Tiefling

Twisted souls born of fiendish taint, throughout the galaxy tieflings are pitied at best and reviled at worst. Viewed with distrust and contempt due to their heritage, tieflings often find themselves completely and utterly alone in a world where their existence is viewed as a blight upon creation and a reminder of a tragedy long since passed.

Physical Description

Fiendish blood never manifests consistently, causing few similarities between tieflings in terms of appearance. Generally, tieflings appear basically human with a handful of otherworldly traits that prevent any attempt at belying the tiefling’s heritage. The most significant of these traits are drastic, such as scaly skin, bestial claws and fangs, wicked protrusions above the brow similar to a ram’s horns, and terrible, batlike or black-feathered wings. Beyond these, some tieflings possess less useful mutations, such as digitigrade or unguligrade legs, skin the color of ash, fire, or smoke, and eyes that glow. Together, these terrifying traits serve to reinforce the negative stereotypes tieflings suffer, especially those relating to dark or wicked intent.

Home World

Although their home world boasts considerable tiefling populations thanks to the presence of demonic wizard-kings, most tieflings live elsewhere, scattered and interspersed throughout the galaxy. Compared to other outsider-ancestry races, tieflings are common in the galaxy simply because of a past disaster. The disaster mysteriously corrupted many worlds and their inhabitants with fiendish power, transforming its victims into raving embodiments of sin and wickedness known as the blood-mad. Those exposed to this danger but ultimately spared its wrath were transformed into tieflings, as were those born from parents who were corrupted by its presence. As a result, many citizens of the galaxy see tieflings not only as fiendish monsters, but as a cruel reminder of the damage wrought to their home.

Society And Alignment

Tieflings don’t have a true society of their own—either they live as undesirables among humans and other races, or as slaves underneath the tyrannical demonic wizard-kings. In both cases, all but the wealthiest and most fortunate tieflings are forced to scavenge through society’s trash to survive, as there are few employment opportunities for tieflings that aren’t extremely dangerous or downright embarrassing.

Tiefling activists have petitioned the galaxy for years to enact laws ensuring tiefling civil rights and liberties, and while some small-scale laws have passed recently, the galaxy’s leaders lack much of the influence and might they once possessed, making the enforcement of these laws difficult. As a result, tieflings are prone to a variety of physical and mental health conditions that often go untreated, and their life expectancy is unusually short despite their ancestry. For this reason, tieflings turn their backs on society at large and resort to criminal activity to stay alive, further perpetuating the rumors and prejudices about their kind.

Relations

Tieflings are seldom well-received by other races, as their monstrous appearances are so closely tied to the cultural zeitgeist of what it means to be evil that few are willing to give tieflings the time of day, much less form meaningful relationships with them. Of those races native to the galaxy, dhampirs are perhaps the most receiving of tieflings, as they understand all too well what it means to be tainted in the eyes of the world, and as a result tieflings and dhampirs get along well with one another. Aasimars, on the other hand, often loathe tieflings, their celestial blood boiling at the sight of a tiefling’s abominable form. Those races aside, tieflings can typically expect cold receptions from most other races at best, coupled with discrimination and violence at worse.

Adventurers

One of the few ways that tieflings can rise above the many stereotypes that surround them is by taking on dangerous jobs, and as a result many tieflings are called to a life of adventure, especially those rare few tieflings who refuse to resort to a life of crime to survive. Tiefling adventures often find themselves taking on tasks that few others would dare because of the inherent danger or deplorableness of the assignment, but many tieflings adventures see this as an opportunity to carve out a niche for themselves and learn to distance themselves from the tasks they undertake. Because they’re used to needing a quick place to hide, tieflings make excellent operatives, and their fiendishly clever minds make them skilled mechanics and techomancers. Tieflings seldom become solarions, however, as their souls are innately skewed towards entropy and darkness, making the balance that solarions strive to maintain difficult for them to embrace.

Names

Tiefling names are often guttural and simple-sounding, and are usually self-given shortly after they’re abandoned for their appearance. In the rare case that a tiefling is born to tiefling parents, they are sometimes given names that use Abyssal or Infernal phrases, but most are named using human tongues because of their upbringing. Some examples of tiefling names are Allizsah, Baru, Cregrudrus, Dellisar, Indranna, Irrod, Kasidra, Kilarra, Maldrek, Mellisan, Molos, Mordren, Nisha, Omaldo, Onstrut, Rorridilos, Sarvin, Shoremoth, Temerith, Voren, Zoren.

Racial Traits

+2 Dex, +2 Int, –2 Cha

Hit Points: 4

Size and Type

Tieflings are outsiders with the native subtype and are Medium. They have a base speed of 30 feet.

Special Abilities

Darkvision: Tieflings have darkvision, allowing them to see with no light source at all to a range of 60 feet in black and white only. See darkvision.

Deceptive: Tieflings gain a +2 racial bonus on Bluff, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth checks.

Fiendish Resistances: Tieflings gain cold resistance 5, electricity resistance 5, and fire 5. In addition, tieflings gain spell resistance 6 + their character level against good spells.

Fiendish Extremities: Tieflings possess distorted, often horrific features resulting from their fiendish heritage. At 1st level, tieflings choose one of the fiendish extremities below. Once chosen, this cannot be changed. In addition, tieflings can choose to gain a new fiendish extremity in place of any feat gained from level advancement. Furthermore, tieflings can gain a fiendish extremity as a replacement class feature at 2nd, 4th, 6th, 12th, or 18th level, as if the fiendish extremity were granted by an archetype. Tieflings cannot replace a replacement class feature gained from an actual archetype with a fiendish extremity.

• Prehensile Tail: Tieflings with prehensile tails can use their tail to carry items and wield weapons. In effect, such tieflings can wield and hold up to three hands’ worth of weapons and equipment. While their prehensile tails increase the items they can have at the ready, this does not increase the number of attacks they can make during combat.
• Scaly Skin: Tieflings with scaly skin can use armor in a way that compliments their scaly hide. When wearing armor, they gain a +1 racial bonus to AC. When wearing heavy armor, they reduce its armor check penalty by 1.
• Beastlike Form: Tieflings with a beastlike form have twisted limbs and maws that can be used as deadly weapons. They can deal 1d3 lethal damage with unarmed strikes and the attack doesn’t count as archaic. Tieflings gain a unique weapon specialization with their natural weapons at 3rd level, allowing them to add 1-1/2 x their character level to damage rolls with their natural weapons (instead of adding their level, as usual).
• Vestigial Wings: Although unable to fly, many tieflings have vestigial wings that enable them to float softly to the ground. They can make a DC 15 Acrobatics check to fall safely from any height without taking falling damage, as if using the flight spell (spell level 1st). When falling safely, a tiefling may make an additional DC 15 Acrobatics check to glide, moving 5 feet laterally for every 20 feet the tiefling falls.