DRAGON WEAPONS: Dragonborn Racial Feat [PEACH]

[TyGuy]

Dragon Weapons
Prerequisite: Dragonborn
You enhance your ability to call on your Draconic Ancestry. You gain the following benefits:
• Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You can use your Breath Weapon two times instead of one before completing a short or long rest.
• Instead of exhaling destructive energy, as a bonus action you can expend a use of your Breath Weapon trait to empower yourself with the element associated with your Draconic Ancestry. The effect lasts for 1 minute or until you are incapacitated or dismiss it as a bonus action. Until it ends, your weapon attacks deal and extra 1d4 damage on a hit. The damage type is determined by your Draconic Ancestry. The damage increases to 2d4 at 11th level.



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The name was inspired by the other feats Dragon Fear and Dragon Hide.
The damage and functionality is essentially a rework of divine favor that scales with level and doesn't require concentration.
The design goal was to increase the ways to use breath weapon, the frequency of use, and add an aspect of elemental fighter martial dragonborn characters.

Edit 7.7.2019: reduced damage scaling

[Zhorn]

Dragon Weapons
Prerequisite: Dragonborn
You enhance your ability to call on your Draconic Ancestry. You gain the following benefits:
• Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You can use your Breath Weapon two times instead of one before completing a short or long rest.
• Instead of exhaling destructive energy, as a bonus action you can expend a use of your Breath Weapon trait to empower yourself with the element associated with your Draconic Ancestry. The effect lasts for 1 minute or until you are incapacitated or dismiss it as a bonus action. Until it ends, your weapon attacks deal and extra 1d4 damage on a hit. The damage type is determined by your Draconic Ancestry. The damage increases to 2d4 at 6th level, 3d4 at 11th level, and 4d4 at 16th level.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The name was inspired by the other feats Dragon Fear and Dragon Hide.
The damage and functionality is essentially a rework of divine favor that scales with level and doesn't require concentration.
The design goal was to increase the ways to use breath weapon, the frequency of use, and add an aspect of elemental fighter martial dragonborn characters.

I like the flavour you're going for, but the level scaling portion is a bit too much for the feat.
As a character levels up, they already gain access to methods of attacking multiples times in a round, and with each attack able to take advantage of this damage increase, the output potential of this as worded becomes crazy big.
Even going off +1d4 damage to an attack is already a pretty strong boost if it's to every weapon attack.

Suggest limiting it back to just +1d4 damage to the first hit made each round?
Especially since the feat includes a stat increase AND an additional breath charge

[sandmote]

That's how much extra damage for a 20th level fighter?

1d4 extra damage of your element per hit is probably fine, especially given it lasts a minute.

With your last bullet brought into line, I would actually have this feat let the player use their breath weapon as a bonus action. That would be itself a significant increase in how useful the racial ability is, as you wouldn't need to give up an attack action to use it.

[TyGuy]

I like the flavour you're going for, but the level scaling portion is a bit too much for the feat.
As a character levels up, they already gain access to methods of attacking multiples times in a round, and with each attack able to take advantage of this damage increase, the output potential of this as worded becomes crazy big.
Even going off +1d4 damage to an attack is already a pretty strong boost if it's to every weapon attack.

Suggest limiting it back to just +1d4 damage to the first hit made each round?
Especially since the feat includes a stat increase AND an additional breath charge
Thank you for your response and feedback. I have a few things to bounce back.

the level scaling portion is a bit too much for the feat
How much is too much? Compared to what? Sharpshooter/GWM, elven accuracy, savage attacker?
Many people think Dragonborn is one of, if not the most weak races in 5e. Would closing the gap with a strong or even very strong race specific feat be unbalanced?

As a character levels up, they already gain access to methods of attacking multiples times in a round, and with each attack able to take advantage of this damage increase, the output potential of this as worded becomes crazy big.
Even going off +1d4 damage to an attack is already a pretty strong boost if it's to every weapon attack.

Suggest limiting it back to just +1d4 damage to the first hit made each round?
At 1d4 it's comparable to divine favor and lower damage than a hex or hunter's mark. At 2d4 it doubles divine favor but it's a 43% damage increase over hex or hunter's mark. Those are just references though, as they're concentration spells and can only be up-casted for longer duration, not more damage.

Another feature to compare is the Zealot's divine fury. Even at once/turn it does an average of 6.5 damage per turn at level 6. At level 10 it's increased to 8.5 damage. So 2d4 would be an average of 10 damage with 2 attacks and 100% accuracy. Something to consider though, is that not having a 100% accuracy favors divine fury in this comparison, which gets the full effect so long as one of multiple attacks hit. Things that deal damage on every hit are diminished further than things that happen just once per turn and only need one of multiple attacks to stick. Furthermore, the Draconic Ancestry damage types have varying resistance frequencies, and some of them are quite a lot more frequent than magical physical (hunter's mark with a magic weapon) or radiant (divine favor & divine fury).

In tier 3 at say level 12 it turns into 9.5 divine fury vs 8.5/hit dragon weapons. Which is a lot. Things I still keep in mind but haven't formally calculated are resistances, miss rates, and opportunity costs. This is costing a feat and requires picking an arguably sub-optimal race.

Especially since the feat includes a stat increase AND an additional breath charge
Perhaps dropping the additional charge is in order?


In summation I prefer to keep it every hit for thematic reasons. But if the damage is too strong then perhaps the scaling can be addressed. I put the breakpoints in line with the breath weapon's in order to potentially cut down on confusion. When breath weapon increases, dragon weapons increases. But, the first feat comes at level 4 anyways so that's only 2 levels before the first breakpoint. Maybe the levels of increase need to be addressed anyways.

[TyGuy]

That's how much extra damage for a 20th level fighter?

1d4 extra damage of your element per hit is probably fine, especially given it lasts a minute.

With your last bullet brought into line, I would actually have this feat let the player use their breath weapon as a bonus action. That would be itself a significant increase in how useful the racial ability is, as you wouldn't need to give up an attack action to use it.

Good points. I rather balance for the norm and take the fringe into consideration. I think for most play 2-3 martial attacks per turn is the norm and 4-5 is the fringe. That said, 4d4 is 10 average damage which is basically GWM power attack without the penalty. Even with resistances to consider I agree that's too much.

1d4 is a pittance in tiers 3 & 4 but I just thought of the warlock's lifedrinker, which is 5 damage maxed, exactly the average damage of 2d4!


If the scaling is reduced to 1d4 at first and an increase to 2d4 at level 11 does it look good?

[sandmote]

I'd say a limit of 2d4 is probably fine.

[Bruniik]

I also agree the level scaling seems a bit much. 1d4 to attacks would be fine as even though its the same as divine favor and less than hex/hunters mark this doesn't require concentration so would stack with these.

[TyGuy]

Updated with reduced scaling.

Any constrictive thoughts on this version would be appreciated.