Pathfinder Society, the organized play society for Pathfinder (if you’ve played Pathfinder at a game store or a convention, you probably played PFS), recently changed which races are legal. Many things are illegal in PFS in order to make the game more quick and fair for the collections of strangers who play together; it’s for the best, trust me. Several new and interesting races have become available, and I look forward to figuring out what is going on with those. Two old favorites, tragically, did not make the cut.

The argument can be made that aasimar and tiefling are overpowered; they both are, at least in some ways, though not in all of the same ones. Still, I tend to think that Paizo took them out as much for a change of pace as anything else.

Brutally, back in 3.5 both of these races had the same stats as in PF, but a level adjustment of +1 each to play as PCs. Is using darkness or daylight once per day really worth being a full class level behind everyone else in your party? Maybe not so much.

As discussed in my previous post about gnolls, though, PF has much more forgiving rules about non-core races (they even have a whole book of them, the Advanced Race Guide), and aasimars and tieflings can be played with no penalty. Still, I was a bit surprised when I found out that they were PFS legal, considering 3.5 thought them so much better than core that they needed a level adjustment. Granted, back in 3.5 most of the base races had ability score bonuses of +0 overall (or -2 of you were a half-orc), so the overall +4 or +2 for aasimar or tiefling respectively were pretty solid. The base races in Pathfinder all got kicked up to +2 overall, but aasimar and tiefling remained at +4 and +2, respectively, bringing their power down a bit by comparison.

Let’s start with aasimar. I’ve often said that human and aasimar are the best PFS legal races; human because a free feat of your choice is simply a great bonus (extra skill points aint bad neither), and aasimar because it’s the only legal race to give you a +4 ability point boost with no minus (the other races are all either +2 or (+4, -2)). An extra +2 to an ability score is a pretty damn good reason to take a race right there. Add in the fact that a free spell-like ability and energy resistances about balance out that extra feat you won’t be getting (both of these things could be feats themselves, though maybe not ones you’d take), and aasimar is extremely solid.

As if all that weren’t enough, there are at least two extremely solid PFS legal feats for aasimars in the Advanced Race Guide. “Angelic Wings”, which you can get with one prereq at level 10, gives you a permanent fly speed. Meanwhile, “Celestial Servant”, with no level requirement, can make your animal companion celestial, and that’s a pretty powerful template at higher levels. Worth a feat for sure if you have an animal to use it on.

Thus, aasimar was one of the best races available in PFS. It’s less easy to see why tiefling would be overpowered; it still has energy resistance and a daily spell-like, but its ability modifiers are the standard of +4, -2, so that’s nothing to write home about.

The real magic behind tiefling and aasimar is their racial heritages, from the Blood of Fiends and Blood of Angels Pathfinder Player Companion books. The heritage options swap around a lot of things, most notably what spell-like ability you get and what ability score increases you get. This is a huge deal because of how much versatility it adds. The basic aasimar, with +2 Wis and +2 Cha, is great for a Cleric or Paladin, but those stat increases would not be a great choice for a Wizard, Barbarian, or Rogue, just to name a few. With heritages, though? You can find a tiefling or aasimar to suit your every whim, making them the most versatile races formerly in PFS (next to humans).

Aasamar heritage:

Regular

SLA: Daylight

+2 Wis, +2 Cha

Agathion-Blooded

SLA: Summon Nature’s Ally II

+2 Con, +2 Cha

Angel-Blooded

SLA: Alter Self

+2 Str, +2 Cha

Archon-Blooded

SLA: Continual Flame

+2 Con, +2 Wis

Azata-Blooded

SLA: Glitterdust

+2 Dex, +2 Cha

Gardua-Blooded

SLA: See Invisibility

+2 Dex, +2 Wis

Peri-Blooded

SLA: Pyrotechnics

+2 Int, +2 Cha

As you can see, the running theme is that all of these have a bonus to either Cha or Wis; beyond that every option is available except for Wis + Str and Wis + Int. Wis + Str would be nice for a Druid or Cleric, but you can’t have everything; I’m sure they’ll manage with Wis + Con instead.

I don’t consider Daylight very useful, so most of these alternate SLAs are a big improvement (well, maybe not Continual Flame). Glitterdust is probably my favorite here.

Tiefling heritage:

Regular

SLA: Darkness

+2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Cha

Asura-Spawn

SLA: Hideous Laughter

+2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Int

Daemon-Spawn

SLA: Death knell

+2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Wis

Demodand-Spawn

SLA: Bear’s Endurance

+2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Int

Demon-Spawn

SLA: Shatter

+2 Str, +2 Cha, -2 Int

Devil-Spawn

SLA: Pyrotechnics

+2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Cha

Div-Spawn

SLA: Misdirection

+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Int

Kyton-Spawn

SLA: Web

+2 Con, +2 Cha, -2 Wis

Oni-Spawn

SLA: Alter Self

+2 STr, +2 Wis, -2 Cha

Qlippoth-Spawn

SLA: Blur

+2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Int

Rakshasa-Spawn

SLA: Detect Thoughts

+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Wis

There are 11 of these versus 7 for aasimar, so tiefling has a LOT of options. These also do not follow the aasimar pattern of always having one of the abilities from the regular version (in the case of Tiefling, that’d mean always a plus to Dex or Int, which is not the case above), and it seems the minus can be any mental score, most commonly Int for some reason. Anyway, lots of options, and good choices for literally any class. When there’s a Tiefling heritage that would be good for a Paladin (Demon-spawn), I think we can assume that we have all our bases covered.

So, okay, fine, aasimar is overpowered. Tiefling probably is too, though I don’t think it would be if you made Blood of Fiends non-legal for PFS (but where’s the fun in that?).

Nevertheless, I’m not sad to see them go; sometimes it’s fun to try other options, but sometimes you only do that if you’re forced to.

…Also, almost all of us made at least one final aasimar character to get grandfathered in before the rules changed. Think of them as souvenirs?

A final note: in D&D 3.5, sub-races, very similar to the heritages above, were actually available in the Monster Manual for several core races: Gnome, Elf, Halfing, and Dwarf. Some of these were pretty weird; I always remember Wood Elf (+2 Str, -2 Int, and all the standard elf racial traits), which made poor old Half Orc (+2 Str, -2 Int, -2 Cha, and basically nothing else except darkvision) cry himself to sleep.