Gnolls have also been playable in previous editions but are now strictly off-limits in 5e. I can see them saying no to playable draconians as well due to their origins (despite the sidebar in the PHB).
Weren’t dragonborn originally a “made” race as well? In 3e, they were humanoids who underwent a ritual created by Bahamut to transform, right? Hence the “born” in their name. I actually kind of prefer that to the true-breeding version we got starting in 4e. You could represent it through a lineage like the ones in VGR easily enough, too. (Same with the psionic Elan race.)
Given the similarities between dragonborn and draconians--such that, in 4e, Baaz and Kopak
were treated as variants of Dragonborn--I think it's more likely that they'll be playable, but handled differently. Perhaps the first batch were made by dark rituals, but dragons later learned some other way of creating them, differently expensive. I'd even call it a ready-made, minimal-risk "throw off your oppressors" story, which leans relatively hard into the same philosophies and concepts as the "no more evil monocultural races" stuff. Just as playable Drow are unlikely to belong to the Lolth-worshipping jerk sector of Drow society, playable Draconians are unlikely to belong to the Takhisis-worshipping jerk faction of their world.
Yeah, not sure if 4E ever provided a definitive origin story besides the ancient fallen empire bit.
It intentionally rejected the idea that there was a
definitive origin (part of its commitment, despite protestations to the contrary, to respect the DM's primacy on story matters, even if the DM chose to play in the standard PoL setting). The three proposed origins are (1) created by dragons to be their mortal agents (the story favored by dragons themselves, natch), (2) created directly by Io to be their own thing in his grand structure, or (3) an accidental creation from the droplets of blood Io shed when he was cleaved in half by Erek-Hus, making each dragonborn technically the tiniest bit divine (popular among dragonborn who dislike dragons).
The most "definitive" you get is that they
are, either directly or indirectly, the children (or "grandchildren") of Io, so their patrons are Bahamut and Tiamat, just as Melora is the patron of halflings and Moradin is the patron of dwarves.
We are now about just about three months until the book is released. Does that leave them any time at all for any last-minute UAs for its material? I can't remember how close to release they have pushed UA before.
It's pretty unlikely at this point. UA tends to straddle that vague middle ground between
actual testing (as in, "does this work and what's good/bad about it?") and testing the waters/floating a trial balloon. I'm personally rather annoyed that they use the same vehicle for both things, because that (IMO) makes it rather bad at both, but it is what it is. Neither purpose is meaningfully served this close to release; they must be very close to print right now, potentially even committed to the final layout. Releasing a UA now would be kinda pointless; they wouldn't have the time to respond to any negative feedback, and they don't need to share
rules to generate
hype. So....I just can't see them doing it.
Yeah they are made, but I think it's said somewhere that chromatic dragon eggs, when made into draconians actually turn good (draconians always being the opposite of their egg).
This is how they did it in the past, but honestly, I'd argue "doing X thing on stolen dragon eggs makes
inherently good people" is WORSE than the way OG draconians work. At least with OG draconians, the novels themselves support the idea that they're not so much "evil" as expansionistic, slightly inclined to aggression, and taught not to like the people they've been told to conquer. They're explicitly not stupid, and quite able to figure out on their own that their masters treat them like crap, cannon fodder to be thrown at the enemy because they aren't valued, while their "enemies" are relatively upstanding folk who treat their allies well and don't brook unnecessary casualties. Some of their more far-minded leadership straight up desert, with loyal followers in tow, and strike up positive diplomatic relations (if not friendship per se) with the "good guys" because they can see the
benefits of doing so.
That's about as opposed to "this species has an evil culture baked into it, which only a few special rebels will be able to resist" as you can get, narratively speaking: the draconians WERE made by awful people for awful ends, used and abused by their creators....and they rose up and took their fate and their culture into their own hands. That's a pretty pro-social-justice message....
and it already exists in the novels. They don't have to
invent anything new to make this happen; it's
already justified. To ignore that opportunity when it is thrown squarely in their laps would be foolish.
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