New UA: Draconic Options

[jaappleton]

The more I think of it, the more I like these options for Warlocks.

Any spell-like ability that a race provides is a good option for a Warlock. Any way to preserve spell slots is a solid option.

Also for Paladins who normally don’t get much as far as AoE options, and often want to reserve slots for Smites.

While not AMAZING AoE, using two attacks at 5th level to deal 6d6 (half on a save) is a very solid option for them to have for when AoE is the best route. On average that’s 21 damage, assuming a failed save, which is equivalent to a not-well rolled fireball.

AKA all my rolls of Fireball....

[Segev]

A lot of what's in here is "meh, fine, works I guess" stuff. I am not a huge fan nor huge detractor of some of these things. I will say that my favorite thing in this is making the breath weapon usable more than once and making it usable as one attack in an attack action.

If you're going to make it take a full action to use, that's also fine, but it has to be much more impressive so that it competes with a leveled spell or a full series of attacks. And unless you can use it at will, it needs to be better than a full series of attacks in inverse proportion to how rarely you can use it.

It seems to me to be a lot easier to balance it against one attack than both a leveled spell and a full sequence of an unknown number of attacks, and paying for any extra oomph from AoE with a somewhat limited use.

Maybe they should go full dragon-like mechanics and make it a Recharge on 5 or 6, rather than a limits/rest?

[x3n0n]

Maybe they should go full dragon-like mechanics and make it a Recharge on 5 or 6, rather than a limits/rest?

I think Recharge <N> is not used for PCs for a reason; it's effectively "at least once per encounter" (since you usually have "infinite" rounds between encounters) but with added swingy unpredictability in later rounds of the same combat.

That model makes a lot more sense for monsters, who can't afford to waste their (usually) one moment on screen without their key resource available, but at the same time can't have it available every round; once/encounter is fine there, but it's effectively an unknown "clock" for the PCs: "eventually the dragon will get his breath back, and we should try to take him down before then".

The exceptions (things like features of a Wild Shape, Shapechange, Polymorph form) make more sense to me as exceptions, rather than the default mechanism to control some PC feature.

[Segev]

I think Recharge <N> is not used for PCs for a reason; it's effectively "at least once per encounter" (since you usually have "infinite" rounds between encounters) but with added swingy unpredictability in later rounds of the same combat.

That model makes a lot more sense for monsters, who can't afford to waste their (usually) one moment on screen without their key resource available, but at the same time can't have it available every round; once/encounter is fine there, but it's effectively an unknown "clock" for the PCs: "eventually the dragon will get his breath back, and we should try to take him down before then".

The exceptions (things like features of a Wild Shape, Shapechange, Polymorph form) make more sense to me as exceptions, rather than the default mechanism to control some PC feature.

Perhaps. I do like the idea that a dragon can't breathe one round after another to "go nova" even if that dragon is a PC, but I do get what you're saying. I even agree that that's probably the reason. And uses/short rest works well enough.

[x3n0n]

Perhaps. I do like the idea that a dragon can't breathe one round after another to "go nova" even if that dragon is a PC, but I do get what you're saying. I even agree that that's probably the reason. And uses/short rest works well enough.

Aside on Recharge-like effects:

At a first pass, that might look like "Cooldown 1d4 (or 1d4+1)" (after using this feature, roll a d4; at the beginning/end of your turn, decrease the value by one; you may not use this feature again until its value is less than 1).
Then combine that with the normal limit of uses per rest.

That way you get the slowdown effect you wanted, with some unpredictability, but not so much that a player is re-planning his PC's whole turn based on something he rolled at the beginning of turn.

It doesn't have the logarithmic scaling of Recharge N; I don't know if we would consider that a good thing or a bad thing.

[Segev]

Aside on Recharge-like effects:

At a first pass, that might look like "Cooldown 1d4 (or 1d4+1)" (after using this feature, roll a d4; at the beginning/end of your turn, decrease the value by one; you may not use this feature again until its value is less than 1).
Then combine that with the normal limit of uses per rest.

That way you get the slowdown effect you wanted, with some unpredictability, but not so much that a player is re-planning his PC's whole turn based on something he rolled at the beginning of turn.

It doesn't have the logarithmic scaling of Recharge N; I don't know if we would consider that a good thing or a bad thing.

Good point. I will note that the player needn't replan his turn based on having recovered his breath weapon. He can, but he could go with his turn as planned. He just now knows he has his breath weapon available again on all future rounds until he uses it.

This could also be alleviated entirely in terms of planning by making Recharge be something rolled at the END of the turn, rather than beginning. Use the ability, and at the end of the turn, roll recharge. Or, if you want to guarantee one round of downtime, roll recharge at the end of any turn it wasn't available.

[Chaosmancer]

That was a tired brain fart for me on the success rate.

So, in your opinion, a +1 Dex is a decent Dex score?

I'm not really trying to get hung up on the definition of "decent" here. It is good enough to make it a coin flip. Not sure how defining "decent" is going to change that.

Honestly because I was most of the way through this reply when my PC crashed and on the second write up I just wanted to get it done.

UGH, that sucks. Sorry you had to go through that man. Worst thing ever.

I mean... what metric are you using for 'most racial abilities are generally useful' (at all levels)? A lot of them are only useful in specific situations, a direct opposite to what you're saying, so I'm not sure what your basis for any of this is.

Their value never goes away.

Look at Tabaxi for a second. No one is likely to argue that their claws don't suck. But Double Movement speed is always equally useful at all levels. Proficiency in skills is equally useful at all levels.

Half-Orc? Their proficiency is equally useful at all levels. Their improved Crit is equally useful at all levels, because weapon damage scales with number of attacks so it is the same boost every level. Not dying once per day, equally useful at all levels.

Cantrips scale and are equally useful at all levels.

And when you start finding abilities that people tend to not like... it tends to be those abilities that don't scale well. The Goliath Endurance doesn't scale well. Or abilities that are so situational as to make you question why, like the Water Genasi getting Create or Destroy Water.

I mean, I just assumed based off of you saying 'Giants, Dragons, powerful fiends, powerful undead?' As a lot (maybe most idk) of what you were listing are both physically too large to bank on aoeing them and otehrs, and you probably wouldn't have many accompanying creatures with them.

What are you really expecting from this, Fireball level damage? Again I tend to buff the damage a little in my game, but heck even your example: Doing 18% of damage to multiple (potentially all) enemies on the board is pretty damn good, it leaves them significantly injured for the rest of the party to clean up. A racial ability that stands alone instead of being an enhancement, shouldn't compete with other prime things at those levels unless it's a niche situation. Otherwise it greatly belittles classes and what roles the other party members may choose to build for.

You are ignoring the other part though. At early levels you were dealing 50%. Isn't that competing with other prime abilities and belittling the roll of classes? To do 18% of 7 hp you would have to deal 1 damage. Would you use that ability at level 2, "As an action deal 1 damage to all foes in a 15 ft cone. This recharges on a short or long rest."

No, I don't think you would. I think that everyone would agree that is trash. And yet, you want to sell that same ratio us at 11th level, and praise it for "significantly injuring" the enemies.

And the biggest thing is, while the now 11th level breath weapon does have a damage buff, 4d8 is an average of 18. That raises us from 18% to 23%. A jump sure, but it is only 4 points of damage more and the math isn't bad here. It just feels better.

And I think it should be buffed, I add an additional die, I just don't think a blitz of buffing is what's needed, warranted or good for the game.

And I disagree because any one of these buffs alone wouldn't be enough. Sure, they'd be nice, but they wouldn't offer what we really need to make this viable for casters and martials. It needed the damage boost and it needed the swap for an attack.

The "prof per long rest" is less a buff and more an overarching design change. They've changed 1 per short rest to this across the board for a year now. It you don't have to like it, but it is just a factor of the evolving design.

I didn't think I really needed to elaborate on this, but okay: He was down to less than 30% health, cut off from the rest of the party by more enemies than there was party members. I was using Star Spawn, so he'd have disadvantage to attack the ones that were in front of him anyway, but the reality is this: he wasn't going to kill any of them with two attacks and he needed to get out of dodge or go down. If he attacked them to do more damage to fewer of them, then that's largely irrelevant since after his Misty Step, those monster were then at the back of the group.

By doing what he did, he got away whilst damaging most of them, including the ones that the party would then take on first, which were not the ones he'd be able to melee.

So, highly specific and somewhat confusing real world example. Got it. I have no idea why attacking the ones he could reach was bad, I guess he was behind the enemy so the rest of the party was hitting the front of the enemy. But this is highly idiosyncratic so declaring that Dragon Breath as an action is good because you can hit the opposite side of the enemy because they are between the party and you are too low health to risky staying in melee, that is just taking an anecdote too far.

I don't know why you're assuming killing them was possible in a single action, by taking the course of action he did, he unified most of the party, stopped himself going down (and as he is the primary healer and only member with access to rez magic) that probably stopped a potential TPK happening.

I don't think you actually addressed what Paladins get Burning Hands, but the only AOE he had access to was his breath and Fireball (from a boon, that he had already expended). Just because a slot was used to escape going down, does not mean an option was available for that slot to be used in a damaging way otherwise, nevermind better damage wise than the breath in question.

Because I'm talking in general. Dragon Breath should be useful for more than injured Vengeance Paladins who are split off from the party. If I'm playing a wizard and I run up, dragon breath and misty step, but I could have gotten better damage by running up and casting a 2nd level burning hands, or by staying back and throwing a shatter, then Dragon Breath isn't useful.

You seem to be baffled that we want an iconic ability to be our second or third option, instead of our last option. And no body thinks this is going to be a go to option for anybody except martials who might be facing a horde... in which case, them getting an AOE isn't the end of the world.

Is your assumption here sword and board and dueling? This happened at level 13 and he didn't have Dueling, but to be blunt no, not necessarily. I'm not sure why you seem to be switching over to single target assumptions now either, you listed the damage of both attacks, but just the damage for the aoe would be applied to everyone in the aoe to some degree.

Your very argument (and I'm not saying this is intentional) is very, very misleading in how it's presented.

I always try and assume sword and board dueling, as it is a vanilla middle of the road build. If people are going for higher damage they tend to do other things, but very few opt for lower damage than this.

And, I was assuming the damage being spread out over two targets. In my experience, a 15 ft cone generally hits two or three enemies. But, enemy health can be conceived of as a single pool, like you are doing by applying 3d6 to every enemy. So, whether it was single target or duo targets doesn't matter.

Also, to be generally clear, you seem to assume lower CR creatures like goblins when defending Dragon breath. But, as we established, a 3d6 dragon breath is likely to only severely injure 3 goblins. The attacks are nearly guaranteed to kill two (only way they don't is if you miss the swing). Two dead enemies is better for your action economy, and you didn't use up a resource in the process. And, instead of needing potentially three more source of damage, you might only need one to finish of the single goblin.

I listed a single additional condition, where a racial ability means that a character can still participate, that's a good thing, you're talking like it's the only time a player would want to use it.

It is the only time I've seen it used, when the player literally felt like they had no other viable option.

You can't say that without justification. What about prof times per day makes it better for terms of equality? It doesn't.

And has been addressed. That is new standard design. Sorry you don't like it, but they've been making this swap over for a year now. It wasn't just for this.

Your numbers again veer into favourable territory. It's an aoe, that 3d8 breath weapon will be multiplied across enemies caught into it and there's no reason why teh Bladesinger would use something like Ray of Frost (2d8) and not Firebolt (2d10) or Toll the dead (2d12, since you just blasted them you know they're injured).

And you say daily resource, it's a Wizard, with plenty of spell slots (and Arcane Recovery) to use on other turns and encounters, adding something like this to the bag of tricks is a significant boon, especially since it isn't a spell.

How is being favorable a bad thing? Oh no, the Bladesinger Dragonborn wizard might do some mid-tier damage with a daily resource, and they are a wizard who has a lot of daily resources already.

Here, let me give you a different one. The Dragonborn Fighter might be able to deal 3d8 damage in an AOE and then attack with their sword for 1d8+6. And they don't have a lot of daily resources to use.

The issue with your example isn't that the Breath weapon is too powerful, it is the Bladesinger Wizard and Wizards in general.

Prof per day doesn't line up with two expected SRs a day, it's strictly better level 5 onwards and equal if you're a table that has only one short rest per day before then.

Was there a survey I missed where a lot of people have no short rests at all? Because that isn't a game problem, that's a table problem.

It has been a thing for a while. Not sure how you missed it.

This is a little frustrating as I'm not sure if you genuinely don't see the difference or you're playing devil's adovcate because you like the buffs.

A cantrip is not the same league, if you took a damage cantrip then you're using a cantrip instead of what your class gave you. If you could do what your class gives you, then why are you using the cantrip? If it's a niche that means it's the only thing to do, that's something you complained about with the breath weapon. And again, if you use the cantrip, you're not doing anything else. It is a choice to do that or something else. The breath weapon in this UA fits in alongside what an Extra Attack character woudl normally do. That's not the same thing at all.

Booming Blade on a Rogue massively boosts what their class gives them. My sister mains a High Elf Swashbuckler with Booming Blade constantly.

Firebolt is a ranged attack. Far greater range than the breath weapon. Less likely to be used, but what about on a spellcaster who took that from their ancestry so that they could focus on other spells. Like a Druid who prefers getting in close, but has this firebolt as their ranged attack option?

Maybe you are playing an artificer and took Mending, which is nearly mandatory for the Battle Smith and Artillerist to keep their companions alive, and gives you more cantrip options for them, since they are highly limited.


The point is, if you planned to take a race, and get a cantrip, and took that cantrip... you are planning on using it. It is a core part of your strategy one way or the other. But, for the dragonborn, you seem to have a problem that the player might take this race, and plan to use this ability in more than the rare fight where the stars align. That isn't a problem, that is normal play. "People will want to use this and that's boring" is a bad argument in my opinion.

...yes.

If it is a passive ability you don't get a choice, so it can't possibly be a no-brainer.

Seems like not getting a choice requires less brain.

Hoo-boy, really? I wasn't listing options availble to a single character, I was listing possible reactions that it could clash with to show how Goliaths of different classes and builds could face a choice to make.

Since you felt like ridiculing it though, here's a few different real world examples from two different groups, neither player frequents optimisation boards, all players with drastically different game history:

Sorcadin with Sentinel: normal OA, Sentinel reaction, Shield, Channel Divinity option (Redemption)

Barbarian/Rogue with Defensive Duelist: Normal OA, DD, Uncanny Dodge

Straight Paladin with Magic Initiate: Normal OA, Shield

Having multiple reactions you can take is not only possible, it isn't even uncommon. The Barbarian that reduces damage from the Lightning Bolt loses out on any potential OAs. That said there's no reason that Barbarian couldn't have Shield Master, or Mage Slayer etc.

Then... shouldn't they plan around that? I mean, if I have multiple competing reactions, I generally have a plan for how to scale and use those reactions. You seem to think that somehow having options is a bad thing... but the Goliath ability is 1/day. Or maybe 1/SR. Either way, it makes a lot of sense to use it up, it isn't like saving it does you any good.

Nothing should come close for a Dragonborn using Dragonbreath? Really? What about anything they get from their class or any feats?

If you do reply, I would like to see why you think all of them are necessary instead of jsut saying they are, and I'd like some examples of all of those racial abilities that remain universally useful no matter the level of play, without being very niche. Active abilties preferred since, y'know, you actually have to make the choice to use them, but whatever you can find would be nice.

Sure, I got a little hyperbolic there at the end. Because an evoker wizard using fireball blows any possible use of Dragonbreath out of the water and steam fries it.

But you seem to be presenting this like it is a problem that people will want to use an iconic ability. That isn't a problem. That is what should happen.

And I gave examples of abilities up above.

[quindraco]

Half of these are available to Dragonborn. As feats. To give them it again would be to make the feats redundant. Which would go some way to reducing power creep that people tend to claim WotC is doing little to stop. How much should be given to a race to start with?

Xanathar gives natural armor, natural weapons, and dragon fear over 2 feats. The fear especially makes sense for a feat because not even real dragons are born with the fear aura.

The Wings are available, technically, to the Gem variant. Perhaps we should make that available to all of them, as a choice?

And the skills could be chosen by basically anyone. Which I suppose isn't needed because you don't need something (the intimidation skill) in lieu of something else (the fear) when you have access to that fear. I also thought they were trying to move away from skills from races (at least stated. I know other recent UA had then again). Even then, they are skills. You could pick them up from your class or background at level 1 anyway. So literally every dragonborn PC can have them.

The only things they don't have any access to naturally are the vision upgrades and Shapechange. I'm fine with the lack of vision because everyone in the edition has darkvision and it's kinda of overblown. As for Shapechange, that's stuff very high level spells are for, unless you are okay with a watered down version like Disguise Self.

These feel like non-issues to me.

As an aside, I don't think there are any chromatic dragons with change shape. I'm all in favor of different colors of Dragonborn getting different abilities, but there's just no good reason to give any ability to all dragonborn if it's an ability only some true dragons have. I believe the most basic true dragon is the Red one, so if you want to argue for Dragonborn racials, I feel like they're the place to start, and they don't get shapechange. Or a swim speed. Or several other things some other dragons get.

Incidentally, giving them 10 foot blindsight instead of darkvision would be very draconic. All true dragons do get that. And since it's a fighting style, it's functionally been declared weaker than darkvision, so no balance concerns.

[Citadel97501]

Anyone else looked at the dragon breath change and thought, I wonder if that would be fun with a Gloom Stalker. Stealth up, then hop out of nowhere with a breath weapon followed by melee brutality.

[Dork_Forge]

I'm not really trying to get hung up on the definition of "decent" here. It is good enough to make it a coin flip. Not sure how defining "decent" is going to change that.

You made a sweeping generalisation that I don't think most people would initially agree with so wanted clarity, if +1 Dex is 'decent' then all it takes is a +3 Con or hitting a prof improvement to suddenly make it 'not decent' based on making it a coin flip or not.

UGH, that sucks. Sorry you had to go through that man. Worst thing ever.

Thanks, unfortunately as my PC ages it is an increasingly frequent issue, old boy still plays the games I like just fine though.

Their value never goes away.

Look at Tabaxi for a second. No one is likely to argue that their claws don't suck. But Double Movement speed is always equally useful at all levels. Proficiency in skills is equally useful at all levels.

Including things like proficiencies will make this messy, since the Dragonborn gets resistance and that if anything, gets more important as the levels go up.

But on the universally useful note: Feline Agility realistically declines in usefulness for all Monks and Barbarians. As their movement speed increases, their base speed is more likely to cover the incombat distance they need to travel. Where as Feline Agility is really neat, but incredibly situational. I've both played and DM'd Tabaxi's that had no need for it for sessions on end, where as one player used it every chance they could get. It's a niche ability, and seems to be the centrepiece of the Tabaxi in your eyes, that would be a bad thing for the Dragonborn..?

Half-Orc? Their proficiency is equally useful at all levels. Their improved Crit is equally useful at all levels, because weapon damage scales with number of attacks so it is the same boost every level. Not dying once per day, equally useful at all levels.

Improved crit is not equally useful at all levels for anyone apart from the Fighter. Every other martial class scales weapon damage in other ways after 5th, with the die size itself not really changing either.

Cantrips scale and are equally useful at all levels.

Offensive cantrips scale, there's a lot of cantrips that have no scaling. I've seen High Elves take Light, Mage Hand and Prestigiditation.

And when you start finding abilities that people tend to not like... it tends to be those abilities that don't scale well. The Goliath Endurance doesn't scale well. Or abilities that are so situational as to make you question why, like the Water Genasi getting Create or Destroy Water.

Stone's Endurance doesn't scale particularly well at high levels, but it's arguably overkill early on and about right in Tier 2 for it's intended purpose (shrug the worst of a hit off). Though this is just looking at purely reducing damage to maintain experience:

As the levels go up Casters become more reliant on concentration spells by and large to maximise their effectiveness, by the very (stupid) nature of concentration saves 1d12+Con can trivialise big hits for saving purposes, regardless the actual hp lost.

It can also save you from instadeath, a very real threat in Tier 1 (and depending your class and life choices, Tier 2).


A lot of races that give you spells don't age particularly well, examples:

Drow's Faerie Fire

Tiefling's Hellish Rebuke (I know there's a bazillion and one Tiefling flavours now with different spells, but there's only so much time in the day and I imagine the same applies to a lot of them)

Githyanki's Jump

Most Genasi (Earth gets a pass)

Triton's... everything

Otherwise:

Any weapon or armor proficiency is very easily wasted

Alternative movement speeds are nice, but easily lose their shine at later levels or are very niche

Bugbear's Surprise Attack is in the same bin as Assassinate

The number of subraces or whole races that are underwhelming or incredibly niche aren't exactly infrequent:

Centaur unless your goal is crazy movement speed

Changeling give you nothing really but roleplay fodder and maybe recon

Dwarf (Mountain) is pretty bad in general unless you use Tasha's optional rule

Hobgoblin's are very underwhelming

Vanilla Humans unless you are a very unlucky roller (oh have I been there) or have abserd aspirations

Kalashtar are pretty bad

Kenku read like they had a central ability that they accidentally hit delete on

Loxodons are pretty bad unless you want to grapple with a great weapon or sword and board

Minotaurs are eh at a generous best

Orcs feel like they're missing a central ability (especially in comparison to Half Orcs)

Simic Hybrid is pretty bad until you hit 5th, then eh

The bar for racial abilities really isn't very high overall.

You are ignoring the other part though. At early levels you were dealing 50%. Isn't that competing with other prime abilities and belittling the roll of classes? To do 18% of 7 hp you would have to deal 1 damage. Would you use that ability at level 2, "As an action deal 1 damage to all foes in a 15 ft cone. This recharges on a short or long rest."

No, I don't think you would. I think that everyone would agree that is trash. And yet, you want to sell that same ratio us at 11th level, and praise it for "significantly injuring" the enemies.

Frankly, because low level characters can do jack from their classes alone. Any low level caster gets a whole lot more castery by taking a race that gives spells, even if they quickly fall off later. Levels 1-2 are meant to go by quickly, if they're played at all, gaining a substantial ability at those levels isn't an issue, it's arguably needed a lot of the time since low level D&D is deadly AF.

Player damage and monster hp don't really scale at the same rate, especially with other factors like resistance coming into play.

This really just highlights to me though that one thing I'd change is the level things scale at, shift it to tiers and just have the number of dice the breath does = prof mod. Moving everything down a level and upping the ceiling would help how they feel, a change like this would work well with bumping the die up to d8s as well I feel.

And the biggest thing is, while the now 11th level breath weapon does have a damage buff, 4d8 is an average of 18. That raises us from 18% to 23%. A jump sure, but it is only 4 points of damage more and the math isn't bad here. It just feels better.

The die size increase isn't really (and has never really been) my problem, it's more why throw this on top of the other buffs. If all you're changing is the damage, a single die size is small potatoes and not worth the confusion it'll create.

And I disagree because any one of these buffs alone wouldn't be enough. Sure, they'd be nice, but they wouldn't offer what we really need to make this viable for casters and martials. It needed the damage boost and it needed the swap for an attack.

It only really needed a damage boost, it's an aoe. Martials will use it when they could use an aoe, need the damage type etc. Casters can use it when they're low on slots or build around having it instead of taking certain other aoes

The "prof per long rest" is less a buff and more an overarching design change. They've changed 1 per short rest to this across the board for a year now. It you don't have to like it, but it is just a factor of the evolving design.

When it's used on a race that already exists, on a feature that already exists, it is a buff regardless of design ethos. SR abilities still exist in the game and out number the prof per day ones.

It's not even a sweeping design change either:

The Cleric and Paladin's optional slot regeneration can be used a number of times a day depending on their level

Quite a lot of abilities are once per long rest unless you burn a slot

All of the Rune Knight's active rune abilities are once per short or long rest

The psi die regen of the Soulknife and Psi Warrior are short rest based

The recovery/use mechanics in place are anything but uniform and the reality is this:

We've had one book with that prof bonus nonesense in, Tasha's. All the UA content amounts for little until it's in a book, and until it is I'll keep voicing my dislike and criticisms of it because that is the entire point of UA.

So, highly specific and somewhat confusing real world example. Got it. I have no idea why attacking the ones he could reach was bad, I guess he was behind the enemy so the rest of the party was hitting the front of the enemy. But this is highly idiosyncratic so declaring that Dragon Breath as an action is good because you can hit the opposite side of the enemy because they are between the party and you are too low health to risky staying in melee, that is just taking an anecdote too far.

All I did was give an example that had literally just happened, though being low on health and outnumbered aren't really uncommon at all. I never said it was good because you could hit the other side of the enemy, I explained why in this case hitting with his sword was not the best use of his action.

Because I'm talking in general. Dragon Breath should be useful for more than injured Vengeance Paladins who are split off from the party. If I'm playing a wizard and I run up, dragon breath and misty step, but I could have gotten better damage by running up and casting a 2nd level burning hands, or by staying back and throwing a shatter, then Dragon Breath isn't useful.

Please don't take my example as if it is my entire argument, it leads to what looks like hyperbole that isn't helpful to anyone.

To take your example: If a caster knows they will have access to an aoe, then it means they can choose to not prepare or even take an aoe (or just reduce the ones they take) similar to your caster taking a cantrip race argument.

You seem to be baffled that we want an iconic ability to be our second or third option, instead of our last option. And no body thinks this is going to be a go to option for anybody except martials who might be facing a horde... in which case, them getting an AOE isn't the end of the world.

Being able to do something is iconic.

Actual dragons don't rely on their breath weapons, they're lucky if they can do it once a fight, and when they do it's their entire action. Something being iconic is a poor argument for it being powerful, nor should it be a good one, it leads to nonesense like Fireball being unusually good just because it's Fireball.

As it stands, I don't see why it wouldn't be a go to option, it's straight better than attacking twice unless you have a lot of riders on said attack.

I always try and assume sword and board dueling, as it is a vanilla middle of the road build. If people are going for higher damage they tend to do other things, but very few opt for lower damage than this.

That feels more optimiser board baseline than real world, I've seen plenty of martials prefer something like Defense or protection to Dueling.

And, I was assuming the damage being spread out over two targets. In my experience, a 15 ft cone generally hits two or three enemies. But, enemy health can be conceived of as a single pool, like you are doing by applying 3d6 to every enemy. So, whether it was single target or duo targets doesn't matter.

That isn't how you wrote it though, you said: 'Wouldn't I soften up the enemy more by using my weapon to deal 2d8+12 damage instead of 3d6?'

And that paints a drastically different picture. You also assume successes on the part of all Goblins, which would be unfortunate if you're hitting 2/3 but still isn't bad.

Also, to be generally clear, you seem to assume lower CR creatures like goblins when defending Dragon breath. But, as we established, a 3d6 dragon breath is likely to only severely injure 3 goblins. The attacks are nearly guaranteed to kill two (only way they don't is if you miss the swing). Two dead enemies is better for your action economy, and you didn't use up a resource in the process. And, instead of needing potentially three more source of damage, you might only need one to finish of the single goblin.

It's an aoe, so I'm generally assuming more numerous weaker creatures

So let's say that there's 3 Goblins, you kill one and severly injure two others, the 'insert caster here' can then 'insert aoe here' and get a guaranteed kill on them even if they saved.

Just because you don't kill everything you hit, doesn't mean you didn't do better than just killing two (which is only as favourable as you paint if you take dueling).

Similarly, you don't have to open up with breath, you could try and use it to finish multiple severely injured enemies.

It is the only time I've seen it used, when the player literally felt like they had no other viable option.

That's your personal experience, mine significantly difffers.

And has been addressed. That is new standard design. Sorry you don't like it, but they've been making this swap over for a year now. It wasn't just for this.

One book published, and it still contains a mix of refresh mechanics, so the ship has hardly sailed just because we have some UA.

How is being favorable a bad thing? Oh no, the Bladesinger Dragonborn wizard might do some mid-tier damage with a daily resource, and they are a wizard who has a lot of daily resources already.

What? The example I gave you is 26.5 average damage, Fireball is 28. What's midtier about that?

Here, let me give you a different one. The Dragonborn Fighter might be able to deal 3d8 damage in an AOE and then attack with their sword for 1d8+6. And they don't have a lot of daily resources to use.

And then Action Surge and do the same thing again. And then after a short rest attack breath, Action Surge attack attack.

Or hey, breath to incap, breath again, action surge attack twice.

Or attack with a great weapon for more damage

Or drop a maneuver or insert ability here on the attack at the same time.

I haven't bother to look, but the fact that it still counts as taking the attack action is bound to have some funky interactions.

It's something that just screams nova or find ways to abuse, and it's unnecessary.

The issue with your example isn't that the Breath weapon is too powerful, it is the Bladesinger Wizard and Wizards in general.

The issue is also them not considering knock on implications of stacking powercreep. Bladesinger gets republished=powercreep

Dragonborn gets republished=powercreep (if this version is published)

It has been a thing for a while. Not sure how you missed it.

Didn't miss it, not a complete thing, if anything their actual design goal is:

Use prof bonus in more places.

In which case: Dragonbreath weapon is xd8 where x is your prof bonus. Done.

Booming Blade on a Rogue massively boosts what their class gives them. My sister mains a High Elf Swashbuckler with Booming Blade constantly.

That's not universally useful, that's a niche cantrip on a class that only gets one default attack anyway. It's also costing her TWF, which is not only another chance to land sneak, but would allow her to leverage Fancy Footwork more to Skirmish effectively.

It'd also really suck for her if an enemy caster counterspelled her only attack that turn. Counterspelling a cantrip feels a lot better when said cantrip had Sneak dice behind it.

Firebolt is a ranged attack. Far greater range than the breath weapon. Less likely to be used, but what about on a spellcaster who took that from their ancestry so that they could focus on other spells. Like a Druid who prefers getting in close, but has this firebolt as their ranged attack option?

High Elf locks you into Intelligence for the casting stat regardless of Tasha's optional stat moving, so I'd say that Druid is hoping the dice carry them or has an unusually high Int mod.

Maybe you are playing an artificer and took Mending, which is nearly mandatory for the Battle Smith and Artillerist to keep their companions alive, and gives you more cantrip options for them, since they are highly limited.

Not mandatory for either of them and again a niche case: caster with limited cantrips, that uses subclasses that can benefit from a particular cantrip more. Arguably the Artillerist would be better off picking up another damage cantrip for their Arcane Firearm ability, which amounts to 'having options.'

The point is, if you planned to take a race, and get a cantrip, and took that cantrip... you are planning on using it. It is a core part of your strategy one way or the other. But, for the dragonborn, you seem to have a problem that the player might take this race, and plan to use this ability in more than the rare fight where the stars align. That isn't a problem, that is normal play. "People will want to use this and that's boring" is a bad argument in my opinion.

And if you play a dragonborn, and get a breath weapon... you'll probably end up using it. Both my current dragonborn plays make use of it, dragonborn players I've DM'd in the past have made use of it (campaigns and one shots)... Outside of boards like this a huge driving factor for a character is theme and quite frankly as long as they can do the iconic thing, it doesn't matter if it isn't the optimum thing in the moment.

Seems like not getting a choice requires less brain.

Amusing but not helpful or addressing that passive abilities are just, not really applicable.

Then... shouldn't they plan around that? I mean, if I have multiple competing reactions, I generally have a plan for how to scale and use those reactions. You seem to think that somehow having options is a bad thing... but the Goliath ability is 1/day. Or maybe 1/SR. Either way, it makes a lot of sense to use it up, it isn't like saving it does you any good.

You're a caster looking to reduce a Concentration save, you're low level hoping to reduce the damage that will inevitiably down you so you don't die, you could reduce this damage, but might get smacked around or might be able to kill x.

You can (and I think most do) for what you'd like to do, but plans rarely survive contact with the enemy and before you can very easily be put into a situation where you have to choose:

I can hit x, I might kill them but there's other monsters left this turn and if they hit me it'll be really nasty if I don't reduce it. So, try and reduce their numbers, or save your skin?

Competing choices for the same action economy is a blessing and a curse.

Sure, I got a little hyperbolic there at the end. Because an evoker wizard using fireball blows any possible use of Dragonbreath out of the water and steam fries it.

But you seem to be presenting this like it is a problem that people will want to use an iconic ability. That isn't a problem. That is what should happen.

People want to use something iconic because it's iconic, it doesn't need to be... this to be used. And when it's good enough that you're using it more frequently in a fight that an actual dragon does, that's not using it to be like the icon anymore (nevermind the fact that so many things have breath weapons it's arguable it's even iconic of a dragon, Hell Hounds and Abominable Yetis do for Torm's sake.)


Just give it a minor damage buff to bring it up to snuff and then give them abilities that actually feel more like real dragons.

[Bilbron]

My thoughts on Draconic Options (video only, I'm afraid... no notes as it was unscripted):

11:21

https://youtu.be/SpePqhVZCkM

TL;DW: I like them all and think them all excellent, balanced additions, except for Flame Stride and Summon Draconic Spirit.

[MaxWilson]

UGH, that sucks. Sorry you had to go through that man. Worst thing ever.

Thanks, unfortunately as my PC ages it is an increasingly frequent issue, old boy still plays the games I like just fine though.

This exchange made me very curious until I went back, checked the context, and realized that PC here did not stand for Player Character.

[Dork_Forge]

This exchange made me very curious until I went back, checked the context, and realized that PC here did not stand for Player Character.

Who knew playing a Goblin long term using Constantine rules would be a bad idea?

[Chaosmancer]

. You made a sweeping generalisation that I don't think most people would initially agree with so wanted clarity, if +1 Dex is 'decent' then all it takes is a +3 Con or hitting a prof improvement to suddenly make it 'not decent' based on making it a coin flip or not.

And a "decent" strength at level 1 isn't decent by level 18. You didn't even want me including monsters of mid-CR so I'm not sure what you want me to say about things increase over time.

. Including things like proficiencies will make this messy, since the Dragonborn gets resistance and that if anything, gets more important as the levels go up.

But on the universally useful note: Feline Agility realistically declines in usefulness for all Monks and Barbarians. As their movement speed increases, their base speed is more likely to cover the incombat distance they need to travel. Where as Feline Agility is really neat, but incredibly situational. I've both played and DM'd Tabaxi's that had no need for it for sessions on end, where as one player used it every chance they could get. It's a niche ability, and seems to be the centrepiece of the Tabaxi in your eyes, that would be a bad thing for the Dragonborn..?

I've seen it go up in value over time, though I will acknowledge the need for it can become niche if you have a high enough base speed. That isn't a leveling thing though. A fighter at level 1 gets the same value as a fighter at level 20. This is a big difference. And proficiency's are included because they are a fine ability and they retain usefulness over levels. Just like the Dragonborn's Resistance. Which is an ability they have that keeps usefulness over levels.

. Improved crit is not equally useful at all levels for anyone apart from the Fighter. Every other martial class scales weapon damage in other ways after 5th, with the die size itself not really changing either.

A Half-Orc Paladin who cries with their longsword gets 3d8 damage at level 1, level 5 and level 11. The general value of "critical harder" is still applicable.

. Offensive cantrips scale, there's a lot of cantrips that have no scaling. I've seen High Elves take Light, Mage Hand and Prestigiditation.

Great. Mage Hand retains the same usefulness at level 17 that it had at level 1. That isn't damage, but you chose not to take a damaging cantrip, nothing I can do about that.

. Stone's Endurance doesn't scale particularly well at high levels, but it's arguably overkill early on and about right in Tier 2 for it's intended purpose (shrug the worst of a hit off). Though this is just looking at purely reducing damage to maintain experience:

As the levels go up Casters become more reliant on concentration spells by and large to maximise their effectiveness, by the very (stupid) nature of concentration saves 1d12+Con can trivialise big hits for saving purposes, regardless the actual hp lost.

It can also save you from instadeath, a very real threat in Tier 1 (and depending your class and life choices, Tier 2).


A lot of races that give you spells don't age particularly well, examples:

Drow's Faerie Fire

Tiefling's Hellish Rebuke (I know there's a bazillion and one Tiefling flavours now with different spells, but there's only so much time in the day and I imagine the same applies to a lot of them)

Githyanki's Jump

Most Genasi (Earth gets a pass)

Triton's... everything

Otherwise:

Any weapon or armor proficiency is very easily wasted

Alternative movement speeds are nice, but easily lose their shine at later levels or are very niche

Bugbear's Surprise Attack is in the same bin as Assassinate

The number of subraces or whole races that are underwhelming or incredibly niche aren't exactly infrequent:

Centaur unless your goal is crazy movement speed

Changeling give you nothing really but roleplay fodder and maybe recon

Dwarf (Mountain) is pretty bad in general unless you use Tasha's optional rule

Hobgoblin's are very underwhelming

Vanilla Humans unless you are a very unlucky roller (oh have I been there) or have abserd aspirations

Kalashtar are pretty bad

Kenku read like they had a central ability that they accidentally hit delete on

Loxodons are pretty bad unless you want to grapple with a great weapon or sword and board

Minotaurs are eh at a generous best

Orcs feel like they're missing a central ability (especially in comparison to Half Orcs)

Simic Hybrid is pretty bad until you hit 5th, then eh

The bar for racial abilities really isn't very high overall.

I disagree with you on one or two of those, but that doesn't matter. Because also on that list? The original Dragonborn Breath Weapon.

They changed it. They should probably change A LOT of those races. With Tasha's it is now a lot easier to not waste Proficiencies. That helps. A lot of those spells can be useful if planned around correctly. Some of those aren't primary abilities.

But, just because you can point out bad abilities doesn't change the idea that, if abilities shouldn't be bad, we should design them differently.

. Frankly, because low level characters can do jack from their classes alone. Any low level caster gets a whole lot more castery by taking a race that gives spells, even if they quickly fall off later. Levels 1-2 are meant to go by quickly, if they're played at all, gaining a substantial ability at those levels isn't an issue, it's arguably needed a lot of the time since low level D&D is deadly AF.

Sleep. Magic Missile. There is a lot of great stuff at early levels. You just can't do a lot of it. At level 2 a Ranger with Dual-Wielding and Hunter's Mark is a blender. Monks are amazing. It just doesn't feel impressive because you are weak and 5th level is such a huge jump.

. Player damage and monster hp don't really scale at the same rate, especially with other factors like resistance coming into play.

This really just highlights to me though that one thing I'd change is the level things scale at, shift it to tiers and just have the number of dice the breath does = prof mod. Moving everything down a level and upping the ceiling would help how they feel, a change like this would work well with bumping the die up to d8s as well I feel.

IT might be a good change. I think they are shifting close to that point, but I'd need to look at all of it.

. The die size increase isn't really (and has never really been) my problem, it's more why throw this on top of the other buffs. If all you're changing is the damage, a single die size is small potatoes and not worth the confusion it'll create.

It only really needed a damage boost, it's an aoe. Martials will use it when they could use an aoe, need the damage type etc. Casters can use it when they're low on slots or build around having it instead of taking certain other aoes

I haven't seen any confusion. And we've addressed the other issues and why they needed fixed.

. When it's used on a race that already exists, on a feature that already exists, it is a buff regardless of design ethos. SR abilities still exist in the game and out number the prof per day ones.

It's not even a sweeping design change either:

The Cleric and Paladin's optional slot regeneration can be used a number of times a day depending on their level

Quite a lot of abilities are once per long rest unless you burn a slot

All of the Rune Knight's active rune abilities are once per short or long rest

The psi die regen of the Soulknife and Psi Warrior are short rest based

The recovery/use mechanics in place are anything but uniform and the reality is this:

We've had one book with that prof bonus nonesense in, Tasha's. All the UA content amounts for little until it's in a book, and until it is I'll keep voicing my dislike and criticisms of it because that is the entire point of UA.

Just pointing out man, if they are making this change fairly consistently, then it shouldn't be that big of a shock when they do it again. Feel free to voice your complaints, but this isn't a "why did they add this buff to Dragonborn" as much as it is "why are you moving away from 1/SR as a mechanic"

Being able to do something is iconic.

Actual dragons don't rely on their breath weapons, they're lucky if they can do it once a fight, and when they do it's their entire action. Something being iconic is a poor argument for it being powerful, nor should it be a good one, it leads to nonesense like Fireball being unusually good just because it's Fireball.

As it stands, I don't see why it wouldn't be a go to option, it's straight better than attacking twice unless you have a lot of riders on said attack.

I'll agree the monster design for Dragons could have used a lot of work. But, come on, don't try and sell me on the idea that Dragon's Breath isn't iconic in the extreme

And, as someone who recently had the harrowing experience of a dragon who recharged three times in a row... I can attest to why they made that difficult and rare.

. That feels more optimiser board baseline than real world, I've seen plenty of martials prefer something like Defense or protection to Dueling.

Sure, it can happen. I've seen it too. People tend to overvalue damage though, so I've seen a lot more with dueling.



*Snipping a lot, these responses are getting too big*

What? The example I gave you is 26.5 average damage, Fireball is 28. What's midtier about that?

Average of 26.5 to one creature, average of 13.5 to the others (If I remember the level correctly)

And then Action Surge and do the same thing again. And then after a short rest attack breath, Action Surge attack attack.

Or hey, breath to incap, breath again, action surge attack twice.

Or attack with a great weapon for more damage

Or drop a maneuver or insert ability here on the attack at the same time.

I haven't bother to look, but the fact that it still counts as taking the attack action is bound to have some funky interactions.

It's something that just screams nova or find ways to abuse, and it's unnecessary.

"The fighter might use another iconic and powerful ability to cool things with it"

Yeah, I know. But if the fighter is dropping their single action surge and two of their daily breath weapons, I'd sure hope it was an impressive display. Or hey, maybe they drop a daily ability, a daily resource and their action surge. Again, shouldn't that be rather impressive?

Action Surge is powerful. We know this. A high-level Eldritch Knight (or a slightly lower one with a wand) can fireball, action surge, Fireball. That is also impressive.

. That's not universally useful, that's a niche cantrip on a class that only gets one default attack anyway. It's also costing her TWF, which is not only another chance to land sneak, but would allow her to leverage Fancy Footwork more to Skirmish effectively.

It'd also really suck for her if an enemy caster counterspelled her only attack that turn. Counterspelling a cantrip feels a lot better when said cantrip had Sneak dice behind it.

1) You can still dual-wield, you just can't do both the same turn

2) Yes, an enemy counter spelling you sucks. Still, please counter spell and cancel my at-will ability before I even roll. That just means you are out a 3rd level slot and don't have a counter spell for our actual spell casters. Enjoy the [Insert powerful spell here]

High Elf locks you into Intelligence for the casting stat regardless of Tasha's optional stat moving, so I'd say that Druid is hoping the dice carry them or has an unusually high Int mod.

Either one is valid. I specifically chose a less optimized thing, because the logic behind choosing and using it is consistent. When it applies, you always use it. The thing you are complaining about with the Dragonborn.

Not mandatory for either of them and again a niche case: caster with limited cantrips, that uses subclasses that can benefit from a particular cantrip more. Arguably the Artillerist would be better off picking up another damage cantrip for their Arcane Firearm ability, which amounts to 'having options.'

Also valid, but trust me, keeping that turret alive has a lot of value. Enough I went with a single damage cantrip when I played one.

. And if you play a dragonborn, and get a breath weapon... you'll probably end up using it. Both my current dragonborn plays make use of it, dragonborn players I've DM'd in the past have made use of it (campaigns and one shots)... Outside of boards like this a huge driving factor for a character is theme and quite frankly as long as they can do the iconic thing, it doesn't matter if it isn't the optimum thing in the moment.

But a lot of people didn't like it, because it wasn't a good option, and therefore they never did the thing.

People want to use something iconic because it's iconic, it doesn't need to be... this to be used. And when it's good enough that you're using it more frequently in a fight that an actual dragon does, that's not using it to be like the icon anymore (nevermind the fact that so many things have breath weapons it's arguable it's even iconic of a dragon, Hell Hounds and Abominable Yetis do for Torm's sake.)


Just give it a minor damage buff to bring it up to snuff and then give them abilities that actually feel more like real dragons.

Ah yes, all that classic fantasy art that includes yetis using their breath weapon. Just because something else uses it, doesn't mean that it isn't iconic for a different creature.

None of the other iconic dragon abilities are going to really fly. Blindsense would never get through. Flight won't make it. You might be able to do something with fear, but that is already a feat. There isn't a lot else except the scales. Which would be cool, but I can see why they didn't.

[Dork_Forge]

And a "decent" strength at level 1 isn't decent by level 18. You didn't even want me including monsters of mid-CR so I'm not sure what you want me to say about things increase over time.

It's not that I didn't want you including mid-CR, it's that you brought up a CR 8 creature against a DC that wouldn't reasonably apply to them. Higher CR creatures should be looked at in respect to the DC they'd reasonably expect to face.

I've seen it go up in value over time, though I will acknowledge the need for it can become niche if you have a high enough base speed. That isn't a leveling thing though. A fighter at level 1 gets the same value as a fighter at level 20. This is a big difference. And proficiency's are included because they are a fine ability and they retain usefulness over levels. Just like the Dragonborn's Resistance. Which is an ability they have that keeps usefulness over levels.

Then Feline Agility falls under the same not universally useful for everyone banner as some versions of Dragonbreath, since two base classes give speed bumps and multiple subclasses on other classes do as well.

Proficiencies should just really balance against resistance then, otherwise it becomes anything and everything races get against one thing Dragonborns do.

A Half-Orc Paladin who cries with their longsword gets 3d8 damage at level 1, level 5 and level 11. The general value of "critical harder" is still applicable.

The relative value of a single additional d8 (or whatever weapon die) is not universally good across all levels. It's great when it happens at first, then just fades into the mix as monster hp skyrockets in higher CRs, better on crit fishing builds, but that's very niche and unreliable.

Great. Mage Hand retains the same usefulness at level 17 that it had at level 1. That isn't damage, but you chose not to take a damaging cantrip, nothing I can do about that.

Eh? As levels increase more people in the party are likely to gain access to abilities that do similar, the Gith get a superior Mage Hand on top of other casting.

I disagree with you on one or two of those, but that doesn't matter. Because also on that list? The original Dragonborn Breath Weapon.

They changed it. They should probably change A LOT of those races. With Tasha's it is now a lot easier to not waste Proficiencies. That helps. A lot of those spells can be useful if planned around correctly. Some of those aren't primary abilities.

But, just because you can point out bad abilities doesn't change the idea that, if abilities shouldn't be bad, we should design them differently.

A large part of your point was (or it seemed to be) that there was so many good racial abilities that were universally good. So I tried to illustrate that isn't the case, again, I'm on board with buffing Dragon's Breath, just no this much.

And the reality is that by reprinting buffed versions of existing options, they're just intetionally causing fragmentation because they won't just go back and errata things. We've seen that. And they certainly won't reprint buffed options for everything that isn't up to par with the stand out abilties that come to mind.

Sleep. Magic Missile. There is a lot of great stuff at early levels. You just can't do a lot of it. At level 2 a Ranger with Dual-Wielding and Hunter's Mark is a blender. Monks are amazing. It just doesn't feel impressive because you are weak and 5th level is such a huge jump.

My point wasn't just that they don't get much, but that they can't do much of what the get. Like Sleep and Magic Missile on a caster with a few slots to last all day.

Rangers and Monks like you say are very good early on, they're also dependent on being in melee with their hp are so low insta death is a very real possibility, nevermind just going down when there's limited party resources to bring them back up. Balancing act.

IT might be a good change. I think they are shifting close to that point, but I'd need to look at all of it.

As part of our discussion I actually reread a bulk of the Tasha's options, it really just feels like they're trying to include prof bonus more in general rather than as a centralised resource mechanic. This is reinforced by some options having built in short rest recharge via say, Ki powered options on a Monk.

I'd love to see the version I proposed, it'd be more compelling damage wise, whilst not upsetting the base of the game as a whole.

I haven't seen any confusion. And we've addressed the other issues and why they needed fixed.

I didn't mean any confusion in a thread full of people that generally know the rules very well and enjoy optimising and discussing the game outside of table time. I'm talking about at the table in the moment when Dragonborn are involved, because the PHB version won't go away. You'll have two different Dragonborn using different die sizes for their breathweapons, nevermind the different shapes.

This wouldn't have been a problem if they had called them Draconians or whatever, but presenting to races named the same but with different yet similar traits is asking for trouble. At least Wildemount gave two distinct Dragonborn variants instead of a replacement.

Just pointing out man, if they are making this change fairly consistently, then it shouldn't be that big of a shock when they do it again. Feel free to voice your complaints, but this isn't a "why did they add this buff to Dragonborn" as much as it is "why are you moving away from 1/SR as a mechanic"

It's both, I don't like prof use in this way and UA is the time to voice it, but it is a buff on it's own and a buff multiplier when otehrs are involved.

I'll agree the monster design for Dragons could have used a lot of work. But, come on, don't try and sell me on the idea that Dragon's Breath isn't iconic in the extreme

I think they could have used more thematic inclusion of their element, but overall I don't mind Dragon design other than 'why on earth would this dragon land at any point and not just TPK the party from the air?


My main point was that being able to do something is enough for it to be an iconic tie in, Dragonborn can breathe like Dragons, which isn't really a particularly dragon thing to do in D&D, it's just that in the real world we associate that with dragons primarily.

And, as someone who recently had the harrowing experience of a dragon who recharged three times in a row... I can attest to why they made that difficult and rare.

Yup it's nasty and that is some bad luck you had there, ouch!

But that took an entire action to deal elemental damage that left itself open to various defenses. Things shift dramatically when it's alternating aoe and attacks used back to back with no luck involved, since your uses are a certainty.

Sure, it can happen. I've seen it too. People tend to overvalue damage though, so I've seen a lot more with dueling.

This really just highlights that none of our experiences are universal, which matters when panning something hard like the PHB breath.

*Snipping a lot, these responses are getting too big*

Yeah that's fair enough

Average of 26.5 to one creature, average of 13.5 to the others (If I remember the level correctly)

I think that's right, either way... how is that midtier damage?

"The fighter might use another iconic and powerful ability to cool things with it"

Yeah, I know. But if the fighter is dropping their single action surge and two of their daily breath weapons, I'd sure hope it was an impressive display. Or hey, maybe they drop a daily ability, a daily resource and their action surge. Again, shouldn't that be rather impressive?

Action Surge is powerful. We know this. A high-level Eldritch Knight (or a slightly lower one with a wand) can fireball, action surge, Fireball. That is also impressive.

Yes we know this, we also know that it's a popular dip grab because it's so low level. One of the questions they should ask themselves when designing new things should be 'how will this interact with existing options?' and quite frankly Action Surge should be up there in one of the top concerns.

1) You can still dual-wield, you just can't do both the same turn

That feels nitpicky, I would hope you would know that taking a cantrip as an option wouldn't lock a character out of a global rule. The fact is that if she uses the cantrip she took, she can't do other things that benefit her class/subclass. It's an opportunity cost and that's important for balance to me.

2) Yes, an enemy counter spelling you sucks. Still, please counter spell and cancel my at-will ability before I even roll. That just means you are out a 3rd level slot and don't have a counter spell for our actual spell casters. Enjoy the [Insert powerful spell here]

Counterspelling your sister in this case means that she cannot attack at all that turn, which as a Booming Blade/Sneak Attack user probably means a substantial dip in damage, it also means that she'd now have to burn her bonus on Cunning Action since she didn't attack to get her free disengage.

Either one is valid. I specifically chose a less optimized thing, because the logic behind choosing and using it is consistent. When it applies, you always use it. The thing you are complaining about with the Dragonborn.

The thing I'm complaining about is something always applying, which your example doesn't, your example was even a worse than standard option because of the stat discrepency, where as all characters will have a decent Con regardless (well not everyone, but sometimes people think it 's fun to dump Con, not a fan personally).

Also valid, but trust me, keeping that turret alive has a lot of value. Enough I went with a single damage cantrip when I played one.

It has a lot of hp for what it is and a high AC, how often was it actually being damaged? Was your game really aoe heavy or something?

But a lot of people didn't like it, because it wasn't a good option, and therefore they never did the thing.

And a lot of people just like doing the thing, that just swings in roundabouts.

Ah yes, all that classic fantasy art that includes yetis using their breath weapon. Just because something else uses it, doesn't mean that it isn't iconic for a different creature.

None of the other iconic dragon abilities are going to really fly. Blindsense would never get through. Flight won't make it. You might be able to do something with fear, but that is already a feat. There isn't a lot else except the scales. Which would be cool, but I can see why they didn't.

Dragons breathing is iconic in the real world, in D&D it isn't really a unique trait of theirs, that was my point.

I could see something along the lines of the Blindfighting style making it in or a fly speed, we already have two always on racial options for flight and they usually impose armor restrictions to compensate.

Personally I'd feel more epic flying around and swooping down on my enemies rather than sometimes using a breath weapon, though in my games I gave the Paladin wings and a buff to his weapon so *shrug*

[P. G. Macer]

~Snip~

There are two points here I’ll bring up. I don’t have the time or the knowledge to argue against all of them, but I noticed some things.

First off, you compared the tabaxi’s Feline Agility to the PHB dragonborn’s breath weapon, claiming both were situational abilities not universally useful to all classes. You are technically correct, but contrary to what Futurama may say, technically correct is not the best kind of correct. In this case, there are degrees of how frequently applicable a trait is, and in my opinion and experience Feline Agility has far more opportunities to be usefully used than the PHB Breath Weapon, which past Tier 1 is generally a bottom-of-the-barrel option.

My second point is that while you point that breath weapons are not unique to dragons in D&D, and you acknowledge that breath weapons are iconic to dragons in the minds of most real-life people, you don’t seem to acknowledge the full implications of this. When new players come to 5e and want to play a dragon-person, the obvious thematic choice is the dragonborn, and the BW is what makes them dragon-y to a layperson, mores than 10 feet of blindsight would, and not as potentially game-breakingly powerful as winged flight. As someone whose first D&D PC ever was a dragonborn, the realization that the breath weapon was weaker than Burning Hands in Tier 1 was deflating. The increased usage and die size make it into more useful territory, and besides possibly your TCoE bladesinger example, isn’t so powerful that cheesy combinations exist.

Gotta go for now.

[MaxWilson]

And the reality is that by reprinting buffed versions of existing options, they're just intetionally causing fragmentation because they won't just go back and errata things. We've seen that. And they certainly won't reprint buffed options for everything that isn't up to par with the stand out abilties that come to mind.

(1) The new devs have shown that they are willing to change things in errata. New verisons of Xanathar's will have nerfed Healing Spirit. New printings of SCAG will have the Tasha's Bladesinger in it.

(2) Errata doesn't decrease fragmentation, it actually increases it. Now you have to talk about whether you're using SCAG Bladesinger (original) or SCAG Bladesinger (2021 edition).

[ProsecutorGodot]

(1) The new devs have shown that they are willing to change things in errata. New verisons of Xanathar's will have nerfed Healing Spirit. New printings of SCAG will have the Tasha's Bladesinger in it.

(2) Errata doesn't decrease fragmentation, it actually increases it. Now you have to talk about whether you're using SCAG Bladesinger (original) or SCAG Bladesinger (2021 edition).

I believe it was also you (I know it was someone here) that noted when Xanathar's was printed that it had a different wording for Swashbuckler that has a significant impact on their ranged viability, was that ever changed?

So, so true on that errata. There are errata that were made before I'd even begun playing DND that I see cause some issue even today, unarmed strikes anyone?

[MaxWilson]

I believe it was also you (I know it was someone here) that noted when Xanathar's was printed that it had a different wording for Swashbuckler that has a significant impact on their ranged viability, was that ever changed?

So, so true on that errata. There are errata that were made before I'd even begun playing DND that I see cause some issue even today, unarmed strikes anyone?

The SCAG errata do not change the SCAG Swashbuckler. The SCAG Swashbuckler, unlike the Xanathar's Swashbuckler, continues to have the ability to sneak attack via Rakish Audacity even for targets more than 5' away (i.e. SCAG Swashbuckler is a much better archer than Xanathar's Swashbuckler).

I wish they'd update that stupid sentence in the DMG about "6-8 medium or hard" encounters per day (or a greater number of more difficult encounters) as a guideline. As you may know, that sentence was accurate and matched the table when the Basic Rules were originally written (v0.1), but by v0.2 the table had been updated to relabel those formerly-medium/hard encounters as easy/medium. (That is, ceilings in the table were changed to floors.) But the sentence was not updated, so now the table and the text don't match, and everyone who actually does the math comes to different conclusions than those who just read the paragraph, and it causes controversy.

They need to just update the text to say "6-8 easy or medium", or else do the math and say "4-6 medium or hard".

[Chaosmancer]

I honestly tried to work up the energy to respond to most of this but... I just don't have it in me this weekend. So, highlight reel on the parts I could bring myself to respond to. Sorry that I'm just... exhausted.

I didn't mean any confusion in a thread full of people that generally know the rules very well and enjoy optimising and discussing the game outside of table time. I'm talking about at the table in the moment when Dragonborn are involved, because the PHB version won't go away. You'll have two different Dragonborn using different die sizes for their breathweapons, nevermind the different shapes.

This wouldn't have been a problem if they had called them Draconians or whatever, but presenting to races named the same but with different yet similar traits is asking for trouble. At least Wildemount gave two distinct Dragonborn variants instead of a replacement.

We have like fifteen different types of elves. Having multiple dragonborn isn't that confusing. Anyone who can handle building a dungeons and dragons character themselves can figure out that there are multiple different dragonborn. Might even give them their own nicknames.

This is a non-issue.

I think they could have used more thematic inclusion of their element, but overall I don't mind Dragon design other than 'why on earth would this dragon land at any point and not just TPK the party from the air?


My main point was that being able to do something is enough for it to be an iconic tie in, Dragonborn can breathe like Dragons, which isn't really a particularly dragon thing to do in D&D, it's just that in the real world we associate that with dragons primarily.

And you'll notice that I didn't say "Iconic for the Dragons of the Worlds of Dungeons and Dragons." I said "Iconic for Dragons". So yes, in the real world, where people live and care about things like being iconic, dragons are iconic for breath weapons, like breathing fire. That is the point. Please stop trying to say that "well, yetis use breath weapons, so it isn't iconic for a dragon to breath fire."

Yup it's nasty and that is some bad luck you had there, ouch!

But that took an entire action to deal elemental damage that left itself open to various defenses. Things shift dramatically when it's alternating aoe and attacks used back to back with no luck involved, since your uses are a certainty.

Yes, a player ability is more reliable than a monster ability. This tends to be because players like to plan their turns, rather than just hoping to see.

This is design 101 of DnD man. Monsters have rolled recharges. Pretty much no player abilities do. We tried it once, and people hated it.

Counterspelling your sister in this case means that she cannot attack at all that turn, which as a Booming Blade/Sneak Attack user probably means a substantial dip in damage, it also means that she'd now have to burn her bonus on Cunning Action since she didn't attack to get her free disengage.

And the wizard can safely cast Hypnotic Pattern because the counterspell was used up on stopping an at-will ability.

Yes, it can happen, and that doesn't mean it is a bad thing for the party. Unless you specifically added an enemy with counterspell just to cancel the rogue's turn, and no other casters are present.

It has a lot of hp for what it is and a high AC, how often was it actually being damaged? Was your game really aoe heavy or something?

I actually never got the chance to use mending on it. Game only lasted a few sessions, but the DM hated that turret, because the temp hp single-handedly prevented the party from tpking multiple times over the few sessions. He started explicitly trying to target it to get rid of it because it was doing so much damage mitigation.

[Dork_Forge]

First off, you compared the tabaxi’s Feline Agility to the PHB dragonborn’s breath weapon, claiming both were situational abilities not universally useful to all classes. You are technically correct, but contrary to what Futurama may say, technically correct is not the best kind of correct. In this case, there are degrees of how frequently applicable a trait is, and in my opinion and experience Feline Agility has far more opportunities to be usefully used than the PHB Breath Weapon, which past Tier 1 is generally a bottom-of-the-barrel option.

Then our experiences differ, the amount of times a player can't reach something aren't that frequent in my games overall for various reasons, and players that rely on mobility either get it from elsewhere or need a more reliable source of it than Feline Agility. As a floor the breath weapon is at least damage, where as often times there's just no need or benefit (there's even detriments) to moving too much.

This might be different if player speeds matter outside of combat, but they don't unless you choose to take it into consideration so *shrug*

My second point is that while you point that breath weapons are not unique to dragons in D&D, and you acknowledge that breath weapons are iconic to dragons in the minds of most real-life people, you don’t seem to acknowledge the full implications of this. When new players come to 5e and want to play a dragon-person, the obvious thematic choice is the dragonborn, and the BW is what makes them dragon-y to a layperson, mores than 10 feet of blindsight would, and not as potentially game-breakingly powerful as winged flight. As someone whose first D&D PC ever was a dragonborn, the realization that the breath weapon was weaker than Burning Hands in Tier 1 was deflating. The increased usage and die size make it into more useful territory, and besides possibly your TCoE bladesinger example, isn’t so powerful that cheesy combinations exist.

To be frank, the notions of new/uninitiated players shouldn't have a heavy influence on the game. My iconic impression of trolls is the burly turn to stone kind, that doesn't change the fact that in D&D they're hyper regenerating mutant creatures. I guarantee that when people think of the things dragons can do fly would come up as much as breathing fire, yet the dragonborn doesn't get a standard flight speed and they can breathe all kinds of things. D&D has existed long enough to move beyond it's inspirations, which means that the iconic expectations that people have of general fantasy won't match up. You want to be a dragon person, great, here's a Dragonborn. You want the firebreath to be more dragon like... You realise you're not actually a dragon right?

Iconic is a terrible argument for these changes.

(1) The new devs have shown that they are willing to change things in errata. New verisons of Xanathar's will have nerfed Healing Spirit. New printings of SCAG will have the Tasha's Bladesinger in it.

(2) Errata doesn't decrease fragmentation, it actually increases it. Now you have to talk about whether you're using SCAG Bladesinger (original) or SCAG Bladesinger (2021 edition).

I didn't know they were errata'ing SCAG and that bums me out, TCoE BS can go suck a lemon and won't see my games.

I agree that errata doesn't reduce fragmentation as standard, it's just a different kind of fragmentation that affects different people in different ways (primarily books users and people that don't refer to source material much).

I honestly tried to work up the energy to respond to most of this but... I just don't have it in me this weekend. So, highlight reel on the parts I could bring myself to respond to. Sorry that I'm just... exhausted.

Self care is more important than an internet discussion, get some good rest in, your body will thank you.

We have like fifteen different types of elves. Having multiple dragonborn isn't that confusing. Anyone who can handle building a dungeons and dragons character themselves can figure out that there are multiple different dragonborn. Might even give them their own nicknames.

This is a non-issue.

We have a lot of subraces for Elves, we don't really have an instance where there's two copies of the same Elf in player facing material.

The issue here is that you can be a Red Dragonborn and the only thing that determines your breath is the source. The name of the race, subchoices, and ability remain the same. That's what I'm talking about with confusion and you just don't get that with subraces, because they're called different things with different names abilities.

Even if they go back and errata the Dragonborn, as Max pointed out, that's just a different level of fragmentation (and inevitiably confusion).

And you'll notice that I didn't say "Iconic for the Dragons of the Worlds of Dungeons and Dragons." I said "Iconic for Dragons". So yes, in the real world, where people live and care about things like being iconic, dragons are iconic for breath weapons, like breathing fire. That is the point. Please stop trying to say that "well, yetis use breath weapons, so it isn't iconic for a dragon to breath fire."

Yeti was one of two examples I originally gave, my point is that there's no reason that real world people expecting full size dragons to do x should mean jack about a related race besides them being able to do it in some form.

This could just as easily be represented as:

Dragons can breath fire, so can a Dragonborn, the Dragonborns is weaker, but it's not a real dragon so that makes sense.

The iconic thing that links them beyond appearance is capability, not effectiveness.

Yes, a player ability is more reliable than a monster ability. This tends to be because players like to plan their turns, rather than just hoping to see.

This is design 101 of DnD man. Monsters have rolled recharges. Pretty much no player abilities do. We tried it once, and people hated it.

The entire point of what you replied to was that mixing breath with attacks changes things up mechanically and also shifts dragonborn futher away from dragons.

And the wizard can safely cast Hypnotic Pattern because the counterspell was used up on stopping an at-will ability.

Yes, it can happen, and that doesn't mean it is a bad thing for the party. Unless you specifically added an enemy with counterspell just to cancel the rogue's turn, and no other casters are present.

My point was that by using her cantrip, she left herself vulnerable to additional countermeasures whilst locking herself out of other things.

She's taking those risks, hoping for a higher payout in damage and control, but it's still a risk and opportunity cost.

Being able to sub out a single attack for a full power breath doesn't have that same opportunity cost, since the breath will pretty much always be better than a single attack (ignoring element choice here).

I actually never got the chance to use mending on it. Game only lasted a few sessions, but the DM hated that turret, because the temp hp single-handedly prevented the party from tpking multiple times over the few sessions. He started explicitly trying to target it to get rid of it because it was doing so much damage mitigation.

That sounds like a little bit of antagoism from the DM based on what you've said, personally I don't think that the time spent repairing a turret is worth it, but that may change in a game where a DM is so targeted on it.

[Segev]

I'll be honest, I don't see how feline agility isn't extremely reliable. All it takes to recharge it is not moving for one round. It's guaranteed-available at least once per combat, and probably multiple times if you have any sort of stick-and-move strategy.

[Dork_Forge]

I'll be honest, I don't see how feline agility isn't extremely reliable. All it takes to recharge it is not moving for one round. It's guaranteed-available at least once per combat, and probably multiple times if you have any sort of stick-and-move strategy.

The ability has a short recharge, but the amount of times crazy high speed is relevant is highly table dependent and ime doesn't really come up that often. This is reinforced by two classes having built in speed bumps and numerous subclasses also giving speed bumps.

If you were building a strategy around mobility and ti wasn't just 'I can run really fast sometimes!' I can't see the Tabaxi being a top choice based on Feline Agility.

[Kane0]

The ability has a short recharge, but the amount of times crazy high speed is relevant is highly table dependent and ime doesn't really come up that often. This is reinforced by two classes having built in speed bumps and numerous subclasses also giving speed bumps.

If you were building a strategy around mobility and ti wasn't just 'I can run really fast sometimes!' I can't see the Tabaxi being a top choice based on Feline Agility.

In your estimation how good is it compared to the orcs aggressive?

[Dork_Forge]

In your estimation how good is it compared to the orcs aggressive?

Far better, it doesn't require a bonus and isn't contingent on moving towards an enemy. If Feline Agility took a bonus it would lose a lot of its appeal, especially since it'd no longer combo with bonus action dashing.

[MaxWilson]

The ability has a short recharge, but the amount of times crazy high speed is relevant is highly table dependent and ime doesn't really come up that often. This is reinforced by two classes having built in speed bumps and numerous subclasses also giving speed bumps.

If you were building a strategy around mobility and ti wasn't just 'I can run really fast sometimes!' I can't see the Tabaxi being a top choice based on Feline Agility.

Tabaxi + grappling + Psi Knight flying + Spike Growth is extremely interesting.

[P. G. Macer]

Then our experiences differ, the amount of times a player can't reach something aren't that frequent in my games overall for various reasons, and players that rely on mobility either get it from elsewhere or need a more reliable source of it than Feline Agility. As a floor the breath weapon is at least damage, where as often times there's just no need or benefit (there's even detriments) to moving too much.

This might be different if player speeds matter outside of combat, but they don't unless you choose to take it into consideration so *shrug*



To be frank, the notions of new/uninitiated players shouldn't have a heavy influence on the game. My iconic impression of trolls is the burly turn to stone kind, that doesn't change the fact that in D&D they're hyper regenerating mutant creatures. I guarantee that when people think of the things dragons can do fly would come up as much as breathing fire, yet the dragonborn doesn't get a standard flight speed and they can breathe all kinds of things. D&D has existed long enough to move beyond it's inspirations, which means that the iconic expectations that people have of general fantasy won't match up. You want to be a dragon person, great, here's a Dragonborn. You want the firebreath to be more dragon like... You realise you're not actually a dragon right?

Iconic is a terrible argument for these changes.


~Snip~.

I mentioned “other than flying” in my previous post, so the qualifier was there to begin with. Regardless of whether new/uninitiated players should have a heavy influence on D&D, it’s clear that they do, especially since 5e is attracting newcomers in droves. From what I’ve learned from other fellow forum-goers who are familiar with the D&D Next playtest, 5e was initially designed to attract 3.5e players who had abandoned D&D in the 4e era in favor of Pathfinder. Now that 5e has exploded in popularity, however, there is a significant profit incentive on WotC’s part to make things more newbie-friendly, and that applies to both mechanics and flavor (Another example of this is associating hobgoblins with the Fey in the previous UA, which is alien in D&D but familiar ground to outsiders; one of Shakespeare’s Puck/Robin Goodfellow’s aliases is Hobgoblin).

It’s also worth noting that the new breath weapon only is comparable to that of a true dragon’s at 17th level, the start of Tier 4, where PCs are de facto demigods, and even then the UA dragonborn’s breath weapon is only more or less on par in damage with a wyrmling’s (which comes up on top depends on which of the ten published wyrmlings you’re comparing it to), so for most of the game the new BW is still weaker than an actual dragon’s, and late-game is equal to that of the youngest category of true dragons. Granted, this analysis doesn’t take into account frequency of use, as PB uses will almost certainly outnumber a recharge die, but for most campaigns this will not matter, and it’s something of a wash IMHO.

[animewatcha]

I looked at this thread time to time. Haven't noticed anyone trying (could be wrong), but what about dragonborn monk with the subclass being the draconic one?

[Kane0]

Yeah that was mentioned at least once, you can spam breath attacks to a DM-aggrivating degree

[Chaosmancer]

We have a lot of subraces for Elves, we don't really have an instance where there's two copies of the same Elf in player facing material.

The issue here is that you can be a Red Dragonborn and the only thing that determines your breath is the source. The name of the race, subchoices, and ability remain the same. That's what I'm talking about with confusion and you just don't get that with subraces, because they're called different things with different names abilities.

Even if they go back and errata the Dragonborn, as Max pointed out, that's just a different level of fragmentation (and inevitiably confusion).

Nope, there are three different versions of each of the Aernal Elves and Valenar elves from Eberron. Depends if you are using the Wayfarer's Guide, Rising from the Last War, or the PHB (I might be mixing in Exploring Eberron, so it might only be two, but the point still stands)

And yet, confusion isn't a big thing with those.

. Yeti was one of two examples I originally gave, my point is that there's no reason that real world people expecting full size dragons to do x should mean jack about a related race besides them being able to do it in some form.

This could just as easily be represented as:

Dragons can breath fire, so can a Dragonborn, the Dragonborns is weaker, but it's not a real dragon so that makes sense.

The iconic thing that links them beyond appearance is capability, not effectiveness.

And real dragons are much more effective. 60 ft cones dealing 10d6 damage are very different than a 15 ft cone dealing 3d8.

But you still want to be able to utilize it in combat more than once, maybe twice. Again, you have to remember that not everyone runs with 2 short rests per day. Also, losing a full action is a massive detriment to martial characters. These were the considerations, and since it was very possible for a Dragonborn to never use their breath weapon, because it wasn't effective, there was no appearance of them being related to dragons. They might as well have been Lizardfolk, because they didn't do anything draconic.

The entire point of what you replied to was that mixing breath with attacks changes things up mechanically and also shifts dragonborn futher away from dragons.

But again, as I said, we don't use rolled recharges on player abilities. We tried that, it didn't work. But, at the same time, dragons can use their breath weapons more than once per short rest. They get it back about once every three turns on average. This is a decent compromise.

. My point was that by using her cantrip, she left herself vulnerable to additional countermeasures whilst locking herself out of other things.

She's taking those risks, hoping for a higher payout in damage and control, but it's still a risk and opportunity cost.

Being able to sub out a single attack for a full power breath doesn't have that same opportunity cost, since the breath will pretty much always be better than a single attack (ignoring element choice here).

And what you are calling being "vulnerable to additional countermeasures" I see as "bait for weakening the enemies resources."

I will never understand this insistence that having an at-will option somehow locks you out of other things you could possibly do, when you could just choose not to use the at-will option. And using Dragon Breath also locks you out of other options. You can't attack and cast a spell. You can't attack and dodge. You can't attack and dash. Unless you are a class who can do those things. And take a rogue, you have to give up sneak attack to use dragon breath. That's a big ask.

Is a dragon breath generally better than a single attack? Sure, maybe. When you have three uses of it are you going to use it every single round of combat? No, you are going to save it for the most effective use. It is only that now you aren't trying to balance that as a martial with giving up everything else.

That sounds like a little bit of antagoism from the DM based on what you've said, personally I don't think that the time spent repairing a turret is worth it, but that may change in a game where a DM is so targeted on it.

He had a love-hate with it.

It was clearly the most powerful thing in the party, because we talked and about it, and we acknowledged that without a dedicated healer, a lack of stealth, and running face first into half a dozen encounters between Short Rests it was nearly solely responsible for keeping the party alive.

Which he appreciated, because the game would have been over the second session without it, but he hated it as well, because it was clearly so powerful that if we had had even a slightly different party make-up, we could have been unbeatable (in his opinion.)