Hey folks, do you think you could use the Path of Spite (Dark Elves) as a good analogue for Planescape-y Tieflings? I know Tieflings aren’t Elves, but a lot of it seems to match, thematically, except the spell/skill songs. I don’t know. I may be stretching this one. It’s just an idea I’m very fond of at the moment. What do you think?
Or could you, like, give Spite to a Human stock character, add in some Char. traits, and call it a Tiefling? I dunno. I probably need to go read the Monster Burner. I definitely don’t want to hack the game, but I want to use the tools it provides to create some stuff of my own.
Isn’t there a trait that gives you, like demon heritage? I don’t have the book in front of me ATM, but I think you could just do that and then have the player “flavor to taste” with his/her other traits. It would be a lot less leg work, but I do kinda like the idea of tiefling LPs, too. Guess it depends on the campaign?
So…a few years back I was running a D&D game that we converted to Burning Wheel. We had help here in the forums and otherwise just blundered into the conversion doing the best we could to convert concepts over particulars. It was messy, but it worked. One of the conversions included a Tiefling with Faith.
He had been born and raised in Hell and saved by a Paladin on a mission. So he was a little weird by D&D standards too.
I actually used Orc lifepaths (Great and Black) to base his background and skills on. Then his traits included Tainted Legacy, Resistant to Fire (MB), Mark of the Beast (Pit Lord), Life is Death, Silent Hatred, and Thousand-Yard Stare. Then, due to his religious conversion, he also had Lawbreaker, Mark of a God, Broken, Faithful, and Sickly.
Man, he was fun. Meek and quiet most of the time, but with a terrible edge that would occasionally show itself.
If I were to make a Tiefling now, I guess I would use what matches his origin most closely (custom LPs could work if you had the time). Human LPs (with Traits like Tainted Legacy) make sense if he was born among men.
I’m sorry I haven’t replied until now, but I’m finally about to start running a BW game in a Planescape-ish setting, and this thread has been super helpful. Tainted Legacy is great for a default Tiefling trait, and some of the stuff that EarthenForge mentions looks solid as well. Will update.
Here’s how I’ve decided to do Tieflings: very simply.
They use the Lifepaths of Man and get the Tainted Legacy trait for free. Tainted Legacy lets you choose a free trait from among various monsters in the Monster Burner. I combed through the traits for all of those monsters and just pulled out the ones that I felt fit Tieflings well:
–Aura of Terror
–Dominant Will
–Dragon’s Blood
–Iron Hide
–Lawbreaker
–Membranous Wings
–Mesmerizing Gaze
–Slashing Claws
–Snake Venom
So, essentially, a Tiefling is a human with one of the above traits. Iron Hide may even be a little too boring, but I think it’s OK to leave that up to the player. The player will also have to describe how this trait manifests physically and obviously in the way the Tiefling looks.
What do you think? Any problems here? I’d rather keep it simple and workable, and learn from play what works and what doesn’t.
You could say “Get this giant trait for free,” sure. But that’s not nearly as fun as…
A new Born LP!
Either with Tainted Legacy as the required trait or a second trait and some lighter-weight trait as the required one. Look at Gifted Child in MaBu for ideas. I’d put it in the Outcast setting: I figure no matter what your family background, really, being a tiefling pretty severely impacts the opportunities that are open to you.
It’s simple and clean and involves all of, like, three lines of new content you have to develop.
Use the “Lifepaths of Man”, and start in the Outcast setting with this Lifepath (altered from the “Gifted Child” Lifepath on p218 of the Magic Burner):
Born Tainted 10 yrs 4 res — Leads: Outcast, City, Religious
Skills: 2pts, general
Traits: 2pts, Tainted Legacy, Misunderstood, Abused
“Tainted Legacy” is a trait that lets you pick a trait from a number of monsters in the Monster Burner. I’ve narrowed the list of possible traits to ones that fit the concept of “demon-human offspring” well:
–Aura of Terror
–Dominant Will
–Dragon’s Blood
–Iron Hide
–Lawbreaker
–Membranous Wings
–Mesmerizing Gaze
–Slashing Claws
–Snake Venom
I would add Servitude to the leads, since it seems to line up well with the general likely-to-be-stepped-on theme of a tiefling’s early life. The Outcast setting’s juicy built-in LPs are probably sufficient for getting elsewhere (e.g. if you want to make your character a fighter, you can do Born Tainted -> Thug -> lead to Soldier setting -> Foot Soldier in three lifepaths).
Also, the “Work for your nice things!” part of me makes me want to reorder the traits so that Tainted Legacy isn’t first (i.e. the required trait). But that’s a minor thing, really, and it depends on whether you see all tieflings as having crazy abilities or some of them having crazy abilities while others just have weird features with relatively little to show for it. (I’m assuming player-character tieflings will all want Tainted Legacy anyway, so it’s really just “Do you want to force another trait on them or not?”)
That’s an interesting suggestion. I mean, I know that giving Tainted Legacy away easy is possibly really powerful? But I was thinking that “Tainted Legacy” had to be required, because it’s what makes a Tiefling a Tiefling (it also kind of functions as a character trait in that whatever monster trait they choose obviously has a physical manifestation).
I’m going to keep it as-is (with Servitude lead added in), because to be Born Tainted you gotta be fuckin’ tainted, y’know?
My “throw some other trait at them first” is more for a Planescape-y setting where lots of people are tieflings and there are both “slight odor of ash and a shadow of knife-edge in their faces” tieflings and “holy crap that chick has goat legs and a lizard tail and what did she just do with her eyes???” tieflings.
That makes sense. I’ll keep that in mind, especially for NPCs. Our setting is is an amalgam of Planescape-ish concepts with a dash of Perdido Street Station thrown in (I just started reading it), and obviously MoBu City is a big inspiration.
