Dragonborn

This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.

Nowhere in the PHB fluff did it say Dragonborn have tits, just this one picture in a sidebar. Goddamnit.

If you were looking for the player character in Skyrim, then gb2/v/.

Dragonborn are a race from Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, expanding upon a racial template idea from 3.5's Draconomicon. Created for the player's handbook on the principle that "the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, so wouldn't it be awesome if you could actually play a dragon-like race?", they attracted huge amounts of RAGE from /tg/ due to a combination of their replacing the iconic half-orc as the PHB1's "brute race" (oh, and also the gnome got booted for the tiefling, but seriously, who the fuck cares about gnomes?) and the fact females followed classic sexual dimorphism. Or, in other words, girl dragonborn have tits, and neckbeards got up in arms about it, in part due to the opinion that this made them a furry race - explanations in their racial book that dragonborn are monotremes, not reptiles (which dragons aren't really either), didn't help, and monotremes don't even have nipples or breasts anyway!

People who are more comfortable with vidya gaems will call dragonborn "Argonians," for the swamp-dwellers in The Elder Scrolls from the second game onward (they were just palette swapped humans in Arena so that game isn't mentioned). They appear in Skyrim as well, but this game also features you as the Dragonborn (person capable of stealing the souls from dragons, Highlander style), who does not have to be an actual lizard person. People who are old school neckgreybeards will call them "warm-blooded lizard-folk with breath weapons, and don't get a bonus to holding their breath for no good goddamn reason."

3.5's Dragonborn were a racial template, quite literally individuals of various humanoid races who underwent some sort of giant unbirthing ritual in order to pledge their loyalty to Bahamut, the god of metallic dragons. To do this they need to crawl inside some kind of giant egg and gestate for a bit. Ignoring for a moment that this is horrifying in its own right and that the splatbook with them tries to pass this whole process off as a good thing, they lose their Dragonborn forms if they willingly perform an evil act, which of course enforces the Heresy that it's good to be furry. They were also sterile as part of the transformation. Tiamat naturally had her own analogues based on melding Chromatic Dragon blood with various humanoids and animals, creating abominations called the Spawn of Tiamat.

Before dragonborn existed, the closest things were the Half-Dragons of 2nd and 3rd edition, which were literally "your mom (or, very rarely and in 3.x only, your dad) fucked a dragon!". 3.5 also included a draconic template, which made the blood relationship more distant (similar to tieflings, aasimar and genasi being the watered-down versions of half-fiends, half-angels and half-elementals).

Dragonborn survived the edition change to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and are pretty close to their 4e model, which for all its faults at least avoids the "Mary Sue with a side-order of squick" to be found in 3.5. As most of the early hatred has faded with time, and as the other "iconic" races are perfectly intact, they seem ready to stay for the long haul.

The loss of hatred is probably helped by the fact that Dragonborn fill a previously unfilled niche: Satisfying the "I wanna play a dragon!" itch without otherwise unbalancing the base game the way that Half-Dragons and the dragon "racial classes" did in earlier editions.

Dragonborn in 5e

• Ability Score: +2 Strength, +1 Charisma.
• Typical Alignment: Favor Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil.
• Size: Medium. They are stated as growing to well over 6 feet in height and averaging about 250 pounds.
• Speed: 30 feet base walking speed.
• Draconic Ancestry: Choose one of the five Chromatic Dragons (Black, Blue, Green, Red, White) or Metallic Dragons (Brass, Bronze, Copper, Gold, Silver); this affects your other racial abilities.
• Breath Weapon: Your breath weapon's style (Blacks, Blues, Brasses, Bronzes and Coppers have Line type breath weapons; Golds, Greens, Reds, Silvers and Whites have Cones), damage type and the ability score used to save against it (Greens, Silvers and Whites attack Constitution, everything else attacks Dexterity) are all determined by your Draconic Ancestry.
• Damage Resistance: You have Resistance to the same damage type that you inflict with your Breath Weapon.
• Languages: Common and Draconic.

A highly self-sufficient and clannish race literally born of dragons, in that they were created from dragon eggs either by the draconic gods themselves or by powerful dragons. Some still serve as faithful servants, especially as soldiers, but many more are now without a purpose and try to find a reason for their existence. First generation dragonborn more strongly resembled their ancestors, especially in terms of scale color, but generations of interbreeding have created a more unified appearance, with common scale colors being brass, bronze, scarlet, rust, gold, or copper-green. Strongly blooded individuals, whose coloration (and sometimes appearance) again calls to mind their Chromatic or Metallic ancestors, do occasionally appear and are considered marked by destiny.

Dragonborn in 4e

A Dragonborn gladiatrix fighting in one of the many pits of Athas.

• Height: 74" - 80". Weight: 220 - 320 lbs.
• Size Class: Normal. Speed: 6 squares.
• Ability Bonuses: +2 Strength or +2 Constitution, +2 Charisma
• Skill Bonuses: +2 History, +2 Intimidate
• Racial Abilities:
  • Dragonborn Fury: +1 bonus to attack when Bloodied (half hitpoints or lower)
  • Draconic Heritage: +CON bonus to healing surges
  • Dragon Breath: (Encounter Power, Minor Action) choose an element type (Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning or Poison) and one physical attribute at character creation. Once per encounter, may exhale as a close blast-3 attack using ability mod +2 vs. Reflex for 1d6 +attribute bonus elemental damage to all in area. Attack roll bonus and base damage increase each time you go up a tier; +4 and 2d6 at level 11, +6 and 3d6 at level 21.
• Recommended classes: Fighter, Paladin, Warlord

They have fine scales over all their body, with colors ranging between golden, scarlet, rust, ocher, bronze and brown. The scales aren't metallic, they feel like leather. They have blunt snouts, frills along the jawline, and a headcrest of long ropey scales (think the dreadlocks that the Predator alien had). There used to be a huge Dragonborn empire, but it's gone more than a dozen generations ago (and Dragonborn live only as long as humans do), and now they're just rootless clans. They still hold onto the pride of once being on top, and they insist they were always honorable in the good ol' days, so feel free to play them like fire-breathing Klingons, or musclebound Russian gypsies. Because of their stats, they make one of the best races in the PHB for Paladins and Warlords, in contrast to half-orcs, who spent most of the last two editions basically pigeonholed into being barbarians. (Though one good thing 4e did for the half-orc was open up a number of other classes, like the monk).

Dragonborn in 3.5 Ed

They were published in "Races of the Dragon," (ISBN:978-0786939138, January 2006) an official splatbook written by Gwendolyn Kestrel, who also gave us "The Book of Erotic Fantasy (d20)". They were people of any race who got sucked into the cult of Bahamut and were born-again as lizardmen with a side-order of Mary-Sue.

• +2 Constitution, -2 Dexterity. Dragonborn are hearty and healthy, but they are awkward in their newly adopted bodies.
• Humanoid (dragonblood): Dragonborn are of their former type (usually humanoid) with the dragonblood subtype and any other subtypes they had before undergoing the Rite of Rebirth. For all effects related to race, a dragonborn is considered a dragon and a member of her original race. This does mean that ANY creature with intelligence 3+ and a non-evil alignment can become a dragonborn; warforged and awakened golems can become dragon-bots, awakened trees can become fucking dragon trees, ooze elementals can become goo-dragons, whatever. And yes, a dragon can be born again into a shittier dragon. Why is it shittier? Their lifespan will become a lot shorter and their already bad dexterity will become even worse in exchange for another con bonus point, which given the fact that no great wyrm dragon has a con score under 20 means that this bonus isn't needed.
• Age: After a dragonborn undergoes the Rite of Rebirth, she emerges as an adult creature regardless of her previous age. If she lives for 200 years (see Table 1-1, page 10), she enters middle age. This is a good thing for human dragonborn, and a big disappointment for formerly immortal beings who became dragonborn.
• +2 dodge bonus to Armor Class against creatures of the dragon type. The dragonborn have an innate sense of how best to defend themselves against their potential enemies.
• Immunity to Frightful Presence: Dragonborn are immune to the frightful presence ability of dragons, just as if they were dragons.
• Draconic Aspect: Bahamut has blessed the dragonborn with aspects combining some of the best attributes of good dragons. Upon completing the Rite of Rebirth, a dragonborn chooses which of the following three aspects to manifest. Once the choice is made, it cannot be changed.
  • Heart (Su): A dragonborn who chooses heart as her draconic aspect gains a breath weapon. Straight line, (level/3 + 1)d8 damage, save for half, each use you can choose the damage type from these elements: acid, cold, electricity, or fire.
  • Mind (Ex): A dragonborn who selects the mind aspect sharpens her senses, gaining immunity to paralysis and magic sleep effects. She gains darkvision out to 30 feet and low-light vision, plus a +2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks.
  • Wings (Ex):A dragonborn who selects the wings aspect hatches sporting fully formed wings. Dragonborn can use these wings to aid their jumps (granting a +10 racial bonus on Jump checks) and to glide. Those with 6 HD or more can use their wings to fly.
• Automatic fluency in Draconic, because sitting in an egg for a year is apparently the draconic equivalent of Rosetta stone.
• Favored Class: Fighter. No XP penalties for multiclassing into Fighter. You know, the shittiest base class in the game that can be outplayed by some NPC classes.
• Note that while Bahamut only accepts beings of lawful good or neutral good alignment as clerics, he accepts any non-evil being as dragonborn. Yes, Bahamut is the god of good dragons, won't actually accept the prayers of Always Chaotic Good brass and copper dragons, but will still let them be reborn into shittier dragons, he's racist like that.

Dragonborn in 3rd Ed

They were called 'half-dragon templates', and had no fluff other than "Dude, a dragon fucked your mom? Duuuuudde!"

• Hit Dice: bump it up one die type, no larger than d12
• AC: +4 racial bonus to base armor class
• Attacks: Bite attack for d6, claw attack for d4
• Special Attacks: breath weapon 1/day, damage ranges from 3d6 to 6d10, depending on who fucked your mom
• Special Senses: gains low-light and darkvision to 60'
• Special Defenses: immune to sleep and paralysis effects, and immunity to 1 elemental type depending on who fucked your mom.
• Ability scores: +8 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Cha
• Challenge Rating: +2 of base creature. Yep, just +2, because it rhymes with "Mary-Sue" ('cause I still know what that means), although the DMG says being a half-dragon counts for +4 extra levels if you're playing it as a PC, which is a very painful penalty since virtually nothing (not even all those bonuses) are worth being 4 levels behind the rest of your party.

There is nothing preventing you from stacking either the half-fiend or half-celestial templates on top of this, in addition to the axiomatic, anarchic (from the MotP), celestial, and fiendish templates, as well as the half-illithid and half-fey templates (FF), and the Half-Ogre and Half-Minotaur templates on top of all this. If you do have such a ridiculous number of templates stacked on top of each other, only one of those templates is going to signify your parentage, the others are just signs that a Wizard got really bored and decided to kidnap you in order to screw with your DNA to see what would happen when you were a kid.

Dragonborn in 2nd Ed

Again, this is just 'Half-Dragon' and "your mom is a dragonfucker" for fluff. Only male bronze, silver, and gold dragons can produce hybrids with female elves, dwarves (wtf), and gnomes (WTF?!). The products combine a human-style inability to multiclass with a demihuman-style inability to get too high level, and the only thing they get in exchange are a few useless racial abilities, plus a very weak breath weapon at level 7. To add insult to injury, they are introduced in Council of Wyrms, wherein you can, right off the bat, play a powerful as fuck dragon PC. They come off as both ugly and weaker than humans, demihumans, or dragons.

For other "dragonfolk" concepts that came out during this edition... well, honestly, there were a few, even including the Dragon-Kin race, who were basically humanoid dragons. However, two races in particular were of note.

Draconians

These guys have their own page, but to sum up: the Dragonlance setting dumped orcs and replaced them with draconic humanoids created as expendable foot-soldiers through magically corrupting the eggs of metallic dragons. Draconians are most notorious for their Death Throes ability; their corrupted fundamentums keep them from the draconic breath weapon, but cause various pain-in-the-ass effects upon the draconian's death.

Dray

They have their own page as well. Long story short, they were made by the Sorcerer-King Dregoth by mutating other creatures. The first batch went wrong, the second were better.

Gallery

• 
  I'm an adventurer!
• 
  Sunder Armor
• 
  Move action: Flee
• 
  Full Dex bonus to AC
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
  Spears don't work that way
• 
  Oh yeah, polish it.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
  Yes, those things actually work.
• 
  Oh look, an awful meme as well.
• 
  Just look at this furry shit.
• 
• 
•