D&D General Dragonmarks in other settings

[Thommy H-H]

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.

This is explcitly the stance taken in Eberron: Forge of the Artificer. The Dragonmark feats aren't gated by species or anything else. That's obviously what makes them interesting as ideas for something equivalent in other settings. In my homebrew games I've had Aberrant Dragonmarks show up, albeit as a result of arcane bioengineering as part of a half-dragon-warlord-seeking-draconic-apotheosis thing, but for some reason it's actually never occured to me to use the other Dragonmarks, even though I have a whole nation transforming into dragonborn and dragon moons showing up in the sky and just a big mess of dragon hyphen type stuff happening.

I did just try seeing if I could map the Dragonmarks onto the canonical dragons, but it's not an easy fit (normally you can just about beat that kind of setting detail into shape!). Obviously Storm is blue, but beyond that you kind of have to stretch a little bit, especially because there aren't any 'evil' Dragonmarks (except Aberrant).

 

[eclair~]

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.

Most Dragonmarks are more powerful than Magic Initiate (Wizard), because with the Potent Dragonmark feat, you get over ten extra spells you can cast, plus a 5th-level spell slot every short rest to cast them—compared to one 1st-level spell you can cast for free once per long rest.

If you think it's fair for only some of your players to have access to that because other players didn't make the right choice during character creation, then you're inevitably going to produce a poor game experience for those players.

 

[Voadam]

I was severely underwhelmed by the mechanics of Dragonmarks in 3e and the only Eberron game I played in had only a little Dragonmark house politics before we shipped off to the Jungles of Xendrik to go after giants. Dragonmarks are not the parts of Eberron that really caught my attention (the religion stuff, the five kingdoms, Xendrik, warforged and shifters, The Great War, pulp and noir). I have not even looked up how they are handled in my copy of Rising From the Last War and the specific Dragonmarked houses and minor magics are not something I have tried to really port over into other settings.

5e and particularly 24 5e have the magic adept 1st level feats, and as someone mentioned above there are the runechildren in Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. 3e also allowed multiclassing to do something similar. 4e had easy multiclassing feats to gain a wizard cantrip as an encounter power. From 3e on in D&D there have been a number of ways to get a bit of magic.

I have used warforged mechanics in my own Eberron influenced but not Eberron mashup setting and played in games where they were used. I was in one Disney themed game where one player used warforged fighter mechanics for her giant porcelain doll (former child bodyguard) character. In my 5e Iron Gods campaign a player was a full on robot technologist in the Thudarr the Barbarian style Numeria land where there is lots of recovered Sci-Fi from a ginormous colony ship that crashed 10,000 years ago.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Most Dragonmarks are more powerful than Magic Initiate (Wizard), because with the Potent Dragonmark feat, you get over ten extra spells you can cast, plus a 5th-level spell slot every short rest to cast them—compared to one 1st-level spell you can cast for free once per long rest.

If you think it's fair for only some of your players to have access to that because other players didn't make the right choice during character creation, then you're inevitably going to produce a poor game experience for those players.

Ah, so your concern is with Potent Dragonmark, not the starting feats. That's possible. So with a two-feat investment, at level 4, a character can cast a single spell once per short rest of level 1 or 2, and by level 10 it becomes up to a single level 5 spell. Yes, it's effective. To return to the specific example I gave, that would be a single spell for a Fighter or Rogue to cast, or one more for a wizard. Not game-breaking at all.

I appreciate your concern about the wellbeing of starting players, though, and the possibility of missing out in character creation. So again, I will ask, how strict are you in using backgrounds at your table? because that is a constraining characteristic.

 

[Zardnaar]

Most Dragonmarks are more powerful than Magic Initiate (Wizard), because with the Potent Dragonmark feat, you get over ten extra spells you can cast, plus a 5th-level spell slot every short rest to cast them—compared to one 1st-level spell you can cast for free once per long rest.

If you think it's fair for only some of your players to have access to that because other players didn't make the right choice during character creation, then you're inevitably going to produce a poor game experience for those players.

Its not. You get less spells than the initiate feats.

The ten extra spells are added to your spell list. Not spells known.

Potent dragonmark is almost a no brainer level 8 maybe 4.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

RAW you can take a custom or older background and pick whatever stats and origin feat you want.

The only requirement is Eberron game.

 

[Zardnaar]

I would rename the feats or add the houses to non Eberron game.

Forge of the Artificer becomes Forge of the Wonderbringer in FR.