Fizban's Treasury of Dragons introduces three ancestries for the dragonborn race. Each reflects one of the three dragon families in Dungeons & Dragons — the chromatic, the gem, and the metallic. Here's a sneak peek at the metallic dragonborn and how it compares to the original dragonborn found in the Player's Handbook.
- Metallic dragonborn racial traits
- A metallic dragonborn's outlook on life
- Building a metallic dragonborn character
Metallic dragonborn racial traits
Dragonborn with metallic ancestry lay claim to the tenacity of metallic dragons—brass, bronze, copper, gold, and silver—whose hues glint in their scales. Theirs is the fire of hearth and forge, the cold of high mountain air, the spark of inspiration, and the scouring touch of acid that purifies.
Source: Fizban's Treasury of Dragons
The original dragonborn offers two key traits that are based on your draconic ancestry: damage resistance and a breath weapon that can be used once per short or long rest. The race lends itself to martial classes — particularly the paladin — by offering +2 in Strength and +1 in Charisma at character creation.
The metallic dragonborn still offers damage resistance and a damaging breath weapon, but there are key differences to how the breath weapon works. On top of that, the metallic dragonborn also gains a second breath weapon at 5th level!
Here's a summary of the metallic dragonborn and how it compares to the original:
- You can use your breath weapon a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. The uses of your breath weapon reset on a long rest. For adventuring parties that don't often take short rests, this change increases how many breath weapons you get per long rest. More importantly, you can save your breath weapon uses for combats that matter, rather than being limited to just one use per short rest.
- Your breath weapon is a 15-foot cone. With the original dragonborn, your breath weapon deals damage in a cone or a line depending on your ancestry.
- The damage on the breath weapon has changed. The damage scales from 1d10 up to 4d10 at 17th level. Comparatively, the original dragonborn's damage scales from 2d6 up to 5d6 at 16th level.
- An attack can be replaced with your breath weapon. The metallic dragonborn breath weapon replaces one of your attacks rather than uses an action. For example, if you have the Extra Attack feature, you can replace one or both of your attacks with a breath weapon!
- You gain a second breath weapon. At 5th level, you get Metallic Breath Weapon, a 15-foot cone attack that can be used once per long rest. When you use your Metallic Breath Weapon, you'll choose from one of two effects: Enervating Breath and Repulsion Breath. Enervating Breath forces enemies to make a Constitution saving throw or be incapacitated until the start of your next turn. Repulsion Breath forces enemies to make a Strength saving throw or be pushed back 20 feet and knocked prone.
Ability score increases for the metallic dragonborn
Starting with the harengon and fairy races found in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Dungeons & Dragons races no longer come with set ability score increases. Instead, players will get to choose one of the following options at character creation:
- Increase one score by 2 and increase a different score by 1
- Increase three different scores by 1
Similarly, you'll learn Common and one other language of your choice (with your DM's permission).
A metallic dragonborn's outlook on life
Much like their ancestors, dragonborn are prideful folk. They typically stand tall and are aware but unbothered by the fact that others commonly find them intimidating. Unlike many dragons, however, dragonborn rarely isolate themselves from their own kind. A dragonborn respects the clan to which they belong and will honor their position in it. However, people of this race are always seeking to improve and earn their place in the world.
Metallic dragonborn in particular are tenacious folk. If you're creating a metallic dragonborn, take a look at the personality traits and interests of the following dragons, summarized from the Monster Manual.
Metallic dragon personality traits
Type | Personality Traits |
Brass | Gregarious tricksters; irritated by those who don’t engage with them; fair in dishing out punishment |
Bronze | Tacticians; love learning about warfare; despise tyrants; happy to interfere in conflicts |
Copper | Witty; prankers and jokesters; greedy |
Gold | Wise and fair but aloof and grim; will eat just about anything |
Silver | Friendly and sociable; enjoy learning history |
Building a metallic dragonborn character
The metallic dragonborn's breath weapon traits not only allow your character to deal damage to multiple enemies. They offer crowd control, too. Consider the following as you approach character creation:
- You can use Breath Weapon and Metallic Breath Weapon on the same turn. Characters that can make two attacks in a single turn can replace one attack with their Breath Weapon and another with their Metallic Breath Weapon to wreak havoc on mobs.
- Repulsion Breath enables melee builds. Imagine a metallic dragonborn monk that knocks an enemy prone with Repulsion Breath and then follows it up with a flurry of blows made with advantage!
- Constitution matters. This is true pretty much all of the time. But if you want your enemies to consistently fail their saving throws against your breath weapons, you'll want to find room in your build for a higher Constitution score. Since the barbarian's Unarmored Defense cares about Constitution and the fighter has extra Ability Score Improvements, these two classes could be a good pairing for the metallic dragonborn.
- Bronze dragonborn can maximize their breath weapon damage. The Tempest domain's Channel Divinity, Destructive Wrath, allows you to deal maximum damage when you roll for lightning or thunder damage. A bronze dragonborn's breath weapon deals lightning damage. Not a bad pairing at low levels!
More to find in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons
The metallic dragonborn is just one of three ancestries available for the classic race. But Fizban's Treasury of Dragons is chockful of other goodies, including two new subclasses, tons of dragons, and more.
Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.
Finally! Can’t wait for Fizban’s! Also first
First post! By the way, the metallic dragonborn looks great (time for a gold one that eats weird things).
edit: It turns out it was actually the second post. my bad. Second post, then!
Cool build. A kind of link character that does a downward thrust to defeat enemies that lie prone would be pretty sweet.
I’m not sure whether the new Dragonborn is a little overpowered for a race, or a little underpowered at earlier levels. Any balancing ideas anyone?
finally, an improvement to dragonborn
Can we get this back already?
Their breath weapon is essentially equal to a bog standard AoE damage or control cantrip targeting three commonly higher saves with a somewhat mediocre actual effected area (cones suck) that has a limited number of uses that require using the attack action, eliminating its comboing with other full actions (most notably spells). It's fine. In the presence of races that can fly or have resistance to all magic or with powerful innate spells and proficiencies, I'd say anyone arguing this is either over OR underpowered would rather have to explicate why they think that way instead of us having to explicate why not. I think it's simply just "fine". Flavorful and fun, but simply fine from a tuning standpoint.
Essentially, if the majority distinguishing characteristic of your race is about equal to, say, the Magic Initiate: Wizard feat (two cantrips and a 1pLR 1st-level spell)? I can't possibly see how this should be a problem for a player or a DM in terms of power in either direction. It's just neat.
I'm a bit disappointed by this; enervating and repulsion breath are both very strong options, and it feels like this new dragonborn race is easily stronger than most other races for a combat oriented build (which, let's face it, is what a lot of players go for).
I was expecting this to be toned down, instead it got even more damage at higher levels, and you can still use both attacks in a single turn if you have Extra Attack?
To cast two cone spells a spellcaster would need a dip into Fighter so they can Action Surge to do two in a round (at a cost in level progression and two spell slots), but a Dragonborn can now do it for free as standard? Changing the breath weapon to reset on long rest and be usable in place of an attack was already a huge change; Wizards of the Coast have gone overboard on this, but sadly that seems to be the case with a lot of their poorly refined rules these days (see the Cleric Twilight Domain, which never should have been released as-is).
I'm also disappointed that they've stuck with the sub-races (chromatic, gem, metallic) rather than just letting us mix and match the element and special ability that we want to make a much more flexible dragonborn race; so if you want to build a dragonborn descended from a Battle Dragon for example then your choice is either go a gem dragonborn or use the wrong elemental type and go metallic instead.
Makes me less hyped for this book now, as it's like they didn't listen to feedback at all.
Neat! A dragonborn that can use its breath weapon to push with unrelenting force its foes to the ground :)
It's nice dragonborn have a bit of bite to them now. I still HATE that they don't have base stats built in. Tasha's is great for people that want to min max and whatever other reasons they like the strip down but for people like me that liked the races feeling distinct on a physical level not just flavor, stuff like this kind of sucks. These new races just feels like a slap to the face to everyone who liked the old way. At least with DB we have the old one to use as a template.
I'm keeping the +2 STR +1 CHA at my table. Abandoning racial bonuses is super dumb.
Kind of annoyed about the new racial ability score bonuses. Seriously, a big part of what makes a race distinct from any other race functionally is those ability scores. What’s next, we pick three racial traits from the feats table?
Most definitely doing the same thing. If they decide to keep the loose ability scores in 6e I’m just going to continue running 5e.
Doesn’t this race kind of make the normal dragonborn no longer worth playing?, it’s way more powerful. Didn’t they originally use the custom ability score increases for the Ravenloft races, not the Wild Beyond Witchlight ones?
You are correct.
Yeah, I agree that making race Ability Score Increases (ASI) up in the air removes a lot from the game. D&D is about a set of rules that govern and balance the system. Without those rules, the game is just a free-for-all storytelling session with less of a boardgame feel. It removes the cohesion and structure of the game. I feel like I've lost something by just telling players to choose whatever they want when they build a character. Part of the fun was trying to fit an appropriate race to their strengths/weaknesses. This takes away from the uniqueness of the races.
Wizards should have just suggested to DMs that they can modify the ASI scores as they see fit, but given us a template to follow like they have done in the past. Now races seem much flatter and less unique because you can just do whatever you want. I'm of course, continuing to use the old method in my campaigns, but it will be frustrating for new releases and rules upgrades to have to retrofit the much more distinct system.
As for Dragonborn, I think these changes are overpowered and prefer the old ruleset. There was nothing wrong with it, so I don't see why it needed to be changed. Especially with the sub-races (I have a Draconblood Bronze Dragonborn Wizard in one of my campaigns), you can get a lot of extra unique traits and flavor. Not a fan of the direction they've been going lately, I feel it's too much, too fast trying to take advantage of D&D popularity, which is just bloating the universe taking a lot of the mystique, nuance, and balance of the game I've loved for 40+ years.
So....what the hell do Chromatic Dragonborn get as compensation for this?
"For example, if you have the Extra Attack feature, you can replace one or both of your attacks with a breath weapon!"
Can you really replace each attack you have with the elemental breath weapon? Or did you mean using the elemental and the metallic breath in the same attack action?
I totally agree! The new rules are annoying and impractical. They are stripping away the races’ individuality.
”Dragonborn fans rejoice!”
I can bring back my first ever character better than ever. Oh, October 26th is gonna be a good day.