D&D General Dragonborn Physical Features

[Vaalingrade]

Well, lack of tail I agree looks silly, and apparently so do the artists, since they do have tails in the art now. I don’t have the book yet, so I don’t know if the description talks about tails or not.

Ad for wings, personally I always think wings look silly on humanoid body plans. With stuff like angelic or demonic wings the silliness is kind of an expected part of the package, but with dragon people I prefer they just not have them. The spectral wings are also silly, but at least they’re temporary. And temporary physical wings would be even sillier.

I am a fan of all kinds of wings and I'd rather have emerging/growing/unfolding wings that fake wings.

I feel like the spectral wings are a 'now shut up' feature; something the designers do when they know the fanbase wants something, but doesn't want to give it to them. Happens a lot with flight. Back in 3.5, they knew people wanted a winged race and gave us a hideous wing-armed species that shot bows with their feet and had a terrible glide mechanic called Raptorans.

And to punish people who wanted half dragons, we had unnecessarily high LA or unbirthing. That was the first dragonborn, btw. We haven't gone all that far from 'we have what the fans are asking for at home'.

 

[Charlaquin]

I am a fan of all kinds of wings and I'd rather have emerging/growing/unfolding wings that fake wings.

I feel like the spectral wings are a 'now shut up' feature; something the designers do when they know the fanbase wants something, but doesn't want to give it to them. Happens a lot with flight. Back in 3.5, they knew people wanted a winged race and gave us a hideous wing-armed species that shot bows with their feet and had a terrible glide mechanic called Raptorans.

Wing-arms are infinitely cooler than shoulder-wings.

 

[Corinnguard]

The mechanics for both the 3.5e Dragonborn and the Raptorans were silly attempts to get around their own LA and ECL rules in Savage Species.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Trying to make dragons sad reptiles is just a microcosm if this trend of making D&D less fantastic unless there's a wizard dancing about waggling their fingers and hips while chanting nonsense to make it happen.

And it's getting canonized in the game where there's no longer supernatural powers, just more spells.

It's gotten so bad that people are insisting fantasy=magic and fictional also equals magic.

Nice to see people are offended about what I do with the lore in my own setting.

Making dragons into reptiles is completely unrelated to making everything a spell in DnD. I utterly despise the trend of making literally everything into a spell.

And this trend of making everything 'spectral' or 'a spirit' is another thing I can't stand. I want to call a wolf to my aid. Not summon a holographic dog to cheer me on.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Nice to see people are offended about what I do with the lore in my own setting.

It is comforting.

Making dragons into reptiles is completely unrelated to making everything a spell in DnD. I utterly despise the trend of making literally everything into a spell.

It is because it's part of the mindset of not letting the fantastic be fantastic without being a specific spell.

You can't own a magic book, you have to use a spell to call upon a magic book.

You can't be a thing that flies, you have to summon spell wings.

You can't summon an animal, you have to call into being a fake spell wolf.

By the same token, a person can't be tough and real strong, they either are limited to the strength someone who has never met or observed actual strong folks in real like or they need a spell to justify it.

A person can't be tough and lucky; they either need hit points to all be meat and blood and sadness, or have a spell to let them perform death-defying stunts.

And dragon can't be a dragon--as in a fantastic creature that is wholly unrelated to things in our world -- it either has to be a big, scaley wizard or some kind of real animal except where they breath something colorful and can fly.

And this trend of making everything 'spectral' or 'a spirit' is another thing I can't stand. I want to call a wolf to my aid. Not summon a holographic dog to cheer me on.

I'd be fine if both were options, but I'd rather sacrifice the hologram than the conjuration.

honestly, the real problem here is limitation of options and the tendency for when two options go head to head, the less inspiring, more bland one seems to win every time.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Japanese fantasy is so heavily influenced by AD&D, when it uses races they tend to straight-up be the AD&D races, plus anthropomorphic dogs called kobolds and anthropomorphic pigs called orcs.

A minority do that, but the majority go in completely different directions.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Here's a good video on the evolution of the kobold:

 

[Dausuul]

If one of my players wants dragonborn, and I decide to allow it, then they have the physical features that player wants them to have.

Otherwise, ain't no such animal.

 

[Mecheon]

So does a lack of wings and a tail, or worse hologram ones.

I'm fine with the lack of wings, but tails are a must have. Once again, my go-to for Dragonborn are Drakonids from Warcraft who don't have wings (the winged ones are the winged Dracthyr, a different group of dragon-people resulting from horrific experiments on hundreds of incredibly unlucky drakonids) but are recognisably draconic. Serving as ground troops and being closer to regular people to serve dragon interests and whatnot

Mind, my go-to lore is, dragons made Dragonborn, just like they made kobolds. Dragons are arrogant. So in making what they wanted as a servitor race, went "Hang on, do we want these flying around like we can?", said "No", and didn't give them wings