Half Dragon Dragonborn?

[Emerald_Ace]

I am soon going to starting a new session with a group of players and I know i am going to have a dragonborn (I helped him make it).I always felt dragonborn got the short end of the stick when it comes to racials so I want to buff him up by slowly making him more powerful. I'm thinking at level 5 his breath weapon gets more dice, level 10 immune instead of resistant to his draconic ancestry, and possibly making him a half-dragon dragonborn. The problem is a half-dragon gets a breath weapon based on their ancestry. I'm thinking of just giving him the 10 ft blindsight and 60 ft darkvision with a recharge of 6 on his breath weapon. Is this a good idea or will he just be overpowered?

[Envyus]

I am soon going to starting a new session with a group of players and I know i am going to have a dragonborn (I helped him make it).I always felt dragonborn got the short end of the stick when it comes to racials so I want to buff him up by slowly making him more powerful. I'm thinking at level 5 his breath weapon gets more dice, level 10 immune instead of resistant to his draconic ancestry, and possibly making him a half-dragon dragonborn. The problem is a half-dragon gets a breath weapon based on their ancestry. I'm thinking of just giving him the 10 ft blindsight and 60 ft darkvision with a recharge of 6 on his breath weapon. Is this a good idea or will he just be overpowered?

You are just going to make him overpowered. Dragonborn are already strong. And resistant is more then good enough. Immune just makes it so you have less options to toss at them.

[Kane0]

Best bet is to give him darkvision and tweak his breath weapon to suit (bonus action, scale 2d6 at a time to match cantrips). That ought to do the trick

[90sMusic]

I actually made similar changes to a character in one of my campaigns.

The world didn't have dragonborn, but since a player wanted to be one, I thought of a way to make it work. So I made him instead a half-dragon, born to a dragon mother and a human father.

So here is how I implemented everything...

The breath weapon recharged on a 6 instead of requiring a short rest. Most combats don't last all that long, the likelihood of getting more than 2 breaths out is very small. Most fights he only used one at the start and once in a while he'd get a second one he could use. To him, it always felt like winning the lottery. Felt good for the player and the team.

I didn't tweak the damage numbers at all. 2d6 and scaling up 1 level behind when cantrips scale up is more than enough damage because the breaths are all AOE and hit multiple targets. At level 6, he had to make a choice: Do I attempt to attack and do 2d8+10 damage from my two attacks (assuming they land) or do I use this 3d6 breath? You have to hit at least 2 targets for it to even equal the regular attack damage, that's assuming no resists. The amount of damage and with how infrequent it is, it's fine. Never had a player complain or even give the impression that the half-dragon was too powerful or anything along those lines.

I gave him the immunity instead of resistance, however, I made him go green dragon. Poison isn't a very common damage type used by enemies, so immunity to it really doesn't have a huge impact on gameplay, but it can lead to some interesting RP scenarios now and then. Poison also uses a constitution saving throw instead of a dex saving throw, most monsters (especially the hard ones) have much better con saves than dex saves. So between those two things, his having immunity and the additional breaths didn't make him into some kind of unstoppable killing machine.

I feel that going with fire might be a bit much though. So many enemies deal fire-based damage and they typically have lower dex saves, just being a fire-based dragon makes you stronger than being a poison-based one for instance. I think cold-based would also work, but i'd probably avoid anything else.

Blindsight is just too strong. If you give them blindsight, and they're any sort of melee character, they can just get inside magical darkness and goto town on all enemies. They will always have advantage on attacks and always have disadvantage to get hit by enemy attacks. They will detect all stealthed enemies inside rooms or trying to sneak up on you, etc. It's just too strong of a perk to be "given" to them. Maybe, MAYBE you could grant it later down the road, around level 17 or so as that is when wizards are getting things like wish and foresight, rogues are getting blindsight of their own, so it would probably be alright at that point if the campaign lasts until then.

Definitely give them darkvision. It's really, really stupid dragonborn don't get darkvision in the first place, and nearly all the races have it regardless.

I also made his dragon mother a part of the story... I mean, I used backgrounds from all players to make characters that influenced the story as well, but with her being an ancient green dragon, she was an interesting character for them to interact with. She cared for him, as mothers do, but she was still evil to the core and being green nearly every word out of her scaley mouth was a lie and meant to trick, deceive, and manipulate them. At one point she tricked the party into completing a quest for her because they thought they were working against her and in the best interest of the kingdom, not realizing it was doing exactly what she wanted.

But anyway, that's how I did it, never had any complaints. The players loved that campaign, it went on a little over a year.

[D.U.P.A.]

Immunity is not something you can toss around. With fire immunity you can basically swim in lava.

[Herobizkit]

Maybe check out the Lizardman from Volo's Guide to Monsters and toss the Half-Dragon template on it?

#Realtalk, your player is the one who wants to play Dragonborn; your player is also aware of the Dragonborn's shortcomings and wants to play one anyway. This Is A Good Thing. No tweaks necessary IMO.

[DragonSorcererX]

i am soon going to starting a new session with a group of players and i know i am going to have a dragonborn (i helped him make it).i always felt dragonborn got the short end of the stick when it comes to racials so i want to buff him up by slowly making him more powerful. I'm thinking at level 5 his breath weapon gets more dice, level 10 immune instead of resistant to his draconic ancestry, and possibly making him a half-dragon dragonborn. The problem is a half-dragon gets a breath weapon based on their ancestry. I'm thinking of just giving him the 10 ft blindsight and 60 ft darkvision with a recharge of 6 on his breath weapon. Is this a good idea or will he just be overpowered?

Do it! Just do it! Dragonborn master race!

[INDYSTAR188]

Is there any kind of penalty for using a template? Like in 3.5 there was level adjustment stuff. Also is there a listing of the templates?

[JackPhoenix]

Immunity is not something you can toss around. With fire immunity you can basically swim in lava.

No, you can't, lava is too dense to swim in, you could propably walk across the surface, but it would be like waddling in a thick mud.

/completelymissingthepoint