Playing Tieflings in Dungeons & Dragons 5e

in a fantasy world where magic runs in the blood one's lineage can be a blessing or a curse and if you thought that your family vacations were held try playing a tea fling in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition greetings my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we discuss everything Dungeons & Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are taking an in-depth look at playing a fling at your character in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition we're gonna take a look at the different racial features and traits and abilities that you get as well as what classes might best suit a tiefling player we're also gonna look at some role-playing ideas and world building ideas for both dungeon masters and players there's lots to dive into with this very cool player character option so let's get rolling so to get started with tea-things let's talk about their lineage and their lore T feelings are born half demon or a devil depending on where you're coming from with that yes this infernal or fiendish bloodline has marked the tea-things family going back generations so well an individual tiefling is not necessarily the direct offspring of a fiend they are often someone who far back in their ancestry they have a fiendish ancestor which could even be an arch devil or a demon lord depending on the prestige and pedigree of your particular tiefling now in some settings this is modified in different ways where tea flings come from great and noble houses in fact legendary empires like bale to wrath which wholesale had all their nobility interbreed with legions of fiends producing a new people and new culture which endured until that Empire like all empires fell into ruin there's a lot of choices that you have to make when you're setting out to play a tea fling in Dodge and Dragons what does the Lauren lineage of your player character look and feel like are they tied and bound to their demonic heritage are they an outcast to society or do they live in a world where it's he flings our abundant and part of the culture are they looked upon strangely when they walk into town or are they just met just like any other creature in the worlds of D&D the infernal heritage of the T flings mean that they are such to a wide range of different mutations and visual appearances depending on the exact nature of their ancestry well the classic infernalty flame might have a tail cloven hooves feet and horns and various ridges and bone structures in their face they could just as easily not and more classical Planescape t flings might look very very human aside from some small unsettling feature like a slightly warped or asymmetrical face small protruding horns a six finger marking the spawn of the Demon Lord grats or even a strange eye color or smell that emanates from their body so in addition from the T flings unique role-playing lineage you get to really have this creativity in what your character looks like and I'm a fan when you're creating a feeling of flipping through the monster manual and looking at all the art for all the various demons Devils and particularly the arch demons and demon Lords and saying what are the touchstones of that demon or devil that you want to embody in your tiefling so Monty what excites you most about playing a tiefling what do you think there is to really wrap your head around and really get excited for let's not mince words tiefling strike that nerve that is the edge Lord in all of us you get to be the brooding antihero or really skirt along those villainous archetypes especially when paired with the class that you choose if you're choosing something like a necromancer or a rogue or a warlock that really is an invitation to dive into being just a little bit or maybe extremely evil I think that that is part of the appeal they do lend themselves really well to certain classes that also have that edge Lord appeal and so you really get this kind of nice package of being able to combine a half-demon presence with a slightly edgier class and what's really cool here is that there are so many people out there who really want to dive into a slightly gray area type of character who isn't necessarily totally good and maybe isn't necessarily totally evil and the tiefling really lands right in that middle where it could swing either way I think the teeth wing is also a character option that built-in has so much story you could have the mystery of what your lineages and your parentage is which is a classic archetype and a very common port of call that maybe your demonic parent or ancestor or granddaddy is perhaps even the villain of the campaign and that gives you a direct link to what's going on in the campaign itself maybe you just want to find out where you come from as a character and going along with those impulses is really rewarding from a storytelling perspective you also get connected to the great cosmic conflicts of the Dungeons & Dragons universe in that you do have that connection to the outer Plains to the abyss to the nine hells but also to the kind of conflicts that occur in the material worlds as well if you're inhabiting a setting that perhaps draws inspiration from the teeth empires of bail to wrath I think as we get into the mechanics of what the T feelings offer there's so many good options for classes to play as a team because of their special abilities and racial benefits it just is a very well-rounded racial option I think it's worth mentioning that T flings just look cool a lot of work has been done in the artwork of teeth wings to make them look like sexy badasses that has an appeal all to its own the armor design the character design really pushes the edge and really feels like something non standard especially when you're choosing a miniature for your character and this is where we're gonna come to our friends at hero forge who give you a lot of great options to design and customize your own miniature to play a tee fling character in Dungeons and Dragons tee flings are very popular racial option but you can't always find the right mini for the class that you want to play and with the new variant options 40 fling you can really fit them into any class in the game so being able to design and customize your own mini with hero forge is a great option heading on over you can use hero forges online character builder to customize a half-demon character choosing from all sorts of options like claws and who's different styles of horns and hair styles even if you want to play a winged 'add tiefling you can add that to the miniature as well and regardless of which class you want to play with your character hero for just going to give you the options to really complete that and build that out once you've created your perfect miniature in hero forge you can order it to be printed and delivered right to you it comes in a variety of different options for what material you would like to order it in we recommend the premium plastic and if you're picking up a premium plastic miniature from hero forge make sure to use the discount code dungeon dudes at checkout to save five dollars off your premium plastic miniature if that's not enough hero forge is now launching their new Kickstarter for hero forge 2.0 which will now offer options for getting your miniature delivered to you in full color whether that's through their new innovative printed 3d printing technique which prints the color into the miniature itself or having it professionally hand-painted by the hero forge painters this is a really awesome chance to get in at the ground level with hero forges new offerings so check them out on Kickstarter through to mid-february 2020 or head on right over to hero forge com to pick up your latest and greatest miniature for your next player character and with that let's talk about the different character traits that you get for playing a tea fling tea things are very diverse in dungeons and dragon addition because the options for tea things go far beyond what is just in the players handbook because in fact we have variants for tea things that have been presented in both sort coast adventurers guide and in Morton kinds Toma folks between all the variants that there are now to choose from for tea flings there's virtually an option for every class in the game each variant will come with a different set of spells and ability modifiers that you can use to really customize them to fit in anywhere and all of them are pretty great so let's start off by taking a look at the baseline Player's Handbook tiefling and then we'll crack open Morden kind and stoma foes and the Sword Coast Adventures guide to see how we can modify this so right off the bat T feelings get a +2 to charisma and a +1 to intelligence making them a great choice for any charisma based class as well a good option for Wizards or characters that have an interesting using their intelligence score this does pretty specialized them into the mental ability scores they don't have any physical stat boosts in the core T Fling which is why the variants are so interesting now all t flings gained resistance to fire damage and dark vision as part of their infernal heritage but they get a little bit more than that as well in that all t flings do gain some spell casting to all T flings from The Player's Handbook have the thaumaturgy cantrip and a third level they gain hellish rebuke and at fifth they came darkness these spells can be very useful and you get them just by picking this as a race finally all T flings are medium-sized creatures with a ground speed of 30 feet you do know common and infernal innately for playing a tiefling and you've got the full suite of human-like customization options for what your character's appearance and age and weight and height are although you do get a few differences because of your devilish heritage we should also note the variant options available for the tiefling starting with the options presented in the sword coast adventures guide with things such as feral or winged it t flings so the feral tiefling is changes out their ability score increases and instead of gaining a bonus to in elegance and charisma they instead gain a +2 bonus to their dexterity score and a +1 bonus to their intelligence score if you choose the winget trait you lose the infernal legacy trait from the tiefling so you don't gain the spell casting from thaumaturgy and darkness but you do instead gain a flying speed of 30 feet as long as you're not wearing heavy armor you'll want to make sure to talk to your DM before choosing to take any of these options and the Sword Coast adventures guide especially the wing it t-- fling option because some DMS might not be happy with a player starting off with flying also in the Sword Coast adventures guide there are other options such as Devils tongue which allows you to replace the spells giving you vicious mockery instead of thaumaturgy as your can trip and then there is the hellfire option which gives you burning hands Mordan kinds Toma foes also introduced variants on the tiefling sub-races as well each of these variants follow after one of the various 9 arch Devils of the nine hells and both of them work similarly to the ones in the sarcos adventures guide in that they may change the ability score increases you get as a tea fling but they also changed the spells that you gain from the infernal legacy trait what's important to know about this is that the tiefling sub-races in warden x toma foes are incompatible with the options in the sword coast adventures guide so if you choose a warden kinds Toma foes option you don't have the infernal legacy traits so you can't get wings with these sub-races the two options that stood out to us are the Zarya l' or the dissipater options for the tea fling if you choose dissipater as your infernal lineage you gain a bonus to your dexterity score instead of your intelligence score and your cat your spell casting gives you spells like disguise self if you choose the Zarya lineage you get a bonus to your strength instead and you get the branding smite and searing smite options for spells so I think between the stock tiefling and the other variants of the tea-things you've got a lot of choices here if you've got the za Realty thing you've got bonus to your charisma and your strength perfect for a paladin if you're choosing the dissipator tiefling with the bonus to dexterity and charisma pretty perfect for a swashbuckler look basically everything any of the spell casters are gonna want a bonus to their dexterity more than they're gonna want a bonus to their intelligence if their charisma based I think we could go around this all day but the idea here is that with T flings having the versatility in their options above what I would say any other racial option has means that when we start talking about the classes that would work well with a tea fling you could pick any class and find a tiefling that matches that option choosing your legacy with LaVista gives you a bonus to your Constitution score choosing fair Nia gives you a bonus to your wisdom score so every single teeth Ling sub-race in Morden kind of stoma foes basically means you can swap out the spells that you know gained +2 to your charisma and then +1 to any other ability score of your choice of course your ability score bonus then locks you into what spells you gain but this is pretty flexible it's almost as flexible as playing a variant human it in my opinion it is the second most flexible option for a racial choice that you can make and dungeon and Dragons fifth edition I would say it's pretty tied with the half elf fair enough half elf half elf is up there as well with its versatility still because of these additions it really makes tiefling jump way up in the ranks for a great racial choice no matter what you want to play yeah I think you can basically make anything work with the teeth Ling although a couple class options are truly iconic for T things so let's go into some of those favorites we'll start with the bread-and-butter of all tiefling players and that is the tiefling warlock option yeah I think if you're playing at ething warlock of LaVista s-- make the infernal pact with your fiendish ancestor you've got your bonus to constitution your bonus to charisma you got lots of great spell casting it just completely Lee sings and it really matches that sort of antihero vibe and edge Lord for all of you people out there who are really looking to drive home how dark and sinister your character is now of course as a warlock you don't have to make a fiendish pact with your tea fling you could choose one of the other pact options maybe your teeth Ling is interested in exploring other sources of power and is actually looking to change their legacy or change their stars so you don't have to completely lean into the archetype by playing the pact of the fiend warlock with your tea flame but it is a lot of fun and it all lines up perfectly the tiefling also lends themselves very well to the sorcerer option just having the inherit magic within them being born half-demon it makes sense that they are erupting with magical energies yeah if you really want to be a bit of a Mary Sue you could also be a draconic lineage tiefling sorcerer and then you've got the infernal Andrew conic legacy in your bloodline what a family tree has spawned you I don't really want to contemplate too much but I think that that's kind of the the silly and fun appeal of playing thief links especially with sorcerers and warlocks because you do get to have all of these other plainer forces and supernatural creatures involved in your character's lineage which is kind of cool and can actually yield some interesting plot devices if you wanted to play against type and really have a tiefling who is fighting against their ancestry as a demon you could look at the celestial pact warlock or the divine soul sorcerer or because of your bonus to charisma and some of the variant options a paladin also works very well a tiefling is a fantastic character to explore the redemption arc with because it really represents a character that has to overcome their nature and perhaps even the atrocities of their past in order to come to terms with who they are and so playing a tiefling paladin or playing a teef divine soul does give you those connections to more celestial forces at the same time though you could twist that around because the divine soul doesn't necessarily need to be the divine soul of a benevolent deity they could be the divine soul of Asmodeus himself and so they could be embracing the power of the nine hells directly and embracing the divine powers that inhabit that realm maybe even they could be a divine soul of Tiamat there's the drew comic thing again and with the Paladin you know the oath of conquest and the oath of vengeance are not necessarily very nice oats there's a lot of options in there that you could tie these back into your tiefling ancestry and heritage and really drive home the fact that you are fighting on behalf of a dark force that it's vengeful towards some other entity out there still playing a good character but you have a lot of little nuances that you can twist and turn around to make a really interesting character and I think that's where the tiefling shines is that with all of these options your role-playing and character development options are endless yeah I really think you draw a lot of amazing inspiration from characters like Hellboy or spawn in creating how your tea fling interacts and moves through the world particularly tea flings that have these supernatural powers like tiefling paladins warlocks or sorcerers because you get that whole feeling of actually having the powers of Hell at your command but then you're twisting them for actually a benevolent purpose you can explore that most deeply I think with the sorcerer the Warlock and the Paladin but also to a lesser extent say with a tea flame wizard as well which is a pretty good choice maybe not the best of the spellcaster options but I think a tiefling wizard is quite iconic particularly a teeth winged necromancer when we look at all the classes there's so many strange unique options but I've seen some great tiefling bards which is a rather unsettling sort of vibe that I get from a tiefling bard but it's a very good choice and works really well with what they offer a tiefling bard is basically right out of a heavy metal album cover I don't know about you but I think playin a tiefling bard is completely on point and is an opportunity to basically roll out your favorite classic rock heavy metal like blast that Led Zepplin blast that ac/dc get in your highway to hell like come on model him after Dave girl's appearance in Tenacious D's Pick of Destiny film and you have your tiefling bar door hit there even when we look at rogues as another option they're arty flings that fit in here and they do seem like they could play a very good sneaky stealthy sort of character oh yeah the the tiefling variants that give you the bonus to dexterity particularly the ones that come with spells like disguise self or other illusion spells would play perfectly as an arcane trickster or a swashbuckler really work quite well I think there are other martial options that we might look at such as the fighter the Barbarian the Ranger and the monk or other spell casting options such as the cleric or the druid all of which do have options in the variant rules that might lend themselves to them yeah I think you can play around with these I think that as soon as you start backing away from the charisma based spell casting classes like the bard the Warlock the sorcerer and the Paladin as well as to a lesser extent the wizard I think that that's when you're starting to get into the grey zone with the tiefling where you're now exploring things that play against type right you are now looking at not the iconic stereotypical tee things but really out into your own territory the good thing about this is that because you can mix and match the ability score increases you can always find something that makes your character work you're tiefling will always be a bit of a charmer though your character will always have that charisma bonus so I would be really care about playing against the type and then trying to completely ignore your characters plus two bonus to charisma because I've seen players that are like oh I'm gonna play a tiefling monk and I'm just gonna leave my charisma score at the lowest and not worry about that plus two bonus but I think you're kind of cutting out an element of your character entirely there if you want to make best use of the bonuses you're getting looking for something that does use your charisma is very important I will say though the idea of a wing in feral tiefling monk ranger or fighter or even barbarian all sound pretty good just on the strength of the flight alone because we can't discount that as a possibility that all of those classes can really gain a lot from something that can fly especially because they're all classes that don't necessarily need to wear heavy armor because they can all be played as dexterity based or Archer based characters the other thing to keep in mind is if you're not taking the wings even giving these marshall classes a few little spells to just enhance their fighting prowess is not a bad choice either yeah I think that all of them will be good and satisfying options I don't think that there's as much resonance with the marshall classes as there are with the other spell casting classes but i think that for a character role-playing point of view choosing those marshall classes i think represents a tiefling character that is really trying to walk away from their past someone that is really trying to ignore it and not embrace that and that can be a really great role playing angle to explore for your character at the end of the day tee flings are very rich in their character abilities and their role-playing options there's so many different ways to go with the tiefling and there's so many places to draw inspiration from and come up with a really unique and interesting character backstory that's going to allow you to really feel like part of the D&D universe and playing a character that has a fiendish lineage of course this also does mean that when you are choosing to play a tiefling character it is really important to have a conversation with your dungeon Mass about what to expect for that character tea flings and some Dungeons and Dragons settings are gonna be driven out of town with torches and pitchforks and in other Dungeons & Dragons settings in Cosmopolitan places like water deep or Sharn people may not really bat an eye at seeing it t flee so knowing what the stakes are going to be for your character can be quite important and something worth while discussing with your dungeon master for what it's worth for me I enjoy the idea that teeth wings have a mix of demonic and infernal Heritage's I don't really distinguish too much between those in my own game settings and I like to meld them together and I like the idea that the common folk of these worlds CT flings with a little bit of fear the same level of fear that you would experience when you were in the presence of a powerful Noble or another wizard recognizing that this is somebody marked with power and lineage in some way so this has been a look at playing T flings in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition if you've made an awesome T filling character tell us about it in the comments below and of course if you're enjoying our show please consider supporting our work on patreon you can find out how by following the links in the description below don't forget to check out our live play shadows of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes from this season and last season right up over here and we have plenty more videos on the myriad races that inhabit the world have dungeons of dragons right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 102,961

Rating: 4.9582219 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: K-QHU_goO_E

Length: 26min 3sec (1563 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020