Teifling Variants

Tiefling Subraces
Tiefling Racial Core:

Ability Score Increase: +2 Charisma Size:

Medium Speed: 30 feet Vision:

Darkvision Language: Common

Tiefling Subrace: Broken Mirror Tiefling
Broken Mirror tieflings trace their lineage, through pact or blood, to the arch-devil Levistus. As a result, they do not possess the fiery might of other diabolic tieflings, but instead are harbingers of misfortune. Adversity follows these planetouched like a loyal hound, manifesting in an endless series of small accidents of bad timing and pure luck - never against the tiefling itself, but always those around them. Where a broken mirror walks, others trip or slip in the mud. Where they go to drink, others spill their drinks or receive the wrong servings. Where they sleep, others find themselves bedeviled by pests or nightmares. Only by deliberately cursing a creature with an outbreak of focused misfortune does this generalized bubble of bad luck vanish, and even then only for a time. Soon held to blame for every misfortune, legitimately or not, broken mirrors either master the arts of a nimble tongue, become recluses, or seek only the company of people forgiving or uncaring enough to ignore the occasional outburst of small misfortunes.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Dexterity

Mantle of Misfortune: As a bonus action, you can erect an aura that covers an area of 20 feet. All creatures within this aura apart from you suffer Disadvantage on their attack rolls and, on a missed attack, can be moved 5 feet in a direction of your choice. The aura lasts until the end of your next turn. This power can be used once, and then cannot be used again until you have completed a short or long rest.

Tiefling Subrace: Blightseer Tiefling
Blightseer tieflings are bound by ties of blood or oath to the arch-devil Baalzebul, with the fallen angel rewarding them for their ties with visions of ruination and decay. Unless forced aside, a tiefling's vision swims with the effects of time's passage on whatever lies before them, causing all things to rot, decay and putrefy as it watches. By tapping into their infernal heritage, a blightseer can bring this entropic vision to pass, unleashing a gaze of ruin that destroys whatever they are looking at. With a glance, an angry blightseer can sour milk, rot wood, rust iron, crack glass... or make flesh wither from bones. These tieflings are masters of petty retribution, and tend to be thinkers - people who prefer taking a single effective shot rather than swinging multiple times to produce the desired result.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom

Gaze of Ruin: As an action, you can unleash a Gaze of Ruin. When using this power, you can either target one creature you can see and impose Vulnerability to the next attack it takes before the end of your next turn, or unleash a 15ft cone of decay. All creatures in this cone must make a Constitution save. On a failed save, the creature takes Necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier + your Wisdom modifier and begins to rot. Whilst rotting, it must make a Constitution save at the start of each of its turns; on a successful save, the decay ends, whilst on a failed save, it takes Necrotic damage again. The rot continues until the creature passes its save or dies. Once you have used this power, you cannot use it again until you complete a short rest or a long rest.

Tiefling Subrace: Blood-Crowned Courtier
Ability Score Increase: +1 Strength

Kissed By Hell: You have Resistance to Fire damage.

Diabolic Transformation: As an action, you can shapeshift into the form of a rampaging fiend. For 1 minute, you have Fire Immunity, inflict bonus Fire damage with all of your weapon attacks equal to your Charisma modifier, and increase your Strength modifier by +1. Your transformation ends prematurely if you are knocked unconscious, end your turn without having attacked a hostile creature or taken damage since your last turn, or choose to spend a bonus action to do so. Once you have used this transformation, you must complete a long rest before you can transform again.

Tiefling Subrace: Faultspawn
Offspring of the asuras, a race of contemplative and resentful fiends born from catastrophic divine mistakes, the faultspawn are marked by their ancestors with reptilian physiology, excessive limbs, eyes or mouths, androgyny, and a natural instinct towards both misotheism and cruelty.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom

Asura's Gifts: A faultspawn can cast the Vicious Mockery cantrip with this trait. At third level, it can cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter as a 1st level spell with this trait once per long rest. At fifth level, it can cast Crown of Madness as a 2nd level spell with this trait once per long rest. Charisma is the spellcasting ability score for this trait.

Heir to Destruction: A faultspawn gains Proficiency with two martial weapons of its choice.

Tiefling Subrace: Spitespawn
Heirs to the malicious and envious corrupted genies known as divs, these tieflings inherit much of their ancestors' spite and drive to sow misery. Invariably sporting twisting horns like a div, their ancestry also makes itself known through weird mutations of flesh and mouth, from elongated tongues and unusually pigmented or blotchy hides to nested jaws or mobile bulges under the skin.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Dexterity

Div's Trickery: A spitespawn can cast Minor Illusion with this trait. At third level, it can cast Unseen Servant with this trait once per long rest. At fifth level, it can cast Detect Thoughts with this trait once per long rest. Charisma is the spellcasting ability score for this trait.

Liar's Tongue: A spitespawn has advantage on Charisma (Deception) checks.

Tiefling Subrace: Shackleborn
Born from the ministrations of the kytons, a breed of Shadowfell-dwelling fiends obsessed with pain, pleasure and redefining the meaning of flesh, the shackleborn are born marked by a deep fascination with physical cruelty. Mutilation and torture is in their birthright, whether they seek to embrace it with sadomasochistic hedonism or to channel it towards hopefully virtuous goals. Many shackleborn are literally born mutilated, with skin marked by permanent scars and bruises, transclucent flesh or natural piercings of bone or organic metal. Their fixation on sadomasochism invariably leaves its mark on their bodies even beyond that.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution

Pain is Pleasure is Pain: If you take damage in your turn, you can gain Advantage to one attack roll or ability saving throw of your choice made before the end of your next turn. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1), and then must take a long rest before you can use the ability again.

Love The Lash: A shackleborn has Proficiency with the Whip and the Spiked Chain.

Tiefling Subrace: Hungerseed
With their voracious appetites for physical pleasures and sensual indulgence, it should be little surprise that the thuggish oni produce many tiefling descendants. Inheriting the brute strength and the voracious drives of their ancestors, typically marked by overgrown frames, tusks, and unnaturally hued skin, hair and/or eyes, hungerseeds are never content to accept their lot and always seek more.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Strength Powerful Build: A hungerseed is treated as being one size larger for determining its carrying, pushing, pulling and dragging capacity.

Crushing Blows: When a hungerseed delivers a critical hit with a melee weapon, it increases the bonus damage it inflicts by a further base dice roll.

Surge of Might: At 5th level, a hungerseed can cast Enlarge/Reduce (Enlarge only, Self only) as a 2nd level spell. It can cast this spell with this trait only once, and must then complete a long rest before using this trait again.

Tiefling Subrace: Motherless
Invariably weirdly shaped and often reminiscent of primeval organisms such as invertebrates or sea creatures, the Motherless rarely trace their lineage to direct interbreeding with the qlippoth, and more commonly mark individuals or areas stained by the taint of the primordial horrors.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom

Primeval Fortitude: A motherless increases its Constitution modifier by +1 for determining how long it can go without food and water. Additionally, it can derive nourishment from any organic substance it can eat or drink, has Advantage on saves versus Poison and Disease, and is Resistant to Poison damage.

Eldritch Magicks: A motherless can cast the Chill Touch cantrip with this trait. At 3rd level, it can cast Arms of Hadar as a first level spell with this trait once per long rest. At 5th level, it can cast Crown of Madness as a second level spell with this trait once per long rest. Charisma is the spellcasting ability score for this trait.

Tiefling Subrace: Beastbrood
Arrogant and hedonistic as they are, it should be little surprise that rakshasas spawn a great number of tieflings. Although invariably marked with animalistic traits both subtle and overt, even the most inhuman of the beastbrood is eerily harmonious in its fusion of man and beast, creating weirdly exotic tieflings. This peculiar form of... if not beauty, then at least not-hideousness only fuels the haughtiness and hedonism that the beastbrood inherit from their fiendish progenitors.

Ability Score Increase: +1 Dexterity Bent Body: A beastbrood has Advantage on saves to avoid being Grappled and to escape from a grapple or physical restraints.

Rakshasa's Command: A beastbrood can cast the Friends cantrip with this trait. At third level, it can cast Disguise Self with this trait once per long rest. At fifth level, it can cast Detect Thoughts with this trait once per long rest. Charisma is the spellcasting ability score for this trait.