Dammit, Warlord, Warlock, Tiefling, and Dragonborn are growing on me.

[Gloombunny]

Consider the following...

I'm certain exactly how long dragonborn are supposed to live, but, for instance, compare a typical human's life span to that of a typical dragon. A dragonborn (using a human's lifespan) who has to earn his wings and breath through "the experience of trial by fire" -- adventuring, that is to say -- will likely gain those benefits sometime in his late 20's to early 30's. Even those who take a safer appraoch to gaining the requisite experience will have to gain to traits by the time they're 70+ or risk dying of old age as an immature dragonborn, rather than living for centuries as a true dragon.

That does two things...

First, it completely bypasses the youngest three or four age categories of dragons, ensuring that true dragons you do run into are exceptionally powerful. Not only would true dragons start straight off as a juvenile or young adult, but they would also by default (unless you included some sort of fundamental mental change as a part of the molt) have all the class levels accumulated as an "adolescent" dragonborn.

Second, it allows you to keep dragonborn as a modestly common race, with all the ancient empires that may entail, while still keeping dragons relatively few and far between. The limiting factors being: A) As with any race, few will ever take up adventuring the only pratical way to quickly gain the required experience. B) Even amongst those who adventure, fewer will survive until the higher levels needed to gain those feats. C) Not all those dragonborn who gain enough experience may choose those feats and become a dragon.

In other words... Dragonborn are to dragons what tadpoles are to frogs.

http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_035.htm

Specifically, the sepia-toned section towards the bottom.

 

[Ander00]

Dragonborn are simply very young dragons that have not yet reached full adulthood... At higher levels, once they gain a breath weapon and wings, they have finally reached adolescence and begin molting into a form that can continue growing into a true, adult dragon.

In a GURPS-ish game a while ago, we incorporated a similar theme. I played a horribly disfigured man who was actually a dragon who had not yet reached maturity. That was indeed fun. However, I doubt that idea would work very well for a race as common as the Dragonborn are apparently supposed to be. But if you throw that out, I can see it working well enough.


cheers

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I dunno, I can pull a bunch of flavor even from what little we know about Dragonborn.

Former empire, warrior society, tracing their bloodline to some possibly-mythical divine ancestor... sounds kinda WW1-Germanic to me, or maybe late-medieval Arabic, or hell, WW2 Japanese. A whole nation/race of people, looking back at a past, idealized empire, conceiving of itself as the purest race of true warriors, all while bitterly resenting a new geopolitical situation in which they're no longer on top. All it takes is one charismatic leader or oligarchy to tell them that there's a Plan, that they can rise again and regain what's been wrongfully taken, and war is stirring...

 

[Njall]

While I like Warlords, Tiefling and Warlocks, I don't think I'll use Dragonborn a lot, mostly because they don't fit my usual campaign setting.
It doesn't bother me that they're in the PHB, though...they're just an option I'm not going to use, but some folks in my gaming group may like them, and find a use for them in their campaigns.

 

[Seeten]

How about banning humans and demi-humans. And for PC races use Tieflings, Dragonborn, and replace everything else with races from the MM? At the least it will be interesting, and you can use the core PC races you dumped in the place of standard humanoid monsters.

I ran a game where everyone had to choose an outright monster. We had a troll, an ogre, a lizardman, and kobold. Then, I had the "Civilized" races begin assaulting the forest leading up to the pass leading to the mountain/etc that was the gateway into their lands, and the PC's fought against the armed aggression of the Humans and Demi-humans.

I had a lot of fun, and the PC's, despite their alignments of CN, N, and LE acted pretty heroically, and saved a lot of ...monsters. Don't say it too loudly around here, though, this is a badwrongfun scenario, because all PC's should really be good, no warlocks, no evil, nothing necromantic, no clerics to evil gods...

 

[jester47]

I want to play a dammit. Anyone heard about these?

 

[Joh]

I would play DND everyday if it was like living in a ManOWar album cover.

 

[Joh]

While I like Warlords, Tiefling and Warlocks, I don't think I'll use Dragonborn a lot, mostly because they don't fit my usual campaign setting.
It doesn't bother me that they're in the PHB, though...they're just an option I'm not going to use, but some folks in my gaming group may like them, and find a use for them in their campaigns.

I have to say, this is by far the best outlook to have on 4e. People are getting so upset over stuff thats easily omitted in their own games.

Whenever I run DND, I don't allow people to play non-specialized wizards. Does that mean I get upset that generalized wizards exist? No, and I don't mind them when I play in other people's games, but I like my flavor, and I run it the way I want to.

Just because something is in a book somewhere, no matter what book it is, doesn't mean it has to ruin your fun.

 

[Stogoe]

I just hope that there are lots of races in the MM glossary for me to mix and match. Not saying I dislike the Dragonborn from what I know, but I'd like to have tons of choices for my world.

 

[Imp]

I want to play a dammit. Anyone heard about these?

Well, you play AD&D, and roll up a 1st-level magic-user.