Tiefling

How Tieflings looked like prior to 4e.

A corruption-touched race from Dungeons & Dragons, with a lineage stretching all the way back to 2e's Planescape setting, where they were one of the three initially released races for the setting, alongside the githzerai and the bariaur. In contrast to their mostly-forgotten kinsfolk, they have had a huge impact on D&D and been quite decently supported ever since, becoming core races in the 4th and 5th editions. It has to be said, this may be due to their fluff being rather supportive of mary sue-players.

One of the recurring themes of Tieflings is that others find them inherently unsettling. They tend to have Charisma bonuses (representing either their superior ability to intimidate others or the fact that everybody wants to bang the horned chicks, depending on who you ask).

2e, 3.x, Pathfinder

Tieflings are mortals whose lineage is tainted by the blood or essence of a fiend - demon, devil, daemon, whatever - at some remote point in their ancestry. Not an actual fiend's kid, mind, (those are either alu-fiends or cambion, depending on the gender), but one of their descendants. Basically, if a humanoid half-fiend has a kid, it'll probably be a tiefling, and after that the fiendish blood can also skip a few generations. Sometimes, it naturally occurs due to fiendish pacts, either in the pact-ee or their descendants.

In general, tieflings are presumed to be either unable to figure out what sort of fiend was their ancestor, or just inherently prone to fiendish mutation. As a result, their physical displays of fiendhood and their ability modifiers have often had sizeable - we're talking D100 tables, here - random tables to roll on, depending on edition and sourcebook.

That said, there is a little support for more "pureblooded" or "recognizable" tieflings. Pathfinder has a whole sourcebook called Blood of Fiends which features not only the inevitable "random tiefling power/appearance" tables, but also details on all of the various kinds of tiefling that can be spawned from specific classes of fiend - demon, devil, daemon, demodand, rakshasa, oni, kyton, etc. Additionally, tieflings are one of only two non-core races usable in officially-sponsored play (the other being the aasimar), and are common in-setting around both the nation of Cheliax (whose demon-summoning ways creates lots of them and whose Nazi-esque human-supremacist social policy discriminates against them) and around the Worldwound. (You, uh... you don't want to know what goes on around the Worldwound.)

Naturally, this lineage begged for grid-filling in the form of the aasimar (celestials) and genasi (elementals), though 3.5 would go another step by adding in "planetouched" races to reflect the outsiders of the Morally Neutral planes too.

Though officially all tieflings can spring from all manner of humanoid races, most writeups tend to either focus on the human tieflings or make it so that the twisting influence of their fiendish blood defines them "more" than their parents being non-fiends. That said, 3.5 Forgotten Realms did do up the Tanar'rukk (orc-descended tieflings) and the Fey'ri (elf/succubus tieflings).

The Legendary Tiefling Tables

The 2e tiefling first appeared in the "Player's Companion" component to the Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set. There, it was handled fairly simply; +1s to Int and Cha, -1s to Str and Wis, Infravision 60 feet, halving damage from Cold, +2 bonus to saving throws versus Fire, Electricity and Poison, and the ability to cast Darkness (15ft radius) once per day. Then "The Planeswalker's Handbook" introduced the legendary Tiefling customization tables, where you sacrifice the spell-like ability, cold resistance and saving throws bonus to make 5 rolls on a D100 Tiefling Abilities table and 1d4 rolls on a D100 Tiefling Appearance table. Gaze in awe at the potential combinations of traits your munchkin special snowflake could have possessed!

Tiefling Abilities

01-03: Blur 1/day 04-06: Charm Person 1/day 07-09: Chill Touch 1/day 10-12: Comprehend Languages 1/day 13-15: Darkness (15ft radius) 1/day 16-18: Detect Good/Evil 2/day 19-21: Detect Magic 3/day 22-24: ESP 1/day 25-27: Invisibility 2/week 28-30: Know Alignment 1/day 31-33: Mirror Image 1/day 34-36: Misdirection 1/day 37-39: Pyrotechnics 3/week 40-42: Suggestion 1/week 43-45: Summon Swarm 1/week 46-48: Vampiric Touch 1/week 49-51: Whispering Wind 1/day 52-55: Half damage from Fire 56-59: Half damage from Cold 60-63: Half damage from Electricity 64-67: Half damage from Acid 68-75: Infravision to 120 feet 76-79: +2 Saving Throw vs. Fire 80-83: +2 Saving Throw vs. Electricity 84-87: +2 Saving Throw vs. Poison 88-91: +2 Saving Throw vs. Cold 92-95: +2 Saving Throw vs. Acid 96: +2 Saving Throw vs. Petrification, Polymorph & Paralysis 97: +2 Saving Throw vs. Rod/Staff/Wand 98: +2 Saving Throw vs. Spell 99: Roll twice, rerolling results above 95 00: Roll three times, rerolling results above 95

Tiefling Appearance

01-04: Small horns on forehead 05-06: Small horns on temples 07: Single horn on forehead 08-09: Long, thin face 10: Fangs 11: All teeth are pointed 12: Forked tongue 13–14: Pointed ears 15: Fanlike ears 16: Extremely long nose 17: Very small (almost unnoticeable) nose 18: Extremely long eyelashes 19-21: Red eyes 22-23: Black eyes (no whites) 24: Feline eyes 25-26: Extremely deep-set eyes 27-28: Green hair 29-30: Blue hair 31: Multicolored hair 32-33: Six fingers (including thumb) 34-35: Three fingers (including thumb) 36-37: Black fingernails 38-39: Red fingernails 40-41: Fingers one inch longer than normal

42: Arms six inches longer than normal

43: Legs six inches longer than normal 44-46: Horselike legs 47-49: Goatlike legs 50-52: Goatlike hooves 53-55: Long, thin tail 56-57: Horselike tail 58-59: Lizardlike tail 60-62: Spiny ridge on back 63-65: Spiny ridges all over body 66-68: Hairless body 69-71: Body covered in short fur or long hair 72-73: Body covered in striped markings 74-75: Extremely greasy skin 76-80: Scaly skin 81-83: Leathery skin 84: Small feathers rather than hair on 10-100% of body 85: Green-tinted skin 86: Blue–tinted skin 87: Red-tinted skin 88-89: Special side effect – roll on the Tiefling Special Side Effects table 90-94: Roll twice, rerolling rolls above 89 95-00: Roll three times, rerolling rolls above 89

Tiefling Special Side Effects

01-10: Ashy odor surrounds body 11-15: Sulfurous surrounds body 16-20: Rotting odor surrounds body 21-25: Skin exudes ashy grit 26-30: Body casts no shadow 31-33: Body has no reflection in mirror 34-40: Susceptible to spells such as Spirit Wrack and Cacofiend 41-45: Tanar’ri react toward tiefling as though the tiefling were a baatezu 46-50: Baatezu react toward tiefling as though the tiefling were a tanar’ri 51-60: Presence causes unease in animals 61-65: Presence causes unease in NPCs, reactions at -4 66-70: Prolonged touch withers normal plants 71-75: Fingers treated as claws (1d4/1d3 damage) 76-80: Touch inflicts 1 point of Fire damage due to high body heat 81-85: Touch inflicts 1 point of Cold damage due to cold body temperature 86-90: Odd skin composition results in base AC of 1d6+3 91: Cannot reproduce 92: Holy water inflicts 1d6 damage 93: Exposure to direct sunlight inflicts 1 point of damage per round 94: Cannot enter “holy” areas 95: Harmed only by magical or silver weapons 96-00: Intuitively speaks the language of one fiendish race

4e & 5e

In 4e D&D, tiefling popularity was recognized and so WoTC decided to dump one of the less popular player races (or so they thought, anyway), the gnome, and make it a core race. But they figured that a race based on "your granddaddy/mommy was a monster from the Lower Planes" wouldn't really be that common. So, instead, they redesigned their tieflings to be the magically corrupted descendants of an evil empire that embraced diabolism and loyalty to Asmodeus to hold onto their power. When their empire fell, they were left scattered and corrupted into the tieflings. As part of this, they got redesigned to a more unified look, with reddish skin, glowing eyes, tails and horns, to make them appropriately "devilish", as opposed to the more grab-bag look of editions past.

D&D Next more or less follows in 4e's footsteps, though it's a bit vaguer on the details as to how they were corrupted and more explicit on the fact that the look of their tails and horns are variable.

Although the Warlock came out in 3.5, it is 4th edition that has really pushed the tiefling/warlock racial to class matchup.