sacrifices - then getting attacked for no reason by the high priests who just tried to have us sacrificed. So many people have tried to kill us and we are yet to learn the single name of a single character. Despite that, the DM keeps telling us out of character how killing that one drow, or that one drow, or that one drow has dramatically altered the world lore.

[Egan_BW]

I did play a tiefling in 5e, but her race wasn't really relevant other than getting chased out of the temple and most people being confused about what she is.

[scriver]

Everyone's a lone wolf who only works alone until they run out of paper in the loo

[MrRoboto75]

Everyone's a lone wolf who only works alone until they run out of paper in the loo

Joke's on you my tiefling druid doesn't believe in the loo or its paper.

[Kagus]

What a coincidence, my swarm of cranium rats character is also a lone wolf!


Also, I was fiddling around recently with the concept of a non-combatant... Fighter.

Battle Master maneuvers have a few different options that don't actually require or involve you making an attack or using the Battle Master DC at all, such as Rally or Commander's Strike (which does not in fact involve the commander making a strike). Throw on some funky feat for juicy utility and you're good to go as the strange non-fighty fightyman who mostly uses spells that are not spells.

Throw a shield into the mix and you can consistently do stuff with your reaction and fighting style too.

[Loud Whispers]

Playing the party serjeant and using commander's strike exclusively would be pretty bants

[MrRoboto75]

That reminds me, wasn't there a no-attack build for 4th edition's warlord class?  I feel like I remember the term "Lazylord" and one of my coplayers doing that.