What is silly to me is that folks are defending and rationalizing dragonboobs:
"Don't think to hard about fantasy."
"Their monotremes so they can have boobs."
"Dragons aren't reptiles so therefore dragonborn can have boobs."
...and on and on and on.
Its all nonsense on its face. Dragons are obviously reptilian in nature, they aren't monotremes, they do not have boobs. I don't need RAW to tell me that dragons are magical, reptilian monsters and the whole "well the RAW doesn't call them reptiles so therefore there is a rationale for dragonboobs" makes no sense because dragons, the creatures most related to dragonborn do not have breasts.
No, they aren't. Dragons are not reptiles in any way, shape or form. Reptiles do not have six limbs. Reptiles are not warm blooded. No reptile flies. The only reptilian thing about dragons is scales. Guess what? CHICKEN'S have scales.
You might be able to call dragons saurial, but, not really.
The only reptilian races in D&D with breasts are crossbreed races such as half-dragons and yuan-ti crossbreeds. No purely reptilian race in D&D or any fantasy game, movie, literature I am aware of has breasts unless it is partly mammal. There are no known humanoid monotremes in D&D.
"No known humanoid monotremes"? This is false. Dragonborn are. But, in any case, WHO CARES?
The artists who draw dragonborn with breasts are doing so likely because the art direction told them to do so. Art direction told them to do so so that 10-13yr olds would face the crippling intellectual dilemma "Well I want to play a female dragonborn, but how will anyone know she's female!!!"
The answer...add breasts.
Yeah its dumb, yeah its lazy and yes it demonstrates that WoTC, on some level, believes that D&D players are unsophisticated nimrods who can't even conceive of differentiating an anthropomorphic reptilian species in any way other than by adding breasts to the females.
Wow, way to say that anyone who likes the artwork is an unsophisticated nimrod. Good luck with that.
Other more sophisticated option (that anyone who ever read about reptiles or watched TLC could understand):
1.) The genders have different coloration. The males can be more colorful and the females more drab. This is common in nature.
Oh boy, we can make half the artwork ugly. That's better than giving them breasts.
2.) One of the genders has a crest, or both have different crests. They can attract mates by flaring their crests or to show agression.
Wow, let's REALLY appeal to the geeks out there. "Hey, is that a male or female dragonborn?" "Well, the crest is exactly 15 centimeters long, so it must be female."
3.) Different physiology such as males having thicker tales shorter necks and females having longer necks and thinner tales or vice versa (I know they don't have tails but they should).
Or, give them different physiology, like, boobs.
...There are potentially countless options that are no only more interesting but that do not require rationalizations or intellectual gymnastics in order to justify the existance of the abberation that is breasts on a non-part mammalian creature. Dragonboobs are pandering, creatively lazy and a sad little act of handwaving that presumes a lack of sophistication on the part of the D&D audience.
When I was 12 and started playing D&D, I was a savvy enough tween to know that creatures that looked like lizardfolk (ie. all humanoid reptilian races) don't look right with breasts.
Wyrmshadows
Good for you. Unfortunately, for you anyway, there's a pretty large number of people out there for whom this is completely a non-issue and have no problems with separating their amateur biologist impulses from gaming.
