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.
I don't like the ASI changes for races. I don't like the new races in general. And I hate that every newer player I invite to the table believes every single 5e book should be considered viable in every campaign, the most.
No dood, you can't be a bunny dood, you can't be a fantasy terminator, and you can't be a gun slinging hippo. 5e is starting to look grossly like that trailer park community down the road that everyone else pretends sort of doesn't exist. :/
The write up fails to mention the new breath weapon damage is worse at levels 1-5. 2d6 averages 7 damage. 1d10 averages 5.5. When a die gets added the new system comes out ahead (10.5 damage for 3d6 and 11 damage for 2d10), but it's a nerf for low level characters.
Why did Dragonborn need a buff? All of these races are just getting to the point where I am considering just removing all of these options from my table. Playing most of the PHB races are, mechanically, the objectively wrong choice at this point.
A similar subrace that was unearthed arcana a while back. I believe they could be immune to their breath weapon damage type for 1 minute, but they might have changed that
In the Unearthed Arcana Chromatic Dragonborn got the "Chromatic Ward" ability, which allowed them to increase their damage resistance to fully immunity for
oneten minutes as an action, once per long rest. It's a nice ability but a lot more situational than the two metallic breath options, though you could combo it with Vitriolic Sphere (cast by yourself or an ally) to just wreck hordes that are around you.Given that they haven't toned down metallic breath at all I'm expecting they'll still have that ability.
If you have two attacks then you can swap one for the regular breath weapon, and the other one for the metallic breath weapon, giving you two total. If you have three or more attacks though you can't do any more, as it's still once per Attack action (for regular breath) and once per long rest for metallic.
I gotta say I prefer the UA change to the Breath Weapon. At 17th level it all balances out, I guess, but I prefer the 2d8 scale to 5d8. Makes the breath weapon seem more impactful as you level instead of what could end up being 1 out of the 1d10 instead of 2 on a 2d8 if you roll that badly.
I like the increase to the number of breath weapon uses available, and the addition of the second breath weapon, but other than that I think that dragonborn are fine as they were.
You're right, that's situational as all effing get out and overall poor compensation.
Not gonna lie, pretty metal. (Edit: So, uh, what's with the stat changes? Isn't the point of custom lineage to build specific races that aren't in the base game? Why does every race need to have this?)
Lol almost everybody in this comment section are angry!
Meanwhile for my take I also wish they kept the original stat increases.
The argument for abandoning them (racial ASI's) is that, with them, only a few classes are optimal for each race (the change makes dragonborn wizards be reasonable! yay!), and that the races still are unique thanks to their racial traits (you can still breathe fire, so do you really need your +2 STR?), and that you can still take STR and CHA if you want.
Looks great. Honestly would love to have more playable races that can get some level of fly. I feel like dragonborn in 5.5 could be great for that as a feat.
It’s overall not that bad , the normal dragonborn had mediocre stuff and this one adds to it. It does make the normal dragonborn obsolete though, the T-1000 has been introduced replacing the old model of T-800
So many people here are just resistant to change. How can you complain about the breath weapons (a Dragonborn-specific thing) while also saying losing ASIs removes racial identity?
I personally welcome racial identity being more about interesting abilities and features instead of just being stat bonuses that make numbers bigger.
While I do like the use of "Proficiency Bonus times per day", I don't think it needs to be attached to everything. Maybe a slight modification where you regain a single use of the breath weapon on a long rest? Also, I feel some of these breath weapons should be a line or use Constitution saves rather than all Dexterity cones.
Other than that, though, I'm glad they are acknowledging the general lackluster dragonborn race.
Dragonborn have been largely ignored in 5th Edition. Damage resistance is nice, but they really had nothing else going for them, and unless you knew going in that you'd be up against a certain type of damage, there was no real point in playing one.
I despair if unoptimal play is seen as inviable. You can totally play a wizard with a 15 INT. You don't need to play a maxed out character at all. If we are going to abandon set ability score bonuses, why not abandon ability score bonuses? After all, if it isn't dependent on your race, then why do characters get it at all? After all, you already have superhumanly good ability scores. Why should you get another bonus on top of the stats you already have?
Can't wait for a 15 foot Cone of Acid
Sigh. The interesting difference of save types, damage types, and AOE type, now gone for it all being a 15 foot cone of dex. Or, I hope this is the case, that is still preserved. But come on, sometimes you want a 30-foot line.
So we're moving away from alignments and set ability scores for races... and then we get set personality traits depending on colour?
These things are not mutually exclusive; suggested alignments and ability score improvements help to inform what your typical dragonborn is like. Players and DM's have always been free to customise this, and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything made that ability explicit.
I don't think anybody minds having the option to change the bonuses, but we'd still like to see what the "default"/suggested values are because it informs us "dragonborn tend to be strong", they tend to be chaotic or lawful, they tend to be over six foot, and weigh several hundred pounds etc. But Wizards of the Coast are stripping all of this out (alignment, ASIs, height and weight are all gone from recent races), so all that's left are the racial traits which only tell us what special things they can do, not what they're like.
We end up with a situation where every goblin can be just as strong as a goliath. Now, I'm someone that likes customisation, but Wizards of the Coast are making changes that create inconsistency in their own world, if they wanted to give us proper racial customisation they should just give us a heap of racial traits (like strong, graceful etc.) then let us build anything we like, and choose what it actually is later (e.g- I build a graceful fey so decide it's representing an elf).