So I've been working on this since before it was announced that Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse would discontinue Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, where the various Tiefling "sub races" were introduced – because while I liked the idea of having the different options, it always bothered me that I couldn't mix and match the spells more. It ended up being an amazing coincidence that I'd already created something people might need once that book was gone.
Originally I just set out to reproduce the sub-races, but make the spells optional using three lists, so I could build a Tiefling with fire resistance, thaumaturgy, hellish rebuke and burning hands if I wanted to. But then I added support for the Winged variant as well, then decided that it would be fun to also add variants with acid and poison resistance (and corresponding spell selections) to represent lineages from the more unusual layers of Baator and Carceri. Then I added a few extra options…
The end result is my Custom Tiefling, intended to let a player build the Tiefling of their dreams! The only difficulty has been that due to the limitations on D&D Beyond public homebrew, it isn't possible for me to include non-SRD spells (anything that isn't in the basic rules or elemental evil player's companion) so I had to make a few substitutions that I'm not super happy with. This is why the ice resistance is the only one with access to false life as it's a replacement for armor of agathys (and placeholder should DDB ever see reason and allow mixed SRD and non-SRD spell options).
There is something of a question mark about whether I can publish this or not; Tiefling is a race in the basic rules, and while (some) Tome of Foes variants can be reproduced using this custom tiefling, none of the text is lifted from that book, plus it's been discontinued anyway. In any event I'm posting it here to see what people think.
“They say ‘the devil is in the details’, but in truth it is the opposite – beware the details of the devil.
Quickness to judge is folly, for a mistake can be fatal when dealing with the denizens of the nine hells, or their half-devil descendants.”
— Blasphemies of Baator
To be a tiefling is to wear the unmistakable mark of the nine hells wherever you go – horns, a tail and vibrantly colored skin are not easily hidden from the prejudices that follow you.
While many tiefling are linked by blood or corruption to the archdevil Asmodeus, not all trace their lineage back to the Prince of Evil. Over the centuries, many other devils have crossed paths, and family lines, with the mortal races – some through genuine affection, and others through grand schemes that may require a dozen generations or more to come to fruition.
Though considered equally blasphemous by some, Tieflings as a people are wildly diverse in culture, morality and temperament – some embrace the darkness of their bloodline and turn towards evil, others shun it and strive for good, while the rest care little for either so long as they are free to live their own lives as they see fit.
Custom Tiefling Traits
Tieflings share certain racial traits as a result of their infernal descent.
Ability Score Increase
When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one score by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy. The “Quick Build” section for your character’s class offers suggestions on which scores to increase. You can follow those suggestions or ignore them, but you can’t raise any of your scores above 20.
Age
Tieflings mature at the same rate as humans but live a few years longer.
Size
Tieflings are about the same size and build as humans. Your size is Medium.
Speed
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Languages
You can speak, read, and write Common and one language of your choice. Most commonly this will be Infernal – a harsh and alien language spoken by the Baatezu, devils of the Nine Hells.
Darkvision
Thanks to your infernal heritage, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Infernal Resistance
Your infernal heritage grants you resistance to your choice of acid, cold, fire or poison damage.
Infernal Legacy
Your infernal legacy grants you a choice of powers that originate with your bloodline.
Alluring Ingenuity
You have proficiency in Charisma (Persuasion) plus one other Charisma, Intelligence or Wisdom skill of your choice.
Devil's Own Luck
When you fail an ability check or saving throw, you may choose to succeed instead. Once you have used this feature you may not do so again until you have completed a long rest.
Magic
Infernal magic flows through your blood, enabling you to cast one cantrip of your choice at will. When you reach 3rd-level you gain the ability to cast one 1st-level spell of your choice. When you reach 5th-level you also gain the ability to cast one 1st- or 2nd-level spell of your choice.
You may cast each spell that you know once at 2nd-level using this trait, regaining the ability to do-so when you complete a long rest. You may also cast these spells using any spell slots you have. Your spellcasting ability for these spells is Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (choose when you select this race).
You may choose your spells from the following based upon your Infernal Resistance:
Starting from 5th-level, as an action on your turn you may choose any number of creatures within 30 feet to take a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier). A creature automatically succeeds if it cannot see or hear you. On a failure a creature is frightened of you for up to one minute. A frightened creature may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect upon itself on a success. You may use this action a number of times equal to half your proficiency bonus, regaining all spent uses when you complete a long rest.
Winged
A pair of bat-like wings sprout from your shoulder blades as a visible sign of your infernal legacy. So long as you are not wearing heavy armor, your wings grant you a flying speed of 30 feet.
Tiefling Variants
Should you wish to recreate the Tiefling variants from the now discontinued Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, you may use the following recommendations. To also recreate the older fixed ability score increases, choose to increase two scores (+1/+2) entering the suggested ability score first (+1) and Charisma second (+2).
Each variant represents a Tiefling with a suggested patron, and with ties to a particular realm within Baator (the Nine-Hells) or one of the layers of the Tartarian Depths of Carceri (also known as Tarterus).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Have you made this an option in the homebrew section? I would love to use it for my next character!
I never got an answer on whether it might get rejected or not, so the release might be short-lived, but you can find it here.
I think it should be okay since Tiefling is an SRD (Basic Rules) race so a variant should be fair game, and while the old Tiefling variants were paid content (Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) I haven't copied anything from them, just provided the spell options required to reproduce (most of) them if you want to.
There may still be some bugs (if so, do let me know!) as it's a difficult one to exhaustively test due to the sheer number of options involved. I'm already using it on a couple of tiefling characters of mine and it's working great for them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So I've been working on this since before it was announced that Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse would discontinue Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, where the various Tiefling "sub races" were introduced – because while I liked the idea of having the different options, it always bothered me that I couldn't mix and match the spells more. It ended up being an amazing coincidence that I'd already created something people might need once that book was gone.
Originally I just set out to reproduce the sub-races, but make the spells optional using three lists, so I could build a Tiefling with fire resistance, thaumaturgy, hellish rebuke and burning hands if I wanted to. But then I added support for the Winged variant as well, then decided that it would be fun to also add variants with acid and poison resistance (and corresponding spell selections) to represent lineages from the more unusual layers of Baator and Carceri. Then I added a few extra options…
The end result is my Custom Tiefling, intended to let a player build the Tiefling of their dreams! The only difficulty has been that due to the limitations on D&D Beyond public homebrew, it isn't possible for me to include non-SRD spells (anything that isn't in the basic rules or elemental evil player's companion) so I had to make a few substitutions that I'm not super happy with. This is why the ice resistance is the only one with access to false life as it's a replacement for armor of agathys (and placeholder should DDB ever see reason and allow mixed SRD and non-SRD spell options).
There is something of a question mark about whether I can publish this or not; Tiefling is a race in the basic rules, and while (some) Tome of Foes variants can be reproduced using this custom tiefling, none of the text is lifted from that book, plus it's been discontinued anyway. In any event I'm posting it here to see what people think.
Update: You can now play the Custom Tiefling as homebrew, or you can preview what I posted here originally below:
Custom Tiefling
To be a tiefling is to wear the unmistakable mark of the nine hells wherever you go – horns, a tail and vibrantly colored skin are not easily hidden from the prejudices that follow you.
While many tiefling are linked by blood or corruption to the archdevil Asmodeus, not all trace their lineage back to the Prince of Evil. Over the centuries, many other devils have crossed paths, and family lines, with the mortal races – some through genuine affection, and others through grand schemes that may require a dozen generations or more to come to fruition.
Though considered equally blasphemous by some, Tieflings as a people are wildly diverse in culture, morality and temperament – some embrace the darkness of their bloodline and turn towards evil, others shun it and strive for good, while the rest care little for either so long as they are free to live their own lives as they see fit.
Custom Tiefling Traits
Tieflings share certain racial traits as a result of their infernal descent.Ability Score Increase
When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one score by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy. The “Quick Build” section for your character’s class offers suggestions on which scores to increase. You can follow those suggestions or ignore them, but you can’t raise any of your scores above 20.
Age
Tieflings mature at the same rate as humans but live a few years longer.
Size
Tieflings are about the same size and build as humans. Your size is Medium.
Speed
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Languages
You can speak, read, and write Common and one language of your choice. Most commonly this will be Infernal – a harsh and alien language spoken by the Baatezu, devils of the Nine Hells.
Darkvision
Thanks to your infernal heritage, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Infernal Resistance
Your infernal heritage grants you resistance to your choice of acid, cold, fire or poison damage.
Infernal Legacy
Your infernal legacy grants you a choice of powers that originate with your bloodline.
Alluring Ingenuity
You have proficiency in Charisma (Persuasion) plus one other Charisma, Intelligence or Wisdom skill of your choice.
Devil's Own Luck
When you fail an ability check or saving throw, you may choose to succeed instead. Once you have used this feature you may not do so again until you have completed a long rest.
Magic
Infernal magic flows through your blood, enabling you to cast one cantrip of your choice at will. When you reach 3rd-level you gain the ability to cast one 1st-level spell of your choice. When you reach 5th-level you also gain the ability to cast one 1st- or 2nd-level spell of your choice.
You may cast each spell that you know once at 2nd-level using this trait, regaining the ability to do-so when you complete a long rest. You may also cast these spells using any spell slots you have. Your spellcasting ability for these spells is Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (choose when you select this race).
You may choose your spells from the following based upon your Infernal Resistance:
Unsettling Aura
You have proficiency in Charisma (Intimidation).
Starting from 5th-level, as an action on your turn you may choose any number of creatures within 30 feet to take a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier). A creature automatically succeeds if it cannot see or hear you. On a failure a creature is frightened of you for up to one minute. A frightened creature may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect upon itself on a success. You may use this action a number of times equal to half your proficiency bonus, regaining all spent uses when you complete a long rest.
Winged
A pair of bat-like wings sprout from your shoulder blades as a visible sign of your infernal legacy. So long as you are not wearing heavy armor, your wings grant you a flying speed of 30 feet.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Have you made this an option in the homebrew section? I would love to use it for my next character!
I never got an answer on whether it might get rejected or not, so the release might be short-lived, but you can find it here.
I think it should be okay since Tiefling is an SRD (Basic Rules) race so a variant should be fair game, and while the old Tiefling variants were paid content (Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) I haven't copied anything from them, just provided the spell options required to reproduce (most of) them if you want to.
There may still be some bugs (if so, do let me know!) as it's a difficult one to exhaustively test due to the sheer number of options involved. I'm already using it on a couple of tiefling characters of mine and it's working great for them.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.