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<blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 7091910" data-attributes="member: 18182"><p>I agree, that draconians, as originally presented in the Chronicles novels and classic modules, don't really make for good PC races. Or, at least, it wouldn't be easy to balance them with the more standard races. But, as others have pointed out, the draconian race evolved quite a bit within the Dragonlance setting from the original trilogy of novels, and as developed, can make VERY interesting PCs. YMMV, of course.</p><p></p><p>Mechanically, it's still tough to evoke the original "feel" of the race and keep things balanced, but I'm sure someone has or will come up with a decent conversion. Dragonborn and draconians are different flavors of the same archetype, and how well one substitutes for the other is a matter of personal taste.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I'd like to see draconian subraces for the existing 5E dragonborn race that evoke the feel of each draconian type, but don't include some of the more potentially game-breaking or unbalanced abilities. Perhaps with some "racial feats" that can add back some of those death-abilities, or powerful not-yet-dead abilities. Not sure how close to canon my thoughts are (and, don't really care), but I like to view "modern" draconians as a balanced race without some of the wild powers of their ancestors, with occasional exceptional throwbacks. And for draconians that have survived from the initial "batch", they would have monstrous stats equivalent to the originals from 1E. That would work well for me!</p><p></p><p>I mean, I'm reaching back through the foggy and rosy crystal glasses of time and nostalgia, but the draconians went through a LOT of retconning as Dragonlance evolved from a trilogy of novels to hundreds of novels and from the 1E game through 2E, Saga, 3E, 4E, and now into 5E. And like most shared worlds, some of that evolution is a bit silly and not always consistent.</p><p></p><p>First we had the original created, all-male race with powerful abilities with deadly death-throes. Later, the female draconians were "found" allowing for draconian babies. I vaguely recall something about "heartstone" draconians in the novels which were a new batch of created, almost mindless draconians that joined the original draconians. Somewhere in there we get "proto" draconians on Taladas and "noble" draconians created from evil dragon eggs and then additional (evilish) metallic draconians in 4E . . . . there's a lot of material there to be distilled into the race.</p><p></p><p>Why bother designing a 5E draconian race, regardless of how different it might be from the original conception? Why not? Why play orcs, gnolls, goblins, and other "evil" races? Because some of us want to. It's that simple, and it's all okay! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dire Bare, post: 7091910, member: 18182"] I agree, that draconians, as originally presented in the Chronicles novels and classic modules, don't really make for good PC races. Or, at least, it wouldn't be easy to balance them with the more standard races. But, as others have pointed out, the draconian race evolved quite a bit within the Dragonlance setting from the original trilogy of novels, and as developed, can make VERY interesting PCs. YMMV, of course. Mechanically, it's still tough to evoke the original "feel" of the race and keep things balanced, but I'm sure someone has or will come up with a decent conversion. Dragonborn and draconians are different flavors of the same archetype, and how well one substitutes for the other is a matter of personal taste. Personally, I'd like to see draconian subraces for the existing 5E dragonborn race that evoke the feel of each draconian type, but don't include some of the more potentially game-breaking or unbalanced abilities. Perhaps with some "racial feats" that can add back some of those death-abilities, or powerful not-yet-dead abilities. Not sure how close to canon my thoughts are (and, don't really care), but I like to view "modern" draconians as a balanced race without some of the wild powers of their ancestors, with occasional exceptional throwbacks. And for draconians that have survived from the initial "batch", they would have monstrous stats equivalent to the originals from 1E. That would work well for me! I mean, I'm reaching back through the foggy and rosy crystal glasses of time and nostalgia, but the draconians went through a LOT of retconning as Dragonlance evolved from a trilogy of novels to hundreds of novels and from the 1E game through 2E, Saga, 3E, 4E, and now into 5E. And like most shared worlds, some of that evolution is a bit silly and not always consistent. First we had the original created, all-male race with powerful abilities with deadly death-throes. Later, the female draconians were "found" allowing for draconian babies. I vaguely recall something about "heartstone" draconians in the novels which were a new batch of created, almost mindless draconians that joined the original draconians. Somewhere in there we get "proto" draconians on Taladas and "noble" draconians created from evil dragon eggs and then additional (evilish) metallic draconians in 4E . . . . there's a lot of material there to be distilled into the race. Why bother designing a 5E draconian race, regardless of how different it might be from the original conception? Why not? Why play orcs, gnolls, goblins, and other "evil" races? Because some of us want to. It's that simple, and it's all okay! :) [/QUOTE]
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