Just pondering about the Fizban Dragon Born breath weapon

[Sigreid]

I was just looking at dragons and dragon born and I'm curious if they said anything about why they went with proficiency bonus per day for breath weapons instead of just giving it a recharge like dragons. Anyone hear anything on that?

[Psyren]

The obvious answer is that dragonborn aren't dragons :smalltongue:

The more game-design-y answer is that tying player resource recovery to the rest mechanic(s) across the board is easy for players to grasp and easy for GMs to keep track of (or modify).

[BerzerkerUnit]

I've seen it said that 5e developers are cleaving hard to a particular design methodology summed up as "here's a finite set of resources, divide them up over your day's encounters." This can lead to some lopsided encounters and the old 15 minute adventuring day.

I personally think there's plenty of room in the game for class design that escalates within an encounter. I'll be rebranding/reposting a fighter (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g_MRkCYLXX-LSmCG4FG7aeBgf6Wtc-Bs/view?usp=sharing)archetype soon as the Riskbreaker Fighter. That rewards TWF at low levels but also some interesting Guilty Gear style combos, like racing in to stab stab with 2 shortswords and then dropping them to draw your twohander for the finisher with an action surge.

I also had a Rage Mage Barbarian (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16vcennv5S8I9YAEXGZMsH6gc2-j4rwvXMpqiCa1o9ig/edit?usp=sharing).

I recently shared a Reaper Class (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kWii79_7bL-yccjp8N4AKbkXS851qLcY/view?usp=sharing) which also has a lot of rest/short rest features, but its core functionality is always on making it operate closer to a Rogue.

I'm fiddling with a Lancer Rogue archetype which can apply it's sneak attack with a lance, spear, or pike and cunning action leap and I want there to be some kind of escalation/desperation mechanic. I miss the Bloodied status and the way it could be used to trigger effects so I may work that in as a subclass feature...

[Kane0]

I was just looking at dragons and dragon born and I'm curious if they said anything about why they went with proficiency bonus per day for breath weapons instead of just giving it a recharge like dragons. Anyone hear anything on that?

Easier for DMs to ration X per short rest and Y per long rest resources when building encounters. It gets harder when you also have A all the time and B recharging some random time within a minute.

Well thats my guess anyways.

[Hytheter]

The design considerations between player characters and monsters are totally different. PCs are supposed to play through multiple encounters in a given day, managing their resources. Hence X uses. Monsters typically only hang around for one fight and thus have mechanics designed with that in mind.

Not to mention that a player rolling recharges all day would just be annoying.

[Sigreid]

Good thoughts. But they also had the design principle that "players like to roll dice". Anyway, I was just curious if anyone on the team had said anything.

[Psyren]

A recharge mechanic would also require tracking time in rounds at odd times, even during exploration or social interaction. Like if your dragonborn is using their acid breath to melt the locks in a prison, how many can they open in if the party spends 1 minute searching? Or 10? 30? An hour? A per-rest mechanic makes that easy to track, a recharge mechanic much less so.

[stoutstien]

A recharge mechanic would also require tracking time in rounds at odd times, even during exploration or social interaction. Like if your dragonborn is using their acid breath to melt the locks in a prison, how many can they open in if the party spends 1 minute searching? Or 10? 30? An hour? A per-rest mechanic makes that easy to track, a recharge mechanic much less so.

Not really a big deal. Most of the breath weapons can't effect objects to begin with and you can still have set charges and a recharge mechanic on them without much hassle. You could play with the amounts to help it to the theme or tie to something else. For example I've altered dragon monks to have a recharge roll on their breath weapon when the expend ki.

[GooeyChewie]

I think the explanation lies not in why Dragonborn don't use the recharge mechanic, but rather why do Dragons use the recharge mechanic. Enemies in D&D generally don't have to worry about facing multiple encounters or getting rests (because generally the party kills them!). If Dragons could use multiple breath attacks in back-to-back rounds, they'd have little reason not to "go nova." At the same time, if Dragons only had one breath attack per long rest, they'd basically only get to do it once ever and that limitation would make them a lot less impressive. The recharge mechanic creates a middle ground where the players need to constantly account for the possibility of the breath weapon but the DM cannot just spam the breath weapon. In short, the recharge mechanic exists because Dragons typically only exist for one encounter, which isn't the case for Dragonborn player characters. Thus Dragonborn PCs work more like any other PC races rather than like monsters.

[togapika]

i'm fiddling with a lancer rogue archetype which can apply it's sneak attack with a lance, spear, or pike and cunning action leap and i want there to be some kind of escalation/desperation mechanic.

i need dis!!!

[Segev]

This is one area where DM-controlled creatures' mechanics and PC-controlled creatures' mechanics differing makes sense, because the pressures on a DM-controlled creature and a PC-controlled creature are different.

To wit: what is the difference, to a DM-controlled creature the DM likely will use only in this one encounter, between a long-rest recharge and a short-rest recharge ability? The creature will never recover the ability either way.

The idea behind the d6, recharge on [range of values] mechanic is that the monster will unpredictably have his ability available to him. He might use it twice in a row, though that is unlikely most of the time, and he will usually have to mix it up even if that ability is the ideal one in most situations.

PCs instead care about resource management because they WILL see a short or long rest in the future, and want to preserve their resources for their best deployment between rests. This causes PCs not to want to alpha strike everything at once...usually.

It gives the PCs more control over WHEN they use them, if less freedom over how OFTEN.