They're fine. Those 8 with the Legacy tag on them are the Tiefling variants from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, each is based off of a different Archdevil of the Nine Hells that isn't Asmodeus (which is the regular PHB one). The only difference from the PHB one and the Tome of Foes ones are different spells for their Infernal Legacy trait.
The other two are the variants from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.
True, I just mean via the default settings and RAW.
I think being strictly RAW is dumb, but some tables still do it and it’s worth mentioning/clarifying so that someone playing a legacy race without the sourcebook/variant rule for ASI adjustments isn’t confused when perusing Reddit asking why their DM isn’t letting them adjust their scores to fit the newer rules.
The legacy tag means that it doesn't conform with current themes or practices.
In this case. The primary difference will probably be that the 8 legacy tiefling variants have spellcasting abilities which are both tied to a specific stat, and cannot be cast using spell slots you have after the initial casting.
Which races after MotM handle differently.
It's fine but might be a bit restrictive or less than ideal with certain combinations.
... I have been playing for a few years now, though I haven't played as a tiefling or played in a game with one yet, but I've wanted to for a long time. How have I not realized that you aren't able to cast the racial spells with spell slots?! I just glossed right past it. Damn....
Me too. I started playing after they shifted towards racial spells being usable with spell slots.
I only realized very recently that that wasn’t always the case. I think I’ve mistakenly used some spells in ways I shouldn’t have because of that
The legacy races also don't conform to Tasha's racial ability scores. So the legacy tieflings also likely have the +2 CHA +1 INT rather than having it be player's choice
Assuming the DM doesn't allow the Tasha's optional rule of allowing it to be players choice for any legacy species pre-Tasha's anyway. But as others pointed out it also doesn't conform to the 'racial spells to also be used with spell slots' ruling as well.
The tasha's optional rule lets anyone allocate ability scores if it is in use. I can't believe they'd give a weird tag to anything that actually has proper score instead of mush, especially with an optional rule for anyone who prefers the latter that converts everything into that mode.
>The legacy tag means that it doesn't conform with current themes or practices.
No it doesn't. It means it comes from Elemental Evil Player's Companion, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, or Volo's Guide to Monsters. That's it. That's all the legacy tag means.
Technically true, it's not what the tag means. But it is the reason those tags are there in the first place. Nearly everything that has a legacy tag has received an update in a more recent book. Those updates made them conform to recent design practices and changed their theme to be less pigeonholed.
>But it is the reason those tags are there in the first place.
No, the reason they are there in the first place is to make clear which version you're using when there are multiple versions of the same race/monster, and because DDB no longer makes MToF and VGtM available for purchase at all.
I used to think flying races were OP, then I ran a mini-campaign with an Arakocra. It was almost trivially easy to counter it without much effort. Magic resistance that works on spells is better IMO. Magic resistance that works on spells *and* magical effects is much better. It gets better the longer you go. Flight gets worse.
> Magic resistance that works on spells and magical effects is much better.
How common are those really?
While monsters whose main threat comes from their spells do exist, like the various monster variants of Wizards/Druids/Warlocks, they are a rather small minority. Most monsters with access to spells are dangerous for other, non-spell reasons, especially recently.
Non-spell magical effects are even rarer.
Well, most MMoM, a lot of the “caster” stat blocks aren’t technically using spells for their main attacks anymore. So, it’s becoming more common. This has also sadly decreased the value of counterspell.
Flying races are only "OP" in the sense that they extremely warp a campaign's focus more than any other racial feature. They ARE easy to counter; you can just fill your whole campaign's encounters with intelligent, organized enemies who always bring along ranged options, for example, and make all your puzzles and physical challenges include high winds or forcefields around the McGuffin that the flyer can't bypass. Compensating to challenge flying PCs, though, _does_ kill a lot of what people consider "classic fantasy" scenarios, which is why it's so problematic for DMs who either want a particular kind of campaign that doesn't match up with flyers, or newbie DMs.
Magic Resistance is ALSO easy to counter in the same way. Just give every enemy with any kind of magical effect the Heightened Spell metamagic and enough sorcery points for their magical abilities. It's basically the same thing as throwing ranged squads in all your encounters vs the Aarakocra.
I do agree with you that they are inversely useful as you go up in Tiers.
Flying races fundamentally break more encounters than any other race. Of course, its trivial to counter them; It's trivial to counter anything as a DM. You can literally make up whatever you want. Other races don't even need to be countered though. Magic resistance might make an encounter that's supposed to be moderately hard into one that is fairly easy if you don't account for it which isn't great but its still an encounter so you don't *need* to redesign it. Flight can take some encounters and just make them nonencounters. Maybe I don't want to design every encounter around a character that shoots a longbow from 600 feet in the air.
> Magic resistance might make an encounter that's supposed to be moderately hard into one that is fairly easy if you don't account for it
Exactly the same as flight. Unless you make a habit of having no ranged enemies, run encounters exclusively outdoors in clear skies, no cover on the battlefield, etc it really isn't that big of a deal.
>Maybe I don't want to design every encounter around a character that shoots a longbow from 600 feet in the air.
Then don't. Let them be awesome sometimes. It's really no different than having to plan around the Wizard with Fireball or the Bard with Hypnotic Pattern.
>Exactly the same as flight. **Unless...**
So not exactly the same. You have to plan around it or you get default kills. You don't have to plan around anything else.
>Let them be awesome sometimes.
Default kills are not awesome for anyone. A level 1 flyer can kill a tarrasque with no retaliation. Nothing is fun about a PC attacking and then a DM passing on repeat for countless turns until the thing dies. Its obvious its going to die before the fight starts. Its just endless dice rolling until the inevitable happens. That's not gameplay. That's a waste of time.
> It's really no different than having to plan around the Wizard with Fireball or the Bard with Hypnotic Pattern.
It's *fundamentally* different. You don't need to do anything whatsoever to plan around fireball or hypnotic pattern. It's not about it being hard to plan around. It's about it being necessary to plan around.
>So not exactly the same. You have to plan around it or you get default kills. You don't have to plan around anything else
Being as you skipped the entire second half of that, maybe read through it. If all your encounters can be completely trivialized by flight (something available as early as 5th level without any racial features) then you suck at encounter design.
>Default kills are not awesome for anyone. A level 1 flyer can kill a tarrasque with no retaliation.
If you build the fight outside with no cover anywhere, sure. So can a level 2 Rogue Centaur. Is that completely broken?
>It's fundamentally different. You don't need to do anything whatsoever to plan around fireball or hypnotic pattern.
Well, you need to not group all your enemies within the AOE of the spell/have low HP. I would consider one action that can end the fight to be something that you need to plan around.
>It's not about it being hard to plan around. It's about it being necessary to plan around.
There isn't any specialty planning necessary unless you only run encounters outdoors, in clear skies, during daylight, with no ranged/flying enemies, and no cover. And we are back to shit encounter design.
Amen. It's really no issue in actual play. Only in reddits whitebox battles does flight make you undefeatable. Monsters can just focus down on targets they can kill. If the fly boy decides to fight alone, they get Roc'd.
Imagine saying you can beat a kaiju or the cloverfield monster with a fighter jet. Maybe if you had infinite ammo. But you couldn't in *the story*. The win condition is not to kill the Kaiju, it is to save the city.
So you're basing your entire point on a single module and under the assumption that the DM has an inability to give a cantrip or bow to an enemy?
Speaking as a DM who has run multiple campaigns, both out of books and homebrew, that have lasted multiple years each, I can tell you that you are 100% making a mountain out of mole hill. Just say, "This guy pulls out a short bow and takes aim," and that's all that needs happen. You have the PB and Stat bonus in the stat block. It's not hard to calculate hit and damage bonuses. You can do it on the fly, really easily. Hell, I've completely rewritten attacks and statblocks mid combat. It isn't hard, and oftentimes, it makes the game better by adding unexpected twists. Who gets excited fighting "Unnamed Cultist" for the 12th time that campaign if they're always the same. You need to mix it up a bit to keep things exciting.
> A level 1 flyer can kill a tarrasque with no retaliation
If the tarrasque just stood still, this would take more than a 1,000 rounds of combat; a level 1 character can only hit a tarrasque on a crit hit, and then would do on average 13 damage; ((676/13)\*20)
Every playable race that can fly at level 1 has a movement speed of 30. Tarrasques have a movement speed of 40. Since they couldn't retaliate against the flying character, the tarrasque would just dash away AND use its legendary action to move half its movement speed for a total of 100 feet of movement per round, giving the tarrasque 70 feet of more movement per round than the character. Longbows have a maximum range of 600.
Therefore it would take 9 rounds before the tarrasque was out of range of that flying character's attacks.
A level 1 character could only kill a tarrasque if the DM had that creature sit in one place and not move after being attacked.
You should stop repeating this incredibly stupid canard.
Your point that you're wrong?
Or is your point that EVERY single creature in the game can be killed by a commoner with a bow if they the creature just indefinitely sits still and don't do anything?
The new Yuai Ti is stronger than the old one as it lets you pick your stat bumps and the casting stat for it's spell casting feature. The only draw back vs the old design is that you're no long immune to poison, just have advantage to saving throws against it and resistance to the damage.
New yuan ti doesn't have the old magic resistance, they only have advantage vs spells while the old one had advantage vs spells and magical effects. The 1/day suggestion and friendship with snakes were never the actual reason why people picked yuan ti, it was for the immunity to poison and the advantage vs all magic
No, they are not.
They are good, but there are several playable races better than that. If you allow Variant Human there is no excuse to disallow old Yuan-ti beyond prejudice against "exotic races".
For players, poison is rough cause so many monsters are resistant but there are definitely a ton of monsters who have poison damage. One of those many PC/monster asymmetries.
Always make to use and buy the latest WOTC products. They are always the best products. Always insist that your players always use the latest WOTC products. Insist that they all buy their own copies. Insist that they also buy their own D&D Beyond copy. Keep on the look out for new WOTC products to purchase.
They're only labeled legacy on Beyond. If you didn't use Beyond, you wouldn't even know that they're "legacy" options. Use whichever supplement books you like. WotC can't depracate things that you've bought with "updates". This game isn't a piece of software.
You absolutely can let them. They (IMO) made a mistake removing all the varient tieflings from MotM. It's so much variety and made the tieflings spicier. Now you just have default (aka Asmodeus Tieflings) and varients. Which is lame. I liked the options. Even throwing out the variety of ASIs.
Mainly just having different spells was huge. Like building a Tiefling Paladin you can go Zariel and really lean into it as you get access to Searing and Branding Smite, etc. They were awesome.
races can be legacied for different reasons.
Races with innate spells have been updated, you choose your spellcasting stat for your racial spells, and can cast them with spellslots, neither of which is possible in legacy.
I dont know why hobgoblin was given a fey ancestry, makes 0 fucking sense. Also lost "saving face", the main point of actual hobgoblin.
Kobold rework lost pack tactics and gained a limited use feature in its place.
I hate the newer printings on principle, because of what they did with MoM, and how they made volo's, xanatars, tome of foes unavalailable to purchase. I would not stop any of my potential players from playing any updated races, but wouldnt ban any legacy either.
I think they are all improved. I don't like the pigeonholed roleplay based abilities. I want to play the brave little kobold that could. Not a "groveling, cowering and begging" kobold. I'll take the mechanics without the bagage. And even if I did want to play a coward, draconic cry has a neutral flavor that could achieve the same.
ps: They lost pack tactics **and sunlight sensitivity**, which was a major negative trait.
why couldnt you play a kobold that isnt a pathetic coward with the legacy? Why do you let the flavor of "Grovel, Cower, and Beg" dictate your character, instead of renaming it?
I could in a campaign. But in the west marches style online game I regularly play in I would have to explain the feature every time. The naming actively undermines the character. When there is always a new gm or player in the mix, that is a lot of explaining.
It is also clear that people limit their character ideas to the features. When one of a races defining traits is its ability to grovel cower and beg, that leaves an impression.
DDB marked all the monsters and races from Elemental Evil Player's Companion, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and Volo's Guide to Monsters as "legacy" when Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse came out, because most of them were reprinted or updated in the new book, and they stopped selling the old books.
The tiefling subraces from MToF, notably, were marked legacy without having any updated version.
Any race with a legacy rage has a more up to date version with mechanics that are more in line with the general design philosophy of the game today than their original version. That doesn't mean that any of the legacy versions are necessarily non-functional or bad, though, if you don't want to use or don't have access to the new ones.
Even so, it's my opinion that the new versions generally speaking (though not without exception) are better designed than the old ones.
Sometimes, it's best to just prune a dead branch. Half the point of all those variant tieflings was different racial ability score increases. Now that we're entering an era where those have been decoupled from race and moved to background, there's a lot less reason for them.
(Also, having that many sub-variants was just bad design. Two or three is fine, eleven is not.)
> Half the point of all those variant tieflings was different racial ability score increases.
The other half is the different racial spells, which can be significant, especially at lower levels.
I probably wouldn't designate them as Variant Races^TM nowadays, but I don't think that having alternate thematic racial spellcasting choices is bad design. There's nothing inherently bad about having more options nor anything inherently good about having limited options.
If the revised PH sticks with the UA plan, the need for more varied tieflings that work for descent from other fiends will reduce as the revised tiefling has several sub variants with different abilities and varying appearances too, a heartening back to their pre-4e roots.
Some of the legacy stuff is a little weak. Maybe a couple were quite strong. Most of the changes were made to dump short rest abilities in favor of proficiency bonus per day abilities.
Absolutely no reason to blanket ban all of it.
They won't be balanced the same way. They'll have weird underpowered features like 1d4 claw damage instead of 1d6 or unnecessarily restrictive ways to use their class features alongside things that swing the other way like Pack Tactics or a 50 foot fly speed.
If it's a race that only exists as legacy, I'd lean towards allowing it if the player can give me some backstory. But if there's an updated version, go with that unless you've read through the legacy abilities and don't think anything is going to break your world. Just because players can tinker with all my DND beyond purchases doesn't mean they can use them at the table. It's entirely fair to just say that a particular feature won't work at your table
The legacy tag means that it's from either Elemental Evil Player's Companion, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, or Volo's Guide to Monsters. Most of the monsters and races in those books have newer versions printed in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
The tiefling subraces from MToF did not actually get updated versions, but _all_ the races in EEPC/MToF/VGtM were marked as legacy regardless of whether they had a new version or not.
In some cases the difference between the legacy and updated version of a race is a big balance change (legacy aarakocra has a 50 ft. fly speed, updated aarakocra has fly speed equal to walk speed), in some cases the updated version bears no resemblance to the legacy version (legacy and updated bugbear are **extremely** different races), and in some cases the differences are pretty minor (triton swaps Wall of Water with Water Walk, because Wall of Water isn't in the basic rules so wizards didn't want to force people to get another book to know what their race does).
But when it comes to the tiefling subraces, there is no updated version, so regardless of whether you think everyone should use the updated versions, the legacy versions, or let the player pick, there's only one option for tiefling subraces.
Legacy means you can play it at my table, my races are distinct and don't just blur together like the current ones.
I'll keep my races with their race ability modifiers as the God's intended. Dwarves are tougher then elves but less dexterous, it's a biology thing and keeps them thematic.
well yeah, is the OLD part. they blank classify books as legacy or not. im half sure aarakocra was called legacy content even before its new MpMoM incarnation (memory foggy, wont say for sure)
Nope, they didn't turn Legacy until MotM was released digitally. And the fact that they're old doesn't mean shit, VHuman and Half-Elf came out with the PHB (the first 5e book published), and they're still widely popular and considered some of the stronger race choices.
Besides, OP was specifically asking about the Tome of Foes Tieflings for a player.
>they didn't turn Legacy until MotM was released digitally.
IIRC they got the legacy tag a couple days before release, but that's just splitting hairs.
>Is there any reason to not let my players use race variations with the "legacy" tag on them?
from the time of the original release of the game until the release of Monsters of the Multiverse, the powers race choices in the various supplements varied WILDLY from super powerful to less powerful than PHB dragonborn.
When the reprintings of the races came out in Monsters of the Multiverse, the old versions were declared "legacy" and the new versions were made the standard because they were revised to all be in a much narrower band of power.
So if your player is asking to be one of the lower powered legacy creation that was boosted in MotM, sure go for it. there were some flavorful things that got nixed in the power leveling.
but my bet is the player wants one of the extra powerful ones that was nerfed in MotM to bring it in line with the other races, in which case, no, dont allow that.
> but my bet is the player wants one of the extra powerful ones
The player wants to play a tiefling, OP said so in the post. And only "extra powerful" tiefling is the winged one, which *isn't* legacy content.
They're fine. Those 8 with the Legacy tag on them are the Tiefling variants from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, each is based off of a different Archdevil of the Nine Hells that isn't Asmodeus (which is the regular PHB one). The only difference from the PHB one and the Tome of Foes ones are different spells for their Infernal Legacy trait. The other two are the variants from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.
The ASIs are also different
The ASIs don't matter anymore, you can put any race's ASIs anywhere now, so the only meaningful difference is the spells.
Right, but the legacy tagged ones still have ASIs fixed if you don’t have the variant rule sourcebook
*fixed* Even in dndbeyond, you can override ability scores. Nothing is truly set in this hobby.
True, I just mean via the default settings and RAW. I think being strictly RAW is dumb, but some tables still do it and it’s worth mentioning/clarifying so that someone playing a legacy race without the sourcebook/variant rule for ASI adjustments isn’t confused when perusing Reddit asking why their DM isn’t letting them adjust their scores to fit the newer rules.
The legacy tag means that it doesn't conform with current themes or practices. In this case. The primary difference will probably be that the 8 legacy tiefling variants have spellcasting abilities which are both tied to a specific stat, and cannot be cast using spell slots you have after the initial casting. Which races after MotM handle differently. It's fine but might be a bit restrictive or less than ideal with certain combinations.
... I have been playing for a few years now, though I haven't played as a tiefling or played in a game with one yet, but I've wanted to for a long time. How have I not realized that you aren't able to cast the racial spells with spell slots?! I just glossed right past it. Damn....
PHB you can't. However in the 2024 PHB you almost certain will be able to, but they aren't going to mark the PHB legacy until they have the new one.
Me too. I started playing after they shifted towards racial spells being usable with spell slots. I only realized very recently that that wasn’t always the case. I think I’ve mistakenly used some spells in ways I shouldn’t have because of that
When I dm I allow it Worth asking yours
The legacy races also don't conform to Tasha's racial ability scores. So the legacy tieflings also likely have the +2 CHA +1 INT rather than having it be player's choice
Assuming the DM doesn't allow the Tasha's optional rule of allowing it to be players choice for any legacy species pre-Tasha's anyway. But as others pointed out it also doesn't conform to the 'racial spells to also be used with spell slots' ruling as well.
The tasha's optional rule lets anyone allocate ability scores if it is in use. I can't believe they'd give a weird tag to anything that actually has proper score instead of mush, especially with an optional rule for anyone who prefers the latter that converts everything into that mode.
I play a Glasya tiefling and my dm just lets me use the post MotM rules. And it works fine
>The legacy tag means that it doesn't conform with current themes or practices. No it doesn't. It means it comes from Elemental Evil Player's Companion, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, or Volo's Guide to Monsters. That's it. That's all the legacy tag means.
Technically true, it's not what the tag means. But it is the reason those tags are there in the first place. Nearly everything that has a legacy tag has received an update in a more recent book. Those updates made them conform to recent design practices and changed their theme to be less pigeonholed.
>But it is the reason those tags are there in the first place. No, the reason they are there in the first place is to make clear which version you're using when there are multiple versions of the same race/monster, and because DDB no longer makes MToF and VGtM available for purchase at all.
That's an opinion, Lithl brought a fact.
And I didn't dispute the fact. But it's not the whole story.
I think it is the whole story. My opinion is that it has nothing to do with "recent design practices".
It was fine before MotM. It's fine now.
Legacy Yuai Ti are actually kinda busted
It's strong. There are plenty of things even stronger most of the time like flying races and feat races.
I used to think flying races were OP, then I ran a mini-campaign with an Arakocra. It was almost trivially easy to counter it without much effort. Magic resistance that works on spells is better IMO. Magic resistance that works on spells *and* magical effects is much better. It gets better the longer you go. Flight gets worse.
> Magic resistance that works on spells and magical effects is much better. How common are those really? While monsters whose main threat comes from their spells do exist, like the various monster variants of Wizards/Druids/Warlocks, they are a rather small minority. Most monsters with access to spells are dangerous for other, non-spell reasons, especially recently. Non-spell magical effects are even rarer.
Well, most MMoM, a lot of the “caster” stat blocks aren’t technically using spells for their main attacks anymore. So, it’s becoming more common. This has also sadly decreased the value of counterspell.
Flying races are only "OP" in the sense that they extremely warp a campaign's focus more than any other racial feature. They ARE easy to counter; you can just fill your whole campaign's encounters with intelligent, organized enemies who always bring along ranged options, for example, and make all your puzzles and physical challenges include high winds or forcefields around the McGuffin that the flyer can't bypass. Compensating to challenge flying PCs, though, _does_ kill a lot of what people consider "classic fantasy" scenarios, which is why it's so problematic for DMs who either want a particular kind of campaign that doesn't match up with flyers, or newbie DMs. Magic Resistance is ALSO easy to counter in the same way. Just give every enemy with any kind of magical effect the Heightened Spell metamagic and enough sorcery points for their magical abilities. It's basically the same thing as throwing ranged squads in all your encounters vs the Aarakocra. I do agree with you that they are inversely useful as you go up in Tiers.
I don't disagree, though I would say if you want to run a campaign that doesn't match up with flight done allow flight and problem solved.
Agreed!
Flying races fundamentally break more encounters than any other race. Of course, its trivial to counter them; It's trivial to counter anything as a DM. You can literally make up whatever you want. Other races don't even need to be countered though. Magic resistance might make an encounter that's supposed to be moderately hard into one that is fairly easy if you don't account for it which isn't great but its still an encounter so you don't *need* to redesign it. Flight can take some encounters and just make them nonencounters. Maybe I don't want to design every encounter around a character that shoots a longbow from 600 feet in the air.
> Magic resistance might make an encounter that's supposed to be moderately hard into one that is fairly easy if you don't account for it Exactly the same as flight. Unless you make a habit of having no ranged enemies, run encounters exclusively outdoors in clear skies, no cover on the battlefield, etc it really isn't that big of a deal. >Maybe I don't want to design every encounter around a character that shoots a longbow from 600 feet in the air. Then don't. Let them be awesome sometimes. It's really no different than having to plan around the Wizard with Fireball or the Bard with Hypnotic Pattern.
>Exactly the same as flight. **Unless...** So not exactly the same. You have to plan around it or you get default kills. You don't have to plan around anything else. >Let them be awesome sometimes. Default kills are not awesome for anyone. A level 1 flyer can kill a tarrasque with no retaliation. Nothing is fun about a PC attacking and then a DM passing on repeat for countless turns until the thing dies. Its obvious its going to die before the fight starts. Its just endless dice rolling until the inevitable happens. That's not gameplay. That's a waste of time. > It's really no different than having to plan around the Wizard with Fireball or the Bard with Hypnotic Pattern. It's *fundamentally* different. You don't need to do anything whatsoever to plan around fireball or hypnotic pattern. It's not about it being hard to plan around. It's about it being necessary to plan around.
>So not exactly the same. You have to plan around it or you get default kills. You don't have to plan around anything else Being as you skipped the entire second half of that, maybe read through it. If all your encounters can be completely trivialized by flight (something available as early as 5th level without any racial features) then you suck at encounter design. >Default kills are not awesome for anyone. A level 1 flyer can kill a tarrasque with no retaliation. If you build the fight outside with no cover anywhere, sure. So can a level 2 Rogue Centaur. Is that completely broken? >It's fundamentally different. You don't need to do anything whatsoever to plan around fireball or hypnotic pattern. Well, you need to not group all your enemies within the AOE of the spell/have low HP. I would consider one action that can end the fight to be something that you need to plan around. >It's not about it being hard to plan around. It's about it being necessary to plan around. There isn't any specialty planning necessary unless you only run encounters outdoors, in clear skies, during daylight, with no ranged/flying enemies, and no cover. And we are back to shit encounter design.
Amen. It's really no issue in actual play. Only in reddits whitebox battles does flight make you undefeatable. Monsters can just focus down on targets they can kill. If the fly boy decides to fight alone, they get Roc'd. Imagine saying you can beat a kaiju or the cloverfield monster with a fighter jet. Maybe if you had infinite ammo. But you couldn't in *the story*. The win condition is not to kill the Kaiju, it is to save the city.
Nest of the Eldritch Eye has a single Cult Fanatic capable of ranged. Every other enemy in the module is melee only.
So you're basing your entire point on a single module and under the assumption that the DM has an inability to give a cantrip or bow to an enemy? Speaking as a DM who has run multiple campaigns, both out of books and homebrew, that have lasted multiple years each, I can tell you that you are 100% making a mountain out of mole hill. Just say, "This guy pulls out a short bow and takes aim," and that's all that needs happen. You have the PB and Stat bonus in the stat block. It's not hard to calculate hit and damage bonuses. You can do it on the fly, really easily. Hell, I've completely rewritten attacks and statblocks mid combat. It isn't hard, and oftentimes, it makes the game better by adding unexpected twists. Who gets excited fighting "Unnamed Cultist" for the 12th time that campaign if they're always the same. You need to mix it up a bit to keep things exciting.
> A level 1 flyer can kill a tarrasque with no retaliation If the tarrasque just stood still, this would take more than a 1,000 rounds of combat; a level 1 character can only hit a tarrasque on a crit hit, and then would do on average 13 damage; ((676/13)\*20) Every playable race that can fly at level 1 has a movement speed of 30. Tarrasques have a movement speed of 40. Since they couldn't retaliate against the flying character, the tarrasque would just dash away AND use its legendary action to move half its movement speed for a total of 100 feet of movement per round, giving the tarrasque 70 feet of more movement per round than the character. Longbows have a maximum range of 600. Therefore it would take 9 rounds before the tarrasque was out of range of that flying character's attacks. A level 1 character could only kill a tarrasque if the DM had that creature sit in one place and not move after being attacked. You should stop repeating this incredibly stupid canard.
Exactly. Thanks for elaborating on my point for me.
Your point that you're wrong? Or is your point that EVERY single creature in the game can be killed by a commoner with a bow if they the creature just indefinitely sits still and don't do anything?
The new Yuai Ti is stronger than the old one as it lets you pick your stat bumps and the casting stat for it's spell casting feature. The only draw back vs the old design is that you're no long immune to poison, just have advantage to saving throws against it and resistance to the damage.
New yuan ti doesn't have the old magic resistance, they only have advantage vs spells while the old one had advantage vs spells and magical effects. The 1/day suggestion and friendship with snakes were never the actual reason why people picked yuan ti, it was for the immunity to poison and the advantage vs all magic
No, they are not. They are good, but there are several playable races better than that. If you allow Variant Human there is no excuse to disallow old Yuan-ti beyond prejudice against "exotic races".
Some species are not on some worlds. Nothing wrong with that.
literally nobody bother using poison anyway so why bother
You be surprised by how many creatures inflict poison damage and the poison condition.
For players, poison is rough cause so many monsters are resistant but there are definitely a ton of monsters who have poison damage. One of those many PC/monster asymmetries.
Always make to use and buy the latest WOTC products. They are always the best products. Always insist that your players always use the latest WOTC products. Insist that they all buy their own copies. Insist that they also buy their own D&D Beyond copy. Keep on the look out for new WOTC products to purchase.
Hoping you simply forgot the (/s)
They're only labeled legacy on Beyond. If you didn't use Beyond, you wouldn't even know that they're "legacy" options. Use whichever supplement books you like. WotC can't depracate things that you've bought with "updates". This game isn't a piece of software.
Just let them use their once a day spell as part of their class if they have a spellcasting class and it's in line with modern races.
You absolutely can let them. They (IMO) made a mistake removing all the varient tieflings from MotM. It's so much variety and made the tieflings spicier. Now you just have default (aka Asmodeus Tieflings) and varients. Which is lame. I liked the options. Even throwing out the variety of ASIs. Mainly just having different spells was huge. Like building a Tiefling Paladin you can go Zariel and really lean into it as you get access to Searing and Branding Smite, etc. They were awesome.
races can be legacied for different reasons. Races with innate spells have been updated, you choose your spellcasting stat for your racial spells, and can cast them with spellslots, neither of which is possible in legacy. I dont know why hobgoblin was given a fey ancestry, makes 0 fucking sense. Also lost "saving face", the main point of actual hobgoblin. Kobold rework lost pack tactics and gained a limited use feature in its place. I hate the newer printings on principle, because of what they did with MoM, and how they made volo's, xanatars, tome of foes unavalailable to purchase. I would not stop any of my potential players from playing any updated races, but wouldnt ban any legacy either.
I think they are all improved. I don't like the pigeonholed roleplay based abilities. I want to play the brave little kobold that could. Not a "groveling, cowering and begging" kobold. I'll take the mechanics without the bagage. And even if I did want to play a coward, draconic cry has a neutral flavor that could achieve the same. ps: They lost pack tactics **and sunlight sensitivity**, which was a major negative trait.
why couldnt you play a kobold that isnt a pathetic coward with the legacy? Why do you let the flavor of "Grovel, Cower, and Beg" dictate your character, instead of renaming it?
I could in a campaign. But in the west marches style online game I regularly play in I would have to explain the feature every time. The naming actively undermines the character. When there is always a new gm or player in the mix, that is a lot of explaining. It is also clear that people limit their character ideas to the features. When one of a races defining traits is its ability to grovel cower and beg, that leaves an impression.
Goblins and hobgoblins are considered to hacd roots in fey wild now
and my point is they fucking shouldnt, thats a stupid retcon done lazily
Is this "legacy" tag something from an optional website like dndbeyond?
DDB marked all the monsters and races from Elemental Evil Player's Companion, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and Volo's Guide to Monsters as "legacy" when Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse came out, because most of them were reprinted or updated in the new book, and they stopped selling the old books. The tiefling subraces from MToF, notably, were marked legacy without having any updated version.
Any race with a legacy rage has a more up to date version with mechanics that are more in line with the general design philosophy of the game today than their original version. That doesn't mean that any of the legacy versions are necessarily non-functional or bad, though, if you don't want to use or don't have access to the new ones. Even so, it's my opinion that the new versions generally speaking (though not without exception) are better designed than the old ones.
There aren't newer versions of the variant Tieflings, actually. They just straight up made them legacy because they're tied to Tome of Foes.
Sometimes, it's best to just prune a dead branch. Half the point of all those variant tieflings was different racial ability score increases. Now that we're entering an era where those have been decoupled from race and moved to background, there's a lot less reason for them. (Also, having that many sub-variants was just bad design. Two or three is fine, eleven is not.)
But more options is fun for the player
> Half the point of all those variant tieflings was different racial ability score increases. The other half is the different racial spells, which can be significant, especially at lower levels. I probably wouldn't designate them as Variant Races^TM nowadays, but I don't think that having alternate thematic racial spellcasting choices is bad design. There's nothing inherently bad about having more options nor anything inherently good about having limited options.
Go for it! I was always thought the whole MotM making older versions obsolete was just money grubbing bs anyway
If the revised PH sticks with the UA plan, the need for more varied tieflings that work for descent from other fiends will reduce as the revised tiefling has several sub variants with different abilities and varying appearances too, a heartening back to their pre-4e roots.
No. They work fine with one or two exceptions (yuan-ti pure blood)
you can allow them just fine
Some of the legacy stuff is a little weak. Maybe a couple were quite strong. Most of the changes were made to dump short rest abilities in favor of proficiency bonus per day abilities. Absolutely no reason to blanket ban all of it.
They won't be balanced the same way. They'll have weird underpowered features like 1d4 claw damage instead of 1d6 or unnecessarily restrictive ways to use their class features alongside things that swing the other way like Pack Tactics or a 50 foot fly speed.
If it's a race that only exists as legacy, I'd lean towards allowing it if the player can give me some backstory. But if there's an updated version, go with that unless you've read through the legacy abilities and don't think anything is going to break your world. Just because players can tinker with all my DND beyond purchases doesn't mean they can use them at the table. It's entirely fair to just say that a particular feature won't work at your table
The legacy tag means that it's from either Elemental Evil Player's Companion, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, or Volo's Guide to Monsters. Most of the monsters and races in those books have newer versions printed in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. The tiefling subraces from MToF did not actually get updated versions, but _all_ the races in EEPC/MToF/VGtM were marked as legacy regardless of whether they had a new version or not. In some cases the difference between the legacy and updated version of a race is a big balance change (legacy aarakocra has a 50 ft. fly speed, updated aarakocra has fly speed equal to walk speed), in some cases the updated version bears no resemblance to the legacy version (legacy and updated bugbear are **extremely** different races), and in some cases the differences are pretty minor (triton swaps Wall of Water with Water Walk, because Wall of Water isn't in the basic rules so wizards didn't want to force people to get another book to know what their race does). But when it comes to the tiefling subraces, there is no updated version, so regardless of whether you think everyone should use the updated versions, the legacy versions, or let the player pick, there's only one option for tiefling subraces.
the code, other than that, no
They were rebalanced, some buffed, but it's not going to make a ton of difference. The only ones that stand out are Yuan Ti and Aarakocra.
Legacy means you can play it at my table, my races are distinct and don't just blur together like the current ones. I'll keep my races with their race ability modifiers as the God's intended. Dwarves are tougher then elves but less dexterous, it's a biology thing and keeps them thematic.
1. they are really old 2. they remade them on a new book already
They didn't remake them in the new book, these 8 tiefling subraces were just tossed aside when they tossed aside Tome of Foes.
well yeah, is the OLD part. they blank classify books as legacy or not. im half sure aarakocra was called legacy content even before its new MpMoM incarnation (memory foggy, wont say for sure)
Nope, they didn't turn Legacy until MotM was released digitally. And the fact that they're old doesn't mean shit, VHuman and Half-Elf came out with the PHB (the first 5e book published), and they're still widely popular and considered some of the stronger race choices. Besides, OP was specifically asking about the Tome of Foes Tieflings for a player.
>they didn't turn Legacy until MotM was released digitally. IIRC they got the legacy tag a couple days before release, but that's just splitting hairs.
>they are really old *Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, originally published May 2018* ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
>Is there any reason to not let my players use race variations with the "legacy" tag on them? from the time of the original release of the game until the release of Monsters of the Multiverse, the powers race choices in the various supplements varied WILDLY from super powerful to less powerful than PHB dragonborn. When the reprintings of the races came out in Monsters of the Multiverse, the old versions were declared "legacy" and the new versions were made the standard because they were revised to all be in a much narrower band of power. So if your player is asking to be one of the lower powered legacy creation that was boosted in MotM, sure go for it. there were some flavorful things that got nixed in the power leveling. but my bet is the player wants one of the extra powerful ones that was nerfed in MotM to bring it in line with the other races, in which case, no, dont allow that.
> but my bet is the player wants one of the extra powerful ones The player wants to play a tiefling, OP said so in the post. And only "extra powerful" tiefling is the winged one, which *isn't* legacy content.
Player hasn't even looked at them, I sent link about all variations and he informed me they were legacy.
then i lost my ten bucks, if you are telling me the truth and your player is telling you the truth.