#variant aasimar

[audreycreations]

A DnD Stained Glass Commission that my friend asked me to make of our group's DnD group! This piece was based off their team's session that involved basically a life and death Iron Chef tournament. This was an experience to learn from since I've never done stained glass look before so this was super fun to do!

*Image has been glazed

[dailycharacteroption]

Subsystems and You 7: Randomized Planetouch tables

 The fact that aasimar and tieflings, once regulated to the monster manual and only given player stats on a “maybe if your GM is feeling really generous” basis, are now widely used races in both Pathfinder and in more recent editions of the World’s Oldest Roleplaying Game fills me with joy. It represents a shift in ideals concerning what makes a viable RPG character. Once upon a time, the idea of playing even a half-orc, let alone a full-blooded orc was considered ridiculous, blasphemous, even. “Orcs aren’t a heroic race!” they’d say.

However, as time has marched onward, developers and the RPG community as a whole have come to recognize how much people identify with what is considered “monstrous”, or otherwise “odd”.

However, that popularity is something of a double-edged sword, since it has also given rise to some vexing visual interpretations of these races.

What I mean by this is that, for both races, though tieflings in particular, a lot of official art for the races has become same-y. In 4th and 5th edition of D&D, almost every art piece you see of tieflings is humanoids with glowing, pupil-less eyes, backwards-sweeping or ram-curled horns, and maybe cloven hooves and a spade tail.

Not to say that those traits are not all viable things for a tiefling to have, but you have to remember that all planetouched races are basically having a drop of outsider blood, or at least influence, in their bodies. And outsiders are freaking DIVERSE, even among a single subtype. We’ve got buff dog men hanging out with floating solar system models, horrible little men with fly heads rubbing shoulders with the embodiments of raw sex appeal and indulgence, creatures that are literally nothing but a mostly-mouth soul-devouring head casually saying hello to a twisted mass of broken limbs as they clock in together, and so on.

With that in mind, you can and absolutely should explore what sort of bizarre traits your tiefling, aasimar, or other planar scions might have. I say it that way because though it hasn’t been touched to the same extent as the main two, Pathfinder is the only system I know of that actively encourages you to get interesting with your portrayal of these otherworldly races.

Whether you delve into the bestiaries for ideas, or decide to wing it with fiendish or celestial developments, you really can’t go wrong. However, a great starting place is a selection of tables from Blood of Angels and Blood of Fiends, which is today’s actual subject (sorry for the long preamble).

 Both of those books sport two tables for the appropriate races, one grants a replacement ability which replaces the spell-like ability of the race (regardless of what subrace you may or may not have picked). These include such abilities as the ability for an aasimar heal from drinking holy water, or perhaps having a chilling cold breath weapon, both available once a day, while a tiefling might have the ability to gain nourishment from ash and cinders, or the ability to speak to all insects.

Meanwhile, the second table is all purely cosmetic things, random traits that have no impact on gameplay, but can help illustrate how diverse aasimar and tieflings can really be. Things like a multitude of eyes, or breath that constantly emits wisps of smoke. All four of these tables are full d100 tables, so there’s a lot of variety.

 Whether or not you use these tables at all (or even bother to roll and instead just pick one), they can certainly provide a lot of inspiration about how diverse not only these two planar scion races are, but can help you extrapolate the diversity of other such races as well.

Consider also how these tables and/or your own creative decisions might also alter if you choose to make the character have the mortal blood of a non-human race as well.

Regardless of what you make of them, I hope this entry at the very least has helped you consider how diverse or downright weird you could make your planetouched characters. Whether you pick some minor variant of the classic, or go fully crazy with it is up to you, and all are valid.

That does it for this week, but check back again for more archetypes and options!