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Viatos wrote:

Edit for the last poster: It's a cutesy way of saying "fairy", meaning fey pact. Which on the one hand is strange, terrible, and full of savage or maddening effects, but on the other hand all your power is given to you by the fairies. New age fairies are badass and all, read the Dresden Files if you want to see what kind of freaky-scary evil the Feywild can throw around, it's just...the word is hard to swallow for some of us.

New age fairies are the cutesy butterfly-winged pixies you see in artwork. Tinkerbell is a new-age fairy. The Fey in 4E are traditional fairies. If you go back into your old Northern European and Gaelic folklore, you'll find that fairies were traditionally scary things, forces of nature with a will and intelligence beyond the understanding of humans. They were definitive monsters.

As to the charisma bonus, it's quite possible for a person to have something off-putting about them, that still makes them difficult to argue with or to turn down. Remember that 1) intimidation is based off of charisma -- as is lying (bluff), and 2) tieflings in 2E (where they were introduced) had a CHA bonus, while being described even more than in 4E as a widely-distrusted race.

Viatos wrote:

Arguments For +Con

• Tieflings are not just the original warlocks, they're the original infernal pact warlocks. But they're not all that great at it. Their racial feat for +win to fire and fear powers is as useful for the multitude of fear keywords among star and fey pact powers and the handful of fire keywords among the same as it is for an infernal pact warlock. And most of an infernal pact warlock's powers target Fort, the strongest save, or Reflex, the second-strongest. That extra +2 Con means a lot to them. They can't really afford to skip it.
  
• Tieflings have horns and tails and demonic blood and they're fire-resistant. It makes sense that they'd be tough, too.

Anybody else been scratching their heads trying to figure out what's up with +2 cha tieflings?

I totally agree. I think that +2 Int +2 Con makes a lot more sense for the race of tieflings.


Half elves are another example of a race that has stat bonuses that don't make a lot of sense. None of the elf races get +2 con and none of them get +2 charisma, but because half elves are known for their ability to get along with both humans and elves, I can go along with +2 charisma. But +2 con makes little sense and it makes half elves less good at their traditional wizard class. I would have gone +2 intelligence, +2 charisma, or +2 wisdom/+2 charisma and then given them some extra ability to make up for the fact that they would not have stat bonuses that help with 2 different defenses.

Zaistars wrote:

I agree flavor wise they should probably have a con bonus but they are balanced against the special abilities they have, which are good, against the fact that they don't have a physical stat bonus. Remember, physical stat bonuses are generally concidered better than non physical ones. It would also be easy to change their racial power to con. But the fire resistance and low light vision are hard to beat.

(bolded emphasis mine)

Um, that was the case in 3.x, but it is much less true in 4e. With the classes set up to get many of their powers based on certain ability scores, all the scores are important to one class or another.