D&D General What if we gave dragonborn four arms?

[Mind of tempest]

Western dragons that dnd dragons derive from are hexapod dragonborn, they only have four.
Giving them wings is apparently a balancing problem for some reason.
What if we gave them four arms like thri kreen?
Would it be less of a problem and make them look less like lizard folk?

 

[Deset Gled]

Having lived through the experience of a myriad of multi-limb and associated multi-attack options in the days if 3.x, my knee jerk reaction would be to immediately disavow and disallow any multi-armed species as a standard PC race. The headaches you get from opening that Pandora's box are never worth the benefits.

Whether that reaction is "experience" or "trauma" is open for debate. But either way, my answer is "no".

 

[sevenbastard]

But either way, my answer is "no".

But come on, I need to have four hands to use my four hand crossbows.

 

[CreamCloud0]

when i think of what makes a dragon-man my first thought is absolutely not giving them four arms,

Wizards needs to figure out to balance physical wings and not this energy-wing nonsense.

i can appreciate trying to distinguish dragonborn and lizardfolk though but this is not the way i would try to do it, i think i'd probably change things on the lizardfolk side, there are alot of ideas you can draw on with lizards (i mean dragons also have diverse concepts to draw from but i think the dragonborn's conceptual bedrock is fairly set and focused on the western dragon thematics).

 

[James Gasik]

Since the rules don't give you an attack for each limb, I think the only possible downside would be maybe using two versatile weapons at once? Dual-wielding with a shield or with a bow equipped?

I guess being able to have a hand free for spellcasting, carry a shield, and have two free hands for whatever else you wanted to do would be problematic in that you'd effectively have +2 AC when you're not really supposed to, which is better than being a Warforged. So probably enough reason to say no if you're worried about game balance.

Though according to the people in the Necromancer thread, game balance isn't as important as fun, so maybe they'd allow four armed races. : )

 

[GMMichael]

What if we gave them four arms like thri kreen?
Would it be less of a problem and make them look less like lizard folk?

I'd somehow want them in my game even less?

It shouldn't be a problem, except for the weird D&D concept of being able to attack MOAR by wielding more than one weapon.

 

[Scribe]

when i think of what makes a dragon-man my first thought is absolutely not giving them four arms,

Yep, neither is it Wings.

It's the breath weapon.

 

[CleverNickName]

A few years ago, one of my players wanted to play a dragonborn. He wanted it to have a bite attack, and a tail attack, and two claws, and rake with its back legs, and of course the signature breath weapon. "Sure," I said. "Now, you can still only make one off-hand attack as a bonus action. You'll just have more choices, not more attacks." I thought that was more than fair.

His reaction:

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Having lived through the experience of a myriad of multi-limb and associated multi-attack options in the days if 3.x, my knee jerk reaction would be to immediately disavow and disallow any multi-armed species as a standard PC race. The headaches you get from opening that Pandora's box are never worth the benefits.

Whether that reaction is "experience" or "trauma" is open for debate. But either way, my answer is "no".

Agreed!

There are some things we should just not mess with. Player's Characters should...

... not have flying wings.
... not be larger than medium.
... not have more than two functional arms.
... require air, food, water, and sleep.*
... not be dead.
... not have darkvision.*

Learn from others experiences, or not.

* I know what you're going to say!

 

[cbwjm]

I'd just stick with giving them wings if I really felt the need to distinguish them. Otherwise they still have their breath weapon and resistances which I feel do a pretty good job at separating them from lizardfolk.