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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8695073" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I know this is going to sound like a broken record coming from me, but I genuinely believe the dragonborn present by far the clearest, most significant "threat" (in a socio-political/socio-economic sense). I've said a ton about all this already, but in brief...[SPOILER="Side thing"]Dragonborn pros (relative to humanity):<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Faster development time but similar lifespan (so more productive lifespan)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Laying eggs lets mothers skip most of the difficulties (and illness) of pregnancy</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Highly charismatic and gregarious despite their stereotypical pride (at least as pro-social as humans)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Physically strong and hardy (and, at least in 4e, noticeably better at healing from wounds)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">More rapid generational turnover (and thus faster base population growth)</li> </ul>Dragonborn cons (ditto):<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">More dependent on dietary protein, making nutrition a serious concern</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Faster development time means any issues or problems that occur in childhood are much more dangerous</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Elemental breath means anti-social behavior can be significantly more dangerous</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Caring for eggs is a huge weak spot--it saves labor but incubation sites are at major risk of attack</li> </ul>[/SPOILER]Unlike most other races which plausibly could be "more powerful" than humans, such as elves or dwarves, dragonborn actually develop faster than humans, and yet they live on the same overall lifespan clock. Where elves and dwarves have stupidly, unrealistically long childhoods (which is an incredible risk in medieval contexts), dragonborn have borderline unrealistically short childhoods, which is very useful in a world that is extremely dangerous to infant children. With a significant reduction in infant mortality purely because dragonborn children can walk within hours of hatching and can talk within months of hatching, on top of all the above stuff, dragonborn pioneers should be a scary, scary prospect for humans. So long as they can get a sufficient source of protein (meaning they almost certainly must be pastoralists or herders), they can set up a foothold, have twice the total population of a human society in less than a century, and their physical prowess and elemental breath make them better-equipped for resisting the main ways of trying to prevent them from doing this (that is, warfare.)If you want a race that took over the Earth but doesn't really begrudge humanity having its own territory, especially if that territory isn't super ideal for the kinds of things that race needs for its ordinary diet and such? Dragonborn are pretty much ideal.Edit: Even better, because they are pretty clearly physiologically different from humans, even if their reasoning capacity and moral-ethical reasoning are largely equivalent, it's also entirely possible that dragonborn would be resistant or completely immune to the kinds of pathogens that normally infect humans....as well as livestock. As a result, dragonborn might be significantly less likely to suffer from plagues than humans, because if they keep mammalian livestock (and actually use good sanitation...), they could skip some of the greatest killers of humanity in the Medieval Period: diphtheria, smallpox, cholera, mumps, measels, etc., etc., etc.</blockquote>

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