Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Tieflings in the grove

The tieflings in this game are presented as a version of the damsel in distress. They aren't warriors, they say. They need help, a savior. And I understand the importance of that as a motivational factor in a game. The player has the chance to be the hero.

But I can't shake this feeling that all the built up sympathy for the tieflings misses out on something.

These are creatures that look like devils. In fact, they have devilish blood running through them. They can perform thaumaturgy and intimidate others with their very presence. Some of them can rebuke others with hellish flames. Fire burns in their eyes.

The game seems scared to explore that aspect of their existence. It's like the developers have gone out of their way to make sure the tieflings don't seem dangerous, when "dangerous" is exactly how they should seem.

These folks have been through hell. At what point are they going to be forged into harder stuff?

Instead, they're talking about little cat doors.

*

Also, if you happen to be playing a githyanki wizard with a cat familiar... for some reason you suddenly don't know what a cat is while talking to them. I get the effort at humor there and appreciate it, but it really does fall flat when you have a cat familiar.

Traumatic experience either forge or break you ...
I dont find anything wrong with second option.

After all as Karlach said: Most souls in Avernus is just meat for grinder.

Also feel free to corect me but wasnt the city elevated back to surface eventualy?
I mean some civians could stay hidden through whole event.

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As for the cat ... im sure Githyanki have their own word for the creature.
I mean would you know what "kočka" is?
I can give you also a hint just as that Tiefling do: It have fur, paws, and we call it by saying: chi chi chi.

Or it can just seem like a cat but actually:

I mean, the tieflings in the grove are all villagers, they spent their lives working the land, maybe running shops, etc. Just because a guy is big and muscular, that doesn't mean he's going to use it to fight. Sure they were in hell, but it's not like they were there for years and years. Based on what the game conveys, they were only in Avernus for maybe a couple of weeks, tops. That's not enough to turn most people into hardened fighters. I think that might be part of the point of their storyline. That they may look frightening and intimidating, but they're just people, and those looks haveled to them being discriminated against. They just want to be able to live their lives, and the fact that they aren't able to is unfair.

I agree with Gray Ghost. They are normal citizens and If you enter the grove, you get greeted friendly by Zevlor ( while Aradin and his human friends are pretty standoffish). I normally don't play characters that attack without provocation.

If I understand correctly tieflings are normally the children of a humanoid and a devil, but the grove tieflings are not. I think they became tieflings by simply being "teleported" (magicked?) to Avernus by a demonic plot, which magically turned them into tieflings while they stayed there in the first layer of hell. Not sure I got that right entirely, but it was the entire city of (can't remember its name) that got magicked to hell. Meaning mostly just ordinary citizens, men, women and children.

However, some of the Tieflings are adventurers or even Hellriders....

It's a mixture.

The offspring of a mortal and a devil is a Cambion - a potentially very powerful entity, since they are capable of gaining a large portion of a devil's powers, but aren't beholden to the demonic hierarchy in the same way that true devils are.

Tieflings are nothing like that - they have devilish touch somewhere in their ancestry, either by a union at some point ,or by pact or ritual, etc.... but it is extremely diluted and watered down. you can have children born of seemingly mundane mortal parents be a tiefling, because it happened to breed true once, after many generations of not doing so, for example. They aren't fiend-kin, not in any way that matters, and in some cases, even their visible fiendish features can be so minor or understated as to be missed entirely (rarely in video game though, due to resource limitations ^.^). you can ALSO get spontaneous tieflings from major events, like you mention - the Elturel incident did indeed cause many spontaneous tieflings when it occurred; people unwilling transformed by the energies of the planes. There would also be some who were preyed upon and convinced to make bargains, during the time they were trapped there - in particular, scared citizens who would latch onto any promise of safety for fear of their lives.

We don't actually know what numbers of the refugees from Elturel were born tieflings, and which became so suddenly through accident or deal; short of asking each one individually for their story, we have no way of knowing... and chances are any who *were* tricked or tempted into deals that made them this way won't want to talk about it.

+1
thanks for sharing I did not know about this the Grove makes a bit more sense now.

To me it’s context - I am know the game is referring to other D&D materials, but it’s a lot: you start a game on alien starship I hell and teleport back to your realm to encounter bunch of devil kin who also happened to be in hell at some point but now they are not, and they are here, and there are goblins lead by tadpole cult and… It’s a lot to take in. Is there even a reason for tieflings to be tieflings and not local farmers seeking refuge from shipcrash/goblins?

I sense that "The Descent" will play a big part in the BG3 story. Having decided on refugees from "The Descent" being in the Grove they wanted to make them sympathetic so they resorted to portraying them as an oppressed minority. Tieflings were convenient for both subtle and not so subtle reasons.