Tiefling isn't a single "race", right?

[MarioGomes1938]

Are they always transformed humans? Or are there other races that transform into tieflings, like dwarves and elves?

[[TG] zac]

Lore wise they are mostly from humans but can happen when any race is exposed to energies from the lower planes and that energy causes mutation in their offspring when they have them.
It can also happen if someone has "relations" with beings from the lower planes.
Tieflings who have "relations" with other races also almost always result in tiefling offspring (as can be seen in a few of the drizzit novels where one noted character had a tiefling dad and a high elf mother)

In game & In 5e table top however they are considered their own race and there is no mention of how one or even both of your parents might not even be one.

Frankly I prefer how pathfinder 2e handles them where you have the base races then the ancestry options.
Tiefling is one of the versatile ones, meaning it can be applied to any race and instead of one of that race's sub race options for features you get the base abilities then what the versatile heritage offers.
Same for a couple dozen other options like aasimar (which in its self has a dozen or so categories), dragonblooded and others.

[AnonymousWizard]

Tieflings are human stock, there ARE nonhuman planetouched but they've never been a focus. At least a couple did get touched on in the 3e era, but I can't remember the names off the top of my head.

Back in 3.X there were also a bunch of half-X templates that could be applied to many creature types (in fact Tieflings were explicitly at least second generation, I believe all planetouched were), but a lot of those were too powerful for 5e's race setup.

[TaKo]

Początkowo opublikowane przez AnonymousWizard:

Tieflings are human stock

not currently, not exactly?

if by tiefling one just means planetouched individual, there are several kinds of such plane-touched beings and to make things more complicated each gets their own name, with tiefling being specifically humans i guess, tho some use the term interchangeably with just "plane touched individual"

fey'ris, maeluths, wisplings, tanarukks are other types

but its easier to say and remember "[insert species/race] tiefling" and only tieflings have much support when in comes to official books

[AnonymousWizard]

Początkowo opublikowane przez TaKo:

Początkowo opublikowane przez AnonymousWizard:

Tieflings are human stock

not currently, not exactly?

if by tiefling one just means planetouched individual, there are several kinds of such plane-touched beings and to make things more complicated each gets their own name, with tiefling being specifically humans i guess, tho some use the term interchangeably with just "plane touched individual"

fey'ris, maeluths, wisplings, tanarukks are other types

but its easier to say and remember "[insert species/race] tiefling"

You do know your second paragraph is dealt with by the part of my post you didn't quote, right?

Also you're wrong, tiefling and planetouched are not interchangeable. Tieflings are a type of planetouched, as are Aasimar and Genasi, all three being human stock. Arguably Shadar-Kai and Eladrin are elf planetouched, but Shadar-Kai are weird and Eladrin refers to like three different things depending on edition (D&D lore is a mess and WotC trying to unify it does not help matters).

Part of this is that Planetouched are represented as races when they should probably be represented as feats (and some kind of are).

But yeah, Tieflings are specifically majority human/minority fiend mixes, in the exact same way that Aasimar are majority human/minority celestial. Which are the ones everybody remembers, but only because they appear in more books than the other planetouched combined. But the distinctions are important, as they don't gain identical abilities,

This thread also seems to stem from Wyll's transformation scene and the answer there is that they're not a tiefling and don't become one, In 3.5 terms they might become a Fiendish Human, but that's also different to a tiefling.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Teeflings are dumb.

[lailaamell]

Początkowo opublikowane przez TaKo:

Początkowo opublikowane przez AnonymousWizard:

Tieflings are human stock

not currently, not exactly?

if by tiefling one just means planetouched individual, there are several kinds of such plane-touched beings and to make things more complicated each gets their own name, with tiefling being specifically humans i guess, tho some use the term interchangeably with just "plane touched individual"

fey'ris, maeluths, wisplings, tanarukks are other types

but its easier to say and remember "[insert species/race] tiefling" and only tieflings have much support when in comes to official books

issue with those is their aligment is locked the tieflings aligment isnt locked for the toril 13 sold their souls to asmodeus in return for tieflings to be free to choose their own paths and also made every tiefling at the time of sundering into one of asmodeus blood wich ascended him to godhood this also had the side effect of tieflings kids always ending up as tieflings themself

[アンジェル]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Cartesian Duelist:

Początkowo opublikowane przez アンジェル:

I am still baffled by how the Fall of Elturel started, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate:_Descent_into_Avernus

That is not what I meant. Well knowing the adventure campaign it is more a logical question in regards how one corrupt politician can "just forfeit all the souls of a town".

Even the campaign does not feel complete without the homebrew module Fall of Elturel.

[jonnin]

there is a lot of that in D&D. You would think there could be half races like orc/elf or dwarf/halfling or half-dwarf(all the halfs assume human is one of the two parts) etc. Same for tieflings, there is no reason a dwarf could not be cursed one way or another to be one.

The problem is the sheer number of combinations. Just listing every possible 50/50 parentage would take an entire supplement book, and when you add infernal and divine ancestry (and there are many others in some rules -- pathfinder has a half undead race, elemental races, and more, and NWN also had a number of oddball races). The rules give you a good set and if you want something else in table top, your DM can allow it or not -- it takes time to do a custom race -- but most DM will allow it if its reasonable and not a min/max power monger thing. To do a custom race, you have to decide on how it was raised (one or the other races raised it, or both as parents?) to determine which racial skills it gets (like use of a type of weapon is from culture not innate by birth) as well as SLA (like gith misty step 1x/day) and stat adjustments (if using those) and so on. Weird combos will also trigger RP moments as people react to you: even a half elf is a little remarkable outside a medium city and an exotic mix would be very remarkable. People would remember you, ask offensive questions, make derisive comments, and so on in some places or be less willing to talk to you. You would have no racial kinship (eg "as one dwarf to another" or "let me in, I am like you" etc) to help conversations and such. Across the board it may be too much for some DM to take on esp if everyone wants to do it.

FR specifically, there are more in depth 'rules' about how the races interact and what exists etc. There are almost no angelics (opposite of tieflings) compared to the huge numbers of tieflings.

[Something completely different]

Początkowo opublikowane przez seeker1:

As you can see in the game, some people think tieflings are devils. They are not. They are descended from devils, those ancestors could be generations ago. So I guess they are part-devil. But are not inherently evil for being so.

Tieflings are descended from FIENDS, not just from devils.

[Яeplicant]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Pan Darius Cassandra:

Teeflings are dumb.

*shocked in Neeshka*

[Bloodartist]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Estevan Valladares:

You know that D&D lore =/= BG3 lore right ?

Wrong. Baldur's gate 3 is canon for its places, locations characters and starting events. BG3 is official publication. BG3 may use different rules than the official rules, but that is different from the lore perspective.

https://www.gameslearningsociety.org/is-baldur%CA%BCs-gate-3-canon-to-dnd/

However, as with all games with multiple endings, the endings obviously can't be canon at the same time. Most everything else is.

[Jaeleth]

Początkowo opublikowane przez MarioGomes1938:

Are they always transformed humans? Or are there other races that transform into tieflings, like dwarves and elves?

Tieflings are a race as much as, say, half-elves...

Although... Race is a tricky word, because it's not really a biological term, it's an informal definition, some people use it as a definition for a subspecies.
Species, on the other hand, is and being species a "group of organisms that are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring", I'd say Tieflings are such, since they obviously have Tiefling children in spite of having their origin as the offspring of demons and humans, as much as Half-Elves are the offspring of elves and humans.

In game they are defined as a playable race so...

[GriffinPilgrim]

Tieflings are humans with ancestry from the Lower Planes. Other races can interbreed with fiends too but the results are different beings like the fey'ri.
Humans are the most numerous race so hence why there are more tieflings than others.

[StrayBullet]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mike Garrison:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Duilf:

The refugees are from a town that got pulled into hell then spat back out as part of a plot so likely most if not all of them weren't Tieflings before they had a direct purposeful dose.

I think it's quite clear that they were already tieflings before "the descent". What changed for them is that they had been marginally accepted until then, but after that event they were driven out.

Zevlor's memories in the pod are a typical story. During the descent he and his fellow paladins worked together to try to protect the city. Dwarf, elf, human, tiefling -- they all fought together. However, afterward, the survivors didn't care that Zevlor had stood side-by-side with them in battle, and kicked him out of his order and the city.

It's quite clear you've not even looked into the lore ... Elturel was mostly humans before the fall.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Elturel

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

When in Rome Elturel...