Okay, so, disclaimer, if you don't like this idea that's cool. I don't know if I will even use it. However, I really like it and thought, "hey, I'll share it."
So, I kinda hate Dragonborns. I think they're boring and, mostly and I apologise in advance about this, but they're for boring people. It's like they're designed to attract people who want to be something overpowered. If you like playing them, by all means, but honestly, I think they're a dreadful bit of design.
I was looking at the Draconic gifts and one of them is literally become a dragonborn. Which is ... uh, if I wanted to play as a dragonborn, I'd create a dragonborn, right? Right? But I started thinking about it and how it looks. I was thinking about how dragons can change shape into humanoids. I was also thinking about how dragons reproduce.
Holy shit, I said, what if Dragonborns were actually the youngest form of a dragon. Turning mortals into dragonborn is how dragons "reproduce" and what if Dragonborns were also not ... weird dragon people, but looked like a shapeshifted dragon-- which is to say mostly like a person, but could possess some unnatural features. What if dragonborn weren't a normal player race and there weren't thousands of them running around in cities. Then, the ability to become a dragonborn from a dragon gift is actually something a player might pursue and it solves one of the problematic races that were added because they were "cool". I mean, we have half-dragons, draconians and dragonborn, who all roughly look the same-- how do villagers not scream in terror everytime a dragonborn appears? I guess they can see the character sheet.
Take it, leave it. I just wanted to share this idea.
I'm not exactly a fan of dragonborn, but "overpowered" is really not something I associate with the race in 5E and "boring" feels nonsensical with regards to just about any race. Your character is what you make it, and the few racial elements you get don't really amount to enough to call one race boring and another interesting, IMO. I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't get the issue here. Liking or not liking a race has, as far as I'm concerned, not a whole lot to do with its design. Even if some mechanical features are better or cooler or more interesting than others, what you can make of "race" goes so much beyond the mechanical that it almost becomes irrelevant to me.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I'm not exactly a fan of dragonborn, but "overpowered" is really not something I associate with the race in 5E and "boring" feels nonsensical with regards to just about any race. Your character is what you make it, and the few racial elements you get don't really amount to enough to call one race boring and another interesting, IMO. I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't get the issue here. Liking or not liking a race has, as far as I'm concerned, not a whole lot to do with its design. Even if some mechanical features are better or cooler or more interesting than others, what you can make of "race" goes so much beyond the mechanical that it almost becomes irrelevant to me.
I didn't say they were overpowered, but rather they seem over powered. This is simply due to the association of them to dragons. If you ask what's more powerful: a human or a dragon, on face value, people will likely say "a dragon".
It's bad design because Dragonborn (and Asmodean Tieflings) don't really fit well into the world around them. They are boring because they are an incarnation of pandering. They exist to service a fratboy mentality.
At the end of the day, I don't really care about people disagreeing with me. I don't care if you like dragonborn or think they are a fine addition to D&D. None of that is important to me and I won't be shown the error of my ways. Nor am I here to persuade you that dragonborn are awful. What I am here to do is share an idea I had. If you don't see the point? You're free to disagree. But I don't need to justify, more than I have, my inciting position. Ultimately, that's not what this thread is intended for.
I'm not exactly a fan of dragonborn, but "overpowered" is really not something I associate with the race in 5E and "boring" feels nonsensical with regards to just about any race. Your character is what you make it, and the few racial elements you get don't really amount to enough to call one race boring and another interesting, IMO. I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't get the issue here. Liking or not liking a race has, as far as I'm concerned, not a whole lot to do with its design. Even if some mechanical features are better or cooler or more interesting than others, what you can make of "race" goes so much beyond the mechanical that it almost becomes irrelevant to me.
I didn't say they were overpowered, but rather they seem over powered. This is simply due to the association of them to dragons. If you ask what's more powerful: a human or a dragon, on face value, people will likely say "a dragon".
It's bad design because Dragonborn (and Asmodean Tieflings) don't really fit well into the world around them. They are boring because they are an incarnation of pandering. They exist to service a fratboy mentality.
What the heck does that even mean?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'm not exactly a fan of dragonborn, but "overpowered" is really not something I associate with the race in 5E and "boring" feels nonsensical with regards to just about any race. Your character is what you make it, and the few racial elements you get don't really amount to enough to call one race boring and another interesting, IMO. I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't get the issue here. Liking or not liking a race has, as far as I'm concerned, not a whole lot to do with its design. Even if some mechanical features are better or cooler or more interesting than others, what you can make of "race" goes so much beyond the mechanical that it almost becomes irrelevant to me.
I didn't say they were overpowered, but rather they seem over powered. This is simply due to the association of them to dragons. If you ask what's more powerful: a human or a dragon, on face value, people will likely say "a dragon".
It's bad design because Dragonborn (and Asmodean Tieflings) don't really fit well into the world around them. They are boring because they are an incarnation of pandering. They exist to service a fratboy mentality.
At the end of the day, I don't really care about people disagreeing with me. I don't care if you like dragonborn or think they are a fine addition to D&D. None of that is important to me and I won't be shown the error of my ways. Nor am I here to persuade you that dragonborn are awful. What I am here to do is share an idea I had. If you don't see the point? You're free to disagree. But I don't need to justify, more than I have, my inciting position. Ultimately, that's not what this thread is intended for.
I didn't ask you to justify anything. I saw your statements about dragonborn and your qualification that this is problematic, and I chose to offer counterarguments - not necessarily for your benefit either, but for anyone reading this thread. Which, frankly, I don't really have to justify either. We can agree to disagree, which doesn't require either of us to stay silent.
Whether you think they are or merely seem overpowered is a moot distinction. I don't think either is the case. They're an official PC race - the assumption should be that that makes them balanced, not overpowered, and in reality they're on the weak end as far as PC races are concerned. They're not popular, so if they are an incarnation of pandering that must have been a swing and a miss. In comparison, elves are a much more obvious candidate for pandering to the fanbase. Whether any race fits into the world depends entirely on how they are meant to fit in (I'll come back to this later) and has little or nothing to do with design and everything with worldbuilding.
That out of the way, your idea is - as far as I can tell - a reflavoring of a dragonborn's origins. It doesn't change their design, it only defines how you see them fitting into the world (coming back to this, as I said). With the overwhelming majority of campaigns being measured in in-game months, a couple of years at most, being the youngest form of a dragon offers no real perspective on ever being just that: the character changes from whatever it started out as into a dragonborn and is all but certain to remain exactly that for the rest of their adventuring days, or is created as a dragonborn and absolutely nothing is different other than some in-game lore about how they came to be. Unless you're saying "dragonborn" aren't actually dragonborn, just baby dragons, in which case you're not redesigning anything but simply throwing out a race option.
Nothing says there are thousands of dragonborn in any city by default, or that there are dragonborn and draconians and half-dragons present in the world, or that villagers not effectively scream at the sight of one. You're making assumptions about settings that don't have to be true and probably in most cases aren't. This is a matter of setting, world and character design, not race design.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Okay, so, disclaimer, if you don't like this idea that's cool. I don't know if I will even use it. However, I really like it and thought, "hey, I'll share it."
So, I kinda hate Dragonborns. I think they're boring and, mostly and I apologise in advance about this, but they're for boring people. It's like they're designed to attract people who want to be something overpowered. If you like playing them, by all means, but honestly, I think they're a dreadful bit of design.
I was looking at the Draconic gifts and one of them is literally become a dragonborn. Which is ... uh, if I wanted to play as a dragonborn, I'd create a dragonborn, right? Right? But I started thinking about it and how it looks. I was thinking about how dragons can change shape into humanoids. I was also thinking about how dragons reproduce.
Holy shit, I said, what if Dragonborns were actually the youngest form of a dragon. Turning mortals into dragonborn is how dragons "reproduce" and what if Dragonborns were also not ... weird dragon people, but looked like a shapeshifted dragon-- which is to say mostly like a person, but could possess some unnatural features. What if dragonborn weren't a normal player race and there weren't thousands of them running around in cities. Then, the ability to become a dragonborn from a dragon gift is actually something a player might pursue and it solves one of the problematic races that were added because they were "cool". I mean, we have half-dragons, draconians and dragonborn, who all roughly look the same-- how do villagers not scream in terror everytime a dragonborn appears? I guess they can see the character sheet.
Take it, leave it. I just wanted to share this idea.
I'm not exactly a fan of dragonborn, but "overpowered" is really not something I associate with the race in 5E and "boring" feels nonsensical with regards to just about any race. Your character is what you make it, and the few racial elements you get don't really amount to enough to call one race boring and another interesting, IMO. I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't get the issue here. Liking or not liking a race has, as far as I'm concerned, not a whole lot to do with its design. Even if some mechanical features are better or cooler or more interesting than others, what you can make of "race" goes so much beyond the mechanical that it almost becomes irrelevant to me.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I didn't say they were overpowered, but rather they seem over powered. This is simply due to the association of them to dragons. If you ask what's more powerful: a human or a dragon, on face value, people will likely say "a dragon".
It's bad design because Dragonborn (and Asmodean Tieflings) don't really fit well into the world around them. They are boring because they are an incarnation of pandering. They exist to service a fratboy mentality.
At the end of the day, I don't really care about people disagreeing with me. I don't care if you like dragonborn or think they are a fine addition to D&D. None of that is important to me and I won't be shown the error of my ways. Nor am I here to persuade you that dragonborn are awful. What I am here to do is share an idea I had. If you don't see the point? You're free to disagree. But I don't need to justify, more than I have, my inciting position. Ultimately, that's not what this thread is intended for.
What the heck does that even mean?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I didn't ask you to justify anything. I saw your statements about dragonborn and your qualification that this is problematic, and I chose to offer counterarguments - not necessarily for your benefit either, but for anyone reading this thread. Which, frankly, I don't really have to justify either. We can agree to disagree, which doesn't require either of us to stay silent.
Whether you think they are or merely seem overpowered is a moot distinction. I don't think either is the case. They're an official PC race - the assumption should be that that makes them balanced, not overpowered, and in reality they're on the weak end as far as PC races are concerned. They're not popular, so if they are an incarnation of pandering that must have been a swing and a miss. In comparison, elves are a much more obvious candidate for pandering to the fanbase. Whether any race fits into the world depends entirely on how they are meant to fit in (I'll come back to this later) and has little or nothing to do with design and everything with worldbuilding.
That out of the way, your idea is - as far as I can tell - a reflavoring of a dragonborn's origins. It doesn't change their design, it only defines how you see them fitting into the world (coming back to this, as I said). With the overwhelming majority of campaigns being measured in in-game months, a couple of years at most, being the youngest form of a dragon offers no real perspective on ever being just that: the character changes from whatever it started out as into a dragonborn and is all but certain to remain exactly that for the rest of their adventuring days, or is created as a dragonborn and absolutely nothing is different other than some in-game lore about how they came to be. Unless you're saying "dragonborn" aren't actually dragonborn, just baby dragons, in which case you're not redesigning anything but simply throwing out a race option.
Nothing says there are thousands of dragonborn in any city by default, or that there are dragonborn and draconians and half-dragons present in the world, or that villagers not effectively scream at the sight of one. You're making assumptions about settings that don't have to be true and probably in most cases aren't. This is a matter of setting, world and character design, not race design.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
When did Dragonborn start pledging fraternities?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
....What even is this thread../