[Homebrew idea] Dragonborn variant: Dragon Turtle Ancestry

[Finback]

So, just throwing together something new, for those who want a new idea. Please comment if there's anything that feels overpowered/underpowered/should be tweaked.

Dragon Turtle variant traits:

Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution Increases by 1. You do not receive the Charisma bonus for normal dragonborn.

Size: Dragonborn are already quite tall and heavy, but a dragonborn with dragon turtle ancestry can also be almost be as wide as they are tall, and half as heavy again as a normal dragonborn.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 25 feet.

Carapace: Your body is covered in thicker, heavier scales that produce a shell-like covering. Your unarmoured AC is increased by 1.

Powerful Build. You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.

Breath Weapon: Your dragonborn breathweapon is a cloud of superheated steam, in a cone of 15ft (Con. save). This damage is untyped.

Damage Resistance: You do not have the damage resistance of other dragonborn.

Amphibious. You can breathe air and water.

Swim. You have a swimming speed of 30 feet.



So, I'm not sure what to do about the steam breath weapon as untyped. I considered it a tradeoff for the aquatic abilities and the goliath lifting ability, which I also wanted to balance/set against the heavy build giving a lower speed.

Feedback?

[EvilAnagram]

You took away one feature and replaced it with four features.

[Finback]

The amphibious and swim features seemed to go hand in hand, and both fitted with the ancestry. I'm curious if people think the carrying capacity, or the armour, is too strong, so I can dump one but keep the other.

I also tried to balance by reducing the speed, to represent that heavier build impacting on their mobility, putting them on par with dwarves/gnomes/halflings, and removed both the resistance, and the damage type from the breathweapon (as a) I couldn't find a suitable parallel damage type that matched (ok, fire maybe, but I was trying to take power levels down) b) it removed the capacity to make a build suited to any particular damage weakness))

[Arkhios]

Amphibious and swim speed could be easily written into one ability.

Dropping movement by 5 feet might be enough for powerful build, I guess, and I think removing resistance is actually worth the +1 AC while unarmored.

Edit: untyped damage vs typed damage is a bit unorthodox and potentially too strong, because as written, nothing can resist or negate such damage, since untyped damage doesn't exist in the rules. Maybe change the type to thunder? (thunder doesn't have to be related with storms or lightning)

All that said, this should probably be in the Homebrew Design subforum.