Aloïsius said:
And I'm quite sure some of those "Tieflings" were in fact Dragonborns, as me and others hypotethised sometimes ago! This would explain the PHB cover. It was right under our noses.
Eh, not so sure, all the horned guys in the preview images we've seen so far seemed more demonic than draconic to me . . . but we'll all see soon enough!!!
Olgar Shiverstone said:
Meh. More anthropomorphic lizard-men is not something I personally think that D&D was missing. And why invent a new race when there are already so many iconic races to choose from in the game? If you wanted dragons/lizards, there are lizardmen, half-dragons, draconians, dragon-touched, kobolds ....
Lizardfolk and kobolds are certainly iconic creatures, but as monsters to fight rather than as PCs. Despite the PC options in "Races of the Dragon", "Savage Species" and other books. While I wouldn't mind seeing a PC-style writeup of those two, never in a PHB! (that goes for orcs, hobgoblins and similar races too)
Half-dragons, draconic creatures (template), draconians and the many other "dragon descended" (term from "Races of the Dragon") all share the same rough "idea space" as the dragonborn . . . basically that of dragon-men characters. But for inclusion in the first PHB, we wouldn't want a templated race (half-dragons, draconic creatures) both due to complexity and lessening the value of having these templates as monsters in the MM. Plus the whole concept range of "dragon descended" is a bit confusing and doesn't have a solid "hook". Draconians are very recognizably unique to Dragonlance and again are an evil monster race to boot, not really suitable for a PC race in the PHB.
Dragonborn have a clear hook and make perfect sense as an adventuring PC race, they are heroes called to serve by Bahamut! (well, at least in 3e they were) I imagine the 3e "sorta-template" mechanics will be dropped for a more standard PC race writeup. I also think that while the race will still be a "good" race, they won't be solely tied to Bahamut anymore, but perhaps good dragons in general.
And the balance of concepts works well too! You have your "celestial" race, the eladrin; your "fiendish" race, the tieflings; and your "draconic" race, the dragonborn! They also work well with an alignment perspective, "good" race = dragonborn, "evil" race = tiefling, and "neutral" race = eladrin.
A lot of the races some of us would prefer will be in the MM anyway, with PC stats in the appendix. So, it's a win-win for most of us!
I'm pretty excited, as I loved the dragonborn race in 3e but found the mechanics clunky. I can't wait to see what they've done with the race in 4e!