meomwt
First Post
Ah, but the demigod cambion tyrant Iuz is an exceptional individual, and the crashed starship in the Barrier Peaks is an extraordinary circumstance; both are unique. Those are hardly the same as having an entire PC race, hundreds of thousands of dragonmen, wandering around the Flanaess.
As I have said before regarding an overabundance of magic; making the fantastic too common reduces its impact and renders it mundane, no longer extraordinary, and ultimately boring. Including a PC race of dragonmen reduces something that should be extraordinary to an everyday, commonplace occurrence.
In Greyhawk, elves and dwarves are supposed to be somewhat exotic; adding dragonmen to the mix is nudging things quite a bit too far.
With the caveat that I don't have the 5E PHB yet, and so I don't know how Dragonborn are defined in the RAW, I can't comment on their level of exoticism compared to elves and dwarves.
Were I to be DM and a player in my Greyhawk game wanted to be a Dragonborn, then I would explain that they were the offspring of a human and a dragon (and they would have to determine which type of dragon) and that they have yet to meet another of their kind, etc. Human/ Dragon offspring - whilst not common - do occur on Oerth and if an easy, well-defined race is available to represent this, so be it.
And, as with anything a player wants to bring to the table, DM has final say over exactly what abilities the Dragonborn would have, to avoid over-powering other players.
Dragonborn would certainly not be common in the Greyhawk lands (no more than, say, 1 in 100,000 would be so born) - but player-characters are supposed to be a cut above the general populace, and making a Dragonborn an adventurer would be a bold and innovative RP choice (especially in a campaign where dragons played a large part in proceedings - Tyranny of Dragons, for example - where the PC has to act against his own heritage).