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 feel like I get everything about what a race is like from their introduction and description, not their ASIs, so not having set ASIs for a race seems like a very trivial thing to me. As such, I really don't mind having the ASI be chosen by the player.
I do agree about alignment, height and weight though, though idealy you should be able to tell general alignment from the description.
Lastly, a bit of nit-picking, but Goliaths have the Poweful Build trait, so technically they are gonna be stronger than goblins. It may not be that relevant in combat, but out of combat is important too after all.
We’re not resistant to change in general, just change for change’s sake. If you like picking your own ASIs, great, but the whole point of D&D is to present you with a structured set of rules you can change if change is desired. It’s supposed to add structure rather than take away from it.
Of course, because it makes sense that a goblin is no less likely to be a wizard than a high elf.
I was genuinely afraid they'd be presented as Draconians, given the book's title.
The average damage on the breath weapon has increased. 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.
This is not much of a buff. 2d6 is 7 average damage, and 1d10 is 5.5 average damage, a slight decrease. It is marginally higher at higher levels, though.
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!
Using your Channel Divinity on your breath weapon would be a terrible waste.
The additional battlefield control options for your breath weapon are pretty good, though.
Is a moonstone dragon preview article going to appear on DDB in the next couple of days?? I'd really rather not watch a 20-minute video when I could read an article.
This.
Draconians are in the book, but they are not a player race.
Correct, but those are lineages, which modify your race
By my reading, you can replace one attack with the Breath Weapon and one with the Metallic Breath Weapon
This 👆
And this 👆
I think eliminating set racial ability score bonuses removes exactly nothing from the game. You want set bonuses to give you cookie cutter stereotypes? Set them for your table, or build your PC in a manner you feel appropriate. You want the freedom to go another way because it’s a completely made up game of fantasy storytelling? Do that instead. You get the game you want & other people get the game they want. No one loses out. To think increased flexibility is “dumb” because it allows other options (while simultaneously supporting your preferred way of having fun) is…well, dumb.
Conversely, eliminating set racial ability score bonues adds nothing to the game. You always had that ability. By codifying it as "the" way, does not increase flexibility. To use your own words, to buy into that illusion is dumb. It's a cheap illusion. Using your logic, however, let me ask you: what rules couldn't be wiped away by the same logic? Why have rules at all? After all, they only limit perceived flexibility (not acknowledging that no rules in D&D are binding in any meaningful way and any can be abbrogated with impunity.) What we should do, to maximise game flexibility is limit official material to setting material and ideas to create your own settings. All other implementations are unnecessarily restrictive.
Naturally, I don't think this, but you're drawing an arbitrary line in the sand which is exactly as arbitrary as the line in the sand you seem to be decrying. Therefore, your argument -- seeing that it lacks logical integrity when placed under stress-- is that you prefer one arrangement more than another arrangement. That's fine, but it is hardly persuasive.
The ASI complainers are correct. All of these races and subraces hit different because of their racial ASI. Clearly it leads to unique roleplay outside of racial abilities.
Orc (x3), Half-Orc, Goliath, Minotaur = +2 STR +1 CON
Tortle, Centaur = +2 STR +1 WIS
Locathath, Bugbear, Longtooth (Shifter) = +2 STR +1 DEX
Githyanki (Gith), Hobgoblin = +2 STR +1 INT
Elf subraces (x4), Feral Tiefling, Aarakocra = +2 DEX +1 INT
Elf subraces (x4), Halfling subraces (x3), Kenku = +2 DEX +1 WIS
Elf subraces (x3), Halfling subraces (x2), Swiftstride (Shifter), Tabaxi = +2 DEX +1 CHA
Elf subraces (x2), Stout Halfling, Goblin, Grung = +2 DEX +1 CON
Duergars, Leonin, Earth Genasi, Beasthide (Shifter) = +2 CON +1 STR
Hill Dwarf, Water Genasi, Lizardfolk, Loxodon = +2 CON +1 WIS
Fire Genasi, Mark of Warding Dwarf = +2 CON +1 INT
Gnome subraces (x2) = +2 INT +1 DEX
Verdan, Scourge Aasimar = +2 CHA +1 CON
Aasimar subraces (x2) = +2 CHA +1 WIS
Tiefling, Yuan-ti Pureblood= +2 CHA +1 INT
P.S. Where do you think Haregon and Fairy would fall on this list?
But clearly WotC are running out of ways to represent new races and subraces. Over half of them already share the exact same racial ASI. How many +2 STR +1 CON or +2 CON +1 STR races are they going to come up with before you complain about racial sameness (again)? Or should WotC just stop making new races and subraces? Or should they ONLY invest in Intelligence-based races from now on bc not many races have +2 INT? Or should every new race be +1, +1, +1? Or should new races have more ASI and less racial abilities bc ASI are clearly better at differentiating one people from another?
Or do you have some other suggestion that prevents further racial power creep but also feels unique mechanically and narratively? Please do go on. I am all ears.
P.S. Getting rid of a set +2/+1 bonus to stats in favor of flexible stat increases does not equal to erasing whole gameplay systems or rulebooks. That's a steep slope logical fallacy. DnD isn't suddenly a rules-lite solely narrative focused tabletop game because fairies and rabbit people don't have baked in +2 DEX +1 WIS racial bonuses.
It doesn't matter if several races have the same suggested ASI bonuses, as they still differ in other ways; the point is that WotC is removing the suggested values that help to inform a quick or typical build, and are doing so in a way that is making races feel less well defined mechanically. That said, I wouldn't object to WotC taking a look at the mix of scores and using that to focus on things that we've been lacking.
A big part of the problem is that they're changing the design pattern for races too late in the game; they've had an established pattern for races for nine years, so why forcibly change it going into year ten? It's a bewildering choice, especially coupled with dropping of heights and weights which makes no sense at all; if they want to make a radical change to how race/species plays into a character build then that should be reserved for when they can do it properly, e.g- with an actual, radically different, 6th edition (rather than the 5.5e we've been told to expect).
What they're doing doesn't fix any of the real problems with how races/species/classes are defined and interact in D&D 5e, and it just forces the use of something that was previously optional. And worse, they're doing it will introducing new power creep that's making the imbalance of older races even worse (without offering anything to help them).
HOLY MOTHER OF BAHAMUT!!!!!
I hope they don't listen to all these people complaining about the ASI change. I much rather prefer this change. Now every race/class combination can be viable as opposed to being a hindrance because you want to make a more interesting character.
My first ever character, a Red Dragonborn Rogue can now be far better than he had been before, while keeping what made him interesting to me (his backstory which leads to the class).
But every human in real life is the same, right? We're all the same height, weight, muscle mass, intelligence, etc. No, wait, that's not right. So why would every Orc be BIG AND STRONG AND STUPID? The new ASI rules allows for various types of people to exist in every race as opposed to everyone being exactly the same.
And PC's are supposed to be special among others in the world, right? That's why they're the ones saving the world? So wouldn't an Orc Wizard (with a +2 to Int thanks to the rule change) be special among other orcs? As opposed to just being the same as every Orc with the +2 Str. If you still want the overall race to be a certain way in your world, that's fine, but shouldn't the heroes, the ones who are supposed to be different and special, be allowed to be different and special?
I disagree with everything you just said. The original dragonborn were so "meh" in both flavor and mechanics. You didnt feel like a ferocious dragon person when you played a dragon born, it felt like a crappy off brand tiefling. My group didnt use short rests often so if I played a dragon born, I got to use my breath weapon once a day. That sucks. This is super cool! Theres so many more options here and WotC is working to make sure that each type of dragon born (gem, chromatic, and metallic) are all unique feeling in their own ways while also trying to make them feel tied to their counterparts. I love this direction. it finally feels like dragonborn can live up to the dragon in their name.
If they followed the UA at all, then chromatic dragonborn have stronger elemental ties. I think they can temporarily get immunity to the ancestral element and bless others with some kind of elemental damage?