The most frustrating thing about this is that even with the weak-ass subrace ("lineage/legacy") system they're using, they could still EASILY have made Aasimar and animal-types into different categories with less overlap while still putting them both down as Ardlings. But noooo, subraces do nothing but give you random-ass spells now! God, I hope they get their heads out of their butts and change that.
My only real issue with your post is that the spells "subraces" give you in this One D&D playtest aren't entirely random.
There's a theme with some of them.
Oh, I know there's a theme. My issue is that instead of giving me a tangible thing that no other race can do, they're like, "here, have these specific options that you could just take anyway if you were playing a cleric or wizard."
In 5e, that basically describes Tieflings... except that Tieflings have a ton of lineage options, and it makes sense for them to have inherent magic due to infernal corruption, plus being able to pick which specific archdevil you take after means the spells feel a little more special.
So not only have they made Tieflings way less interesting by 1) giving that same feature to three other races and 2) reducing Tiefling lineage options from 9+Feral to 3, but they've missed the whole point of WHY it worked for Tieflings. As a Tiefling, you're taking this taint upon your existence and channeling it into something useful. As a Wood Elf, I... can cast a spell that makes me walk slightly faster at level 3. Because woods.
It just dilutes what used to be a fairly unique Tiefling feature. The only other races that got free spells like that are Gith (because it's really just psionics), High Elves (which makes sense if you think of them as treating magic like literacy), and Genasi (which are literally elemental creatures). Of those, only Tieflings and Gith could level-up their racial casting, because for them it's a form of personal growth rather than inherent skill or basic education.
...So it just feels wrong to me that a Drow Barbarian will hit level 5 and go "now I can attack twice, and also cast a 2nd-level wizard spell."
You're missing two crucial details about the elf thing:
The creator deity of elves in the Forgotten Realms, Corellon Larethian, is a god of magic among other things. So elves in that setting innately have some magical prowess.
Drow were always able to cast those spells. You can see for yourself right now. All races in the Underdark actually have some spellcasting iirc, because of the weird magical energies suffusing that place.
Also yes, they reduced the tieflings from 9 to 3. But you're not mentioning how they reduced it. The 9 were for all nine archdukes of the Hells. But the 3 in this playtest are for tieflings with Abyssal, Infernal, and miscellaneous fiendish (or "Chthonic" as they call it in the playtest) lineage. So in exchange for giving up the more specific Nine Hells flavour, you get flavour that covers all of the Lower Planes, and a number of people have been playing tieflings with lineages connected to fiends outside of devils anyway, so this is just making it official.
Hot Take- Make Gith into a tiefling subrace. They can be Abominal origin instead of Infernal, Cthonic or Abyssal (cause they were experimented on by abominations, ie mindflayers; couldn't think of a good adjective for Far Realm).
It even fits. Resistance to psionics instead of fire/necrotic/poison, get an invisible mage hand, shield, detect thoughts, which are spells they got in 5e anyways. They'll end up with Thaumaturgy instead of another skill or charm/fear resistance, but Thaumaturgy was supposed to replace the tiefling's traditional Intimidate bonus anyways, so its kinda equivalent that way.
Hot Take 2- There should definitely be a Beastfolk race of -some kind- in the PHB. Its a popular archetype that many people like, so it should have representation in the core book. Forcing a million distinct racial blocks that will be spread out across gods know how many books and years?
Like, wolf/dogs, foxes, various cats and rabbits are the most commonly depicted beastfolk in media; it took over 2 years for tabaxi, which isn't terrible amount of time but still not an insignificant amount, but we just got rabbit folk in Witchlight last year (seven years!!!), and we've never seen anything canines.
"But just use Shifters from Eberron!" You know what? I'm fine with that if they want to make that a core Beastfolk race. But there should be something.
Hot Take 3 - celestial origins should just be a 1st level feat. Angels and their descendants are generally portrayed as just glowy humans. Celestial eladrin are now elves. Guardinals can be celestial beastfolk. This would even allow some amount of celestial dwarf, halfling and gnome representation when they're normally screwed over when it comes to that. Short folk get no love.
When celestials are commonly portrayed as glowy humans or glowy elves... ya know, frack it. They don't deserve a separate race. Just use the ones we have. Glowy wings can be a higher level feat or something to avoid the flying race problem.
Hot Take 4 - 4e deva can be represented by elves with the Guidance cantrip. 5th edition elves already have a whole reincarnation schtick as part of their background lore. Guidance can be used to reflect knowledge of their past lives. Done. Heck. Cut out the elf part and just go with Guidance cantrip.
Hot Take- Make Gith into a tiefling subrace. They can be Abominal origin instead of Infernal, Cthonic or Abyssal (cause they were experimented on by abominations, ie mindflayers; couldn't think of a good adjective for Far Realm).
It even fits. Resistance to psionics instead of fire/necrotic/poison, get an invisible mage hand, shield, detect thoughts, which are spells they got in 5e anyways. They'll end up with Thaumaturgy instead of another skill or charm/fear resistance, but Thaumaturgy was supposed to replace the tiefling's traditional Intimidate bonus anyways, so its kinda equivalent that way.
How would you represent the Githyanki and the Githzerai?
Also I highly doubt they would ever do this, because tieflings specifically trace their lineage to hellish beings, and aberrations like mindflayers, aboleths, and beholders are of a different breed from demons, devils, yugoloths, succubi, etc. Having an aberrant race might be a decent shout, but I don't think it would replace the gith since their lore is so specific.
That's a great idea. And the feat can level up, just like aasimar racial feats do. This would encourage people to play a wider variety of celestial creatures, including half-orcs, grung, etc. They have gods, too, right?
And completely agree that a beastfolk race should exist. I get that some people complain that existing races are special (owlin, harengon, etc.). Keep those in the separate books. But a generic one with a table and some example ideas would be great. Lots of people want to play those kinds of characters.
I don't see the need for the Gith split - its mostly cultural and the whole point of 1d&d races are to be more biology and less culture. And I've already implemented a houserule for swapping out the racial spells at char gen, so if the players really wanted jump and misty step instead, its already covered by that rule.
As for never doing it? Well, that's why its a hot take!
Lastly, a small note - cthonic tieflings aren't necessarily tied to yugoloths, but rather they're tied to the Grey Wastes of Hades. A predominantly undead infested region. Thus the necrotic resistance and necromancy spells, something yugoloths aren't known for (instead they're renowned for acid immunity/uses). Indeed, they could very well be an attempt at dhampirs or other partial undead. Just add a cantrip that functions as a Vampire Bite instead of Vampiric Touch.
So, these abominals would be... Far Realm tieflings instead of being from the infernal, abyssal, or hades planes.
You're missing two crucial details about the elf thing:
The creator deity of elves in the Forgotten Realms, Corellon Larethian, is a god of magic among other things. So elves in that setting innately have some magical prowess.
Drow were always able to cast those spells. You can see for yourself right now. All races in the Underdark actually have some spellcasting iirc, because of the weird magical energies suffusing that place.
That's fair, and it's true that I hadn't considered that. Complaint mostly retracted (though I still wish they made a greater effort to make subraces more distinct than what they get for spell lists...)
Also yes, they reduced the tieflings from 9 to 3. But you're not mentioning how they reduced it. The 9 were for all nine archdukes of the Hells. But the 3 in this playtest are for tieflings with Abyssal, Infernal, and miscellaneous fiendish (or "Chthonic" as they call it in the playtest) lineage. So in exchange for giving up the more specific Nine Hells flavour, you get flavour that covers all of the Lower Planes, and a number of people have been playing tieflings with lineages connected to fiends outside of devils anyway, so this is just making it official.
It made tieflings more broad, yes, but it also made them shallower. Instead of saying "you have infernal corruption in your bloodline, but you get to choose what kind of devil you're associated with against your will," they're doing a blanket "nah if you're infernal then you use fire stuff." What about Zariel tieflings? What about Mephistophiles tieflings?
This could probably be fixed with some eventual guidelines toward adapting existing 5e content to the new version (even if they just say "use the variant spells in place of the infernal legacy spells", it would mean I have it on paper that it's a valid option) but for now it just looks like they took the thing that made tieflings special, gave it to half the races in the game, and then removed a ton of tiefling options.
You're missing two crucial details about the elf thing:
The creator deity of elves in the Forgotten Realms, Corellon Larethian, is a god of magic among other things. So elves in that setting innately have some magical prowess.
Drow were always able to cast those spells. You can see for yourself right now. All races in the Underdark actually have some spellcasting iirc, because of the weird magical energies suffusing that place.
That's fair, and it's true that I hadn't considered that. Complaint mostly retracted (though I still wish they made a greater effort to make subraces more distinct than what they get for spell lists...)
Also yes, they reduced the tieflings from 9 to 3. But you're not mentioning how they reduced it. The 9 were for all nine archdukes of the Hells. But the 3 in this playtest are for tieflings with Abyssal, Infernal, and miscellaneous fiendish (or "Chthonic" as they call it in the playtest) lineage. So in exchange for giving up the more specific Nine Hells flavour, you get flavour that covers all of the Lower Planes, and a number of people have been playing tieflings with lineages connected to fiends outside of devils anyway, so this is just making it official.
It made tieflings more broad, yes, but it also made them shallower. Instead of saying "you have infernal corruption in your bloodline, but you get to choose what kind of devil you're associated with against your will," they're doing a blanket "nah if you're infernal then you use fire stuff." What about Zariel tieflings? What about Mephistophiles tieflings?
This could probably be fixed with some eventual guidelines toward adapting existing 5e content to the new version (even if they just say "use the variant spells in place of the infernal legacy spells", it would mean I have it on paper that it's a valid option) but for now it just looks like they took the thing that made tieflings special, gave it to half the races in the game, and then removed a ton of tiefling options.
My guess is they want to keep it simple for newer players.
Maybe in future One D&D supplements, or even the Planescape book, we'll see a comeback of the archduke lineages. Maybe even demon prince lineages too, since we're adding Abyssal to the fold now.
Lastly, a small note - cthonic tieflings aren't necessarily tied to yugoloths, but rather they're tied to the Grey Wastes of Hades. A predominantly undead infested region. Thus the necrotic resistance and necromancy spells, something yugoloths aren't known for (instead they're renowned for acid immunity/uses). Indeed, they could very well be an attempt at dhampirs or other partial undead. Just add a cantrip that functions as a Vampire Bite instead of Vampiric Touch.
Dhampir race already exists in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.
Dhampir race already exists in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.
New book, new edition, yo. Orcs are in both Monsters of the Multiverse and the new core. Stops them not, it does.
Either way, the point is that cthonic Tieflings have this odd connection to undeath / necromancy unexplained by the current fiendish . We need rampant speculation!!!
It made tieflings more broad, yes, but it also made them shallower. Instead of saying "you have infernal corruption in your bloodline, but you get to choose what kind of devil you're associated with against your will," they're doing a blanket "nah if you're infernal then you use fire stuff." What about Zariel tieflings? What about Mephistophiles tieflings?
For the most part, all they did was swap out the spells and attributes for the various infernal Tieflings.
Attributes no longer matter, and we can swap out Firebolt and Hellish Rebuke for Friends and Charm Person for a succubus/Fernia-style * bloodline. Honestly, just a note about swapping racial spells is all we need. Not even specific spells listed.
Or maybe get some 1st level feats. I seem to recall cult benefits, copying those could be doable.
* I actually prefer imp, succubus, Erinyes, chain, ice devil bloodlines to archdevil lineages.
New book, new edition, yo. Orcs are in both Monsters of the Multiverse and the new core. Stops them not, it does.
Either way, the point is that cthonic Tieflings have this odd connection to undeath / necromancy unexplained by the current fiendish . We need rampant speculation!!!
Do you know why Oinoloths (the yugoloths that look ugly as sin, no pun intended, and spread disease) are called such? Because they're named after Oinos, the first layer of Hades.
Also there is a type of yugoloths that have never shown up in 5e yet called baernaloths. They're also native to the Gray Wastes, but we might get something on them in Planescape (at least, I hope so).
Also the demodands, the native fiends of Carceri, are actually made from corpses.
Point is, we still don't have enough material on the Lower Planes other than the Abyss and the Nine Hells to make any real judgments on what they're going for with chthonic tieflings. Not to mention, the playtest explicitly called out yugoloths, succubi, and night hags as examples of fiends Chthonic tieflings can trace their lineage to.
If they are doing cthonic yugoloths, we are going to probably see some major changes in the loths. It's ironic, but loths are actually pretty susecptible to necrotic damage. They were always immune to acid damage instead.
Traditionally, each outer plane being had a different element they were immune to. Kinda playing the part of pseudo-elementals with damage spells. Necrotic resistance is NEW for fiends of any type afaik.
If they are doing cthonic yugoloths, we are going to probably see some major changes in the loths. It's ironic, but loths are actually pretty susecptible to necrotic damage. They were always immune to acid damage instead.
Traditionally, each outer plane being had a different element they were immune to. Kinda playing the part of pseudo-elementals with damage spells. Necrotic resistance is NEW for fiends of any type afaik.
Which is still VERY interesting.
While I could talk all day about the Lower Planes and what they could do with it, it'd get way too off-topic.
I do think Ardlings could still have a place even if they backtrack on it and decide to go with Aasimar in the end. That is, I do think the race can still show up in some form in Planescape, since we don't really have anything much on the Upper Planes.
What's the point in such homogenization? Dhampir and gith as they are, are distinct enough, and their origin clealry has nothing to do with lower planes or fiends. I don't mind some merging of excessive and redundant features, but this is not the case. It's like making a "shortling" race by mashing together dwarves, halflings, and gnomes, because they're all short, all look humanlike, and all live on prime material plane.
What's the point in such homogenization? Dhampir and gith as they are, are distinct enough, and their origin clealry has nothing to do with lower planes or fiends. I don't mind some merging of excessive and redundant features, but this is not the case. It's like making a "shortling" race by mashing together dwarves, halflings, and gnomes, because they're all short, all look humanlike, and all live on prime material plane.
I think a lot of this discussion doesn't "get" what I'm referring to. I don't mean to make a generic beastfolk race and leave it at that. I mean give some sets of options to "dress them up." So some mix of abilities that different creatures could have (water breathing, long jump, fly speed, darkvision, etc.) so that someone can mix them up to create a creature. Imagine a beastfolk with a fly option (so an aardvark), but then you give it dark vision (so now it's an owlin), or instead mimicry (a kenku), but perhaps you want some other options for a parrotfolk or a vulturefolk or whatever. Similar with different mammal, reptilian, or other creatures. So you could easily create an owlin or harengon, but also a mousekin or a badgerfolk.
I've made several beastfolk for people at my table. And I've had to look through home-brew options and/or cobble together my own. I can definitely keep doing that. But a new player/DM might be discouraged, and having a ready made template helps make choosing some sort of animal person easier.
My daughter wanted to be a rabbitfolk and we cobbled something together for her before harengons. But she gave up trying to make a fox character and went tabaxi instead because it was too hard to find a way to introduce that. So for someone like that, it's limiting to have some animals (tabaxi, harengon, aarakocra, kenku, tortle, grung) but not others. Meanwhile, we have like a dozen flavors of elf.
I think a lot of this discussion doesn't "get" what I'm referring to. I don't mean to make a generic beastfolk race and leave it at that. I mean give some sets of options to "dress them up." So some mix of abilities that different creatures could have (water breathing, long jump, fly speed, darkvision, etc.) so that someone can mix them up to create a creature. Imagine a beastfolk with a fly option (so an aardvark), but then you give it dark vision (so now it's an owlin), or instead mimicry (a kenku), but perhaps you want some other options for a parrotfolk or a vulturefolk or whatever. Similar with different mammal, reptilian, or other creatures. So you could easily create an owlin or harengon, but also a mousekin or a badgerfolk.
I've made several beastfolk for people at my table. And I've had to look through home-brew options and/or cobble together my own. I can definitely keep doing that. But a new player/DM might be discouraged, and having a ready made template helps make choosing some sort of animal person easier.
My daughter wanted to be a rabbitfolk and we cobbled something together for her before harengons. But she gave up trying to make a fox character and went tabaxi instead because it was too hard to find a way to introduce that. So for someone like that, it's limiting to have some animals (tabaxi, harengon, aarakocra, kenku, tortle, grung) but not others. Meanwhile, we have like a dozen flavors of elf.
To have a fox person, just take a wildhunt shifter. Allowing to pick features to make whatever mix you want would lead to emergence of munchkin master race with best cherry-picked features.
I think a lot of this discussion doesn't "get" what I'm referring to. I don't mean to make a generic beastfolk race and leave it at that. I mean give some sets of options to "dress them up." So some mix of abilities that different creatures could have (water breathing, long jump, fly speed, darkvision, etc.) so that someone can mix them up to create a creature. Imagine a beastfolk with a fly option (so an aardvark), but then you give it dark vision (so now it's an owlin), or instead mimicry (a kenku), but perhaps you want some other options for a parrotfolk or a vulturefolk or whatever. Similar with different mammal, reptilian, or other creatures. So you could easily create an owlin or harengon, but also a mousekin or a badgerfolk.
I've made several beastfolk for people at my table. And I've had to look through home-brew options and/or cobble together my own. I can definitely keep doing that. But a new player/DM might be discouraged, and having a ready made template helps make choosing some sort of animal person easier.
My daughter wanted to be a rabbitfolk and we cobbled something together for her before harengons. But she gave up trying to make a fox character and went tabaxi instead because it was too hard to find a way to introduce that. So for someone like that, it's limiting to have some animals (tabaxi, harengon, aarakocra, kenku, tortle, grung) but not others. Meanwhile, we have like a dozen flavors of elf.
For a fox, I personally started with half-elf (drow magic) as a base. Assigned Perception and Deception as the skills. Swapped out Darkness for Alter Self. The character in question was going valor bard, so they were getting dancing lights and minor illusion through that. Its been a while, though, so details fuzzy.
Of course, that was 5e, and I'd expect 1dnd would need something different.
To have a fox person, just take a wildhunt shifter. Allowing to pick features to make whatever mix you want would lead to emergence of munchkin master race with best cherry-picked features.
Wildhunt shifter as fox person? Survival-junkie shifter is a fox? That's... Foxes are iconic trickster types. They're more likely to be rogues, bards or certain warlocks patrons. Also they tend to be rather social - RE: Renaud the fox, Tamamo no Mae. And what about fox fire? Many people will expect some innate relationship to fire or illusions with regards to foxes.
Suggesting a wildhunt shifter when it has nothing in common with the common pop culture depictation of foxfolk is probably not the best answer to the problem... As is dismissing mix-matching when we could probably pull it off in the same manner as 1dnd dragonborn or elves are showing different races.
Heck. Could just have a racial trait that says something like "Can cast Alter Self as a bonus action a number of times equal to proficency bonus." And let the spell do all the heavy lifting when it comes to listing various transformations. Or.. Enhance Self, was the spell that ate all the Owl's Wisdom, Cat's Grace, etc spells?
I agree with the premise when they try to make a general animal race (beastkin), that they don't have to create sepearte races like in the last edition it should be a race with animal mechanics. Maybe something like the shifter or like the hybrid race where you choose auqatic etc. with enough option that the most used animals can be replaced.
I would rather have an aasimar for the angel race and a beast race than the aadrling, which i feel is not making any of the sides happy.
Its not even egyptian themed its just you have wings and take 3 cleric spells and a fitting but one of the most useless resistances in the game.
You're missing two crucial details about the elf thing:
Also yes, they reduced the tieflings from 9 to 3. But you're not mentioning how they reduced it. The 9 were for all nine archdukes of the Hells. But the 3 in this playtest are for tieflings with Abyssal, Infernal, and miscellaneous fiendish (or "Chthonic" as they call it in the playtest) lineage. So in exchange for giving up the more specific Nine Hells flavour, you get flavour that covers all of the Lower Planes, and a number of people have been playing tieflings with lineages connected to fiends outside of devils anyway, so this is just making it official.
Hot Take- Make Gith into a tiefling subrace. They can be Abominal origin instead of Infernal, Cthonic or Abyssal (cause they were experimented on by abominations, ie mindflayers; couldn't think of a good adjective for Far Realm).
It even fits. Resistance to psionics instead of fire/necrotic/poison, get an invisible mage hand, shield, detect thoughts, which are spells they got in 5e anyways. They'll end up with Thaumaturgy instead of another skill or charm/fear resistance, but Thaumaturgy was supposed to replace the tiefling's traditional Intimidate bonus anyways, so its kinda equivalent that way.
Hot Take 2- There should definitely be a Beastfolk race of -some kind- in the PHB. Its a popular archetype that many people like, so it should have representation in the core book. Forcing a million distinct racial blocks that will be spread out across gods know how many books and years?
Like, wolf/dogs, foxes, various cats and rabbits are the most commonly depicted beastfolk in media; it took over 2 years for tabaxi, which isn't terrible amount of time but still not an insignificant amount, but we just got rabbit folk in Witchlight last year (seven years!!!), and we've never seen anything canines.
"But just use Shifters from Eberron!" You know what? I'm fine with that if they want to make that a core Beastfolk race. But there should be something.
Hot Take 3 - celestial origins should just be a 1st level feat. Angels and their descendants are generally portrayed as just glowy humans. Celestial eladrin are now elves. Guardinals can be celestial beastfolk. This would even allow some amount of celestial dwarf, halfling and gnome representation when they're normally screwed over when it comes to that. Short folk get no love.
When celestials are commonly portrayed as glowy humans or glowy elves... ya know, frack it. They don't deserve a separate race. Just use the ones we have. Glowy wings can be a higher level feat or something to avoid the flying race problem.
Hot Take 4 - 4e deva can be represented by elves with the Guidance cantrip. 5th edition elves already have a whole reincarnation schtick as part of their background lore. Guidance can be used to reflect knowledge of their past lives. Done. Heck. Cut out the elf part and just go with Guidance cantrip.
How would you represent the Githyanki and the Githzerai?
Also I highly doubt they would ever do this, because tieflings specifically trace their lineage to hellish beings, and aberrations like mindflayers, aboleths, and beholders are of a different breed from demons, devils, yugoloths, succubi, etc. Having an aberrant race might be a decent shout, but I don't think it would replace the gith since their lore is so specific.
That's a great idea. And the feat can level up, just like aasimar racial feats do. This would encourage people to play a wider variety of celestial creatures, including half-orcs, grung, etc. They have gods, too, right?
And completely agree that a beastfolk race should exist. I get that some people complain that existing races are special (owlin, harengon, etc.). Keep those in the separate books. But a generic one with a table and some example ideas would be great. Lots of people want to play those kinds of characters.
I don't see the need for the Gith split - its mostly cultural and the whole point of 1d&d races are to be more biology and less culture. And I've already implemented a houserule for swapping out the racial spells at char gen, so if the players really wanted jump and misty step instead, its already covered by that rule.
As for never doing it? Well, that's why its a hot take!
Lastly, a small note - cthonic tieflings aren't necessarily tied to yugoloths, but rather they're tied to the Grey Wastes of Hades. A predominantly undead infested region. Thus the necrotic resistance and necromancy spells, something yugoloths aren't known for (instead they're renowned for acid immunity/uses). Indeed, they could very well be an attempt at dhampirs or other partial undead. Just add a cantrip that functions as a Vampire Bite instead of Vampiric Touch.
So, these abominals would be... Far Realm tieflings instead of being from the infernal, abyssal, or hades planes.
That's fair, and it's true that I hadn't considered that. Complaint mostly retracted (though I still wish they made a greater effort to make subraces more distinct than what they get for spell lists...)
It made tieflings more broad, yes, but it also made them shallower. Instead of saying "you have infernal corruption in your bloodline, but you get to choose what kind of devil you're associated with against your will," they're doing a blanket "nah if you're infernal then you use fire stuff." What about Zariel tieflings? What about Mephistophiles tieflings?
This could probably be fixed with some eventual guidelines toward adapting existing 5e content to the new version (even if they just say "use the variant spells in place of the infernal legacy spells", it would mean I have it on paper that it's a valid option) but for now it just looks like they took the thing that made tieflings special, gave it to half the races in the game, and then removed a ton of tiefling options.
My guess is they want to keep it simple for newer players.
Maybe in future One D&D supplements, or even the Planescape book, we'll see a comeback of the archduke lineages. Maybe even demon prince lineages too, since we're adding Abyssal to the fold now.
Also, for the record, I support the idea of making celestial lineages a thing you can add on top of existing races.
Seems to be a decent compromise on paper to represent the various kinds of celestial beings you can have.
Dhampir race already exists in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.
Thank you!
New book, new edition, yo. Orcs are in both Monsters of the Multiverse and the new core. Stops them not, it does.
Either way, the point is that cthonic Tieflings have this odd connection to undeath / necromancy unexplained by the current fiendish . We need rampant speculation!!!
For the most part, all they did was swap out the spells and attributes for the various infernal Tieflings.
Attributes no longer matter, and we can swap out Firebolt and Hellish Rebuke for Friends and Charm Person for a succubus/Fernia-style * bloodline. Honestly, just a note about swapping racial spells is all we need. Not even specific spells listed.
Or maybe get some 1st level feats. I seem to recall cult benefits, copying those could be doable.
* I actually prefer imp, succubus, Erinyes, chain, ice devil bloodlines to archdevil lineages.
Do you know why Oinoloths (the yugoloths that look ugly as sin, no pun intended, and spread disease) are called such? Because they're named after Oinos, the first layer of Hades.
Also there is a type of yugoloths that have never shown up in 5e yet called baernaloths. They're also native to the Gray Wastes, but we might get something on them in Planescape (at least, I hope so).
Also the demodands, the native fiends of Carceri, are actually made from corpses.
Point is, we still don't have enough material on the Lower Planes other than the Abyss and the Nine Hells to make any real judgments on what they're going for with chthonic tieflings. Not to mention, the playtest explicitly called out yugoloths, succubi, and night hags as examples of fiends Chthonic tieflings can trace their lineage to.
Bah! Bah I say!
If they are doing cthonic yugoloths, we are going to probably see some major changes in the loths. It's ironic, but loths are actually pretty susecptible to necrotic damage. They were always immune to acid damage instead.
Traditionally, each outer plane being had a different element they were immune to. Kinda playing the part of pseudo-elementals with damage spells. Necrotic resistance is NEW for fiends of any type afaik.
Which is still VERY interesting.
While I could talk all day about the Lower Planes and what they could do with it, it'd get way too off-topic.
I do think Ardlings could still have a place even if they backtrack on it and decide to go with Aasimar in the end. That is, I do think the race can still show up in some form in Planescape, since we don't really have anything much on the Upper Planes.
What's the point in such homogenization? Dhampir and gith as they are, are distinct enough, and their origin clealry has nothing to do with lower planes or fiends. I don't mind some merging of excessive and redundant features, but this is not the case. It's like making a "shortling" race by mashing together dwarves, halflings, and gnomes, because they're all short, all look humanlike, and all live on prime material plane.
I think a lot of this discussion doesn't "get" what I'm referring to. I don't mean to make a generic beastfolk race and leave it at that. I mean give some sets of options to "dress them up." So some mix of abilities that different creatures could have (water breathing, long jump, fly speed, darkvision, etc.) so that someone can mix them up to create a creature. Imagine a beastfolk with a fly option (so an aardvark), but then you give it dark vision (so now it's an owlin), or instead mimicry (a kenku), but perhaps you want some other options for a parrotfolk or a vulturefolk or whatever. Similar with different mammal, reptilian, or other creatures. So you could easily create an owlin or harengon, but also a mousekin or a badgerfolk.
I've made several beastfolk for people at my table. And I've had to look through home-brew options and/or cobble together my own. I can definitely keep doing that. But a new player/DM might be discouraged, and having a ready made template helps make choosing some sort of animal person easier.
My daughter wanted to be a rabbitfolk and we cobbled something together for her before harengons. But she gave up trying to make a fox character and went tabaxi instead because it was too hard to find a way to introduce that. So for someone like that, it's limiting to have some animals (tabaxi, harengon, aarakocra, kenku, tortle, grung) but not others. Meanwhile, we have like a dozen flavors of elf.
To have a fox person, just take a wildhunt shifter. Allowing to pick features to make whatever mix you want would lead to emergence of munchkin master race with best cherry-picked features.
For a fox, I personally started with half-elf (drow magic) as a base. Assigned Perception and Deception as the skills. Swapped out Darkness for Alter Self. The character in question was going valor bard, so they were getting dancing lights and minor illusion through that. Its been a while, though, so details fuzzy.
Of course, that was 5e, and I'd expect 1dnd would need something different.
Wildhunt shifter as fox person? Survival-junkie shifter is a fox? That's... Foxes are iconic trickster types. They're more likely to be rogues, bards or certain warlocks patrons. Also they tend to be rather social - RE: Renaud the fox, Tamamo no Mae. And what about fox fire? Many people will expect some innate relationship to fire or illusions with regards to foxes.
Suggesting a wildhunt shifter when it has nothing in common with the common pop culture depictation of foxfolk is probably not the best answer to the problem... As is dismissing mix-matching when we could probably pull it off in the same manner as 1dnd dragonborn or elves are showing different races.
Heck. Could just have a racial trait that says something like "Can cast Alter Self as a bonus action a number of times equal to proficency bonus." And let the spell do all the heavy lifting when it comes to listing various transformations. Or.. Enhance Self, was the spell that ate all the Owl's Wisdom, Cat's Grace, etc spells?
I agree with the premise when they try to make a general animal race (beastkin), that they don't have to create sepearte races like in the last edition it should be a race with animal mechanics. Maybe something like the shifter or like the hybrid race where you choose auqatic etc. with enough option that the most used animals can be replaced.
I would rather have an aasimar for the angel race and a beast race than the aadrling, which i feel is not making any of the sides happy.
Its not even egyptian themed its just you have wings and take 3 cleric spells and a fitting but one of the most useless resistances in the game.