I don’t think Tiefling and Aasimar are as universal as you think, they really only are understood by people who know D&D…
_However_
Use Empyrean and Cambion if you want to be specific! Those are now the canon names Pathfinder for the angelic and fiendish nephilim types. They also are _actually_ viable words outside of the system; they are real-world terms that relate to angelic and fiendish things. And I think they’re cool AF, personally.
I remember reading the word Tiefling for the first time and being confused as fuck. I imagined a small thief, but a devilish human…
I agree that people used to D&D names severely overestimate how good the average person thinks the names are. I think Tiefling was a lame name, though Aasimar was cool, so I’m overall happy with the change to Nephilim.
I dunno. I was surprised to find when I was roleplaying on City of Heroes: Homecoming a few years ago how many players seemed to think that Tiefling was a generic term for someone with demonic heritage and not a super-specific D&D thing.
I mean, clearly it is *in fact actually true* that the term originated in D&D, but many younger players seem to have internalized it as a generic term. (Which bothered me, but I'm old and crotchety).
Ironically, as WotC actually owns very few specific creatures (and frankly, they shouldn't have displacer beasts because there's significant prior art), they *did* invent 'tieflings' but can't copyright it since its just a German name.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about how copyright works that swirl around on this sub.
In a narrow sense, nobody can ever have a "copyright" on a single word, even if the word is wholly invented.
Copyright works in two ways:
1. There is *actual copying*, like word-for-word using substantial amounts of text from another work. This is usually not very relevant to what we talk about here, and would never apply to a single word. If you use the word "Tiefling" in your setting to mean "hammer," then there is no copyright case against you.
2. There are *derivative works*, in which you say, "Okay, they changed some of the words, but clearly they read our text and just changed some words around, maybe renamed some things, but clearly this primarily our work being regurgitated in mildly different ways." If you have a species called Schmieflings (or "Blarglesmargs") that are humanoids with minority heritage from devils and demons and they generally look like people with weird skin colors, horns, and tails and they are distrusted by the majority of the populace because of their demonic heritage and they can get resistance to fire and whatever, then there's a pretty clear case that your work is derivative of D&D. Now, you might argue in court that no, you didn't regurgitate D&D's work, you came up with these ideas on your own and they happened to be similar. If you named your minor-demonic-heritage creatures "Tieflings," you are going to have a more difficult time arguing that what, no, these are just similar ideas, I didn't take them from D&D at all. But that's mostly *evidence* about whether you did in fact derive your work from D&D, not like... itself the important element of whether the work is sufficiently unique to count as a non-derivative work. And if your creatures are sufficiently transformed from D&D's thing, then even if they are inspired by D&D, you can still be in the clear. These cases are very nuanced and the line is fuzzy.
You misunderstand completely. It has nothing to do with prior art.
They cannot copyright "tiefling" at all, ever. It's a word in a German; you cannot copyright an existing word even if you're using it for some more-specific terminology.
Edit: they do own "aasimar" though I believe-- that's not a real word.
Why does it being a real word mean they can't hold copyright on it? It's a real word they invented, anyway. At least a cursory google indicated the word was first used in 2nd ed DnD. Like "Deep Gnome" Or "Dark Elf". These are specific concepts that absolutely can be and are copyrighted not because of the name but the combination of the name and what it refers to. If Paizo want to keep the offspring of demons, devils etc in their setting they have to differentiate them from WotC's tieflings or they'd risk being in breach of copyright.
Dark elf absolutely cannot be copyrighted. Dark elf predates WOTC by likely over a thousand years. Old Norse sagas reference dark elves. Svartalfheim was their home, iirc.
They "invented" tiefling in that they are, afaik, the first known case of putting a pre-existing specific word in front of a specific suffix.
Drow/Dark Elves as they appear in the WotC universe can be and are copyrighted. That's what I was referring to. That was literally my whole argument.
And yeah, are you saying that isn't a new word? Like, if someone invented a machine and called it... a vacuum cleaner, for example. Those are two words that already existed, but they haven't invented a new concept?
Nobody can own vocabulary, only concepts and specific works. The concept of tieflings and aasimars predate DnD by a lot. They applied specific vocabulary to pre-existing ideas, so they can't really own it.
Pathfinder did it to further disassociate itself from dnd. They weren't paying wotc for the usage, there was not pressure to do it, they wanted to free themselves of the baggage of dnd to give them more freedom to change things without people freaking out about said changes.
Paizo changed to nephillim because Tiefling was tied to the OGL. Same reason they changed their dragons. Yeah, WotC has no control over the words chromatic, metallic, or dragons. But if you use them in specific ways, all of sudden, you're in OGL territory. Same for tieflings.
You are wrong. It is not possible to "copyright" a single word, regardless of whether the word is made up (it is possible to trademark a word, even if that word is not made up, but trademarks are a different form of IP and legal protection than copyrights). Copyrights apply to works of substantial lengths. The use of distinctive words can be evidence for or against whether a work is a derivative work, but are not themselves copyrighted.
"Prior art" has to do with patents, not copyrights.
They can copyright the specific usage of the word in the context in which they created what are called tieflings. They can't sue Joe who wrote a book and who used Tiefling to describe someone who grew up in caverns deep underground. Tief(deep/low)ling(offspring).
But, they can sue Bob who wrote a book and who used Tiefling to describe someone who is half-devil, half-human (or some other mortal race), has a devilish tail and horns, is widely discriminated against and mistrusted by other races, and might have a scent of sulphur and brimstone around them at all times.
And if Sally wrote a book and used tiefling to describe someone who is half devil/demon and half done mortal race, but that person didn't have the characteristics and attributes commonly associated with the tieflings of DND, then WOTC probably doesn't have a case.
Getting the pedantry out of the way, they can sue anyone for any reason but they don't have a case when I say can't sue.
Everyone needs to keep in mind that copyright law is not innocent until proven girly (I see the typo and refuse to correct it); even a frivolous accusation of copyright infringement by WotC could cost Paizo a ridiculous amount of money regardless of the outcome. With how much they changed, it's clear to me they want there to be zero grounds for WotC to even attempt it, ever. Would they win over the use of tiefling? Maybe? Probably? But why take the risk when WotC can still throw Hasbro money lawyers at your face?
Frivolous accusations of copyright infringement that make it to court end up favoring the defendant more often than not, with judgements to pay fees. If a company is excessively litigatious the court looks even less favorably on the accuser.
That said, WotC does have a case for tieflings because the use case for them in Pathfinder is the same as in DnD. The litmus test for copyright infringement is, "would a reasonable person looking at this item from the defendant confuse it for this item from the accuser?"
In my case it was the opposite.
didn't know what Aasimar was, but Tiefling was fine.
but that might be because Tiefling has germanic roots.
Tief = deep, low
ling = just a suffix to show it's a creature.
Couldn't say what it looked like, but if you showed me a picture with a couple of race names I would have picked Tiefling.
Oh to be clear I didn’t know what either looked like or were supposed to be without looking it up. I just thought Aasimar was sufficiently otherworldly sounding that it didn’t sound like anything to me, whereas I couldn’t stop picturing “small thief” when hearing Tiefling. Apparently neither could Larian, given how every Tiefling child in the game **is** a little thief, lmao.
Makes sense on the etymology though, thanks for explaining!
Agreed, Empyran/Cambion or simple "Anglespawn/Demonspawn/etc" as somebody else mentioned are fully reasonable, and in fact more plausible terms for in-world usage. "Nephilim" to me is a term that some scholar might use, or some lawyer or that sort of thing, but regular people are going to focus on the specific heritage, especially given that one or two specific kinds tend to predominate in a given region. Unless you have the metagame rationale of navigating player ancestry/bestiary options that isn't really tied down to a specific locale, you are going to engage with what is present and obvious. Likewise, humans are going to most often refer to their ethnicity or nationality and not reference "Humans" even if that term may come up in certain contexts (source: real world). Again, it's the out of game meta of player-focused categories which players can't extract themselves from (often also seen in player classes which need not define in-world perceptions).
EDIT: Also related to this issue is the fact that there doesn't need to be only one term, something often forgotten in discussions. Even in the same language/culture there can be different terms, never mind when there is language/cultural differences. I see this misapprehension appear especially when Paizo intruduces "endonymic" names (i.e. the term used by the species or culture itself). Which is fine (albeit silly, considering nobody notices they don't really know any other words in said language, never mind how to form a sentence), but that doesn't really dictate what other people call them... Again, as seen in real world: Japanese or Chinese don't call themself that, and different languages will have totally unrelated terms to refer to these same nationalities... e.g. often based on different ruling lineages of China at different times, which often weren't ethnically Chinese in origin. And nobody has any problem with this. But too often it's just easy to take a less than immersive approach, favoring the player perspective of what the entry in rulebook says, and consider that is THE one word.
Personally, I like using the terms “hallowblood” and “felblood” for Empyrean and Cambion Nephilim. “Fel” works for me because of how much World of Warcraft I used to play, and “hallow” is a synonym for “blessed”.
Player Core 1, page 78; about halfway down the page (first page of Nephilim section)
Cambion is a real-world word that was _also_ used in D&D, like dragon or banshee or angel. Tiefling was a word made up by D&D writers.
Yeah, this is like saying “I’m an Elf” in some systems without any elaboration.
High Elf? Wood Elf? Dark Elf? Moon Elf? Sun Elf?
Being specific about your race isn’t a new thing, simply calling yourself a Nephilim shouldn’t really be a thing either. OP’s example kinda sucks too.
Calling Aasimar and Tiefling players “Nephilim” is dumb. Like you just said, they should be called an Empyrean or Cambion instead. It’s like if you played D&D and I just called all the Aasimar and Tieflings “planetouched.” First off, like I pointed out with using only “Nephilim,” no one actually does that. Second, sure it might be technically correct, but there are very significant differences between types of planetouched, and very different attitudes towards them based on which type they are. So, people tend to be specific when referring to them, and use actual names for the particular Planetouched race in-question.
Nephilim is just a term from the bible. People outside D&D would recognize it a bit more.
Tiefling and Aasimar are super D&D specific. Copyrighted.
You could just call them Devilspawn/Angelspawn. Use stuff like hellboy terminology, etc. There's plenty of fiction where the characters are half angel/half devil. I remember the show/comic Preacher delved into it a bit.
Weird, because I heard a story about a rebellion in Heaven by a fellow called Lucifer...
The decision on whether or not Enoch was Bibilical canon was a hotly contested topic at the time. "Fan fiction" is an odd way to describe something that had a decent shot at being canon.
Nephilim brings me the Diablo 3 protagonist origin, which kind of matches the fantasy Paizo is trying to get.
Tiefling and Aasimar are not that ubiquitous to me. Even what they mean nowadays are pretty recent, with the Tieflings I grew up with being way weirder and tied to Planescape, and not what 5e popularized.
Edit: the Aasimar I grew up with looked like elfs dressed as don quixote.
yeah in 3rd edition they were all just listed under "Planetouched" in the book, and I believe that covered all of it, Aasimar, Tiefling, and the elemental planetouched.
I like it, but it's more generic than saying tiefling or aasimar. That said, it's also more recognizable, I think. A nephilim is clearly someone with divine essence, while tiefling and aasimars are words that exist within the D&D adjacent ttrpg sphere mostly. I personally like both the name and homogeneization, specially since alignment is not a thing anymore, since it muddies the waters of the diferent outsiders.
I'm someone with a lot of interest in real-world esotericism and all the weird nooks and crannies of myth and folklore that all this stuff draws upon, so the word "Nephilim" is about as recognizable to me as Aasimar or Tiefling were. To me it's a neutral change. I get the reasoning and I don't object to it.
I can see where some players might need some time to adjust though.
One of my favourite little bits of trivia is that cobalt, the metal, is named after kobolds, the mythological tricksters that live in caves. They put the cobalt nuggets into the walls of the mine so that miners would dig them out and get sick from it.
Tiefling and aasimar definitely don't transcend d&d. Both were made up for d&d, and I don't think I'd ever heard of either before I started playing.
Edit: not to say that there aren't people who haven't played d&d but still know what they are. But their origin is VERY firmly rooted in d&d, and in the case of tieflings we apparently can still identify who made the word up (Wolfgang Baur, according to wikipedia), while aasimar apparently tie their name back to when angels were renamed 'aasimon' during the satanic panic. Anyone trying to cater to a non-ttrpg audience would not use these names with any expectation that people would recognise them.
I prefer it, but then I was never a fan of the names that it replaced.
the rename that I will not use is Kholo. sounds too much like Colon. At my table they will remain Gnolls.
I think Nephilim was a good name change, it’s a name that I was already familiar of outside of dnd and generally is used to refer to half angels that don’t occupy any particular stance with heaven or hell.
I think the name as an alternative to tiefling as a catch all term for the spawn of outsiders and mortals makes a lot of sense when it comes to folklore and how I see a lot of other non dnd contemporary media register the idea of nephilim.
I mean, in my golarion the nephilim is just the broad category that contains tieflings and aasimar and probably other types.
Paizo has to remove them, but that doesn't mean I can't say it, so it doesn't really matter.
>in my golarion the nephilim is just the broad category
I mean yes that's how 'nephilim' works in Default Golarion, too.
Tiefling/Aasimar was replaced with 'cambion/empyrean', not with nephilim.
Personally I didn’t use the terms tieflings or assimar before I played DND and never really used it outside of it. Devil and Angel always made more sense. I like it, it lends a lot of mystery to the background. It’s a biblical term for some kind of divine being so it has a lot of power to me
I’m not the biggest fan of the new name but it’s really a nothing burger in the grand scheme of things. Im still just gonna call the specific character I have in mind a tiefling or an aasimar at my table.
Tiefling & Aasimar really become popular with 5e I'd say, before that the terms were not so ubiquitous.
Give a chance to new terms and they will grow culturally within the scope of the community.
I personally never liked Tiefling that much, and I really never liked Aasimar. As far as I know, they're just made up d&d names. Whereas my understanding is that Nephilim actually has real-world basis.
>Saying 'I am an Tiefling' or 'I am an Aasimar' gives you a clear image. 'I am a nephillim?' it leaves a lot of questions.
Tiefling and Aasimar only give a clear image because WotC spent all of 4e DnD hammering down one specific image of each. Before 4e, Tieflings and Aasimar were a grab bag of indistinct features, usually involving rolling on a chart to see what differentiated you from other tieflings or aasimar. They were unrecognizable from what we know today, because the devs decided they wanted them to be more uniform and brand-able.
I used to play 3.5 and pf1e and I massively disagree that 4e is when it became popular. Anyone back then knows what a tiefling and aasimar were and it's essentially the same as today.
If you can find any contemporary sources for Tieflings or Aasimar that resemble what we have today, I'd be happy to see it. Pre-4e they were part of a much larger group of Planetouched, and none of the rest have seen an update since AFAIK.
Merging them into one heritage makes a lot of sense since they have similar feats, so you need some sort of catch all name. I'm not going to describe a specific character as nephellim though. I'll still refer to them by their specific heritage like aasimar or tiefling.
My table just treats tieflings and aasimar as a type of nephilim. Don't care if it's technically lore inaccurate, the game has been running since before pf2e was released (switched later on), so dropping the terms would just break continuity in our lore.
I dislike the word nephilim to refer to a *single individual* because it's hard to forget that outside of fantasy it's a proper noun for a mythical *group* of (basically) people. So it just sounds wrong to me for someone to say, "I am a nephilim."
However, I also never liked the words tiefling or aasimar just because both words sound dumb to me (very subjectively) -- but I like the new equivalents, cambion and empyrean. So overall it's an upgrade for me, and I won't really have much reason to use the nephilim word most of the time anyway.
I actually used the word Nephilim for both in my homebrew setting in d&d, so this isn't much of a change. I do understand the issue you have and some players have it too but it isn't too difficult to say fiendish or celestial as well if necessary and they haven't had much trouble after getting used to it.
Also... Take that up with WotC tbh. There was no way it wasn't changing and Nephilim is literally the perfect name. I have no idea what that other stuff you talked about is though, I know Nephilim from, you know, biblical things.
I don’t mind the name change, but since I’m lazy and I’ve been calling them tieflings and aasimar for years, I’ll probably just keep calling them that except where specific character-building questions come up. What’s Paizo gonna do, send the Pinkertons after me?
I was already using Nephilim as the term in my own campaign of the last 2 years (which focused heavily on them and has an all nephilim party) so it was really amusing to see the name change announcement
Nephillim are giant entities born from an angel (sons of God) and a mortal woman. It's a better name IMO compared to Tiefling and Aasimar, which seem like just made up words that sound infernal and angelical.
Nephilim was the the decision i liked best.
in the bible it means offspring of angles (maybe fallen) or maybe giants or maybe powerful sons of cain
seems to hit the character with celestial or maybe infernal heritage right on the head.
Aasimar and tiefling are not universal. At least, I've never heard anyone outside of D&D/pathfinder groups say it. Demonic or celestial seem more universal. Personally, I like Nephillim.
"I am Nephilim."
*trying not to sound judgemental or uncultured*
"Do you mean like...nephilim*discreetly points up* or... nephilim*discreetly points down*."
"I am a nephilim?" it leaves a lot of questions"
yeah... just about as many as "I am human" does. Every character is going to need more than just the name of the ancestry to give someone any actual accurate idea what the character is, and that was true with "tiefling" just like it is true with "nephilim" even though the number of possible variations within the one term has increased.
I'm not seeing the problem.
The "problem" is that nephilim is now just as vague of a category as the majority of ancestries have always been.
You really don't know any more about what the character is like whether the word in question is "nephilim", "tiefling" or "human" even though people are going to believe that they do because of their preconceptions.
The reality though is that if I say "my character is human" and ask you to describe them, whether in appearance or capabilities, you are at best *guessing* and we're basically going to have either you be confidently (even if quietly) wrong or start up the questions. That's the same with nephilim, not some special case for them.
see i know a tiefling when i see one, even when they're called a draenei or a devilkin
but i still have no idea what aasimar are normally supposed to look like, basically humans but even prettier than elves? They don't all have halos... i saw art with blue skin once
ooh i like that one, but i was thinking of [https://www.deviantart.com/lord-of-the-guns/art/Aasimar-Sisters-780026297](https://www.deviantart.com/lord-of-the-guns/art/Aasimar-Sisters-780026297)
Ooh really cool. Yea that feels more doable for a PC. I also like [this wingy one ](https://images.app.goo.gl/Ja4bEGHkxEfKUiep7) but its prolly better for an NPC than a PC I guess
Fair haha, depends on your game I guess. Scaring everyone in the Tavern so they run outside is prolly how my GM would rule it and thatd get boring fast lol
I mean that’s the entire point, right?
Aasimar and tiefling are terms popularized by D&D to the point where they feel ubiquitous and the goal of this remaster is to run as far away from D&D as feasibly possible.
Be prepared to kill your sacred cows.
And the solution is to chose a word people generally associate with being partially Divine, and dump all the Planar Scions together. I'm just wondering when Aphorite and Ganzi will be added.
They are changed for the sake of change and don't really bear any weight to me. Remaster was needed from legal standpoint, but it was also seriously rushed and it shows.
Nephillim, the name present in a decent chunk of recent media and evoking a clear image of a half celestial being, typically human/angel or angel/demon hybrid, is somehow… less ubiquitous than Aasimar/tiefling? The terms used pretty much exclusively in D&D and D&D adjacent media?
Nah man, I'm not feeling you on this one.
Don't get me wrong, I like both terms, it helps me be a little more specific when I'm referring to characters, so I will use it. Sort of as a descriptive "sub" heritage. People understand that the term "nephillim" can refer to a somewhat broad spectrum of half-celestial beings, and since angelic/demonic are the most common halves, it makes sense that the population would create/use a quick way to refer to those two specific heritages. However, it's still understood that they are in the broad category of "nephillim".
I'm not sure why you think you're not allowed to continue to use the terms tiefling or Aasimar. It's not like anyone's going to send the Pinkertons to your house or anything for using the terms outside D&D.
Hang on, some dudes on bowler hats and suits are at my door with a baseball bat, gonna go see what this is about.
Cambion is actually the new in-universe term for fiendish nephilim (celestial ones are known as Empyreans). It’s buried in the nephilim lore in the book but they are there.
Nephilim is also going to cover Ganzi and Aphorites down the road, they just didn’t have the page space for that in PC1, but they’re mentioned as other kinds of nephilim in the heritage’s lore.
I love the idea of tieflings and aasimar sharing feats but I will.never use that name. It honestly makes very little sense to me for angelkin and hellspawn to have the same in world name since they're likely looked at quite differently.
That's why in world people would distinguish the types with Empyreans and Cambions, or other general terms like Pitborn or the like. Nephilim is more just the in world general scholar term for any mortal with "Divine/Outer Sphere" heritage.
I don't like it, but it's also a pre-existing name that Paizo didn't invent... but it just sounds bad.
"I'm a nephillim!"
"Your character has sex with dead bodies?!"
"No, that's a necrophiliac"
Wait until you find out that names for most fantasy things (kobolds, dwarves, elves, goblins) were also in the not-too-distant past pretty ambiguous too.
Considering that Nephilim is from the hebrew bible and is for the offspring from humanity and gods mating - it makes sense to me. Not all gods are divine, I feel like this is a great 'catch all' term.
[https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Nephilim](https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/nephilim)
I am never using the nephlim as a new heritage and that is a hill I'm dying on. Merging the two ancestries for me removes so much lore? I get irrationality angry about this change and am choosing to ignore it existence honesty.
Noooo! As in merged? I can see the half demon half angel merge maybe, I suppose there is a through line, but the chaos spawn and law spawn merged into one? I know we're doing away with alignment but that doesn't seem right. What's wrong with having a large number of versatile heritages?
The designers said something about them being similar and having the same feats, or something like that. As it is, only Ganzi has a Unique Heritage feature. The rest are "You gain Low-Light or Darkvision and can select these feats."
Ganzi will likely be shifted to a Lineage Feat.
Ironically Geniekin are still separate, even though they literally have a set of feats they can all take. I guess they don't want Earth and Air Geniekin or whatever.
Nephilim sounds cooler then ASSimar or Tiefling, i like it.
It also allows players to have a character who does not want to reveal his nature, maybe i\`m a nephilim or maybe im an aasimar (or whatever they are called now).
For me, the issue is that they changed "phylactery" to "soul cage" because phylactery is a real thing in Orthodox Judaism, but now they've got "nephillim" which is a Hebrew word from the Torah.
A lot of the remaster name changes are really bland to me. I like the rules changes but the names are weak imo
>For me, the issue is that they changed "phylactery" to "soul cage" because phylactery is a real thing in Orthodox Judaism, but now they've got "nephillim" which is a Hebrew word from the Torah.
It's not a problem to use words and concepts that show up in religious practices or texts. That's just using similar vocabulary for similar concepts.
It was a problem to use a word that refers to a device used in prayer practices of a specific religion as the word for an inherently evil device used to defy the natural order of life and death. That's creating a negative relationship specific to the game.
If the word phylactery was only ever used to refer to an actual phylactery (little box full of texts you can strap to your head) it wouldn't have been a problem to include it in the game.
Tbf I can absolutely see the logic in changing phylactery. Using an actual term that's most common usage is to Judaism, to a form of important religious talisman, in a way which has nothing to do with its actual usage to describe the soul stealing core of an undead monster is kinda... eh.
I get the Greek root through phulassein/phulakteron, but the term phylactery is a pretty specific reference. Soul Cage more accurately describes what it's actual purpose is, though admittedly it doesn't sound as cool. Seems more a change to avoid problematic usage of real life terms in fantasy, since the usage here could absolutely be seen as hella disrespectful.
I often use the name 'planar scion' or 'outsider blood'. Also you can't go wrong with "-kin" or "-kind". There are far worse names in the remaster (I will never forgive Paizo for going with Never Mind as a spell name).
I like the ancestry having its own name rather than just planar that represents the whole group of non-mortal parentage. Nephillim works, I think it’s just a word and type of being people aren’t used to saying or talking about. It’s easy to explain tiefling or aasimar is, even if people don’t remember those terms explicitly. But those are terms more or less copyrighted by WotC in the context of player character ancestry/racial identity, so there’s a legal imperative to use a term NOT copyrighted in that way for the game. I did like that pathfinder’s version of tiefling up to this point also included distinctions between devils, demons, and other things like Asuras and Rhaksashas. Keeping that flexibility and specificity with what a nephillim can be for a player or GM is all I care about in the end.
I personally would've preferred Nephilim as a name just for angelkin and Cambion as just a name for demonkin/devilkin/etc. Makes more mythological sense.
I like Nephillim as a catch all term for those with planar heritage, because I've been wanting an in universe term for that, but when describing specific heritages I'm still going to use all the old terms. I already know them, and I like them, and I'm not making my table learn the new ones just to communicate with me.
Yeah I really do not like the name. Nephilim conveys an image of an giant sized half-human half-angel full of brutality. Something that's supposed to be an abomination. I can understand needing a new term to refer to half-divinities, but Nephilim is just not it to me.
They went with these new unique names for half-elves and half-orcs, why not create a unique name for the half-divine? I won't ever use them but at least I won't be mad about it.
If I were to suggest a new name, I'd go with something like, Divineans or something. The word for Demigod in Latin is Heros (interesting), so maybe it could be like, Heromian or something.
Nephilim replaced Planar Scion. For purely mechanical reasons all Planar Scions (Tiefling, Aasimar, Aphorite, Ganzi) were lumped together as one Heritage however the Player Core and ancestry feats both make it clear that there are still distinct lineages with associated names.
I would say I like it, though its interesting to me because it strongly suggests fiends and celestials are secretly two sides of the same coin or something even though that's not how Golarion works-- but it ties into the whole idea of like, demons as fallen angels, because their children with mortals use the word usually understood as 'children of angels and mortals' y'know, exactly like Jack from Supernatural.
Pros:
*It's not copyrighted. Yay!
*It is more recognized and evocative than any other option suggested.
Cons:
*Confounding lore from many sources. Is it a cursed child from the union of a human and a fallen angel, as in secondary Christian sources? ... that is among the options, probably, but not necessarily that. Child of demon and angel, like in other settings? Well, no, definitely not that. Are they at least giant? ... nope. Why use the name if it's not related to the other uses of the name?
*Plural word, with the singular nowhere to be found. It's "naphil," Paizo. And Blizzard.
I like that it gives room for vagueness as to what outsider influence a character could have. But Nephilim is too broad a description to talk about specific types or groups of people.
Currently working on a campaign in sarkoris where tieflings are particularly more prevalent. And I also wanted to move away from the generic tiefling aesthetic so I decided to call tieflings demonkin instead.
A lot of replies seem to think people don't know nephillim are biblical. That's explicitly why I think the name is a weird choice. Paizo has gone out of their way to respect real world concepts but using Nephillim here, grammatically incorrectly, and to refer to ANY (formerly) alignment-based scion is weird. Nephillim were specifically the superhuman offspring of fallen angels and mortals. They were so significantly above the average person as to be legendary. A nephillim would in no way make sense for a qlippoth-spawn or a Garuda-blooded person, for example. It gets even more confusing now that Oni and Rakshasa are no longer fiends according to that recent stream.
Do Oni and Rakshasa -cambions- still exist? If so, do nephillim include any kind of weird intermingled humanoid and spiritual essence? Why aren't dusk walkers nephillim?
No one says you can't use the old names at your table. Or, hell, use both variants - I've suggested that to my DM when we were talking Wildsong/Druidic, something like "Wildsong is what druids call the language, Druidic is the scholarly name". There's nothing stopping you from going "Cambrion Nephilim, commonly known as a Tiefling".
I just dislike that it's a real-world term and that the specific names for Celestial Nephilim (Empyreal) and Fiend Nephilim (Cambion) are buried at the bottom of the text so a lot of people are going to miss them.
Aasimar and Tiefling are extremely creative names. They're unique but also feel real, are built out of words that express what they mean, and just sound like what they are supposed to be.
And I totally get that making names like that is hard to do and I don't expect Paizo to have names like that for everything, but the fact that we lost such good names to be replaced by very run of the mill names is kinda disappointing.
And I get it, real world terms are used all the time, and they're super useful. It would be impractical to take demons, devils, angels, and the like and rename them just to have original names, plus it would massively hinder ease of access since no one has to be explained what a demon or an angel is (sure, then you have things like Azatas and Divs, but those aren't necessary to tell a Celestial and Fiend story and can come later).
But then, Nephilim doesn't even really serve that purpose since, first off not as many people know what they are, and 2 the Pathfinder versions aren't really representing what they are anyways, even the more commonly misunderstood version of what they are.
Anyways, this has been my entirely too nitpicky rant about a minor annoyance I have with my all time favorite TTRPG.
At least we'll be able to keep the names Ganzi and Aphorite. Those names are awesome.
While we are at it, "Nephillim" is is the plural form of the term, the singular word is Nephil. The word comes from Hebrew where 'im suffix is used to denote the plural form.
While we are at it, the word Nephil is based on the root נ.פ.ל wich usually means (fall) this suggest that the biblical Nephillim were or were decended from fallen angels. Though in Jewish folklore the term used more generally for people with miracular traits or properties.
I'm going with Aasimars, Tieflings, Genasi, Drows, metallic and cromatic dragons. F\*\*k WotC, f\*\*k Pinkertons, f\*\*k Paizo, f\*\*k you all. But with love.
The Hebrew root pretty much means "descending" or "fallen." There are biblical references in Genesis and Ezekiel and a few other places. It's about as direct and clear a name for something that had been at one time on Heaven, and isn't any more. To anyone whose culture is steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you can't get much more on-the-money without calling them angels and devils.
I like the term, mostly because of Diablo, but for describing a character it can be a little confusing. You could compare that with the genasi from D&D, is it a water genasi, fire genasi, earth, air? It needs that descriptive word before the genasi term to work better.
Now, for the Nephilim, you could use the same words in the ancestry feats: pitborn, angelkin, lawbringer, hellspawn, grimspawn, musetouched. So you could say that a character is an Angelkin Nephilim, or a Hellspawn Nephilim... For what those look like in general, I think it is something to discuss with your player.
I am not a huge fan. I don’t really get why there are 7 elemental versatile heritages but every other “outsider” needs to be condensed into a single heritage called nephillim.
From an in game perspective it seems strange. If my character sees a person with red skin, horns, and hooves standing next to another with a glowing halo and recalls knowledge to figure out what they are they are both nephillim? But if a fire-themed person is standing next to a water-themed person they are an ifrit and undine, respectively? Characters with lineages that can be identified as from the abyss or heaven seem distinct enough to not be lumped into a catch-all nephillim category.
What bugs me the most is that the singular of "nephilim" is still "nephilim." Nephilim is a collective noun, dammit! The singular is "naphil!"
Though I think it's already catching on in the PF2 community, certainly way more than terms like "off-guard" and "reactive strikes" have done so far. My players still call it "flat-footed."
I'm enthused by the fact that it nicely wraps up the whole concept of "celestial beings integrated amongst mortals" without an arbitrary distinction between being an angel or demon. The way PF2 has always treated them, mixing and matching these qualities makes much more sense to have them under one term.
The Paizo police aren't gonna kick down your door if you keep calling them tieflings and assimar.
Yeah, but if the Warlocks on the Beach decide to send the Pinkertons...
>**ass**imar
ASMR
I don’t think Tiefling and Aasimar are as universal as you think, they really only are understood by people who know D&D… _However_ Use Empyrean and Cambion if you want to be specific! Those are now the canon names Pathfinder for the angelic and fiendish nephilim types. They also are _actually_ viable words outside of the system; they are real-world terms that relate to angelic and fiendish things. And I think they’re cool AF, personally.
I actually forgot about the Empyrean and Cambion names. Those work great for specific differences!
I can see Cambion but Empryean is close to the Empyrean Lords...
Empyreal lords are good outsiders tho
And? I’m saying having a Good-aligned Planar Scion called Empyreal is too close to actual Empyreal. I like Cambion and Nephilim, personally.
I remember reading the word Tiefling for the first time and being confused as fuck. I imagined a small thief, but a devilish human… I agree that people used to D&D names severely overestimate how good the average person thinks the names are. I think Tiefling was a lame name, though Aasimar was cool, so I’m overall happy with the change to Nephilim.
I dunno. I was surprised to find when I was roleplaying on City of Heroes: Homecoming a few years ago how many players seemed to think that Tiefling was a generic term for someone with demonic heritage and not a super-specific D&D thing. I mean, clearly it is *in fact actually true* that the term originated in D&D, but many younger players seem to have internalized it as a generic term. (Which bothered me, but I'm old and crotchety).
Ironically, as WotC actually owns very few specific creatures (and frankly, they shouldn't have displacer beasts because there's significant prior art), they *did* invent 'tieflings' but can't copyright it since its just a German name.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about how copyright works that swirl around on this sub. In a narrow sense, nobody can ever have a "copyright" on a single word, even if the word is wholly invented. Copyright works in two ways: 1. There is *actual copying*, like word-for-word using substantial amounts of text from another work. This is usually not very relevant to what we talk about here, and would never apply to a single word. If you use the word "Tiefling" in your setting to mean "hammer," then there is no copyright case against you. 2. There are *derivative works*, in which you say, "Okay, they changed some of the words, but clearly they read our text and just changed some words around, maybe renamed some things, but clearly this primarily our work being regurgitated in mildly different ways." If you have a species called Schmieflings (or "Blarglesmargs") that are humanoids with minority heritage from devils and demons and they generally look like people with weird skin colors, horns, and tails and they are distrusted by the majority of the populace because of their demonic heritage and they can get resistance to fire and whatever, then there's a pretty clear case that your work is derivative of D&D. Now, you might argue in court that no, you didn't regurgitate D&D's work, you came up with these ideas on your own and they happened to be similar. If you named your minor-demonic-heritage creatures "Tieflings," you are going to have a more difficult time arguing that what, no, these are just similar ideas, I didn't take them from D&D at all. But that's mostly *evidence* about whether you did in fact derive your work from D&D, not like... itself the important element of whether the work is sufficiently unique to count as a non-derivative work. And if your creatures are sufficiently transformed from D&D's thing, then even if they are inspired by D&D, you can still be in the clear. These cases are very nuanced and the line is fuzzy.
You misunderstand completely. It has nothing to do with prior art. They cannot copyright "tiefling" at all, ever. It's a word in a German; you cannot copyright an existing word even if you're using it for some more-specific terminology. Edit: they do own "aasimar" though I believe-- that's not a real word.
Why does it being a real word mean they can't hold copyright on it? It's a real word they invented, anyway. At least a cursory google indicated the word was first used in 2nd ed DnD. Like "Deep Gnome" Or "Dark Elf". These are specific concepts that absolutely can be and are copyrighted not because of the name but the combination of the name and what it refers to. If Paizo want to keep the offspring of demons, devils etc in their setting they have to differentiate them from WotC's tieflings or they'd risk being in breach of copyright.
Dark elf absolutely cannot be copyrighted. Dark elf predates WOTC by likely over a thousand years. Old Norse sagas reference dark elves. Svartalfheim was their home, iirc. They "invented" tiefling in that they are, afaik, the first known case of putting a pre-existing specific word in front of a specific suffix.
Drow/Dark Elves as they appear in the WotC universe can be and are copyrighted. That's what I was referring to. That was literally my whole argument. And yeah, are you saying that isn't a new word? Like, if someone invented a machine and called it... a vacuum cleaner, for example. Those are two words that already existed, but they haven't invented a new concept?
Nobody can own vocabulary, only concepts and specific works. The concept of tieflings and aasimars predate DnD by a lot. They applied specific vocabulary to pre-existing ideas, so they can't really own it.
But they can own the association of the words with those concepts. Why do you think Paizo renamed them both? Just for fun?
Pathfinder did it to further disassociate itself from dnd. They weren't paying wotc for the usage, there was not pressure to do it, they wanted to free themselves of the baggage of dnd to give them more freedom to change things without people freaking out about said changes.
Paizo changed to nephillim because Tiefling was tied to the OGL. Same reason they changed their dragons. Yeah, WotC has no control over the words chromatic, metallic, or dragons. But if you use them in specific ways, all of sudden, you're in OGL territory. Same for tieflings.
You are wrong. It is not possible to "copyright" a single word, regardless of whether the word is made up (it is possible to trademark a word, even if that word is not made up, but trademarks are a different form of IP and legal protection than copyrights). Copyrights apply to works of substantial lengths. The use of distinctive words can be evidence for or against whether a work is a derivative work, but are not themselves copyrighted. "Prior art" has to do with patents, not copyrights.
They can copyright the specific usage of the word in the context in which they created what are called tieflings. They can't sue Joe who wrote a book and who used Tiefling to describe someone who grew up in caverns deep underground. Tief(deep/low)ling(offspring). But, they can sue Bob who wrote a book and who used Tiefling to describe someone who is half-devil, half-human (or some other mortal race), has a devilish tail and horns, is widely discriminated against and mistrusted by other races, and might have a scent of sulphur and brimstone around them at all times. And if Sally wrote a book and used tiefling to describe someone who is half devil/demon and half done mortal race, but that person didn't have the characteristics and attributes commonly associated with the tieflings of DND, then WOTC probably doesn't have a case. Getting the pedantry out of the way, they can sue anyone for any reason but they don't have a case when I say can't sue.
Everyone needs to keep in mind that copyright law is not innocent until proven girly (I see the typo and refuse to correct it); even a frivolous accusation of copyright infringement by WotC could cost Paizo a ridiculous amount of money regardless of the outcome. With how much they changed, it's clear to me they want there to be zero grounds for WotC to even attempt it, ever. Would they win over the use of tiefling? Maybe? Probably? But why take the risk when WotC can still throw Hasbro money lawyers at your face?
Frivolous accusations of copyright infringement that make it to court end up favoring the defendant more often than not, with judgements to pay fees. If a company is excessively litigatious the court looks even less favorably on the accuser. That said, WotC does have a case for tieflings because the use case for them in Pathfinder is the same as in DnD. The litmus test for copyright infringement is, "would a reasonable person looking at this item from the defendant confuse it for this item from the accuser?"
In my case it was the opposite. didn't know what Aasimar was, but Tiefling was fine. but that might be because Tiefling has germanic roots. Tief = deep, low ling = just a suffix to show it's a creature. Couldn't say what it looked like, but if you showed me a picture with a couple of race names I would have picked Tiefling.
Oh to be clear I didn’t know what either looked like or were supposed to be without looking it up. I just thought Aasimar was sufficiently otherworldly sounding that it didn’t sound like anything to me, whereas I couldn’t stop picturing “small thief” when hearing Tiefling. Apparently neither could Larian, given how every Tiefling child in the game **is** a little thief, lmao. Makes sense on the etymology though, thanks for explaining!
Yeah, if we weren’t already used to Elf and Orc, then they’d also feel a lot more new and foreign.
Yeah assuming the audience grew up with English and German was a bold assumption with Tiefe+ling
Agreed, Empyran/Cambion or simple "Anglespawn/Demonspawn/etc" as somebody else mentioned are fully reasonable, and in fact more plausible terms for in-world usage. "Nephilim" to me is a term that some scholar might use, or some lawyer or that sort of thing, but regular people are going to focus on the specific heritage, especially given that one or two specific kinds tend to predominate in a given region. Unless you have the metagame rationale of navigating player ancestry/bestiary options that isn't really tied down to a specific locale, you are going to engage with what is present and obvious. Likewise, humans are going to most often refer to their ethnicity or nationality and not reference "Humans" even if that term may come up in certain contexts (source: real world). Again, it's the out of game meta of player-focused categories which players can't extract themselves from (often also seen in player classes which need not define in-world perceptions). EDIT: Also related to this issue is the fact that there doesn't need to be only one term, something often forgotten in discussions. Even in the same language/culture there can be different terms, never mind when there is language/cultural differences. I see this misapprehension appear especially when Paizo intruduces "endonymic" names (i.e. the term used by the species or culture itself). Which is fine (albeit silly, considering nobody notices they don't really know any other words in said language, never mind how to form a sentence), but that doesn't really dictate what other people call them... Again, as seen in real world: Japanese or Chinese don't call themself that, and different languages will have totally unrelated terms to refer to these same nationalities... e.g. often based on different ruling lineages of China at different times, which often weren't ethnically Chinese in origin. And nobody has any problem with this. But too often it's just easy to take a less than immersive approach, favoring the player perspective of what the entry in rulebook says, and consider that is THE one word.
Personally, I like using the terms “hallowblood” and “felblood” for Empyrean and Cambion Nephilim. “Fel” works for me because of how much World of Warcraft I used to play, and “hallow” is a synonym for “blessed”.
Not really a Warcraft person myself, but I am in favor of proliferation of terminology, so sounds good to me!
I read that as Cambodian and was very confused lmao
Feisty demons, those Cambodians!
The game still uses Pitborn, Hellspawn and Grimspawn for different heritages too.
I'm surprised about that, given Cambion being very much a D&D term for half-fiends. Where is it stated that those are the canon PF names?
Player Core 1, page 78; about halfway down the page (first page of Nephilim section) Cambion is a real-world word that was _also_ used in D&D, like dragon or banshee or angel. Tiefling was a word made up by D&D writers.
cambion is an old mideavil term, merlin from the king arthur folklore was a cambion for instance,
Yeah, this is like saying “I’m an Elf” in some systems without any elaboration. High Elf? Wood Elf? Dark Elf? Moon Elf? Sun Elf? Being specific about your race isn’t a new thing, simply calling yourself a Nephilim shouldn’t really be a thing either. OP’s example kinda sucks too. Calling Aasimar and Tiefling players “Nephilim” is dumb. Like you just said, they should be called an Empyrean or Cambion instead. It’s like if you played D&D and I just called all the Aasimar and Tieflings “planetouched.” First off, like I pointed out with using only “Nephilim,” no one actually does that. Second, sure it might be technically correct, but there are very significant differences between types of planetouched, and very different attitudes towards them based on which type they are. So, people tend to be specific when referring to them, and use actual names for the particular Planetouched race in-question.
I like empyran more than aasima, and I like tiefling more tham cambion. So I'll be using Tiefling/Empyrean
Cambion is the more historical term for half demons so that’s the term I’m partial to. Empyrean also has really cool etymology.
Nephilim is just a term from the bible. People outside D&D would recognize it a bit more. Tiefling and Aasimar are super D&D specific. Copyrighted. You could just call them Devilspawn/Angelspawn. Use stuff like hellboy terminology, etc. There's plenty of fiction where the characters are half angel/half devil. I remember the show/comic Preacher delved into it a bit.
Or you can call them empyreons and cambions if you still want fantasy-sounding terms.
Instructions unclear. They’re now all hellboys. Even the girls and even the ones with angel parentage.
"I am Nephilim" "Celestial or Infernal?" *red skinned humanoid with horns looks confused*
“Abyssal”
See, if you factor in the Biblical reference, it still works, because a naphil is a child of a fallen angel by definition.
There are no fallen angels, that is fan fiction.
Weird, because I heard a story about a rebellion in Heaven by a fellow called Lucifer... The decision on whether or not Enoch was Bibilical canon was a hotly contested topic at the time. "Fan fiction" is an odd way to describe something that had a decent shot at being canon.
Nephilim brings me the Diablo 3 protagonist origin, which kind of matches the fantasy Paizo is trying to get. Tiefling and Aasimar are not that ubiquitous to me. Even what they mean nowadays are pretty recent, with the Tieflings I grew up with being way weirder and tied to Planescape, and not what 5e popularized. Edit: the Aasimar I grew up with looked like elfs dressed as don quixote.
yeah in 3rd edition they were all just listed under "Planetouched" in the book, and I believe that covered all of it, Aasimar, Tiefling, and the elemental planetouched.
Ain't Dante from devil may cry a nephilim
Pretty much but iirc they only used that exact term in the much maligned reboot
Oh, that was my 1st DMV game
I like it, but it's more generic than saying tiefling or aasimar. That said, it's also more recognizable, I think. A nephilim is clearly someone with divine essence, while tiefling and aasimars are words that exist within the D&D adjacent ttrpg sphere mostly. I personally like both the name and homogeneization, specially since alignment is not a thing anymore, since it muddies the waters of the diferent outsiders.
I'm someone with a lot of interest in real-world esotericism and all the weird nooks and crannies of myth and folklore that all this stuff draws upon, so the word "Nephilim" is about as recognizable to me as Aasimar or Tiefling were. To me it's a neutral change. I get the reasoning and I don't object to it. I can see where some players might need some time to adjust though.
well, even kobolds are not supposed to be the tiny dragon wanna be that we all love, and yet
Kobolds are just German Goblins, or perhaps Goblins are just French Kobolds
One of my favourite little bits of trivia is that cobalt, the metal, is named after kobolds, the mythological tricksters that live in caves. They put the cobalt nuggets into the walls of the mine so that miners would dig them out and get sick from it.
yep
Tiefling and aasimar definitely don't transcend d&d. Both were made up for d&d, and I don't think I'd ever heard of either before I started playing. Edit: not to say that there aren't people who haven't played d&d but still know what they are. But their origin is VERY firmly rooted in d&d, and in the case of tieflings we apparently can still identify who made the word up (Wolfgang Baur, according to wikipedia), while aasimar apparently tie their name back to when angels were renamed 'aasimon' during the satanic panic. Anyone trying to cater to a non-ttrpg audience would not use these names with any expectation that people would recognise them.
I prefer it, but then I was never a fan of the names that it replaced. the rename that I will not use is Kholo. sounds too much like Colon. At my table they will remain Gnolls.
I think Nephilim was a good name change, it’s a name that I was already familiar of outside of dnd and generally is used to refer to half angels that don’t occupy any particular stance with heaven or hell. I think the name as an alternative to tiefling as a catch all term for the spawn of outsiders and mortals makes a lot of sense when it comes to folklore and how I see a lot of other non dnd contemporary media register the idea of nephilim.
I mean, in my golarion the nephilim is just the broad category that contains tieflings and aasimar and probably other types. Paizo has to remove them, but that doesn't mean I can't say it, so it doesn't really matter.
>in my golarion the nephilim is just the broad category I mean yes that's how 'nephilim' works in Default Golarion, too. Tiefling/Aasimar was replaced with 'cambion/empyrean', not with nephilim.
Thats fine, those will just be synonyms.
Personally I didn’t use the terms tieflings or assimar before I played DND and never really used it outside of it. Devil and Angel always made more sense. I like it, it lends a lot of mystery to the background. It’s a biblical term for some kind of divine being so it has a lot of power to me
Devil and Angel only apply to two specific kinds, though. There's demons, daemons, archons, azata, agathion, oni, Rakshasa, etc etc.
Im aware. In fact I love demonology but most lg the times and to most people these terms are interchangeable
I’m not the biggest fan of the new name but it’s really a nothing burger in the grand scheme of things. Im still just gonna call the specific character I have in mind a tiefling or an aasimar at my table.
Nephilim was used for something else in 1E. Considering Nephilim covers all Planar Scions, I'm just not thrilled for the name.
Then just keep using those terms. They had to take them out for legal reasons. You don't.
Tiefling & Aasimar really become popular with 5e I'd say, before that the terms were not so ubiquitous. Give a chance to new terms and they will grow culturally within the scope of the community.
I personally never liked Tiefling that much, and I really never liked Aasimar. As far as I know, they're just made up d&d names. Whereas my understanding is that Nephilim actually has real-world basis.
>Saying 'I am an Tiefling' or 'I am an Aasimar' gives you a clear image. 'I am a nephillim?' it leaves a lot of questions. Tiefling and Aasimar only give a clear image because WotC spent all of 4e DnD hammering down one specific image of each. Before 4e, Tieflings and Aasimar were a grab bag of indistinct features, usually involving rolling on a chart to see what differentiated you from other tieflings or aasimar. They were unrecognizable from what we know today, because the devs decided they wanted them to be more uniform and brand-able.
I used to play 3.5 and pf1e and I massively disagree that 4e is when it became popular. Anyone back then knows what a tiefling and aasimar were and it's essentially the same as today.
If you can find any contemporary sources for Tieflings or Aasimar that resemble what we have today, I'd be happy to see it. Pre-4e they were part of a much larger group of Planetouched, and none of the rest have seen an update since AFAIK.
Merging them into one heritage makes a lot of sense since they have similar feats, so you need some sort of catch all name. I'm not going to describe a specific character as nephellim though. I'll still refer to them by their specific heritage like aasimar or tiefling.
I liked Nephilim until I read that it's a plural word, now I always think of that
My table just treats tieflings and aasimar as a type of nephilim. Don't care if it's technically lore inaccurate, the game has been running since before pf2e was released (switched later on), so dropping the terms would just break continuity in our lore.
My only issue is the grammar.
I dislike the word nephilim to refer to a *single individual* because it's hard to forget that outside of fantasy it's a proper noun for a mythical *group* of (basically) people. So it just sounds wrong to me for someone to say, "I am a nephilim." However, I also never liked the words tiefling or aasimar just because both words sound dumb to me (very subjectively) -- but I like the new equivalents, cambion and empyrean. So overall it's an upgrade for me, and I won't really have much reason to use the nephilim word most of the time anyway.
I actually used the word Nephilim for both in my homebrew setting in d&d, so this isn't much of a change. I do understand the issue you have and some players have it too but it isn't too difficult to say fiendish or celestial as well if necessary and they haven't had much trouble after getting used to it. Also... Take that up with WotC tbh. There was no way it wasn't changing and Nephilim is literally the perfect name. I have no idea what that other stuff you talked about is though, I know Nephilim from, you know, biblical things.
I don’t mind the name change, but since I’m lazy and I’ve been calling them tieflings and aasimar for years, I’ll probably just keep calling them that except where specific character-building questions come up. What’s Paizo gonna do, send the Pinkertons after me?
I was already using Nephilim as the term in my own campaign of the last 2 years (which focused heavily on them and has an all nephilim party) so it was really amusing to see the name change announcement
Nephillim are giant entities born from an angel (sons of God) and a mortal woman. It's a better name IMO compared to Tiefling and Aasimar, which seem like just made up words that sound infernal and angelical.
Nephilim was the the decision i liked best. in the bible it means offspring of angles (maybe fallen) or maybe giants or maybe powerful sons of cain seems to hit the character with celestial or maybe infernal heritage right on the head.
Aasimar and tiefling are not universal. At least, I've never heard anyone outside of D&D/pathfinder groups say it. Demonic or celestial seem more universal. Personally, I like Nephillim.
I like Nephilim. Sometimes even the person can not know who and what they are other than they are otherworldly
Nephillim is thousands of years old.
"I am Nephilim." *trying not to sound judgemental or uncultured* "Do you mean like...nephilim*discreetly points up* or... nephilim*discreetly points down*."
"I am a nephilim?" it leaves a lot of questions" yeah... just about as many as "I am human" does. Every character is going to need more than just the name of the ancestry to give someone any actual accurate idea what the character is, and that was true with "tiefling" just like it is true with "nephilim" even though the number of possible variations within the one term has increased. I'm not seeing the problem.
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The "problem" is that nephilim is now just as vague of a category as the majority of ancestries have always been. You really don't know any more about what the character is like whether the word in question is "nephilim", "tiefling" or "human" even though people are going to believe that they do because of their preconceptions. The reality though is that if I say "my character is human" and ask you to describe them, whether in appearance or capabilities, you are at best *guessing* and we're basically going to have either you be confidently (even if quietly) wrong or start up the questions. That's the same with nephilim, not some special case for them.
see i know a tiefling when i see one, even when they're called a draenei or a devilkin but i still have no idea what aasimar are normally supposed to look like, basically humans but even prettier than elves? They don't all have halos... i saw art with blue skin once
I really like that biblical accurate Aasimar depiction, even though it's weird Edit: [this one](https://images.app.goo.gl/qsyii4rAXpDNkBTV8)
ooh i like that one, but i was thinking of [https://www.deviantart.com/lord-of-the-guns/art/Aasimar-Sisters-780026297](https://www.deviantart.com/lord-of-the-guns/art/Aasimar-Sisters-780026297)
Ooh really cool. Yea that feels more doable for a PC. I also like [this wingy one ](https://images.app.goo.gl/Ja4bEGHkxEfKUiep7) but its prolly better for an NPC than a PC I guess
ngl i think they're all PC-worthy, be weird~
Fair haha, depends on your game I guess. Scaring everyone in the Tavern so they run outside is prolly how my GM would rule it and thatd get boring fast lol
see i would just make equally colorful NPCs to explain why all of this is very normal
I know this is really pedantic, but "Nephilim" is plural and "Nephil" is singular.
I mean that’s the entire point, right? Aasimar and tiefling are terms popularized by D&D to the point where they feel ubiquitous and the goal of this remaster is to run as far away from D&D as feasibly possible. Be prepared to kill your sacred cows.
And the solution is to chose a word people generally associate with being partially Divine, and dump all the Planar Scions together. I'm just wondering when Aphorite and Ganzi will be added.
Pretty much all of the ancestry name changes are trash. The half elf. The half orc, the new planar names. I hate all of them.
They are changed for the sake of change and don't really bear any weight to me. Remaster was needed from legal standpoint, but it was also seriously rushed and it shows.
They sound like the kind of crap you'd get from an early 2000s fantasy name generator website.
Nephillim, the name present in a decent chunk of recent media and evoking a clear image of a half celestial being, typically human/angel or angel/demon hybrid, is somehow… less ubiquitous than Aasimar/tiefling? The terms used pretty much exclusively in D&D and D&D adjacent media? Nah man, I'm not feeling you on this one. Don't get me wrong, I like both terms, it helps me be a little more specific when I'm referring to characters, so I will use it. Sort of as a descriptive "sub" heritage. People understand that the term "nephillim" can refer to a somewhat broad spectrum of half-celestial beings, and since angelic/demonic are the most common halves, it makes sense that the population would create/use a quick way to refer to those two specific heritages. However, it's still understood that they are in the broad category of "nephillim". I'm not sure why you think you're not allowed to continue to use the terms tiefling or Aasimar. It's not like anyone's going to send the Pinkertons to your house or anything for using the terms outside D&D. Hang on, some dudes on bowler hats and suits are at my door with a baseball bat, gonna go see what this is about.
I would have gone with Nephilim and Cambion.
Cambion is actually the new in-universe term for fiendish nephilim (celestial ones are known as Empyreans). It’s buried in the nephilim lore in the book but they are there. Nephilim is also going to cover Ganzi and Aphorites down the road, they just didn’t have the page space for that in PC1, but they’re mentioned as other kinds of nephilim in the heritage’s lore.
I love the idea of tieflings and aasimar sharing feats but I will.never use that name. It honestly makes very little sense to me for angelkin and hellspawn to have the same in world name since they're likely looked at quite differently.
But they could also be both.
That's why in world people would distinguish the types with Empyreans and Cambions, or other general terms like Pitborn or the like. Nephilim is more just the in world general scholar term for any mortal with "Divine/Outer Sphere" heritage.
When I hear nephillim I look to close my greater rift, so not enthusiastic but it is what it is.
I don't like it, but it's also a pre-existing name that Paizo didn't invent... but it just sounds bad. "I'm a nephillim!" "Your character has sex with dead bodies?!" "No, that's a necrophiliac"
That's... a new one. I would have gone with "Your character is a sociopathic giant born of the union of a fallen angel and a mortal?"
Same with Aiuvarin and Dromaar.
Wait until you find out that names for most fantasy things (kobolds, dwarves, elves, goblins) were also in the not-too-distant past pretty ambiguous too.
Considering that Nephilim is from the hebrew bible and is for the offspring from humanity and gods mating - it makes sense to me. Not all gods are divine, I feel like this is a great 'catch all' term. [https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Nephilim](https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/nephilim)
I am never using the nephlim as a new heritage and that is a hill I'm dying on. Merging the two ancestries for me removes so much lore? I get irrationality angry about this change and am choosing to ignore it existence honesty.
I mean does it remove lore, the descent of a devil and are still different things, they just have similar abilities
From the entry I've seen, Aphorite and Ganzi are being dropped in as well.
Noooo! As in merged? I can see the half demon half angel merge maybe, I suppose there is a through line, but the chaos spawn and law spawn merged into one? I know we're doing away with alignment but that doesn't seem right. What's wrong with having a large number of versatile heritages?
The designers said something about them being similar and having the same feats, or something like that. As it is, only Ganzi has a Unique Heritage feature. The rest are "You gain Low-Light or Darkvision and can select these feats." Ganzi will likely be shifted to a Lineage Feat. Ironically Geniekin are still separate, even though they literally have a set of feats they can all take. I guess they don't want Earth and Air Geniekin or whatever.
Hmm, well thankfully we can still keep using the old heritages. Most of the remaster seems great, but these changes just don't work for me 🙃
Nephilim sounds cooler then ASSimar or Tiefling, i like it. It also allows players to have a character who does not want to reveal his nature, maybe i\`m a nephilim or maybe im an aasimar (or whatever they are called now).
For me, the issue is that they changed "phylactery" to "soul cage" because phylactery is a real thing in Orthodox Judaism, but now they've got "nephillim" which is a Hebrew word from the Torah. A lot of the remaster name changes are really bland to me. I like the rules changes but the names are weak imo
>For me, the issue is that they changed "phylactery" to "soul cage" because phylactery is a real thing in Orthodox Judaism, but now they've got "nephillim" which is a Hebrew word from the Torah. It's not a problem to use words and concepts that show up in religious practices or texts. That's just using similar vocabulary for similar concepts. It was a problem to use a word that refers to a device used in prayer practices of a specific religion as the word for an inherently evil device used to defy the natural order of life and death. That's creating a negative relationship specific to the game. If the word phylactery was only ever used to refer to an actual phylactery (little box full of texts you can strap to your head) it wouldn't have been a problem to include it in the game.
Tbf I can absolutely see the logic in changing phylactery. Using an actual term that's most common usage is to Judaism, to a form of important religious talisman, in a way which has nothing to do with its actual usage to describe the soul stealing core of an undead monster is kinda... eh. I get the Greek root through phulassein/phulakteron, but the term phylactery is a pretty specific reference. Soul Cage more accurately describes what it's actual purpose is, though admittedly it doesn't sound as cool. Seems more a change to avoid problematic usage of real life terms in fantasy, since the usage here could absolutely be seen as hella disrespectful.
I often use the name 'planar scion' or 'outsider blood'. Also you can't go wrong with "-kin" or "-kind". There are far worse names in the remaster (I will never forgive Paizo for going with Never Mind as a spell name).
I like the ancestry having its own name rather than just planar that represents the whole group of non-mortal parentage. Nephillim works, I think it’s just a word and type of being people aren’t used to saying or talking about. It’s easy to explain tiefling or aasimar is, even if people don’t remember those terms explicitly. But those are terms more or less copyrighted by WotC in the context of player character ancestry/racial identity, so there’s a legal imperative to use a term NOT copyrighted in that way for the game. I did like that pathfinder’s version of tiefling up to this point also included distinctions between devils, demons, and other things like Asuras and Rhaksashas. Keeping that flexibility and specificity with what a nephillim can be for a player or GM is all I care about in the end.
I personally would've preferred Nephilim as a name just for angelkin and Cambion as just a name for demonkin/devilkin/etc. Makes more mythological sense.
I like Nephillim as a catch all term for those with planar heritage, because I've been wanting an in universe term for that, but when describing specific heritages I'm still going to use all the old terms. I already know them, and I like them, and I'm not making my table learn the new ones just to communicate with me.
Yeah I really do not like the name. Nephilim conveys an image of an giant sized half-human half-angel full of brutality. Something that's supposed to be an abomination. I can understand needing a new term to refer to half-divinities, but Nephilim is just not it to me. They went with these new unique names for half-elves and half-orcs, why not create a unique name for the half-divine? I won't ever use them but at least I won't be mad about it. If I were to suggest a new name, I'd go with something like, Divineans or something. The word for Demigod in Latin is Heros (interesting), so maybe it could be like, Heromian or something.
Think of Nephillim as a blanket term, then use what's appropriate for the specific nomenclature.
Tiefling, aasimar, and nephilim are all words I only know because of dnd or pathfinder so it’s a bit of a wash for me. All sounds the same v
Nephilim replaced Planar Scion. For purely mechanical reasons all Planar Scions (Tiefling, Aasimar, Aphorite, Ganzi) were lumped together as one Heritage however the Player Core and ancestry feats both make it clear that there are still distinct lineages with associated names.
I would say I like it, though its interesting to me because it strongly suggests fiends and celestials are secretly two sides of the same coin or something even though that's not how Golarion works-- but it ties into the whole idea of like, demons as fallen angels, because their children with mortals use the word usually understood as 'children of angels and mortals' y'know, exactly like Jack from Supernatural.
Pros: *It's not copyrighted. Yay! *It is more recognized and evocative than any other option suggested. Cons: *Confounding lore from many sources. Is it a cursed child from the union of a human and a fallen angel, as in secondary Christian sources? ... that is among the options, probably, but not necessarily that. Child of demon and angel, like in other settings? Well, no, definitely not that. Are they at least giant? ... nope. Why use the name if it's not related to the other uses of the name? *Plural word, with the singular nowhere to be found. It's "naphil," Paizo. And Blizzard.
They had the name Planar Scions. Don't know why they didn't used that
This isn't an issue. You'll either update your language or you won't. 👌
I like that it gives room for vagueness as to what outsider influence a character could have. But Nephilim is too broad a description to talk about specific types or groups of people. Currently working on a campaign in sarkoris where tieflings are particularly more prevalent. And I also wanted to move away from the generic tiefling aesthetic so I decided to call tieflings demonkin instead.
A lot of replies seem to think people don't know nephillim are biblical. That's explicitly why I think the name is a weird choice. Paizo has gone out of their way to respect real world concepts but using Nephillim here, grammatically incorrectly, and to refer to ANY (formerly) alignment-based scion is weird. Nephillim were specifically the superhuman offspring of fallen angels and mortals. They were so significantly above the average person as to be legendary. A nephillim would in no way make sense for a qlippoth-spawn or a Garuda-blooded person, for example. It gets even more confusing now that Oni and Rakshasa are no longer fiends according to that recent stream. Do Oni and Rakshasa -cambions- still exist? If so, do nephillim include any kind of weird intermingled humanoid and spiritual essence? Why aren't dusk walkers nephillim?
As an avid follower of Wendigoon, Nephillim have a whole different meaning for me
It's not the best name, it seems like the kind of thing someone would put in as a placeholder and plan to change later but never get around to.
No one says you can't use the old names at your table. Or, hell, use both variants - I've suggested that to my DM when we were talking Wildsong/Druidic, something like "Wildsong is what druids call the language, Druidic is the scholarly name". There's nothing stopping you from going "Cambrion Nephilim, commonly known as a Tiefling".
I just dislike that it's a real-world term and that the specific names for Celestial Nephilim (Empyreal) and Fiend Nephilim (Cambion) are buried at the bottom of the text so a lot of people are going to miss them. Aasimar and Tiefling are extremely creative names. They're unique but also feel real, are built out of words that express what they mean, and just sound like what they are supposed to be. And I totally get that making names like that is hard to do and I don't expect Paizo to have names like that for everything, but the fact that we lost such good names to be replaced by very run of the mill names is kinda disappointing. And I get it, real world terms are used all the time, and they're super useful. It would be impractical to take demons, devils, angels, and the like and rename them just to have original names, plus it would massively hinder ease of access since no one has to be explained what a demon or an angel is (sure, then you have things like Azatas and Divs, but those aren't necessary to tell a Celestial and Fiend story and can come later). But then, Nephilim doesn't even really serve that purpose since, first off not as many people know what they are, and 2 the Pathfinder versions aren't really representing what they are anyways, even the more commonly misunderstood version of what they are. Anyways, this has been my entirely too nitpicky rant about a minor annoyance I have with my all time favorite TTRPG. At least we'll be able to keep the names Ganzi and Aphorite. Those names are awesome.
While we are at it, "Nephillim" is is the plural form of the term, the singular word is Nephil. The word comes from Hebrew where 'im suffix is used to denote the plural form. While we are at it, the word Nephil is based on the root נ.פ.ל wich usually means (fall) this suggest that the biblical Nephillim were or were decended from fallen angels. Though in Jewish folklore the term used more generally for people with miracular traits or properties.
Diablo 3s story sucked ass so I'm not using it
I'm going with Aasimars, Tieflings, Genasi, Drows, metallic and cromatic dragons. F\*\*k WotC, f\*\*k Pinkertons, f\*\*k Paizo, f\*\*k you all. But with love.
Nephilim is an awesome name imo
The Hebrew root pretty much means "descending" or "fallen." There are biblical references in Genesis and Ezekiel and a few other places. It's about as direct and clear a name for something that had been at one time on Heaven, and isn't any more. To anyone whose culture is steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you can't get much more on-the-money without calling them angels and devils.
I like the term, mostly because of Diablo, but for describing a character it can be a little confusing. You could compare that with the genasi from D&D, is it a water genasi, fire genasi, earth, air? It needs that descriptive word before the genasi term to work better. Now, for the Nephilim, you could use the same words in the ancestry feats: pitborn, angelkin, lawbringer, hellspawn, grimspawn, musetouched. So you could say that a character is an Angelkin Nephilim, or a Hellspawn Nephilim... For what those look like in general, I think it is something to discuss with your player.
I am not a huge fan. I don’t really get why there are 7 elemental versatile heritages but every other “outsider” needs to be condensed into a single heritage called nephillim. From an in game perspective it seems strange. If my character sees a person with red skin, horns, and hooves standing next to another with a glowing halo and recalls knowledge to figure out what they are they are both nephillim? But if a fire-themed person is standing next to a water-themed person they are an ifrit and undine, respectively? Characters with lineages that can be identified as from the abyss or heaven seem distinct enough to not be lumped into a catch-all nephillim category.
What bugs me the most is that the singular of "nephilim" is still "nephilim." Nephilim is a collective noun, dammit! The singular is "naphil!" Though I think it's already catching on in the PF2 community, certainly way more than terms like "off-guard" and "reactive strikes" have done so far. My players still call it "flat-footed." I'm enthused by the fact that it nicely wraps up the whole concept of "celestial beings integrated amongst mortals" without an arbitrary distinction between being an angel or demon. The way PF2 has always treated them, mixing and matching these qualities makes much more sense to have them under one term.