Dragonblood Races: Your Thoughts?

[Red Fel]

Alright. This is a general conversation thread. See, in various other threads, and for various reasons (optimization, fluff, etc.) the idea of taking the Dragontouched feat, or using a Dragonblood race or the Dragonborn template, has come up.

I'd like to discuss the various Dragonblood races from Dragon Magic. I'm aware that Races of the Dragon had some interesting ones (including Dragonborn), but I don't want to focus on them. I want to discuss, from any perspective you care to share - optimization, character concept, or just fluff - your thoughts on the specific Dragonblood races in Dragon Magic. By way of a quick refresher, they are:

Silverbrow Humans: Offspring of Humans and Silver Dragons. A popular optimization choice, since they retain the Human bonus feat, gain an SLA and the Dragonblood subtype, and only give up bonus skill points. Deepwyrm (Half-)Drow: Offspring of (Half-)Drow and Deep Dragons. Trade out SLAs and lose the Will bonus, but get some skill bonuses. Fireblood Dwarves: Descendants of a clan of Dwarves who were slaves to Red Dragons. Trade off poison resistance for fire resistance, AC bonus against giants for AC bonus against dragons. Forestlord (Half-)Elves: Descendants of Elves who made a truce with Green Dragons. Trade off proficiencies, bonus against enchantment, and skill bonuses for the ability to Treewalk. Stonehunter Gnomes: Gnomes who hunt with Copper Dragons. Trade off illusion bonuses for some skill bonuses. Glimmerskin Halflings: Offspring of Halflings and Gold Dragons. Trade off skill bonus for a Luck bonus to 1 roll/day. Viletooth Lizardfolk: Offspring of Lizardfolk and Black Dragons. Change ability score modifiers, breathe underwater, and Move Silently is a class skill. Sunscorch Hobgoblins: Hobgoblins who worship and emulate Blue Dragons. Change ability modifiers, gain a bonus to Bluff and to saves versus heat damage. Frostblood (Half-)Orcs: (Half-)Orcs who fed on the blood of White Dragons. Cold resistance, vulnerability to fire, and Endurance feat.
And, of course, they all gain the Dragonblood subtype.
So there they are. Anybody have thoughts on them?

I recognize that, from an optimization standpoint, Silverbrow Humans are almost strictly better than regular Humans (unless you really need those skill points). Viletooth Lizardfolk also seem almost strictly better, since they don't actually seem to give up anything except the ability to hold their breath underwater, which is a waste if they can breathe underwater anyway. Forestlord Elves seem almost strictly worse, since they give up almost everything for a single ability they can only use 1/day per 5 HD.

Flavorwise, I'm rather fond of the Fireblood Dwarves; they're pretty decent mechanically, too, since I figure you're more likely to face fire than poison, and dragons than giants.

Your thoughts?

[AnonymousPepper]

I honestly haven't used any of the races except silverbrow humans. They make excellent sorcerers, though, because of their ability to access all those snazzy RotD spells and feats that are either dragonblood only or improved by being dragonblood (in particular, Practical Metamagic makes for fantastic direct damage dealers, and Wings of Cover as a dragonblooded character becomes so ridiculously good that it's easily in the same tier as Alter Fortune and Celerity for immediate action spells). Whilst keeping access to that all-important bonus feat, and not having any ability score penalties anywhere. For the right uses, Silverbrow Humans are the best human subrace published, and that includes the LA+1 Athasian Human from DragMag that gets built-in customizable psionics and two floating +2 ability scores.

[atemu1234]

The humans are the best, as per usual.

[WhamBamSam]

Disguise is always a class skill for Silverbrow Humans, Forestlord Elves and Half-Elves always get Hide, Glimmerskin Halflings get Heal, and Viletooth Lizardfolk get Move Silently. There are corner cases where that's useful.

The worst thing about the Glimmerskin Halfling is that you can't also be a Strongheart.

And yeah, things like Practical Metamagic and the draconic soulmelds can make the dragonblood subtype worth it.

It's also sort of nice that humanoid races with an in-built dragonblood subtype exists, as it allows Changelings to pick it up with Racial Emulation, and being able to do so in a wider variety of disguises than just kobold and differently colored kobold is a nice thing.

[Blackhawk748]

Sunscorched Hobgoblins are fun and make decent Divine casters or Rangers (instead of decent Rogues like normal ones) Also they make solid Paladins, basically they have a nice statblock and the Bluff bonus is interesting.

Frostblood Orcs, sweet mother of god Orcs and Half orcs with actually racial abilities, i thought that was only a legend Being serious here, Resistance to cold and a free feat (even if it is Endurance) that Vulnerability is annoying though, otherwise not to bad.

In short its nice to have some options for monstrous races.

[WhamBamSam]

Sunscorched Hobgoblins are fun and make decent Divine casters or Rangers (instead of decent Rogues like normal ones) Also they make solid Paladins, basically they have a nice statblock and the Bluff bonus is interesting.

Frostblood Orcs, sweet mother of god Orcs and Half orcs with actually racial abilities, i thought that was only a legend Being serious here, Resistance to cold and a free feat (even if it is Endurance) that Vulnerability is annoying though, otherwise not to bad.

In short its nice to have some options for monstrous races.Part of the text that gives Frostblood Orcs Endurance as a Bonus Feat also says that if they would later gain Endurance as a Bonus Feat they get any feat they qualify for. So if you're planning to take 3 levels of Ranger or whatever anyway, they become a better choice.

[Blackhawk748]

Part of the text that gives Frostblood Orcs Endurance as a Bonus Feat also says that if they would later gain Endurance as a Bonus Feat they get any feat they qualify for. So if you're planning to take 3 levels of Ranger or whatever anyway, they become a better choice.

Sweet, i kinda wanna play a Frostblood Orc Ranger now........

Edit: Something i just noticed, in my copy of Dragon Magic, they have the captions for pictures of the Sunscorched Hobgoblins and the Frostblood Orcs flipped, i noticed that the dragons were wrong and went "WTF?" looked closer and realized that that was an Orc above the Hobgoblin Caption and then vice verca. Had a good chuckle.

[Troacctid]

I'm definitely a fan of Fireblood Dwarves. Swapping the AC bonus to dragons is meh--dragons can target defenses other than AC pretty easily--but fire resistance comes up a lot and is way more useful than poison resistance.

[Red Fel]

I confess, I'm starting to see the appeal of Forestlord Half-Elves. Taking a penalty for fighting Green Dragons is just plain stupid, but aside from that, you're not giving up much (a +2 bonus on enchantment spells and effects, and a +2 to Diplomacy and Gather Information), and you're getting... Well, you're getting a rubbish ability with per-day uses, but you're also getting flavor.

I'm just picturing a Forestlord Half-Elf with a Dragonmark, as the Dragon-est Dragonmarked that was ever Dragonmarked.

Also, here's a bit of a RAW-awkward question: Forestlord Elves and Half-Elves have a favored class of Sorcerer. This explicitly replaces an Elf's favored class of Wizard. But Half-Elves have favored class: Any,1 and the RAW doesn't say that this replaces Any with Sorcerer. So does it replace favored class: Any, or is it subsumed into or added to it?

1 Have you ever seen a level 20 Half-Elf Any? Thank you, I'll be here all night.

[WhamBamSam]

I confess, I'm starting to see the appeal of Forestlord Half-Elves. Taking a penalty for fighting Green Dragons is just plain stupid, but aside from that, you're not giving up much (a +2 bonus on enchantment spells and effects, and a +2 to Diplomacy and Gather Information), and you're getting... Well, you're getting a rubbish ability with per-day uses, but you're also getting flavor.

I'm just picturing a Forestlord Half-Elf with a Dragonmark, as the Dragon-est Dragonmarked that was ever Dragonmarked.

Also, here's a bit of a RAW-awkward question: Forestlord Elves and Half-Elves have a favored class of Sorcerer. This explicitly replaces an Elf's favored class of Wizard. But Half-Elves have favored class: Any,1 and the RAW doesn't say that this replaces Any with Sorcerer. So does it replace favored class: Any, or is it subsumed into or added to it?

1 Have you ever seen a level 20 Half-Elf Any? Thank you, I'll be here all night.Well, you're getting the Dragonblood subtype and Hide as a class skill on all your classes. That's not nothing.

That's actually a sort of interesting question. The text also seems to suggest that other Elf subraces can be Forestlord Elves as well, many of which do not have Favored Class: Wizard. It's probably in "ask your DM" territory, though most DMs have the good sense not to enforce multiclass penalties anyway.

[Thurbane]

Sunscorch Hobgoblins make decent enemies, especially as Clerics (+2 Con, +2 Wis). The Dragonblood opens up some interesting feat choices.

[atemu1234]

I have seen half-elves survive; race in a lot of high-optimization builds tends to be an afterthought, at best.

[Amphetryon]

Glimmerskin Halflings are one of the few straightforward choices for a Wizard or Sorcerer to get into Fleshwarper in time to finish it before epic, due to the Heal requirement. If you're a fan of the PrC - and it has a coolness factor along with reasonably solid benefits - the Race should be strongly considered.