Unwelcome races in waterdeep

Tortus · Post by **Tortus** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:25 am

Obviously you aren't reading my responses. Allow me to elaborate. Half of something usually means 50% of it. Now, someone who is a half breed is 50% one thing and 50% another. A tiefling is described as a distant descendant of a fiend. For the sake of keeping the mathematics simple, let's say five generations.

1st generation = 50% human, 50% demon/devil/night hag, or simply fiend. This is a half-fiend, or a halfbreed if you will.
2dn generation = 75% human, 25% fiend. Not a halfbreed any more, as you can see. More like a quarterbreed.
3rd generation = 87.5% human, 12.5% fiend.
4th generation = 93.75% human, 6.25% fiend.
5th generation = 96.875% human, 3.125% fiend.

There. It should be fairly obvious now that a tiefling only five generations removed from its fiendish ancestor is decidedly more human than you would suggest. Tieflings aren't half-fiends, they just carry (according to Races of Faerûn) "the taint of evil in their very souls". The math proves it. 3.125% isn't enough to warrant a half breed title, but it is enough to call a taint.

Tieflings shouldn't be put in the same cathegory as half-orcs and half-drow, who indeed are 50% human and 50% something else.

EDIT: Indeed, the pictures are quite snazzy.

The tiefling could easily enough be imagined as having no horns though, and with the tail tucked in behind a cape could probably pass for being a human.

Mariela · Post by **Mariela** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:29 am

I will grant you with breeding down the lines, you would distill the blood more towards the human. However, after a certain point, you should distill it back down to pure one way or another.

Well maybe not pure, but pure enough you should have decided to play a human, rather than a tiefling.

As I point out... and I don't know where you got your artwork from.. but your example picture shows that your example has horns. Nice attractive woman if she sawed those off.. but still, there is something at the very least elven if not.. a bit off about her. Would I concider her human or a base race, let's say.. so like elven or human? Mmmm... probably elven. I would honestly mistake her for elven.. or something with a great deal of magic infused to it.

But I would NEVER mistake her for human.

Which is my point. If you want to be mistaken for human. .. I dunno. shot inthe dark, play a human? If you want to have that Planed touched.. otherworldly blood.... have it. And don't expect to not ever run into problems about it. And don't try to tell me you are human. Please.
And let me finish my thought before I close my arguement down, don't be surprized when the humans of Waterdeep shy away from you and decide you are evil cause you don't have the serene quality an elf has.. even though you look elven.

Tortus · Post by **Tortus** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:38 am

It's official artwork off the Wizards.com website.

My point is this: tieflings can be born to parents who look perfectly human. The "taint" that carries through the bloodline doesn't always manifest, but when it does, you've got yourself a tiefling. All tieflings don't look the same, and I argue that some could be mistaken for humans, or elves perhaps. I don't personally feel a desire to roleplay a human-looking tiefling, since I already have two, but I can understand people who would. It sounds like an interesting RP to me, and I might have undertaken it had I only more kismet.

I don't think it's fair to say that no tieflings could ever look like humans, because that essentially removes a roleplay opportunity from the game, and that seems counterproductive and against the general spirit of FK.

Moloch · Post by **Moloch** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 12:04 pm

In fact, if you will take the time to read Races of Faerun, I know you all have

, It even says that many tieflings are UNMISTAKABLE from humans. The demonic traits only show up in their personalities. You're putting a bit too much IRL discussion in here, and not enough FR discussion.

Lukon · Post by **Lukon** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 1:54 pm

And yet, in FK, tieflings ALL have at least blatantly obvious trait. Because FK says so. Just like FK gives additional rules to paladins, hasn't raised Bane yet, etc.

FK has some distinct, important house rules, and tiefling traits happen to be one of them.

If you want to play a human-looking tiefling, make an app, and put 'a completely, totally NOT a female tiefling' as your description. Because cloaks and masks do not mechanically work sufficiently.

And frankly, if you have to publically muck about Waterdeep, then you need to go back to evil camp or something. There's got to be something else you be doing, or a more interesting way to go about it than the Silent-Snake-in-a-Box method of stealth.

Jaenoic · Post by **Jaenoic** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 2:00 pm

Wouldn't "unmistakable from humans" mean the opposite, that it's really easy to determine a tiefling from a human?

Races of Faerun wrote: Carrying the taint of evil in their very souls, tieflings are persecuted and feared in most parts of Faerun. Those with gross physical alterations are often killed at birth, and even those with less noticeable physical traits are sometimes killed by their own horrified parents. Occasionally a tiefling is born to someone indifferent to its appearance, determined to redeem it, willing to exploit it, or evil enough to not care about its nature, and these tieflings are most likely to survive to adulthood.

Everything in that opening paragraph suggests that tieflings appearances are always noticeable, no matter the degree.

Also I don't see in Races where it says they are unmistakable. Am I just missing it?

Raona · Post by **Raona** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 2:35 pm

Mariela wrote:I am calm.
This is a logical debate. What made you think I was not?

Those who don't know you and Mele well might, I think, often take away that you are angry from your tone of writing. Those of us who've gotten to know you both sometimes still draw the same conclusion from the force of your words; you don't dress them up in the (mamby-pamby?) modifiers like in my opinion, might, I think, and I believe. (See, I used two of those up above!) But I think it's just your means of debating... As a fellow German-Irish (+ Italian), I know there are a wide variety of debate styles out there!

Mele · Post by **Mele** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 3:16 pm

Please tell me where in FK it says all tieflings must have blatent fiendish traits. This is all I could find.

Tieflings look human, save for one or two distinguishing features,
such as fangs or pointed teeth, or glowing red eyes, small horns or
red skin to name a few. Because tieflings can be born of many evil
outsiders, it is hard to tell any relation as even two tieflings
descended from the same Devil, may look radically different.

No one forces any tiefling to look extra fiendish, just like no halfelf looks extra elven and no halffish looks extra fishie. People have the right to make their own descriptions and have their characters to look as they please.

There's nothing anywhere saying some tieflings do not look mostly human. This is another case where we need to be focusing a bit more on our own roleplay, and not worrying so much if Joe wants to do stupid things on his tiefling because it will bite his ass later.

Thanks for the cookie, Raona, I'm pretty sure Mariela and I are well aware we type in special blunt tone. :P ;)

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:27 pm

As much as Mele will mock me for doing so, I'm going to have to finally agree with her here.

People choose to play as they wish. If they spend Kismet they have earned by playing other characters to make a character who is 'unremarkable' I believe the choice is theirs.

As long as it's not hurting others, I really don't see why anyone else needs to concern themselves with it.

Tieflings are multiple generations removed from their parents. Indeed, many of them look completely human with minor differences (bumps under their hair where previous generations had horns, a stub at their tailbone where a tail used to be, etc). Further, even earlier generations could undergo alterations to their body so that they might look human under armor - tucking of the tail, "surgical" removal of the tail/wings, etc.

While I can certainly understand one wanting to be able to just say 'OMG there is a Tiefling! I can tell because it says so in his or her ungreeted shortname' I don't think that does justice to the players who took the time creating the character and playing them in such a way that they may not be possibly recognized as part celestial/fiendish.

Japcil · Post by **Japcil** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:44 pm

*Raises hand* "I will disagree with Mele!" All tieflings should have pointy tails and beards. If they were given an extra tail attack if the description said they had one I'd bet everyone of them would add a tail to their description.

As to having more RP out of Waterdeep?
I think we should ban all Mele's characters to Shadowdale to generate RP.

*Japcil court-style slams a hammer on a piece of wood*

Horace · Post by **Horace** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:47 pm

Most planetouched look human. But since that isn't an option code wise, I think it's best to keep the coded plane touched characters as immediately identifiable as such.

A large part of any tiefling character, much more so than their celestial blooded counterparts, is dealing with people prejudging them - or suddenly disliking them once their nature is revealed. Which usually suits them just fine, because they typically dislike those people before they can be hated. Since NPC's aren't able to provide this dynamic of the tiefling experience in a more intimate manner, I don't really see a problem with blanket "bannings" to reflect this aspect of their life.

I think everyone agrees that many things would be different if there were DM's around at all times to reflect such things...but they aren't.

Mele · Post by **Mele** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:12 pm

There is nothing code wise stopping a tiefling / whatever from looking more human. Is my snip from the helpfile misleading? "Tieflings look human"?

Can someone please show me where FK says all tieflings have to be "lookatmelookatme!" with tons of bells and whistles?

Hrosskell · Post by **Hrosskell** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:20 pm

This sort of issue should have been covered, and probably was, in the Races forum - before a lot of the planetouched were created, I remember asking how blatant/hidden it needed to be, because I wanted to roleplay my aasimar as a regular human who didn't know his bloodline. But now that we're on the subject of apparent traits, I'd like to say this: there is a lot of racial profiling, and that detracts from some people's RP. My aasimar doesn't know anything about his great grandfather who was a Celestial - I do, and you might assume, but it ruins RP to shove something like that in someone else's face. A big part of any planetouched character's RP is either knowing or not knowing their blood, and how they deal with that. Hiding it seems a viable option for most people, in fact it is said in the source books and I believe the HELP FILES that most planetouched, even aasimar, are shunned in their home places for being what they are - so why not try to hide it in a larger scenario?

My only question on this topic is - would you be having the same argument if the word tiefling were switched to aasimar? Do we all need angel wings and halos and golden eyes and silver hair and bronze skin? This topic seems almost foolish, if not a little biased against players who play evil characters - remember, the other plane-touched are just as odd and in most cases, frightening, so.. Show some equality, or leave the fiends alone.

Grafghur · Post by **Grafghur** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:35 pm

Well, let me drop my 2-cents in here.

When creating a new character, it is up to the player to pick their looks within FK rules. I see no problems having a Tiefling hiding his features to look human, come out at night, etc...

If you're really going to get picky about things like this then, I'd say the same applies to mages that walk around with their magical spheres of fire, or warriors with all sort of red glowing things on them. As a peasant, I might interpret those things as evil and ask the guards to kick you out, due to my fears.

Just a thought.

Horace · Post by **Horace** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:35 pm

There is nothing code wise stopping a tiefling / whatever from looking more human. Is my snip from the helpfile misleading? "Tieflings look human"?

My point was the ungreeted form - you automatically know they are tiefling...through code. If someone says "you're a tiefling"! and you say "no i'm not!" they just have to say, "yes you are"...because code wise they can see it.

My general point was to maybe make it a rule that all planetouched are obviously plane touched - because code wise we all know already...and having the "a broad bottomed sortahuman" doesn't seem like a solution, without just giving them a flat human race descriptor.

Grafghur · Post by **Grafghur** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:38 pm

Code also doesn't tell you that the person in front of you is wearing a cloak. You need to look at them.

If someone is using the code to let them know who they are talking to, then that's against proper RP.

No need to change the system, it works fine as is.

Oghma · Post by **Oghma** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:40 pm

I'd honestly rather see people make human pc's an apply for some demon blood in their line then just spend their kismet on making a human-like tiefling if they want to centre their rp in Waterdeep proper. That is just my personal opinion, I really see it as a waste otherwise of potential.

Lukon · Post by **Lukon** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:47 pm

In regard to Mele's post, it is noted in your own quote that the features are distinguishing. They stand out. Now, in an ideal setting with DMs and stuff, these could be easily hidden. But, frankly, we don't have those options available with code.

I'd love it if we had 'race-concealing' items, but until we do, it's a plain-and-simple pain to accomodate certain RPs.

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:50 pm

I agree that a clean and simple solution to all this would be to make it clear that all planetouched are clearly planetouched.

As Horace pointed out, the code already does that, and such a rule would feel natural (and wouldn't require any code modification).

As Oghma pointed out, if you picked up "tiefling" to play him or her as a human, then why not simply choose "human" as the race and roleplay or pretend that you have some demonic blood?

And to those who would say that this rule goes against their freedom to choose to play a planetouched with very minor physical oddities ... then I would reply that, by forcing other people NOT to notice those (minor) physical oddities, you are acting against other players' freedom to play observant PCs.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:41 pm

An observant PC would read the description and look at how the character is dressed - not just look at a short description and say 'HOMG! It's an Angel/Demon!' I think the fact that there is only a small amount of people who actually read descriptions is revolting.

I remember when I first came here EVERYONE tried to have their descriptions as descriptive as possible - it was a matter of pride. I enjoyed reading them most because I would see a scar in the description and think to myself OOCly 'I wonder how they got that!' and wonder if any of my characters would ever find out.

I remember when I first met a certain well-known Tiefling on this MUD when I first came back - I read the description (*pat self on back?*) and RPed properly that my character didn't recognize that the PC was a Tiefling. I was rewarded and they mentioned to me that most people don't take the time to read the description.

We're supposed to be this elite MUD in rank 22 and climbing higher. We're busy claiming that we want to play our characters as observant when it's the players themselves who lack the dedication to read a simple description? YOUR PC WOULD SEE THAT DESCRIPTION and you as a player being too lazy to read that description do a terrible injustice to your 'observant' PC if you decide to ignore it.