D&D 5E Nonstandard Races You Love And Want Back

[Irda Ranger]

4e beat you to it. Ferak (Iron), Adamaaz (Adamantine) and Kobaaz (Cobalt) Draconians all appeared in the Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons for 4e.

At least that shows I understood the naming convention.

 

[Brandegoris]

I mean...if you completely ignore everything they are, I guess.

But actually, no, they aren't that at all.

Goliath's are awesome.
I like their persona very much

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Except, at that point, why not just use dragonborn? Seems to solve the problem nicely.

And, yeah, again, copping to my own ignorance, I never even bothered with the Saga stuff at all. AFAIC, the setting went very much off the rails at that point.

Because they're....different?

It's not like races take up a ton of space, man.

 

[Hussar]

I hope my user name and profile pic give me some cred as an OG Dragonlance fan (and I've been using them on other gaming forums longer than I've been on EN World), and I have never thought that Dragonborn were a very good Draconian substitute. They're very different takes on what a draconic PC race might look like.

Each of the Draconian races are also very different from each other. If you made a single Draconian race the sub-races would have to be where most of the rules are, including all the stat modifiers.

My point was that if you were going to change what draconians are - and make changes so that they can be raised if they die, for example, you might as well not use draconians at all. I completely agree that dragonborn don't make good draconians. My beef is the idea that draconians make a good PC race. The racial abilities of draconians are not really in line with PC races and the draconian background flavor really doesn't fit anything other than an all evil party.

If it's something someone wants for their home game, more power to them. I'd just rather that the "official" take on draconians didn't turn them into drow where you run into all these good drow that are completely divorced from what drow originally were. And, IMO, it's even harder for draconians. It's not like draconians are "born" and learn to be evil. They are created evil, flat out. The idea that I can mutate evil dragon eggs somehow and they come out good just has too much of a squick factor for me. Draconians, AFAIC, are essentially evil constructs.

It would be like if you took the Peter Jackson Uruk Hai, and then stuffed them into some sort of "Make them Good" incubator and they'll come out good. No. Uruk Hai are mutated elves that have been twisted into evil. Taking some evil creature and somehow twisting it to be good is just completely off the ranch as far as how I view alignment.

 

[Hussar]

Because they're....different?

It's not like races take up a ton of space, man.

Like I said above, that's missing the point. Draconians as written are problematic as a PC race. The "no raising" is a big deal. You die, and there's nothing short of wish that's going to bring you back. Never minding the racial powers like spells, poison, shapeshifting etc. Baaz might be pretty simple to use, but, aurak? Those things are death on toast.

And, let's not forget, the background here. You are a mutated, twisted, evil being bent on subjugating all life in service to the Dragon Queen. Not exactly conducive to a PC race. At least, not for most campaigns. And, there's the different issue of setting fit. Draconians have some pretty strong ties to Dragonlance, obviously. What would a draconian be in, say, Forgotten Realms? A creation of Tiamat? But, Tiamat isn't the same as Takhisis, at least, not in Forgotten Realms. Who made draconians in FR?

So, if you strip all that away, no ties to Takhisis and Dragonlance (in order to make it generic enough to fit in any setting), strip away or greatly reduce the racial abilities of the creature, what are you left with? A lizardy dude that looks kinda like a dragon. Hrm, sounds like a dragonborn to me.

 

[Irda Ranger]

My point was that if you were going to change what draconians are

Three issues--

1) You're making a lot of assumptions about how Draconians would be adapted to be a PC race. Right out of the gate you're just assuming that we change how they die (e.g., no turning to stone), when no one has proposed any rules. I actually wrote it up a first draft set of house rules yesterday and I kept it just the way it is. When a Baaz dies he turns to stone, then crumbles. No Raise Undead for you. Don't like it? Play a different race.

2) Your beef that they're monsters and don't make a good PC race runs counter to a very long tradition within D&D of playing monster races as PCs. Volo's Guide to Monsters has rules for orcs and hobgoblin (aka, Uruk Hai) PCs, for instance, and I used to own AD&D 2E's Complete Book of Humanoids. This fight was lost a long time ago.

3) You're ignoring the canon developments in the published setting. First generation draconians were created as you described but the setting has come a long way since the War of the Lance. There are noble draconians and also they figured out how to reproduce and founded their own nation, Teyr. You don't like the post-WotL canon developments? Fine, but complaining that other players want rules to support canon setting is unreasonable.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Like I said above, that's missing the point. Draconians as written are problematic as a PC race. The "no raising" is a big deal. You die, and there's nothing short of wish that's going to bring you back. Never minding the racial powers like spells, poison, shapeshifting etc. Baaz might be pretty simple to use, but, aurak? Those things are death on toast.

And, let's not forget, the background here. You are a mutated, twisted, evil being bent on subjugating all life in service to the Dragon Queen. Not exactly conducive to a PC race. At least, not for most campaigns. And, there's the different issue of setting fit. Draconians have some pretty strong ties to Dragonlance, obviously. What would a draconian be in, say, Forgotten Realms? A creation of Tiamat? But, Tiamat isn't the same as Takhisis, at least, not in Forgotten Realms. Who made draconians in FR?

So, if you strip all that away, no ties to Takhisis and Dragonlance (in order to make it generic enough to fit in any setting), strip away or greatly reduce the racial abilities of the creature, what are you left with? A lizardy dude that looks kinda like a dragon. Hrm, sounds like a dragonborn to me.

Literally none of that is necessary.
If the player is cool with not being raised upon death, then it isn't a problem. Done. There is no reason to avoid such a race.
There is also no reason they can't have the background they have in DL, and different ones elsewhere.
And it sounds like Dragonborn to you because you are wildly oversimplifying in order to support the conclusion you want to support.
They do different things. It's that simple. People want to play them, they won't take up much space, and their mechanical features would necessarily be quite different from a Dragonborn. The fact they are both draconic humanoids means absolutely nothing. Might as well argue the game only needs one mammalian race.

 

[jayoungr]

Hey, maybe this is a good place to ask about this; am I crazy, or do I remember someone posting a homebrew "Baconian" race of anthropomorphic pigs here a while back? Possibly it got lost in the Great Data Munch of 2016. Does anyone still have a copy, or know where else it can be found online?

 

[Redthistle]

And two sets of nipples.

Although, stallions don't have nipples. So would male centaurs have nipples or not? And where would the babies feed: up top or down low?

As a PC, maybe. Not my favorite sagittaurean* race.

I am a big fan of wemics and BBQ, however, and since wemic-and-centaur pretty much equal predator-and-prey in my mind, two sets of ribs has a certain appeal.

*Sagittaurean is an archaic term for creatures such as centaurs and wemics. Chaucer would have been familiar with the word.

 

[Redthistle]

Ahh. I never got into any of the 3.5 MWP lore at all. And, really, that whole "let's make everything a PC race" is very much a 3e thing. AFAIC, draconians are an evil mutation of good dragons. They have no redeeming qualities. They have no free will. They're in complete service to the Dragon Queen.

Like I said, the 3e retcons to the setting were something I completely ignored. From my point of view, they took all the things that were distinct about the setting, stripped them out, in order to sell more books to players. "Hey! Play our new Dragonlance and you can play a DRAGON!" Blah. No thanks.

Just a 3e thing?

I guess that's why no one is commenting on this thread, eh?

One person's weed is another person's flower.