Product of Infernal Dalliance Is Not a Feat

[For Valor]

Product of Infernal Dalliance has always bothered me...

Honestly, the tiefling is supposed to be the one with the "Satan came and raped your great great grandma", and it comes with stat boosts and darkness 1/day. And that's for, like, a human. I always thoght that elven tielfings and human tieflings should be different. Honestly, if everyone EXCEPT your great great grandfather was an elf, you'd probably look a little different compared to the average tielfing-human combination.

And then, the tielfing is VERY different compared to a human with Product of Infernal Dalliance, and yet they have the same/a similar background. What's up with that?

So I think the solution is a template.

Product of Fiendish Dalliance [Racial Template]
Cost:You lose all the attributes of your normal race (aside from benefits related to skills?), including things like low-light vision
Benefit: gain one of the [baatezu], [tanar'ri], [yugoloth], or [demodand] subtypes, with all the benefits. You also gain 2 claw attacks (1d4 for medium chars) or 1 bite attack (1d6, medium chars). You also radiate faint evil and can take any [Fiend] feat, if you're into that sort of thing.

how is that?

[Mask_De_H]

Huh?

Tieflings are the "mommy fucked a marilith" race, PoID is the "and I'm 1/16 Cherokee...I mean Tanar'ri" feat. At least, that's how I always saw it.

[Orion]

But Tiefling's aren't half-demons, half-fiends are half-demons. Tiefligns ar explicitly supposed to be 1/16th.

I *think* the Op's complaint is that PoID, which is a feat, actually gives more dramatic fiendish traits than being a Tiefling, which is a race, does. Which is true, but if you just cross out "bonus feat" from human and write in the text of PoID you could call the new race "fiendborn" and call it a day.

[Mask_De_H]

True. The RoW writeup for Tiefling and the ToF writeup for PoID are pretty similar, so I don't even know anymore.

Tieflings get the Outsider subtype, whereas PoID gets a specific fiendish subtype; so you could say they are "great grandmammy got fucked by a bearded devil" group as opposed to the Tiefling's "my great granddaddy was Rance and I was borne of a Succubus" or something.

PoID gives you specific fiendish things, while Tiefling gives you magical fiendish things. I guess that's the mechanical split, although you could take Tiefling and PoID and be a double fiend.

[K]

Tiefligns ar explicitly supposed to be 1/16th.

Under what ruleset? What book? It's not that I don't believe you, I just don't remember it ever being defined that exactly.

[Mask_De_H]

Tiefligns ar explicitly supposed to be 1/16th.

Under what ruleset? What book? It's not that I don't believe you, I just don't remember it ever being defined that exactly.

That might have been a play on my "I'm 1/16th Cherokee...I mean Tanar'ri" line. I don't think that's actually in a book anywhere.

[K]

Product of Infernal Dalliance has always bothered me...

Honestly, the tiefling is supposed to be the one with the "Satan came and raped your great great grandma", and it comes with stat boosts and darkness 1/day. And that's for, like, a human. I always thoght that elven tielfings and human tieflings should be different.

The reason I went with a feat is because thematically the coverage on bad-touched races is pretty thin already, and it's nonsensical to make demon and devil monster template variations on standard races.

Also, the things we handed out are better than starting player race stuff, so even if you traded out your race stuff you end up more powerful. It's about as powerful as a feat and opens up the powerful Fiend feats, while starting race crap is about half a feat.

Also note that PoID is available to anyone, so it's the entry fee for random-ass crap to be assimilated into the ToF style fiends. So say you wanted to make a Medusa Fiend, this would be the way.

Personally, I've always thought the half-fiend/fiendish/tiefling scale was just lazy game design and doesn't make a lot of sense. I prefer the system I wrote where you just take levels of one of the fiendish classes and it scales to your power level. I'd honestly just pretend that the standard bad-touched stuff doesn't exist and just use Tome Fiends.

[Orion]

I meant, tieflings are explicitly supposed to be distantly fiendish, not exactly 1/16

[magnuskn]

I always thoght that elven tielfings and human tieflings should be different.

There are already some tiefling variants. Tanarukks, for example.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tanarukk

[Prak]

Fey'ri too

[Red_Rob]

Also, the things we handed out are better than starting player race stuff, so even if you traded out your race stuff you end up more powerful. It's about as powerful as a feat and opens up the powerful Fiend feats, while starting race crap is about half a feat.

Humans explicitly get exactly a feat as their starting race crap. If the races are at all balanced then really all race options should be worth about a feat.

[For Valor]

Also, the things we handed out are better than starting player race stuff, so even if you traded out your race stuff you end up more powerful. It's about as powerful as a feat and opens up the powerful Fiend feats, while starting race crap is about half a feat.

Humans explicitly get exactly a feat as their starting race crap. If the races are at all balanced then really all race options should be worth about a feat.

This is what I was thinking.

I believe that instead of adapting to the race system and configuring race abilities and feats as separate features, the race system needs a rehash so that other races match to the human and Elf Variant.

Slightly unrelated

I DM'd a session where everyone was a "human", but their bonus feat at the beginning had to be something like a [Fiend] or [Monstrous] feat that defined them. Someone took the extra reach feat from Savage Species and had stretchy arms, while somebody else grabbed breath weapon from ToF.

[Prak]

The man has a point... A feat plus +1 skill point/level (before multiplying)

[K]

Also, the things we handed out are better than starting player race stuff, so even if you traded out your race stuff you end up more powerful. It's about as powerful as a feat and opens up the powerful Fiend feats, while starting race crap is about half a feat.

Humans explicitly get exactly a feat as their starting race crap. If the races are at all balanced then really all race options should be worth about a feat.

That's assuming that all races are created equal.... which they aren't. It's pretty generous to call Half-orc's and half-elfs starting package as even half a feat, and some alternate CR +0 races are made of pure awesome (deep halflings spring to mind).

[For Valor]

That's assuming that all races are created equal.... which they aren't. It's pretty generous to call Half-orc's and half-elfs starting package as even half a feat, and some alternate CR +0 races are made of pure awesome (deep halflings spring to mind).

'kay...

...the race system needs a rehash so that other races match to the human and Elf Variant.

hm.

[CatharzGodfoot]

That's assuming that all races are created equal.... which they aren't. It's pretty generous to call Half-orc's and half-elfs starting package as even half a feat, and some alternate CR +0 races are made of pure awesome (deep halflings spring to mind).

You know, PoID really brings to mind a 'Product of Elvish Dalliance' feat which grants the elf subtype and every ability on an elf's racial abilities list. That would make for a decent half-elf, right?

[Mask_De_H]

That's assuming that all races are created equal.... which they aren't. It's pretty generous to call Half-orc's and half-elfs starting package as even half a feat, and some alternate CR +0 races are made of pure awesome (deep halflings spring to mind).

'kay...

...the race system needs a rehash so that other races match to the human and Elf Variant.

hm.

Yes, and?

[For Valor]

That's assuming that all races are created equal.... which they aren't. It's pretty generous to call Half-orc's and half-elfs starting package as even half a feat, and some alternate CR +0 races are made of pure awesome (deep halflings spring to mind).

'kay...

...the race system needs a rehash so that other races match to the human and Elf Variant.

hm.

Yes, and?

I call it avoiding a topic of discussion. You call it what you want.

How about yourself? Do you think re-doing races is a good idea?

[K]

I call it avoiding a topic of discussion. You call it what you want.

How about yourself? Do you think re-doing races is a good idea?

I reserve the right to not comment on thread-jacks, or things I find obvious or boring.

[Mask_De_H]

Yes, and?

I call it avoiding a topic of discussion. You call it what you want.

How about yourself? Do you think re-doing races is a good idea?

It required a redo when Races of War was made, and I don't see the need to redo everything to the Elf Variant's standard. Also, the tricky thing about saying we should balance things to about a feat is the fact that there are a lot of feats.

PoID is a feat. Soul Eater is a feat. Large Size is a feat. Skill Focus (underwater basket weaving) is a feat. Assume Supernatural Ability is a feat. Which set of feats do we balance to?

[Kaelik]

Soul Eater is a feat.

Technically, Soul Eater is two feats.

We just combine them into one, because as feats, they are like at absolute best half as good as Greater Teleport/PoID/and combat feat/Wings of Evil/ect.