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I'm interested in knowing how different colours a tiefling's skin may can be, with official backing. By official backing, I mean, there are plenty of fan-images out there of tieflings of all sorts of colours, but I'm primarily interested in official art for any edition of D&D, and better yet, such skin colours explicitly stated in the text.

Typically, as I pointed out in my previous question, tieflings (in 5e, at least) have either "human skin colour", red skin, or somewhere in between.

From the 5e Tiefling player race description, Infernal Bloodline section (PHB, p. 42):

Their skin tones cover the full range of human coloration, but also include various shades of red.

Examples of other colours (all non-5e references come from this answer):

  • Blue skin: In 2e, The Planewalker's Handbook, p. 80, blue skin is an option. In 3e, Races of Faerun, pp. 125-126, blue skin is attributed to having night hag heritage. In 5e, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, p. 118 mentions this in the Tiefling Variants sidebar ("red or dark blue skin").
  • Green skin: In 2e, The Planewalker's Handbook, p. 80, green skin is an option.
  • Purple skin: In 5e, the main art for the Tiefling player race is purple (thanks @Guybrush McKenzie), although given that this is on the same page of the PHB as the first quote above, and it is a rather reddish-purple (as opposed to a more blueish-purple), it may be argued that it counts as a "shade of red"?
  • Honourable mention to the ivory white tiefling, although there's Q&A that concludes that it counts as a "human skin tone", so that may not count here: Can a tiefling have permanent ivory white skin?

Are there any other tiefling skin colours, either shown in official art or, better yet, mentioned in any official text? I'm not considering novels, only rulebooks and lorebooks. Also, ideally, I'd like images to be backed up by text (hence, are there any mentions in any text of the purple tiefling, for which I only have a picture to infer that it is possible?) where such text exists.

It would be great if answers could include lore explanations for each skin colour, as per my previous question, but since that had a whole question just for blue skin, I'm going to consider that a "nice to have" rather than a hard requirement for answers, lest this become too broad (but it would save me asking "what's the lore behind green?", "what's the lore behind purple?", etc).

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    \$\begingroup\$ @TigerGuy I think you might be missing the point of my question; this isn't about restricting player choice, this is about seeing if there's any precedence for how ever many skin colours exist already in the existing lore. Taking your orange tiefling example, if a player of mine wanted to make an orange tiefling, I'd want to know if some (official) book somewhere already says "some tieflings have orange skin, usually because one of their parents was ...", and if not, then I would work with the player to figure out why their tiefling has such an atypical (for a tiefling) skin colour. \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Commented Mar 18, 2020 at 7:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ Related, asked by @Mołot: Do we know what skin tones humans can have in D&D lore? \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Mar 19, 2020 at 5:50

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Your question notes many sources accounting for tieflings with normal human skin tones as well as red, blue, and green tones, which covers most possible skin tones. I'm aware of the following other instances:

Pale white

In the D&D 3e Lords of Darkness, p. 107, Kleb has pale white skin. I get the sense that this means actual white like paper, as opposed to the pink human skin tone we call "white". His exact ancestry is unspecified, and I think there's an assumption that pre-4e tieflings of extraplanar origin have mysterious and varied ancestry that can allow for a great variety of skin tones and unique traits.

Translucent

In the D&D 3e Lords of Darkness, p. 107, Rekart has nearly transparent skin on his head, such that his skull is visible. His exact ancestry is unspecified.

Purple, yellow, pink

According to this answer on your other question, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount describes tieflings having skin of "deep crimson ... shades of purple, blue, green, and even yellow and pink". Since this is a first-party WotC official D&D sourcebook, it's technically a precedent for purple, yellow, and pink tieflings in D&D.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks, your "pale white" example in particular validates my "honourable mention" of that ivory white tiefling; I was hoping that actual "paper white" would be an option, rather than just "very pale human skin tone". \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 9:38
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    \$\begingroup\$ Re: your edit, not sure I'd consider Matt Mercer's homebrew setting to be "official", but now there's an "official" book out about it, that muddies the waters. Not that I think you should remove that new section or anything, but the 3e stuff I assume to be "more official", if saying that even makes sense... \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 22:52
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    \$\begingroup\$ @NathanS: Your related question: Is Matt Mercer's homebrew setting now considered an official setting? \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Mar 19, 2020 at 5:51
  • \$\begingroup\$ @NathanS "Paper white" is a skin tone that humans can have in DnD as well. This is the skin color of the Imaskari ethnic group, as detailed on p. 111 of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. \$\endgroup\$
    – nick012000
    Commented Mar 29, 2021 at 10:46

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