D&D General Dragonmarks in other settings

[Horwath]

I can use them for noble houses of Waterdeep, or just appearing for individuals dragons predicted for greatness in the future.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I'd never allow 2024 Dragonmarks in any other setting.

The 2014 version of them was reasonable enough to include as options in other settings, but the 2024 Dragonmark feats exist to make characters who choose them much more powerful than any other characters. I'd have no intentions of being unfair to players who don't pick balance-breaking options to let another player get significant expansions to their spell list, or feats that are stronger than everyone else's origin feats, or even get extra casts of much more powerful spells than anyone else can acquire via feats.

This seems a really deeply felt response, and I find it surprising. Which Dragonmarks do you find more powerful than, say, Magic Initiate (Wizard)? Find Familiar, True Strike, and another wizard cantrip, cast with Int, Wis, or Cha, seems to me a high benchmark that (arguably) none of the Dragonmark feats match in terms of power.

Perhaps a related question is this: how free do you allow your players to be in the choice of background? Among the stronger (or at least more desirable) Dragonmarks to my eye is the Mark of Passage. To take it, though, through the House Orein Heir background, means that you can't start with a 16 or 17 in Charisma or Wisdom, which would limit its desirability for Bards, Sorcs, Warlocks, Paladins and Rangers. If you implement customizable backgrounds, it becomes more desirable. Without that, though, it will appeal to some Rogues, some Fighters, Wizards... maybe monks? That to me feels like an appropriate limitation.

 

[Blue]

Though that doesn't mean the only way to introduce Warforged is like this.

I like the idea of them being a Dwarven creation. In one variant, Warforged are a way for couples that can't have children (maybe due to a disease that lowers fertility, homosexual pairings or multi-racial pairings ) to create something like a child. Two souls merge and create a new soul, just like in biological procreation, but the result isn't a dwarf, it's a construct. This would be very different than Eberron Warforged - these Warforged might have loving parents actually, and grew up in the Dwarven culture, maybe the culture still treates you different from normal children (and children treat you differently).

And there you have an example of what I was suggesting for Dragonmarks -- make them important and lore-connected in your setting.

This is a good example of how one can treat such flavorful things and not go the FR route of just tossing them into the setting.

 

[Blue]

I see your point, but to me, it is still a mechanically interesting option to model some of the scenarios described in my initial post, even when you remove it from this original lore.

The point isn't just removing it from it's original lore. It's taking it from it's original lore solely for it's mechanical aspects without replacing the lore, like the Forgotten Realms and some other kitchen-sink settings have done with the Warforged.

This is a roleplaying game. Yes, "game" is in the title and we can have purely mechanical bits, but "roleplaying" is as well. Make them interesting from that aspect as well.

The title of this is "Dragonmarks in other settings". What is superior for an RPG: a flavorless mechanical construct, or the same mechanical construct that also ties into the setting, has meaning, will cause reactions from people who see it, and otherwise interacts both mechanically and culturally?

Stripping half of the meaning of the Dragonmark away by only looking at the mechanical aspects weakens them in a roleplaying game. Give them lore. Give players meaningful choices beyond just the mechanical wargame aspects.

 

[TwoSix]

As per usual, the best approach is to ask the player.

If they just want it as a mechanical upgrade, work with them to build a small roleplaying hook localized to the character; there's no need to build out setting-level detail for it.

If they would like to attach some setting lore to the idea, work with them to build up how they view the "mark" as interacting with their characters, and then you can use that concept to flesh out some in-setting story concepts for later.

And if they're really interested in the "mark" ideas having a strong in-world meaning, than you can work on doing some reskinning that impacts the setting.

 

[JPL]

Well let me pitch something little more specific: dragonmarks in the Forgotten Realms could be a mark of divine favor, and that ties you into a huge body of lore related to the Faerunian pantheons. I don't know if it marks you as a full-fledged Chosen, but maybe it's at least possible first step, a sign that one particular god has their eye on you.

Pairs very well with divine sorcerer, thematically.

 

[Reynard]

If I were to use them in another setting, the first thing i would do is completely disentangle them from ancestry. I have even considered doing that in Eberron -- I think the Houses might be more interesting if they were built around the Marks first, and not race. But that would require a lot of lore revisions I am not especially interested in doing.

 

[TwoSix]

If I were to use them in another setting, the first thing i would do is completely disentangle them from ancestry. I have even considered doing that in Eberron -- I think the Houses might be more interesting if they were built around the Marks first, and not race. But that would require a lot of lore revisions I am not especially interested in doing.

For my personal version of Eberron, I split the difference. The majority of Dragonmarks are passed on via familial/"genetic" lines, but there are enough spontaneous marks that a PC of a different-than-expected race won't be some massively weird outlier. Most Houses are between 90-95% made up of the "standard" race.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I have strong feelings about this, and the warforged are a great example.

In Eberron, being a warforged means a great deal, it's immensely tied to the lore. You were created as a living weapon, not a sentient being, by House Cannith. Veterans (which is many, many people) may feel horror at seeing you, or perhaps you're like their favorite tank, or that you can't actually have real emotions because that would mean that what they did during the Last War would haunt them. You very likely sold to one of the five nations and used in the Last War. The Treaty of Thronehold which ended the Last War also closed down all the Creation Forges, a slow genocide against your people. You have no culture of your own, just the adopted soldier culture of the nation you were a piece of military materiel for.

Being a warforged in Eberron means something.

Being a warforged in kitchen sink settings: Oh look, I'm a living construct. Woo!

The Dragonmarks have vast lore tie ins. Building them into the lore of your setting, making them important, making having one a Big Deal -- then I'm fine for them in other settings. But washing away everything interesting about them except their mechanical effects just to import them I am dreadfully against.

i think i might be the polar opposite here, if i find a thing i like it's usually cool to me independently regardless of the lore, and if i find something i like i'm more that willing to repurpose it and put it into another place or setting.

one of my biggest frustrations with warforged i've had here on the boards is wanting to put warforged in different or new setting and people saying i can't do that because the soulforges and the houses and all the rest of the lore isn't there to justify their existence.

 

[saviirkad]

The point isn't just removing it from it's original lore. It's taking it from it's original lore solely for it's mechanical aspects without replacing the lore, like the Forgotten Realms and some other kitchen-sink settings have done with the Warforged.

This is a roleplaying game. Yes, "game" is in the title and we can have purely mechanical bits, but "roleplaying" is as well. Make them interesting from that aspect as well.

The title of this is "Dragonmarks in other settings". What is superior for an RPG: a flavorless mechanical construct, or the same mechanical construct that also ties into the setting, has meaning, will cause reactions from people who see it, and otherwise interacts both mechanically and culturally?

Stripping half of the meaning of the Dragonmark away by only looking at the mechanical aspects weakens them in a roleplaying game. Give them lore. Give players meaningful choices beyond just the mechanical wargame aspects.

I'm not sure if I agree with this or not, and it really boils down to if you're saying lore needs to be established for the  Dragonmarks or for the mechanics of a Dragonmark as it is applied outside of its usual lore.

I do agree with the latter, in that I can't really wrap my head around not doing that at all, but I think the former is too limiting. Putting any mechanic inside of a lore box it can never be removed from is not my jam. I might mostly play inside that box but I dont want that space to have walls.

If a player of mine said they wanted to use a Dragonmark to represent something, the answer for me would be yes, unless there's some issue I have with the mechanics of that mark in particular or something. How that works in lore is up to the player and I, of course, but doesn't have to mean the establishment of an entire Dragonmark-based system that defines certain people differently than others. I don't think it needs to add anything new or different at all.

Maybe the player is a sorcerer and this feat is simply an aspect of their arcane power manifestation. Maybe they're a wizard and this represents an area of their study and expertise. An Inquisitive Rogue is just that good at their job. Meaning the Dragonmark has no lore of its own at all, it's just a mechanical extension of the character's existing lore.

Now, if the player wanted to use a Dragonmark to represent a lineage (or training or school or some talent with no uniform origin) that has some renown or exists alongside separate lineages (etc.), or as part of my own world-building I wanted to establish something like that, then using the Dragonmarks system to represent that could certainly work.