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

[CleverNickName]

I know we're already pretty far off-topic, but we already have rules for playable species that fly (several of them, in several different books, over several years.) Why not use one of these?

Flight. You have a flying speed of 50 feet. To use this speed, you can’t be wearing medium or heavy armor.

Flight. Because of your wings, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. You can't use this flying speed if you're wearing medium or heavy armor.

Fairy Flight. You have a flying speed equal to your walking speed and can hover. This flight is magical and does not require the use of your wings (if you have them).

Fairy Flight. You have a flying speed of 30 feet. You can’t use your flying speed while you wear medium or heavy armor. (If your campaign uses the variant rule for encumbrance, you can’t use your flying speed if you are encumbered.)

I'm just sayin', this isn't really a new or unusual thing for player characters.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I know we're already pretty far off-topic, but we already have rules for playable species that fly (several of them, in several different books, over several years.) Why not use one of these?




I'm just sayin', this isn't really a new or unusual thing for player characters.

Some dms don't mind flying pcs, other despise them. I think it depends on the kinds of encounters you like to make, since flight trivializes some and is barely even useful in others.

I don't know if I'd want flight on a core race, though. That makes it harder for dms to restrict it.

 

[CleverNickName]

I don't know if I'd want flight on a core race, though. That makes it harder for dms to restrict it.

It wasn't so long ago, that people were saying the same things about whether or not Dragonborn should be in the core rulebook. I remember the outrage and anguish when the D&D Next playtest (soon to become 4th Edition) included them.

It never was a hill that I was going to die on (I have other hills for that), but yeah, you make a fair point--folks are very picky about what gets to be considered "core."

 

[jmartkdr2]

It wasn't so long ago, that people were saying the same things about whether or not Dragonborn should be in the core rulebook. I remember the outrage and anguish when the D&D Next playtest (soon to become 4th Edition) included them.

It never was a hill that I was going to die on (I have other hills for that), but yeah, you make a fair point--folks are very picky about what gets to be considered "core."

I never minded dragonborn, I think they might be my favorite DnD race -but I can understand why some people don't like them aesthetically.

I also don't want wings on my dragonborn because I want them to be distinct from half-dragons - but that's also mostly an aesthetic preference. I'd certainly prefer wings to extra arms.

But if something's in the PHB it's not readily accepted if dm's restrict it. If something's not in the PHB only a few players get whiny if you don't include it, especially if it has abilities not available in the PHB. It's just the expectation, which doesn't mean dms can't include or exclude any ancestry, but it does impact how readily players will accept those restrictions.

 

[Tonguez]

I never minded dragonborn, I think they might be my favorite DnD race -but I can understand why some people don't like them aesthetically.

I also don't want wings on my dragonborn because I want them to be distinct from half-dragons - but that's also mostly an aesthetic preference. I'd certainly prefer wings to extra arms.

But if something's in the PHB it's not readily accepted if dm's restrict it. If something's not in the PHB only a few players get whiny if you don't include it, especially if it has abilities not available in the PHB. It's just the expectation, which doesn't mean dms can't include or exclude any ancestry, but it does impact how readily players will accept those restrictions.

I really didnt see the point of Dragonborn because Half-dragons and Draconians already existed. But its no biggie.

With 2024 making lineage mainly cosmetic, none of them need to core really. It would be good if the PHB could make that explicit and let DMs and groups choose their own 'setting species'

 

[Mind of tempest]

I really didnt see the point of Dragonborn because Half-dragons and Draconians already existed. But its no biggie.

With 2024 making lineage mainly cosmetic, none of them need to core really. It would be good if the PHB could make that explicit and let DMs and groups choose their own 'setting species'

Draconians have a lot of baggage as do dray.
half dragon is one of the endless mutt options and infers that bard memes are a reflection of reality.
Hence, forging a new one meant to do it properly.

 

[Corinnguard]

Dragonborn- born from dragons.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Dragonborn- born from dragons.

but in what way?

 

[Desdichado]

It's not so much that I mind dragonborn, at least as they were in late 3e and 4e, but rather that I think that they're too different to have been integrated into normal D&D settings. Especially D&D settings that already existed. I'm totally OK with the idea that Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dark Sun, etc. didn't have dragonborn societies, because dragonborn—if they exist at all—are fairly unique. Dragonborn in the Nentir Vale setting, on the other hand; sure they fit. They were written into the background of the setting, so there's a place for them. There isn't one in Eberron or Forgotten Realms, so having them shoehorned in feels very meta and obnoxious to me.

 

[James Gasik]

Settings used to be more fluid, I've noticed. Back in the TSR days, if a new supplement or Dragon magazine article came out and said "hey, here's this new class or race" and provided lore for what campaign settings it could fit in, an individual DM might not allow it, but I don't recall anyone saying "x doesn't belong in y setting". Maybe this was just because the internet wasn't quite a thing yet, maybe it was because with Spelljammer and Planescape, TSR's worlds were more cosmopolitan, with it not being a big deal if a Tinker Gnome from Krynn hitched a ride on a spelljammer and landed in Waterdeep or a Bariaur stepped into the wrong portal and found himself in the Free City of Greyhawk.

By the time WotC took over stewardship of the IP, the existence of Aasimar and Tieflings wasn't contested, and we got a ton of new things too, like Genasi, and several books devoted to dragonkind which gave us "draconic" PC options, (like say, Silverbrow Humans).

But during the 4e era, I started to see a growing rise in people upset about not only Dragonborn and Tieflings in the PHB*, but the idea that (gasp) someone might dare play a Warforged in Tethyr, as if the idea of a sentient golem person in the Forgotten Realms (the setting where new things pop up all the time, from Saurials to entire friggin' continents- lookin' at you Maztica and Zakhara). In fact, it doesn't take a lot of explanation as to why such a character could exist. If someone didn't want all the Warforged and Eberron lore cropping up in their campaign, you could easily provide new lore, or use the racial package to represent some other constructed creature (like a Golmoid, from Dragon #317).

*as if Gnomes didn't themselves appear as a PC option for the first time in the 1978 PHB.

Don't get me wrong, if a DM doesn't want someone to play a Mul in the Forgotten Realms (half-dwarves already existing in said setting) or a Tortle on Krynn (despite the setting already having some crazy races, likely because of the Graygem, like Walrus-men), that's their prerogative, of course. A lot of DM's don't like their PC's being a menagerie of oddballs (because of course, there was never anything unprecedented about a Dwarf, an Elf, a Human, and four Halflings going on a quest together), and that's fine- but the irritation some people have with other options existing, even being in the sacred PHB, with the game developers saying "hey, there's a place for these guys in your favorite settings" as if there's never been a precedent for such things throughout the game's history, always struck me as a bit strange.

Especially since I've never heard the same complaints about, say, new monsters being added to the game, often with very little real lore at all beyond "so here's this crazy monster". Is there a fundamental difference from adding Mudmen to your campaign because they appear in Beyond the Crystal Cave and adding Valley Elves to your campaign because they appear in Vale of the Mage, despite not having been even mentioned anywhere previously?