Dragonborn in Dungeons & Dragons 5e

with glinting steel glimmering scales and dancing flames the Dragonborn paladin burst forth into the cultists lair he cries out in Muhammad's name by fire be purged as he draws in a deep breath exhaling a cone of flames that emulates the cultists where they stand my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we discuss everything Dungeons and Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we're taking an in-depth look at playing dragon born as your next player character in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign we're gonna take a look at their racial features and traits as well as role-playing options and what classes might be the best option for your dragon born there's a lot to discuss so let's get rolling so Monte let's talk about why we might want to play a dragon born character well dragon born were introduced in their current form in Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition as an answer the question Dungeons & Dragons is called D&D there's dragons everywhere but it's pretty hard to play one as a player character if you want to be a dragon and it turns out that there's a lot of players out there that really love the idea of playing a draconic character or one of draconic ancestry we heard you like dragons so we put dragons in your dungeons so that you can dragon while your dungeons and dragons playing a dragon born adventurer really lets you play the dun genius dragon iasts player character of them all besides the epic fantasy of wanting to play a dragon in Dungeons and Dragons there's also a lot of really cool lore surrounding the Dragonborn characters yeah there's this cool interrelationship between the draconic deities like Bahamut and Tiamat surrounding the origins of where the Dragonborn come from they are their own unique race not necessarily the Prague Ninh sea of dragons and mortals although in my campaign worlds I usually have Dragonborn be the proxy for true half dragons and that way player characters can actually make up a character say no my daddy or my mom was a dragon and this is my history so I do like the idea of connecting dragon born a little bit more closely to the same sort of ancestral roots that you see with tea flings and azemar so that the Dragonborn gets to say no I'm actually descended from a dragon and here's my lineage I am a half dragon if you don't like the lore that's established for dragon born for your campaign setting I think this is a really great way to negotiate it I really like this idea that dragon born were created by the Dragons to be their favorite servants or to lead draconic armies into battle on their behalf but that really puts them in a place of like servitude to the dragon I think there's a lot of different directions you can go with this as a dragon born player character you really do need to decide what is your character's relationship to true dragons maybe your character aspires to one day become a true dragon maybe your character is the cast-off scion of a dragon who was slain in ages past and has been living as an egg for many years and woke up generations later I think there's a lot of really cool and creative ideas for explaining your characters backstory and even if you are the only dragon born in the entire setting or one of the only few dragon born in the world I think that there's a lot of great role-playing routes that you can draw on for ideas I could even see a dragon born who wants to escape their dragon heritage and maybe they are the favorite servant of a dragon but they get sick of that life and they they try to find their own way in the world yeah there's this whole idea that the Dragonborn were created by Bahamut to be the soldiers against the forces of Tiamat so while Tiamat works through cultist and tries to tent humans and elves and the other mortal races to become the thralls of the chromatic dragons Muhammad might have said well I'm going to address this another way and I'm going to create my own group of people to be my champions in the world so that could be a really interesting angle for instance for a dragon born paladin or cleric especially one that worships Bahamut with all this great lore and back story in mind let's crack open our players handbook and look at the traits that we get for our dragon born player care first up dragon boards get a +2 to strength and a +1 to charisma which is a nice little package for certain classes I would say well over half the classes in the game either want a high strength score or a high charisma score so we can keep that in mind as we're choosing our classes although there's very few classes that want both but getting that +2 to strength really set you up for success in melee combat the biggest choice you have to make when you're creating a Dragonborn is your drew conic ancestry which will give you a damage resistance and a breadth weapon attack when you're choosing your draconic ancestry this is also a fantastic option to crack open the monster manual and look at the personality traits associated with your Dragon ancestor for more role-playing ideas so if you are a green dragon born you might embody that trickster nature of green dragons where if you're a blue dragon you might have their more covetous nature and if you're a red dragon born you might have that primal rage at the core of a red dragon on the flip side of that if you decide to be a metallic dragon you're going to inherit more of their noble ideas and altruistic nature regardless of what you choose your choice of your connick ancestry is going to determine the type of damage resistance that you possess innately as well as the damage type of your breath weapon as well as determining the shape of that breath weapon itself for example the black dragon spews out a line of acid whereas the gold dragon gives out a cone of flames the damage type of your breath weapon corresponds directly to the damage resistance that you possess and so this can almost be a little bit of a choice between the defensive and offensive choices that you might want to make if you choose say for instance to be a gold or red dragon born you're going to find that your fire resistance comes up a lot on the flipside you're going to run into more enemies that have fire resistance on the other hand if you choose something like lightning you might not see your damage resistance come up very often but you're gonna get to use your breath weapon a lot and very rarely see it resisted as a dragon born using your breath weapon is an act and will either create a line or a cone dependent on the choice that you made with your jacana ancestry and it does 2d6 points of damage on a failed save or half as much on a successful one creatures in the area do make a saving throw against your breath weapon the DC is determined by eight plus your constitution modifier plus your proficiency modifier so as your constitution score and proficiency bonus increase as does the saving throw DC in addition as you gain levels your breath weapons damage does increase gaining an additional d6 points of damage at sixth 11th and 16th level so ultimately your breath weapon will deal 5d6 points of damage on a failed saving throw half as much on a successful one and you recharge your breath weapon whenever you finish a short or long rest Dragonborn although being very large usually over six feet tall are still considered medium creatures and they don't have any special visions so no dark vision for you hoping for that for your Dragonball yah ironically enough many true dragons have blind sight but Dragonborn do not gain any of these special senses that are typically associated with their draconic ancestors beyond the ability to speak your conic Dragonborn also do not gain any additional tool or skill proficiencies either so I think the Dragonborn have a very decent package but I can't help feeling like they need one or two more little minor perks I do think that they are locking in perks the breath weapon is really really cool but I've seen some people play Dragonborns and they become less useful later on in the game they don't really do as much damage as you can average Lee do with your weapons especially if you're playing something like a fighter or a barbarian so at the end of the day that kind of falls by the wayside and it would be really nice to see them have some sort of special vision or maybe special armor or something to kind of improve them even drew conic wings might be awesome yeah I think that a lot of these ideas have been explored through feats and on Arthur Akana the idea of giving them wings or an improved breath weapon and a few feats did make it into XANA thar's guide to everything which do give them natural armor and do give them drew conic claws that they can use to make attacks that's the dragon hide feet and the dragon fear feet which lets them use their breath weapon power to cause supernatural fear instead in 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons the breath weapon was a minor action the equivalent of a bonus action in D&D 5 e and that would have made it really cool if it was something that you could use in addition to your attacks but in this case it's a little bit more restrictive and I have seen a lot of dragon born player characters never use their breath weapon or it actually being not the best option because it doesn't deal more damage than even their basic melee attacks but with their +2 strength and their +1 charisma there are a lot of good class options for the dragon board so why don't we talk about that now yeah I think it's pretty obvious that with the strength and charisma bonus the first port of call here is the iconic Dragonborn paladin of Bahamut it just fits right in because paladin's are one of the few classes that relies on both strength and charisma as their two main stats and it just seems really cool to have a dragon born in heavy armor wielding a sword and just smashing into enemies so much of Dragonborn screams aggression and I think with their +2 bonus to strength they do make excellent fighters and excellent barbarians as well I think that being a dragon born fighter gives you a really great option to action surge to use your breath weapon and in all cases one of the real cool strengths of the breath weapon is as a melee combatant if you are surrounded by a bunch of minions the breath weapon is a really good way to clear them out so when you do get surrounded by that group of goblins as a fighter yeah you could make one attack or you could use your breath weapon to just blow them all away and incinerate them so that's where I think for the marshal minded classes this works really well and Dragonborn does lend itself really well to those marshal classes because of its +2 to strength on the other side of that though I have seen a lot of people make a point for Dragonborn sorcerers because the +1 to charisma suits it really well and also the jerk onyx sorcerer paired with the Dragonborn just icing on the cake I think this is the place that you go if you want to be your true dragon feeling character because as a draconic ancestry Dragonborn sorcerer that lines up your dragon ancestry with your drew conic ancestry for your source or a trait you get to really feel like you are living that arcane bloodline and you do grow wings at fourteenth level one of the interesting things that I have seen proposed is choosing a different drew conic origin for your sorcerer traits compared to your drew conic ancestry and that you're some sort of weird hybrid dragon and one of the nice strengths of this is that it actually lets you diversify your damage resistances because as a dragon soul sorcerer you will temporarily gain damage resistances to a certain damage type based on your draconic ancestry but if you choose the same for both they overlap and you don't get an extra benefit so you're like a weird dragon mutt I'm actually really into this role-playing idea that your dragon born sorcerer has two different ancestries because they are actually the Prague ninh see of two true dragons of different colors and so you've come out as kind of this mutt runt that is trying to find their true identity you could also go the route of a warlock that takes pact of the blade but is not the hex blade because hex blade allows you to use your charisma for attacks whereas a pact of the blade you can make attacks still using your strength so it does lend itself well there this is one of the really cool instances where I could see reef laboring the warlocks patron to be a true dragon or Bahamut or Tiamat instead in 3rd edition D&D there was a class that was very similar to the third edition warlock called the dragon shaman that was very similar in this idea that you had a patron that was Bahamut or a dragon and so I could see being a dragon born warlock that took the pack of the blade but that your pact was made with perhaps the fiend pact and your patron is Tiamat or the celestial and your patron is Bahamut or we could even pick Blore some of the other archetypes and maybe you are an undying pact warlock whose patron is a dracolich or a Fae pact warlock whose patron is a fairy dragon I do like how much lore there is for dragons in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons so really tying your patron for a warlock to those jerk onic lures is really just a great option similar to the Warlock I think that College of Valor bards really line up well with what Dragonborn excel at you've got the bonus for strength so you can be a college of valour bard wearing medium or even heavy armor if you gain that proficiency through multi classing or a feat you've got extra attack you want to have a good charisma score for your spell casting so again you've got that arcane martial character that really blends those things well together as one class it also works really well for the College of swords bard yeah it's a bit of a difference because I think most people think College of Valor and College of swords and immediately think dexterity based characters and they don't want to have the heavy armor or shields but you could do this and actually be more of a scald type bard I think you're really cool angle here is that dragons have very long memories and are keepers of lore and stories and maybe you are the Bartok keeper of draconic songs and legends maybe even in fact you were the Entertainer of a true dragon so I think at the end of the day looking over all of this it's easy to see that dragonborns with their strength and charisma bonuses actually lend themselves to a large array of the classes in Dungeons & Dragons because so many of the martial classes are hoping for that strength bonus where a lot of the spell casting classes actually look at charisma for their spell casting yeah I think that of the remaining classes Dragonborn could be a very respectable ranger if you choose the strength focus as well I don't think the charisma does anything for you as a ranger on the monk side that applies as well you could be a strength-based monk it would be a very irregular sort of build but you could possibly make it work I think that playing a dragon bar on wizard really doesn't line up as well as the Dragonborn sorcerer and I think if I wanted to be an arcane spell caster as a dragon born I would embrace my draconic heritage and be a sorcerer instead and then what about the cleric the clerics an interesting call um you could make the case that as a cleric you could focus on your strength score and go with the tempest domain or the war domain and really be more of the paladin like cleric and then we come to the druid which doesn't really lend itself to well to the Dragonborn I don't think so but I have heard it said I agree I don't think that the Dragonborn and the druid really line up very well at all but I have heard it said that you can use your breath weapon well wild shaped that could be fun could be if your DM allows it so when you're creating a Dragonborn if you're making a fighter or a paladin you're gonna be able to find a lot of minis for that but if you're playing against type it's gonna be a lot harder to find the right mini to suit your player character this is where our wonderful friends at hero forge come in they have sponsored this episode and it's a really great opportunity if you are creating a dragon born character to check out hero forges amazing options for half dragon character miniatures because there's a lot of really impressive and fully customizable options so designing your half dragon in hero forge there's so many options for customization that you can make them anything you want if you wanted to play that half dragon bard or Ranger or whatever else you want it to be there are options in there for all the cool weapons and armor and outfits that you could ever imagine hero forge is an amazing source for fully customizable 3d printed miniatures that you can use their online character builder to fully design the perfect miniature for your next player character once you've finished making your miniature you can have a 3d printed and shipped right to your door in a large range of different materials that are all great you can also download the digital STL files yourself and use them with your own 3d printer at home hero forge has plenty of options for half-dragon characters you can customize their fins scales even pose their tail and of course add draconic wings for you dragons sold sorcerers out there so head on over to hero forge calm to start creating your half dragon character and if you're creating a premium plastic character you can use the discount code dungeon dudes at checkout to save $5 off your first order so when we're thinking about role-playing our dragon born characters as Monty said earlier it's a great idea to read up on the lore and personality of the different types of dragons that exist in the world of Dungeons and Dragons and this can really inspire your personality traits and your flaws that you could use to roleplay your character Kelly and I are huge fans of creating both flawed villains NPCs and player characters there are a lot of fun to play and by drawing on the lore of the various dragons you can get a lot of really interesting ideas for what flaws and personality traits your character might possess you might even consider playing against type and inverting the flaws and personality traits presented from the dragon that you're choosing most dragons are very greedy and prone to avarice maybe your character is completely the opposite and feels guilty and has even taken a vow of poverty many dragons are also prone to rage and jealousy your character could be the opposite of those playing a dragon Bourne is an iconic and memorable character choice that most people in the world of Dungeons & Dragons are going to really be able to get behind and love with a lot of great role-playing options and personality traits and flaws presented in the Lords of Dragons themselves it can make a really exciting character to bring to the table so this has been a look at playing dragon born in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition if you've played an awesome dragon born character tell us about them in the comments below if you're enjoying our show please consider supporting our work on patreon you can find out how by following the links in the description below don't forget to check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we have plenty more great videos covering the various people and races that inhabit the worlds of dungeons dragons right over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time game a dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 91,213

Rating: 4.9399552 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: VkOXyEEUw3A

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019