And were often a bit succubus/incubus, because of course they are. I mean, sometimes when you work off DiTerlizzi's art, you gotta thicken it a bit, but ... 4e Tieflings have a tail thicker than their thigh, often emerging at quite an angle from just below their ribcage, because it's too fucking long and would drag on the ground otherwise.
That's the spinal column! It should replace the coccyx, and the asshole is going to need shifted, and ... also the hips, like, there's just not room for a tail that big in a biped, it just doesn't fucking work. It's like a sauropod tail, but just stuck on any old place.
Not to mention the balance, that thing must weigh up like 10kg, it's huge, and there is no way that guy's centre of mass is between his feet. And the space constraints, it's all of five foot long, heavy, unbalancing, just get it cut off so you can fight and run and shit. I mean, it can't have your spine in it, because your hips need that.
Plus! Those horns, that's where the brain goes. You know, the brain. Do I need to explain how important the brain is, how you can't just replace a third of it, symmetrical on both sides, with horn and just be fine like nothing happened. That's not fine, they need way more skull somewhere for their brain to be. Sheep are not smart, Ibex are not smart.
Plus! with the giant, highly flexible (it's like a gods damned snake) tail that is obviously prehensile, and you can't do anything with it! It's huge and the rules just ignore it. I hate that shit. D&D will, at least up to 2007, give things two horn attacks for having pointed horns, don't skimp on mechanics for stuff. Especially in an edition where they wanted a unique little mechanic for every race. It's right there, that gigantic fucking snake thing sticking out of their back.
Like a minor action encounter power, Str vs Fort, prone your opponent. Easy.
Interesting both because some 4e art doesn't have the tail, at all, shows up without one quite often, half the tails that are here seem like they were pretty random late additions to the art, just strewn about any old place. Also that 5e vaguely fixed those anatomy problems, though quite how the legs and tail all fit together at the business end is anyone's guess.
PS: 4e's Tiefling is fluffed as being a lost empire, ... yes, like everyone else is a lost empire. The Dorfs, lost empire, Eladrin, lost empire, .... Half the stuff in the monster manual was at one point an empire, which then was lost.
But the Tiefling art and fluff changes are, all up, pretty minor compared to a lot of stuff in this game. Much bigger horns and the giant sketchy tail and now remnants of a fallen empire, yeah, that's pretty much every single thing in the game, got off light compared to giants and outsiders and elementals and goblins and gnolls and all the undead, ... carrion crawlers! Just this one's in the PHB art all over the place, puts it all up your face.
3.5 Dragonborn already had boobs, maglag, because they were not lizards, they were people who had been given a regular assortment of dragon characteristics by the god of good dragons. All those races in the race books were pointless and sad and very rarely used, even stuff like the Goliath that had something going for it didn't suddenly show up everywhere. I'm not sure anyone noticed 3.5 Dragonborn, other than to call them dragonboobs, which they were duly called all over again when 4e turned up.
They do have much longer snouts in 4e though, so they can leap snarling at the artist in half their pictures, mouth agape, as if to bite, with their bite attack they don't have.
Hmm. To me, WoW Night Elves are 100% a rip-off of 3e's Drow. The very long ears, the purple skin, the spiky armour, femdom stuff. Eladrin just, if anything they're a replacement for Aasimar. But there's no real direction, it's just a random grab bag.
I'm working on that Warcraft angle too. Really this game is the 3e miniatures game turned into an RPG, that's its closest ancestor. A lot of rules, art, already changed there, 28mm stuff needs thick, flattened horns and big snouts so you can see it and also not have it break off.
4e's got, like, a sprinkling of WoW in it, but it's very superficial, and none of it works the same at all. The artists might have been influenced more, but I don't think the designers had played much of it, anything they dragged in by name is all quite flawed, like they'd heard of it but that was about all.
Or they're just super shit at this rules thing, which, hmm. I don't think they're this bad, this development has gone very, very wrong, 4e got quite a bit better as it went on in parts, it's not really like other editions, the worst of it is right here.
