D&D 5E Dragonborn inter-species breeding?

[Minigiant]

Dragonborn can only breed with Dragonborn and Lizardfolk in my game.

The result is a very strong Lizardfolk with the resistance to the damage type of their Dragonborn parent.

Dragonborn can however polymorph and mate with other races. The result is a being of the other race but they have the chance of being a sorcerer (lower chance than when a true dragon does).

 

[Relax]

I really think the fellow needs to be spoken to about what he's actually proposing. Over and over in my life I've seen people do evil acts with no actual evil intent, they just hadn't thought it through or were blinded by culture. If this player understands that he's proposing rape, has companions that are of Good alignment and continues with his plans, waking up dead one morning shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

This does of course raise the question, is killing less of a crime than rape? One doesn't even need to do a comparison. I've always wanted to present my players with the morality involved with slaughtering "evil" creatures. Are Kobolds actually evil, or does their intelligence level and the culture they exist in just make some other humanoids think so. Are the bogeymen of Kobold children Paladins, coming to murder their parents while they sleep, or are Kobold children as bloodthirsty and vile as their parents seem to be?

I think it would be fascinating to have a game where the only truly evil beings are demons, devils and the like, while all humanoids at least are born innocent and only moulded by their environment/culture/social stature. Would at least make raiding an Orc camp a little less cut and dry...

 

[Redthistle]

Dragonborn can only breed with Dragonborn and Lizardfolk in my game.

The result is a very strong Lizardfolk with the resistance to the damage type of their Dragonborn parent.

Dragonborn can however polymorph and mate with other races. The result is a being of the other race but they have the chance of being a sorcerer (lower chance than when a true dragon does).

I like this description of the limiting factors in dragonborn reproduction, especially the link to non-dragonborn with a sorcerous draconic origin.

 

[Kikuras]

This does of course raise the question, is killing less of a crime than rape?

I was pondering the same question, and the conclusion I reached is that it doesn't matter. Killing, death, and even murder, are an unfortunate but expected, and even necessary part of the game that is D&D. Rape is not. It belongs in D&D as much as it belongs in Monopoly or Candy Land (at least as far as overt application by players and DM).

I'm in favor of non-alignment games, where shades of grey reign supreme, and there really is no "orcs are always evil, so it's okay to kill them" attitude. I enjoy being faced with moral ambiguity and then the party having to actually decide how they wish to proceed. Of course, in alignment-based games I like to constantly repeat that orcs are always evil, and that we should not hesitate. I also like to challenge the stunted morality of the goodie-goodies.

 

[MechaPilot]

Decoupling it from the assault issue, inter-species procreation is actually quite interesting. Consider that in the real world there are species of animal whose DNA very closely matches our own (90%+) and that human procreation with those creatures is not possible. How close would the DNA of an elf have to be to human DNA for the half-elf to actually be possible? And what does that say about how close the DNA of an elf is to the DNA of an orc if both can produce offspring with humans?

The creation of creatures by deities is also an interesting twist on the biological angle. With divine creation of the races, a race could effectively be programmed to procreate with no other creatures, all other creatures, all other humanoids, or only with select races and/or subraces.

In my Tenesia setting, all humanoid races are capable of producing offspring with each other, so you can have half-dwarves, half-goblins, half-bugbears, dwarf-elves, gnome-goblins, and so on.

 

[Minigiant]

I like this description of the limiting factors in dragonborn reproduction, especially the link to non-dragonborn with a sorcerous draconic origin.

In case you want to know, in my game:

Lizardfolk PC:
+2 Strength
Medium size
Speed 30ft, swim 30 ft.

Subraces:
Greenscale
+1 Constitution
+1 AC
Hold Breath (15 minutes)

Half-dragonborn
+2 Charisma
Hold breath (10 minutes)
Elemental skin (damage resistance to their draconic element. Immunity if they have held their breath for 1 minute)

Half-Dragonborn NPC:
+2 Str, +1 Cha, Hold Breath(10 minutes), speed 30ft, swim 30 ft. Elemental skin

There's a villain in my game, a half-dragonborn dragon sorcerer called the Mute. His favorite tactic: Subtle Empowered fireballs... point blank.

 

[Sunseeker]

I was pondering the same question, and the conclusion I reached is that it doesn't matter. Killing, death, and even murder, are an unfortunate but expected, and even necessary part of the game that is D&D. Rape is not. It belongs in D&D as much as it belongs in Monopoly or Candy Land (at least as far as overt application by players and DM).

I disagree. That's not to say I believe rape belongs in D&D, I could certainly run a D&D game with no killing, an intrigue, diplomacy-based game wherein the players find clues, solve puzzles and generally attempt to resolve any potential "encounter" without violence.

D&D is based out of a psuedo-medieval fantasy, unfortunately for all the high-minded-ness that D&D attempts, it is not without artifacts of that medieval lore. Medieval life and medieval lore was incredibly dark. Life was cruel, brutish and short. People were terrified of their own shadows, even the supposed forced of good in the world often caused more violence than they prevented. Rape existing in D&D is an unfortunate side effect of the fact that D&D draws its creative inspiration from a time when rape was common. When anyone lower than your own station and especially women, or anyone weaker than you was property and a target for your desires.

Rape has a very specific place in D&D, just as everything else does. I have had campaigns wherein NPCs have been raped. This was a tool to motivate the players, to get those otherwise on the fence to go "woah". A sledgehammer to make my point that the bad guy is indeed a bad guy and that is bad and only you can do something about it. I apologize if I ramble I will attempt to tl'dr:

tl'dr: Rape, like all bad things, has a place in D&D, if only a niche and perhaps extreme place. But to deny that, to claim that rape has no place in D&D is I think, to deny history. To attempt to whitewash reality in favor of a more pleasurable alternative, but I do believe that it is only by recognizing that this dark side in our own history exists, that we are able to move away from it.

I'm in favor of non-alignment games, where shades of grey reign supreme, and there really is no "orcs are always evil, so it's okay to kill them" attitude. I enjoy being faced with moral ambiguity and then the party having to actually decide how they wish to proceed. Of course, in alignment-based games I like to constantly repeat that orcs are always evil, and that we should not hesitate. I also like to challenge the stunted morality of the goodie-goodies.

I tend to agree until the very last point. I like to present situations that offer the chance to question your own morality. You may choose to question, or you may choose not to. I don't like to put my players in a position where they must challenge their morality, though it is nice to see change over time through reaction and learning more about themselves and their characters, it is also equally interesting to watch characters double-down on their initial beliefs.. "Change" in a character does not always mean improvement, but it is none-the-less interesting.

 

[Riley37]

Rape, like all bad things, has a place in D&D, if only a niche and perhaps extreme place

Well... yes and no. In a D&D *setting*, sure, rape happens, just as plague happens, along with brutal taxation, illiteracy, famine and so forth; at least among the human civilizations which are modelled on Middle Ages life. Rape is present in the setting of every story in a realistic contemporary genre. It's also present in "Star Trek"; Lt. Tasha Yar refers to rape gangs on her (violent, backwards) home planet. And although all the posts in this thread, so far, have taken a stance on rape as an unacceptable, evil action, that's not exactly consensus in larger society.

On another hand, none of those horrible realities necessarily appears in gameplay. If Lord of the Rings had been a D&D campaign, it could have been a fine one, though I hope the players would have more awareness of how much of the setting is "swept under the rug"; for every named character who appears in Gondor or Rohan, there are presumably scores of subsistence-lifestyle peasants, whose taxes pay for those named NPCs to have swords and so forth. Anyways, all of the famine, flogging of serfs, rape, etc. happens away from the "main stage" action.

A D&D setting is necessarily different from European history, and might be better in some places. Elves could have a fundamentally better civilization than humans, with rare-to-zero theft, murder or rape. Humans with divine magic - even if it's rare - might have a much better average life than the humans of Earth in 1100 or 1200 AD. After all, if a city is lucky enough to get help from *one* level 5 druid, that druid can *double the harvest* on all the surrounding fields; a cleric who can cure disease twice per day could, I think, do a lot to slow down the spread of a plague. The presence of a few paladins could dramatically change a city's criminal justice system. And so forth.

Anyways... taking it out on the *character* is not, IMO, the answer. Because that just tells the player, that immediate negative consequences of rape happen *in a fictional fantasy setting*. I think there's more value in giving the player the news that unlike certain (not all) football teams, and certain (not all) college fraternies, and certain (not all) armies of occupation, your D&D group has a set of morals, *as real people in the real world*, which does not accept rape.

 

[MechaPilot]

D&D is based out of a psuedo-medieval fantasy, unfortunately for all the high-minded-ness that D&D attempts, it is not without artifacts of that medieval lore. Medieval life and medieval lore was incredibly dark. Life was cruel, brutish and short. People were terrified of their own shadows, even the supposed forced of good in the world often caused more violence than they prevented. Rape existing in D&D is an unfortunate side effect of the fact that D&D draws its creative inspiration from a time when rape was common. When anyone lower than your own station and especially women, or anyone weaker than you was property and a target for your desires.

While D&D does draw inspiration from that time period, it is worth noting that there is definitely more gender equality in many of the D&D worlds than there were in the medieval era of Earth, and that women are generally not considered property any more than men are (as you noted, an arrogant ruler is likely to consider all people of lower station than he is to be property). I say generally because there will naturally be cultural variations, but I believe the general assumption over the last three editions (3e, 4e, and 5e) is one of gender equality unless noted otherwise.

 

[PnPgamer]

Maybe this is an attempt of stocholm syndrome, instead of rape?