I am going to suggest that Aasimar and Tieflings lose their ability penalties rather than their ECL adjustment.
Alternatively, should they merely be templates? After all, a dwarf can have a celestial ancestor as easily as a human can, and shouldn't have the same ability adjustments.
I've always thought they should be templates. The idea that angels and devils only want to have sex with humans is frankly silly.
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I've always thought they should be templates. The idea that angels and devils only want to have sex with humans is frankly silly.
Whenever I hear the word template, I also hear:
I want extra power on TOP of what I already have
or
I wanna have something the GM thinks is to powerful so I can't play it!
I've always thought they should be templates. The idea that angels and devils only want to have sex with humans is frankly silly.
Lawful angelic types would not likely mate out of their own species as it is likely viewed an abomination.
Chaotic angelic types are much more whimsical and may very well go wherever their heart leads them, and humans are merely one of countless possible love connections.
Demons will impregnate anything they can get ahold of, for no reason other than lust and dominance.
Devils are likely to consider half-breeds as abominations and consequently would rarely if ever happen accidentally, but if such an abomination could serve a purpose in the grand plan, it might be worth the effort invested.
And the more neutral outer entities probably don't give it too much thought, though the lawful/abomination attitude likely still prevails.
I thought Aasimar and Tieflings were their own races. So little Aasimar Jr. has an Aasimar mom and an Aasimar dad. Once, sure, their origins were spawned in the corruption of ascended entities, but surely now they're just races unto themselves, right?
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I've always thought they should be templates. The idea that angels and devils only want to have sex with humans is frankly silly.Lawful angelic types would not likely mate out of their own species as it is likely viewed an abomination.
Nah, that sounds more like extreme LN if anything. LG realizes you gotta have love.
As for template vs race...I'm not sure how to feel about it. As per the original fluff, Tieflings and Aasimar aren't really distinct races. They're catch-all terms for people who have something in their bloodline that makes itself apparent physically. I've always considered all races to possibly be giving birth to the planetouched "races". So on that hand I do like the idea of templates.
On the other hand, tieflings and aasimar are so weird and there's just enough commonality between them that they could be a distinct kind of creature, tied together through specific factors beyind racial ties. I like them having standalone creature stats, although I do wish there was more fluidity offered up front, because they are supposed to be extremely heterogeneous creatures. I mean they should vary WILDLY in appearance from person to person. Anyone that remembers the old Planescape art will know what I'm talking about. I know there's no way we'll get it, but ideally(for me at least), there should be some randomized charts of features aasimar and tieflings could get, just to give players and GMs ideas.
Also, voting to remove the LA rather than negative stats, if it comes down to a choice between the two. I'd love to see them be easier for players to get into, even if the negatives rub me the wrong way.
Tieflings and Aasimar should vary if just because demons, devils and angels vary. And I much prefer the old Planescape version and tables.
As for what LG types do and what they're supposed to do, those are two very different things. Aasimar is just a silly word for nephilim, which would be a far better word to use for the descendants of angels.
I would rather change the penalties Tieflings get... I mean, your grand-grand-grand-mother was a sexy Succubus and you have a -2 to Charisma? Plus, the descendant of a fiendish creature is supposed to have some 'innate' magical powers - hence, it would be more logical to become a Sorcerer than a Wizard...
I mean, is there somebody who really thinks that Annah (the Tiefling Rogue from Planescape:Torment) had a penalty on Charisma !?!
(and for the female audience: Haer'Daliss, the Tiefling Blade from Baldur's Gate 2 would have a -2 to Cha? Come on...)
Maybe not the brightest people on the Multiverse, but low Charisma ???
(my suggestion: -2 Int, +2 Cha, +2 Dex, no Level Adj)
Just my 2c.
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Tieflings and Aasimar should vary if just because demons, devils and angels vary. And I much prefer the old Planescape version and tables.
As for what LG types do and what they're supposed to do, those are two very different things. Aasimar is just a silly word for nephilim, which would be a far better word to use for the descendants of angels.
I always looked at nephilim as 'first generation' or in OGL terms Half celestial.
Though I agree, Aasimar is an easily mocked word.
In my mystic Egypt analogue, all the royal families are Aasimar, allegedly tracing their lines back to the gods themselves. When one ascends to become Pharaoh, he (or she) effectively gains the half celestial template. They aren't a 'race' per se, but they do a lot of inbreeding (I was writing a supporting cast that had 'Sister-wife and Brother-husband).
Also, if a child is born who is not plane touched, they're either drowned quietly in the river or exiled. So as far as the commoner knows, the families are all aasimar.
I thought Aasimar and Tieflings were their own races. So little Aasimar Jr. has an Aasimar mom and an Aasimar dad. Once, sure, their origins were spawned in the corruption of ascended entities, but surely now they're just races unto themselves, right?
My understanding is that, while they can breed true (Two aasimar will almost certainly have an aasimar child), a more frequent occurence is genetic 'throwbacks' when an outsider ancestor was many generations ago.
On the other hand, the Campaign Setting refers to 'half-devil' tieflings in Cheliax (and the Diabolist takeover was too recent to dilute them much), even though they should be half-fiends...
I guess what I'm trying to sort out is why celestial blooded sorcerers aren't automatically Aasimar and infernal/abyssal sorcerers aren't automatically Tieflings. (Especially Abyssal, since they have claws and therefore can't just look normal.)
I suppose the fiendish/half-fiend and celestial/half-celestial templates should also be examined for what they represent, too. Toward the end of the 3.5 era there were a lot of monsters with the Half-fiend template that were not in fact parented by a fiend. Instead, it was used a lot when 'fiendish' just wasn't god (or Evil) enough.
Templates. Definetly. If anything should be a template, it's those guys. They're not near-outsiders - they just have a sprinkling of outsider blood. To me that sounds like they should be defined mostly by their mortal ancestors.
Beyond that, I never understood why tieflings got a penalty (especially a hit to cha, when they always were depicted as both confident and alluring) while aasimars didn't.
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I guess what I'm trying to sort out is why celestial blooded sorcerers aren't automatically Aasimar and infernal/abyssal sorcerers aren't automatically Tieflings. (Especially Abyssal, since they have claws and therefore can't just look normal.)
Someone somewhere is definitely making a celestial bloodline tiefling or infernal/abyssal bloodline aasimar. Personally, I'm looking forward to those backstories.
edit-Ha, just thought of an excuse. Blood/life-force transfusion!
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I guess what I'm trying to sort out is why celestial blooded sorcerers aren't automatically Aasimar and infernal/abyssal sorcerers aren't automatically Tieflings. (Especially Abyssal, since they have claws and therefore can't just look normal.)Someone somewhere is definitely making a celestial bloodline tiefling or infernal/abyssal bloodline aasimar. Personally, I'm looking forward to those backstories.
edit-Ha, just thought of an excuse. Blood/life-force transfusion!
Hmm, how about this, the celestial in the family tree 'fell' and the repercussions are felt throughout the bloodline.
Could also be funny the otherway.
"fuego!" *LG town guard they're fleeing from is healed*
"Soulfire? Why in the nine hells do I have soulfire? I'm a Tiefling!"
I guess what I'm trying to sort out is why celestial blooded sorcerers aren't automatically Aasimar and infernal/abyssal sorcerers aren't automatically Tieflings. (Especially Abyssal, since they have claws and therefore can't just look normal.)Someone somewhere is definitely making a celestial bloodline tiefling or infernal/abyssal bloodline aasimar. Personally, I'm looking forward to those backstories.
edit-Ha, just thought of an excuse. Blood/life-force transfusion!
Hmm, how about this, the celestial in the family tree 'fell' and the repercussions are felt throughout the bloodline.
Could also be funny the otherway.
"fuego!" *LG town guard they're fleeing from is healed*
"Soulfire? Why in the nine hells do I have soulfire? I'm a Tiefling!"
"Well you see grandson in my younger years I used to work in the temple of Calastra, and we went on one of those interplanar tours they sell. Well lets just say the milkman was not your father's daddy..."
I have been calling for them to be templates for years and I still think that should be the case.
I mean, is there somebody who really thinks that Annah (the Tiefling Rogue from Planescape:Torment) had a penalty on Charisma !?!
I realize you're being cheeky, but for the record, because I am a huge nerd and I feel the need to point out these things, she only had a Charisma of 13 (Charisma measures personality, not bust size :) ). But she generally had good stats (the lowest of which was a Wis of 10), so yes, it's unlikely she had a penalty to Cha if that was 13 and everything else was good.
Come to think of it, a Wis penalty for Tieflings makes a lot of sense. They would tend to be impulsive, I imagine, and not necessarily be the best possessors of common sense.
(and for the female audience:
I am a member of the female audience, and I prefer Annah, thanks. :D
Haer'Daliss, the Tiefling Blade from Baldur's Gate 2 would have a -2 to Cha? Come on...)
Woulda been hard to make him the stellar Bard he was, indeed. :)
It's worth noting these both were 2nd Ed characters... did 2nd Ed Tieflings have Charisma penalties? I don't remember how they worked.
But pedantic nerdery (and completely irrational Annah obsession) aside, I agree w/ you and the rest.... Cha penalty for Tieflings makes no sense. I always think of demons as potentially either seductive, deceptive, or manipulative--or all three, which suggests not only no penalty, but in fact a bonus. And ya, Sorcerer should be a good class for them (if in fact not a possible favored class along with choice of Rogue).
I can see the argument both ways for template versus separate race. Template would allow things like a fiendish dwarf which could be fun. :D But keeping it as a race might be simpler.
For better or worst, I imagine Pathfinder writers will take the "easiest to make backwards compatible" option and keep Planetouched as races, rather than Templates, even if the latter did make more sense.
But yeah, no more Charisma penalty.
I realize you're being cheeky, but for the record, because I am a huge nerd and I feel the need to point out these things, she only had a Charisma of 13 (Charisma measures personality, not bust size :) ).
I know, I know. I was not referring merely to her physical aspect (although that doesn't hurt, either... ;) ), but to her brash personality, as well. She was supestitious - naming the Lady of Pain or Ravel Puzzlewell made her panicking and doing scaramantic rituals - , but apart from that, she had pungent comments towards everybody in every situation. Plus, her love-affair with the Nameless One was WAY more interesting than that of Fall-From-Grace (even if they took just one ARDENT kiss and nothing more).
You know, I'm a big nerd myself when speaking of PS:T ...
Ok, end Off Topic.
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I mean they should vary WILDLY in appearance from person to person. Anyone that remembers the old Planescape art will know what I'm talking about.
YES!!! this is why I dispise 4e tieflings... I don't want my tiefling red with horns and a tail.... my tiefling is not hellboy. I loved that planescape ones could be that extreme, but could also just have a scaled top of the head, or webbed fingers, or other easily hide-able features.
Template or not, if Plane-touched remain outsider-type, they need a +1 LA. Being outsiders makes them immune to too many spells to not have that (Daze, Charm Person, Hold Person, etc.).
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But the coin is so tempting ...You shouldn't have picked up the coin.."fuego!" *LG town guard they're fleeing from is healed*
"Soulfire? Why in the nine hells do I have soulfire? I'm a Tiefling!"
And I can handle it.
Can't I dear.
of course you can, we don't have any diaagreements
The Planewalker's handbook (thank you Mr. Cook) had awesome tables to generate very. very different tieflings.
A few exerpts:
Tiefling appearance table
Yeah this was one of the more useful tables in the 2nd edition books. I remember the tables in the Necromancers Handbook. Vulnerability to freshly cut wood!? What the hell does that even do? Rules vagueness aside, the blue cover necromancers handbook was probably one of my all time favorite D&D books.
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Tieflings and Aasimar should vary if just because demons, devils and angels vary. And I much prefer the old Planescape version and tables.
As for what LG types do and what they're supposed to do, those are two very different things. Aasimar is just a silly word for nephilim, which would be a far better word to use for the descendants of angels.
I certainly don't like the 4E standardized version. I agree that they may vary and I suspect that if we see anything done to them by Paizo, it will be very little. In fact, just removing the concept of the ECL would be enough for me. Leave the rest to the players.
Heh, another Harry Dresden fan..."fuego!" *LG town guard they're fleeing from is healed*
"Soulfire? Why in the nine hells do I have soulfire? I'm a Tiefling!"
Harry Dresden RULES!
Oh, um,... Topic? Sorry. ;P
I understand why some people want to go back to templates, and also why they moved away from them in the first place.
It wouldn't be TOO difficult to make variant races for all the standards to account for Heavely/Fiendish decent. (I think I saw some over in the long since un-updated Crystal Castle website?)
I also agree that the bonuses/penalties do not make clear sense as is. -2 to Cha? Maybe that was a leftover from when they were first introduced, and seeing people with horns on their heads made the average NPC run away?
Re: the LA, I'm a big fan of anything that does NOT have an LA, so removing it seems a good idea. But didn't I read on one or two other threads that for PathFinder, in order to make all of the 'non-standard' races comparable to the new PF-boosted abilities, you should lower the listed LA by 1? That would make the LA irrelevant in that case.
My 2cp,...
Template or not, if Plane-touched remain outsider-type, they need a +1 LA. Being outsiders makes them immune to too many spells to not have that (Daze, Charm Person, Hold Person, etc.).
That's why, template or not, many DM don't apply this immunity to these spells. They don't need to be outsiders. Problem solved.
I personally run them as LA+0 as a standalone race (with many variants) or as LA+1 as a template. Choice of the player.
Actually, I have a suggestion:
Get rid of the Tiefling and Aasimar as stand-alone races.
Instead, apply the Celestial or Fiendish template.
The resistences are similar. There isn't a stat adjustment. Creature type does not change. The biggest additions would be SR and a Smite, both of which can be handled by altering the templates to know the difference between racial and class HD.
A tiefling becomes a Fiendish Human. An Aasimar is a Celestial Human.
Modify the text of the template to make it that the 'Extraplanar' subtype is not mandatory.
There will be an AWFUL lot of info about tieflings floating around the Paizo booth come Gen Con... especially for those looking through Pathfinder #25...
Oooooh. Will it have Annah? ;)
(That was a joke, in case the winky face was unclear.)
Looking forward to August a little more then. (But I won't be at GenCon, probably. :( )
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I realize you're being cheeky, but for the record, because I am a huge nerd and I feel the need to point out these things, she only had a Charisma of 13 (Charisma measures personality, not bust size :) ).
I know, I know. I was not referring merely to her physical aspect (although that doesn't hurt, either... ;) ), but to her brash personality, as well. She was supestitious - naming the Lady of Pain or Ravel Puzzlewell made her panicking and doing scaramantic rituals - , but apart from that, she had pungent comments towards everybody in every situation. Plus, her love-affair with the Nameless One was WAY more interesting than that of Fall-From-Grace (even if they took just one ARDENT kiss and nothing more).
You know, I'm a big nerd myself when speaking of PS:T ...
Ok, end Off Topic.
Well, "brash" is usually considered a negative by not a few people...
Get rid of the Tiefling and Aasimar as stand-alone races. Instead, apply the Celestial or Fiendish template.
Hearken to Ross, I say.
Get rid of the Tiefling and Aasimar as stand-alone races. Instead, apply the Celestial or Fiendish template.Hearken to Ross, I say.
Oh, and it would save page & wordcount, too, since you can get rid of the example 1st level warriors for both races. Instead, you just add a line or two of text to the Celestial and Fiendish entries:
'Celestial humanoids are often called aasimar.'
'Fiendish humanoids are often called tieflings.'
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Oh, and it would save page & wordcount, too, since you can get rid of the example 1st level warriors for both races. Instead, you just add a line or two of text to the Celestial and Fiendish entries:
'Celestial humanoids are often called aasimar.'
'Fiendish humanoids are often called tieflings.'
The celestial and fiendish templates are supposed to be used to represent creatures from the outer planes that are otherwise standard creatures, like rhinos or seagulls or goblins, etc.
Planetouched are substantially different (humanoids with outsider descent). Ideally there would be "planetouched" templates that would match up with the races neatly, so that if you added the "celestial planetouched" template to a human, the result would be a standard aasimar.
Then you could generate aasimar elves or tiefling orcs as you needed.
For bonus points, their special abilities should dovetail neatly with celestial bloodline and fiendish bloodline sorcerers. :-D
<scribbles some notes>
The celestial and fiendish templates are supposed to be used to represent creatures from the outer planes that are otherwise standard creatures, like rhinos or seagulls or goblins, etc.
Why can't it be both? The stuff you're talking about gets the Extraplanar subtype and functions as it always has.
Stuff with celestial ancestry and/or influence but not enough to be half-celestial gets no subtype (since it isn't an outsider, so Native is assumed), and ends up with a few minor changes.|
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Why can't it be both? The stuff you're talking about gets the Extraplanar subtype and functions as it always has.
Stuff with celestial ancestry and/or influence but not enough to be half-celestial gets no subtype (since it isn't an outsider, so Native is assumed), and ends up with a few minor changes.
Actually aasimar get the type outsider [good, native]. "Native" is an actual subtype, not the absence of a subtype. They also do not have the innate ability to smite evil like a celestial creature.
Actually aasimar get the type outsider [good, native]. "Native" is an actual subtype, not the absence of a subtype. They also do not have the innate ability to smite evil like a celestial creature.Why can't it be both? The stuff you're talking about gets the Extraplanar subtype and functions as it always has.
Stuff with celestial ancestry and/or influence but not enough to be half-celestial gets no subtype (since it isn't an outsider, so Native is assumed), and ends up with a few minor changes.
Aasimar don't actually get the Good subtype.
I understand the difference between Native and Extraplanar: Outsiders are required to have one or the other, and generally have Extraplanar (that's the whole 'Outside' part.)
Creatures that are not outsiders, including most things with the Celestial template, are assumed to be native unless they specifically have the Extraplanar subtype.
I realize that by replacing aasimars with a couple variations on the Celestial template results in a few changes to the way the rules work. What I'm trying to say is I don't think those changes end up being a huge deal.
For variety in tieflings (and aasimar), why not go with the Sorcerer bloodline system? A bloodline for a demon and/or devil that determines major abilities and characteristics; succubus bloodline for +2 charisma goodness, derkaderka bloodline for Acid Spray spit supernatural ability. And so on.
Also hi, I'm new.
That would be a very interesting idea if Paizo ever does a "Planetouched of Golorian" book.
Perhaps just going with Augmented Humanoid [extra planar]? After all that's the way the Monster Manual explains that it should work where it talks about applying templates.
Also hi, I'm new.
Welcome aboard! :-)
For variety in tieflings (and aasimar), why not go with the Sorcerer bloodline system? A bloodline for a demon and/or devil that determines major abilities and characteristics; succubus bloodline for +2 charisma goodness, derkaderka bloodline for Acid Spray spit supernatural ability. And so on.
Also hi, I'm new.
*glomps the new people, shares the special Welcome cookies*
Also hi, I'm new.
Welcome, Aamaxu.
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I've always thought they should be templates. The idea that angels and devils only want to have sex with humans is frankly silly.Whenever I hear the word template, I also hear:
I want extra power on TOP of what I already have
or
I wanna have something the GM thinks is to powerful so I can't play it!
I second that...
As a longtime Planscape devotee I think that they should remain distinct races; partially Humanoid, part something else. They shouldn't be human with outsider or dwarf with outsider, they should be slightly different altogether. Templates only slap extra abilities on the races as is.
And the Outsider type leaves you immune to a whopping 7 core spells, one of which is a combat buff.
-daze
-hold person
-dominate person
-charm person
-enlarge person
-reduce person
-anti-life shell
--Vrock the Casbah!!!
Also hi, I'm new.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Paizo. Watch out for Lilith's cookies, they are addicting. Good though.
Well, "brash" is usually considered a negative by not a few people...
Haven't you seen the horde of dwarf fanbois? ;-)