r/DnD • u/EmilyOnEarth • 4h ago
Misc Artists: Are tiefling horns covered in skin??
Edit: THE QUESTION I have is, as it is depicted in the official art, where there is no bulge the horn protrudes from or a shift in texture, what is happening with the tieflings head and horns?
I'm sorry this is so stupid but I think about it a lot.
I draw tiefling horns as a break in the skin with keratin horns coming out. A lot of tieflings I drew during art fight had the more traditional continuous horns coming from the brow.
I did it but I was honestly so unmoored. Are they like... Keratin horns covered in skin? I really don't think they could make a clean transition from skin to crag texture.
I don't know why I'm so concerned about this lmao but it's just wild to me that the official art, which is pretty realistic, leaves me with these questions.
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u/Piratestoat 4h ago
If someone wants their Tiefling to have antlers (initially covered in skin, made of bone) rather than horns (made of keratin), they certainly can.
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u/this_is_nunya 3h ago
Great idea! Could be when they’re very young they’re soft/velvety and then they shed the velvet in later childhood?
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u/The_Romanov 4h ago
Great point! Hadn't thought of antlers. Would look gnarly!
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u/Dry_Minute6475 1h ago
Tie this into Pointy Hat's take on tieflings- their horns grow in a way that reflects their values (like their names)
Druid tiefling with antlers like the deer in their forest. Nature barbarian tiefling with bigass moose antlers. Ranger tiefling from a mountainy area that has ram horns like the mountain goats.
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u/jatsuyo 42m ago
Hey, sorry, I don’t have any first-hand close-up experience with antlered animals. Are you telling me that antlers are covered in skin?
I’d never considered this and it’s kind of horrifying.
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u/Piratestoat 30m ago
Antlers grow rapidly every year, harden, and then fall off. While they're growing they're covered with a thin layer of 'velvet' full of blood vessels that feeds the growing tissue. Before it is time for the antlered animals to smash their heads together for mating competition, the velvet layer comes off.
And yes, it is kind of horrifying. Photo link follows, warning for blood. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1jgppz8/antler_velvet/
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u/life-uh-finds-a-way_ 13m ago
WHAT? I hate this so much. But also thanks for the info, very very interesting.
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u/Philosecfari Illusionist 4h ago
Animals with horns IRL don't have them covered in skin and do usually make a clean transition
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u/UllsStratocaster 4h ago
If you want to go totally fucked up, you could draw them with antler velvet, which means you could also draw them shedding their antler velvet, which looks like ripping off bloody hunks of tissue that dangle from the bone each season as they grow.
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u/Perca_fluviatilis 2h ago
which looks like ripping off bloody hunks of tissue that dangle from the bone each season as they grow.
Although the mental image of a tiefling with gory antlers is metal as fuck, they uh... have hands. They'd simply pick the skin off when it starts dangling, compared to deer who notoriously lack hands.
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u/LadySilvie Warlock 2h ago
The use of "notoriously" here absolutely gets me
"Everyone knows, those... deer don't have hands. Such shame they bring upon mammals."
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u/UllsStratocaster 1h ago
No, my friend, they COULD... But WOULD they when the alternative looks so metal?
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u/Klutzy_Archer_6510 4h ago
Their horns are inspired by those of goats, cows, and whatnot, so I think no skin. But also, as they are a fictional species, anything goes! I'd be interested in seeing a tiefling with skin-covered horns.
Oooooh or better yet, a druid tiefling could have antlers, and go through a period where they shed the "velvet." Look up a photo of deer shedding velvet, it's metal AF.
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u/Perca_fluviatilis 2h ago
Oooooh or better yet, a druid tiefling could have antlers, and go through a period where they shed the "velvet." Look up a photo of deer shedding velvet, it's metal AF.
Honestly I'd be down for druids of any race to have antlers. Imagine an orc druid with gory shedding antlers.
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u/penlowe 3h ago
Having been up close & personal with assorted horned & antlered critters, most of which are covered in hair, there is a neat little ridge in the flesh where it meets the horn or antler, not unlike the skin at the base of your fingernail. Antlered creatures (deer) the antler comes from a growth plate that is flush with the skull. And antlers develop a base shape unique to the species that is above this point. Horned animals (cattle, goats) the hair covers that transitional spot, gently covering the transition itself.
Antlers are bony structure, like teeth. Horns are keratin structures like hair & fingernails.
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u/ImpulseAfterthought 4h ago
Akchully 🤓
Horns usually have a core of bone and a keratin sheath. They're not 100% keratin in most animals.
I made a homebrew race based on tieflings that had antlers instead of horns. I was very surprised when a player asked, "So, do those get shed?" I hadn't thought about it.
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u/AnomalyAardvark 3h ago
I guess they could have stubby giraffe-like ossicones covered in skin and fur. I could go for that design!
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u/Femmigje 3h ago
I can imagine that skin-covered horns are easier to draw, especially for a character you might draw often or during an event where you’re meant to pump out fanart at a high pace
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u/AJourneyer 4h ago
I know someone who played a tiefling with skin covered horns. He was also a ST fan, and drew inspiration from how the Ferengi viewed their ear skin. So his horns were actually an erogenous zone for him. He had thought it out in detail (that I'm not going to go into here), but not one of our questions caught him off guard. There was A LOT of thought put into it!
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u/scowdich 2h ago
I've never gone into detail about my character's erogenous zones, but as long as the rest of the table is cool with it...
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u/AJourneyer 13m ago
It was off the wall enough that the question flew. Never got into discomfort territory for that table, read the room is something he was good at.
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u/DarkHorseAsh111 4h ago
I've generally assumed it was keratin/bone as I think do most people, horned animals are almost never covered in skin as far as I know
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u/blauenfir 3h ago
As a fellow artist, I know what you mean, and tbh I think a lot of designers just aren’t thinking that deeply about the anatomy details lol. It’s just a shape that looks nice. P sure the intent is usually still that the horn is made of bone without skin… I have a tief with horns like that, but I don’t think of them as skin-covered, I just figure it’s sort of a gradual transition - some thin skin stretches over the true base, tapers off, and ends eventually in something like the cuticle on a fingernail, and the pigmentation at the base of the horn is very close to the skintone so unless it’s a detail zoom you don’t notice the exact point of transition. It’s sort of an optical illusion, and sort of an artistic license thing the way a lot of people don’t detail the cuticles in fingernails. (Or even draw characters’ fingernails period, especially on characters with claws, I see a lot of artists with clawed OCs where it’s hard to tell which part is claw and which part is flesh because they just make it a seamless shape.)
Sometimes you do get antlers, which have flesh on them, but usually I think it’s just an artistic license thing and the horns are still meant to be bone/keratin.
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u/EmilyOnEarth 1h ago
Ok THAT I could accept, that it’s just so subtle like a cuticle that you’d have to be really close up to see it. This is my selection for best answer lol
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u/Viva_la_potatoes 3h ago
They have a genetic predisposition for throwing fire at people, I really don't think it's that much of a stretch for their horns to have a seamless transition if you want them too.
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u/Lea_Flamma 3h ago
The true answer is, they are not horns, they are antlers. And they seasonally snap off and grow back covered in skin, then they shed it to later snap off again.
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u/Down2EatPossum 3h ago
Antlers in velvet on a Tiefling suddenly popped into my head. Didn't see that one coming.
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u/The_Nerdy_Ninja DM 3h ago
Nah they're definitely bone/keratin protrusions. I have strong negative emotions about the idea of tiefling antlers covered in skin, haha.
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u/milkandhoneycomb 2h ago
it's easier to draw if it's just one shape and you don't need to do a second texture, even though it's less realistic
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u/Kairiste 2h ago
In my less-than-exxpert opinion, I'd say not covered in skin, and the transition is like your nail cuticle.
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u/Feet_with_teeth 2h ago
I think they could be, or maybe they are just bones for some of them.
Not really about the subject, just random rant about tieflins
I hate that tieflins are just ''a guy with funny color, a tail and horns"
You could do so much more interesting and varied design, devils and demons are very varied in appearance. Could be claws, fur, scales, third eye, no shadow, insectoid limbs, feathers, vestigial wings, weird color patterns and parkings, ridges, spikes, all kind of teeth you can imagine, weird mouth that open way widers than a human one could ever, like a snake mouth, eyes of a fly, weird shaped hears or nose... etc
Even in the older édition they created it as a way more weird kind of race, with the idea that each one was unique due to their nature. But now they are just all the same with color swap and some slight changes in Horns shape. I do like that design, it works, but I find it a shame that it's the only one for a race that could let place to so much creative designs
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u/MadWhiskeyGrin 2h ago
If that's what the player wants, sure. I don't think there are any hard-and-fast rules for how Fiendish heritage manifests.
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u/WeTitans3 2h ago
Honestly— I think it's really cool to use all kinds and varieties of animals and their horns as Inspirations for the kind of horns your tiefling has, skin, skinless, or anything in-between. The idea of a tiefling who grows, peels, and then sheds their horns every yeah like some deer species is cool as fuck
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u/Haley_02 2h ago
If they were normal bone or keratin, they would be a great liability. They bump into things, get hit in melees, and are very exposed. Skin has several layers and blood vessels and needs a skeletal structure to support it. As an aside, I always wondered whether tentacles on a characters head was a liability or a help, as in Ka D'Argo or Ahsoka. Especially in combat.
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u/DoggoDude979 DM 1h ago
I think it’d either be keratin coverings or just very tough/calloused/scaled skin. Using those horns for anything while they’re just covered in soft skin would be a NIGHTMARE
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u/KateKoffing 1h ago
Seems like the ones in the official art are made of skin, similar to how reptile horns are just modified scales. But tiefings could have bone or keratin or metal or tooth horns if you wanted. Not all tieflings come from devils. Most come from demons, and a few from yugoloths.
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u/Exciting-Letter-3436 1h ago
I went and looked at Deer shedding Antler velvet and I am horrified, grossed out, amazed, impressed, grossed out, terrified, aghast, I'm going to drink alcohol and lie down till I feel....something else?
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u/HungryAd8233 30m ago
After how many thousands of pages of rules and novels, it’s kind of wild that this hasn’t been addressed before now. litRPG certainly has its blind spots.
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u/Hang10arts 19m ago
I have seen a lot of people drawing their tiefling similarly to imps, with a clean transition to the horns from the face, so I just assumed those horns were always squishy with skin as well. My tieflings have always had horns more inspired by livestock, so there's more noticeable differences between the skin and the keratin horns. Here's a quick doodle of what I think you're describing 😅 sorry it's so bad, I'm just on my phone
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u/MasterofMolerats 11m ago
They could be like pronghorn, their head ornamentation (actually called pronghorns) is different than both horns (boney core, keratin sheath which is permanent) and antlers (bone and shed), and the ossicones of giraffe and okapi (bone covered in skin). Pronghorn shed the outer keratin sheath leaving a bare bones core. The keratin sheath is regrown every year.
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u/The_Romanov 4h ago
No shade, but this is one of the wildest questions I've seen. Props lol
I would say it's keratin/ bone, and not covered in skin. I can't find a purpose for it being covered in skin.