Thread 96848371

Are they any good? I typically think of them as being the best example of 5e pretending to be low powered and gritty for the first percent of its run. They just get a resistance and a breath weapon, while almost every other race gets either a long list of racial features or at least better ones. Dwarves have better ability bonuses. Elves have more features and better. Humans get feats or more ability bonuses. Meanwhile the dragonborn breath weapon just isn't worth an action.

Also help me come up with a name for dragonborn!conan here. I might play him.

>>96848371 (OP)
>5e pretending to be low powered and gritty for the first percent of its run
By that are you trying to say that Dragonborn as a race was undertuned in some weird obfuscation?
Either way, it clearly didn't last, since now Dragonborn can swap one of their attacks for a breath use and so it has more potential use cases.
And extra resistance is better than you'd expect.

Ultimately fine though. Str/Cha has its applications. Just play what you want instead of worrying about being slightly suboptimal.

>>96848371 (OP)
Typical case of taking something that worked in 4e and not understanding it and porting it half heartedly because doing it properly wouldn’t „feel“ like DnD
In 4e they had tons of unique stuff with feat support and their stats spread made them good for a variety of classes like paladin, battlemind and sorcerer

>>96849059
Yeah. Just inherently in 4e, something as basic as a Dragonborn Fighter is useful because in addition to making their usual attacks, they can use their dragonbreath, which can mark and penalize a crowd of enemies just due to the way Fighter marking is worded. And that's without taking any feats to make it better.

I've no doubt that 5e tried to playtest it as a bonus action, but I'm guessing the damage felt too low when there weren't any of those natural synergies to play off of, and so they just beefed up the damage. But then they'd basically made it a copy of Burning Hands on a short rest so they had to make it an action so that Wizard players didn't get upset.

>>96849080
Or dragonfear which can be upgraded by a feat to mark essentially the entire enemy team if you got high enaugh Cha
Not to mention you can get wings so now you got a flying high AC murder machine that kills anyone that attacks anyone else.
But 5e was like „uuuuhh I guess you can do realy low elemental and have minor resistance to a damage type you can beg the DM to use“

>>96848371 (OP)
Gay retarded freakshit

>>96848371 (OP)
They are decent, they work with great deal of builds and roles, are probably the last race someone is going to throw a tantrum about when it's being picked by a player.
The reason why they seem so meh in 5e is because they did an awful job porting dragonborn from 4e, where they were second most versatile race after humans.

>>96848371 (OP)
I always felt like a bigger place that 5e dropped the ball was in conveying dragonborn culture. 90% of the players I talk to think that dragonborn are just half-dragons, have a dragon parent, and act like the stereotypes of their dragon color.

There isn't an effort to make them anything more than that by the designers, and so they've been reduced to pure aesthetics.

>>96856412
4E should have just made Forgotten Realms Dragonborn Half-Dragons.
The same way Points of Light Dragonborn were PHB standard, Eberron Dragonborn were replacing/representing the Dragon-Heritage barbarians from that continent no one cared about, Dark Sun Dragonborn represented Drays and Dragonlance Dragonbrn represented Draconians.

But no, FR must change every edition and must accomodate every part of the default book.
Just because TSR did it when swapping from 1E to 2E.

>>96849345
More like freakKINO

>>96848371 (OP)
I think there was a dragon-focused book, published in the back half of 5e, that gave expanded options for the Dragonborn
>name for dragonborn!conan
Zann the Unbound. Kars of the Golden Scale.

>>96856412
>>96857077
This. When I made a Dragonborn character in 5e, I pushed my GM to let me work in references to Arkhosia, and its proud martial traditions. That Nettie Vale/Points of Light lore for Dragonborn was great.

>>96849080
God I fucking miss 4th edition.
Yeah, there's stuff that sucks about it but I miss that characters just kinda had more going on.

>>96848371 (OP)
Khorvashtan Smolderscale

>>96856412
5th edition lore SUCKS. It was bad but serviceable when it started, and now it's absolutely trash tier.

Seriously, look at the 5e Fairy; it's 3 sentences and a couple of D6 tables.

Then look at the 4e Pixie; it's 14 PAGES of lore, including a creation myth, a basic racial summary, culture, iconic hero archetypes and roleplaying tips.

How do you fuck this up so badly?

>>96848371 (OP)
use the FTD or 2024 version. Both are just objectively better.

>>96849345
Aww is the NPC upset that the based and cool dragon man is getting actual focus while his boring one sentence backstory nothing interesting race and class ass getting sidelined? Maybe make an interesting character next time faggot.

>>96868557
Why would I care about the dogshit lore from the writers when I'm going to make my own homebrew setting anyway? They just realized 99% of tables didn't waste their time with the dogshit faggotry realms or Ewbuttwrong settings or any of their other poorly written slop and just made their own settings. I don't need my players going BUT THE BOOK SAYS [insert dogshit lore]. We aren't using that. We have a primer. Read it. use that.

>>96861427
>I think there was a dragon-focused book, published in the back half of 5e, that gave expanded options for the Dragonborn
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. It has objectively better Dragonborn, and those changes got put in 2024.
>Breath weapon replaces one attack taken with the Attack Action, making them great for martials like Fighter, Paladin, or especially monk
>Your ASIs come from your background, meaning you aren't stuck playing a Paladin or STR-based martial, again, you can do a Monk
>You get your resistance
>5th level lets you get flight for a short time

2024 Dragonborn is incredibly based and I'm excited to be playing a Silver Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut here soon.

>>96848371 (OP)
Dragonborn and Tabaxi are the only 5E races that I think have any redeeming features. I don't play 5E but still use them in my world.

I treat Dragonborn like the Jaffa from Stargate. They are servents of dragons used as generals in their armies, but there are some that don't take kindly to a life of servitude and rebal. Making them interesting villains and PCs

>>96869948
Race is the least interesting part of your character. There has been a very real exchange of players who wanted to "grow special through their actions" and larpers who wanted to be "born special" and the second group is very fucking gay.

>>96870807
It's a very important part of your character, as it dictates their upbringing, tendencies, what gods they worship, how they are viewed within the world, how they view the world, and how they approach situations, both in and out of combat. It even informs your decisions based on what class you play not just mechanically, but because some races are culturally predisposed to certain classes.

However, having your stats be tied to it is, ultimately, not a good design choice. Really, they ought to be tied to your Class since that's why you want the ASIs anyway. Mechanically speaking, that would be the best design choice, but having them tied to Background (with the 2014 Custom background still available) is an acceptable middle ground.

Like, if you completely ignore your race beyond its mechanical benefits, you're just not suited to play TTRPGs. I'm sorry, you are a bad roleplayer, you should delve deep into every aspect of your character to create one that makes sense for the campaign and actually feels like a member of that race.

>>96848371 (OP)
Clifford the big red Lizard

>>96870807
Says who you sperg?
It’s Conan THE CIMMERIAN,
Right there in the title. Not Conan the Somalian.
I don’t fucking give a shit about your retarded theatre kid opinion.
I don’t need a fifteen page backstory or grind through 20 characters in a death funnel.
I’ll be a cool Dragon guy and breathe fire and you can be stuck beeing a literal NPC all you want I don’t fucking care