4e Best Dragonborn breath type based on MM

[alfredbester]

So there will always be a finite number of official monsters in the Monster Manual. Now there's of course only one book for 4e. That got me thinking what is the power-gamer's choice for the breath type? Some monsters have resistances or immunities. Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Poison.

I'm thinking of wasting a lot of time going through the book and tallying them up, but at this point I'm guessing Acid is the best one to go with, but we'll see. :)

[Myshlaevsky]

Someone did the numbers on resistances and damage types soon after 4e came out. I'll go look for the thread for you.

EDIT: Erk, it ain't here anymore. Sorry.

[Brigham]

Lightning, Acid, or Cold is your best bet by raw statistics.

Can we link to outside website forums (ENWorld is the forum that has all the MM stat data)?

Super, double, extra secret link:

Spoiler

Show

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=229092

[alfredbester]

Oof, that's a lot more information than I'm making, but oh well, it's kind of fun.

My partial results are:
Acid - 14 resistances, 0 immunities, 3 vulnerabilities
Cold - 14 resistances, 1 immunity, 4 vulnerabilities
Fire - 66 resistances, 5 immunities, 6 vulnerabilities

I'm counting for all subtypes (so all ages of dragons for instance) and I'm ignoring resist-all and resistances that change or are random.

At any rate... fire's out.

I just need some rest and I'll continue. Funny thing is I don't even have a PC... I'm usually the DM.

edit: and it seems obvious that Poison will be out too, but we'll see about the rest.

[mangosta71]

Looking at the partial results, I would probably pick acid over frost. I don't recall any creatures that can only be killed by frost damage off the top of my head, but trolls can only be killed by fire or acid, and fire is out.

[Kletian999]

Generally the monsters that are weak to cold get some cool (pun intended) penalty when hit by it. There's also the lasting frost and wintertouched feats which grant great power to any cold moves. I will second that Acid, fire, or radiant are often needed to stop regeneration.

[Mando Knight]

I think that the best choice would actually be Cold-Fire with Adaptable Breath and Admixture Breath racial feats from "Ecology of the Dragonborn" Dragon magazine article. That way, you can annihilate enemy defenses with a power that kills almost anything. (IIRC, nothing has both cold and fire resistances/immunities, so you could even Wintertouched-Lasting Frost a target with cold immunity!)

EDIT: Also, a Dragonborn Paladin will have better feat synergy if he has Fire breath because then he only has to take Astral Fire and then both his racial and half or more of his class powers are covered by the bonus.

I think that later on they'll release some more cold-resistant enemies and possibly some feats to improve the "weaker" elements...

[mangosta71]

I think that the best choice would actually be Cold-Fire with Adaptable Breath and Admixture Breath racial feats from "Ecology of the Dragonborn" Dragon magazine article. That way, you can annihilate enemy defenses with a power that kills almost anything. (IIRC, nothing has both cold and fire resistances/immunities, so you could even Wintertouched-Lasting Frost a target with cold immunity!)

If this has been officially published, yeah, that's probably the most powerful breath weapon you'll see (provided you don't need other feats for your character). Depending on my projected build, though, I would probably pick acid and not worry about having to take half a dozen feats to buff something that I can only use once per encounter.

[Mando Knight]

If this has been officially published

All Dungeon and Dragon magazine articles are "officially published" as soon as they are posted on the WotC website--the Dungeon and Dragon magazines are now published online only in PDF format.

[mangosta71]

Yes, but it has previously been discussed that WotC often releases previews of articles prior to their publication, and these previews are not official and are subject to change.

[Edea]

Yeah, apparently it's gotta be compiled into one of those "Dragon_###.pdf" files before it's considered 'official.'

I'm thinking this is their new method for checking content before actually giving it the seal of approval; let it loose into the wild and see what people (such as CharOp) try to do with it. Also probably increases chances of book sales (assuming the preview content is well received).

[Colmarr]

Yeah, apparently it's gotta be compiled into one of those "Dragon_###.pdf" files before it's considered 'official.'

Correct. But to answer to the query, Ecology of the Dragonborn was "officially published" in Dragon 365 and the compilation pdf is available on the D&D website.

[alfredbester]

All done! Acid wins!

Final results:

Acid - 14 resistances, 0 immunities, 3 vulnerabilities
Cold - 14 resistances, 1 immunity, 4 vulnerabilities
Fire - 66 resistances, 5 immunities, 6 vulnerabilities
Lightning - 13 resistances, 2 immunities, 0 vulnerabilities
Poison - 23 resistances, 89 immunities, 0 vulnerabilities

Scorecard (resistances + immunities - vulnerabilities)
Acid: 11
Cold: 11
Lightning: 15
Fire: 65
Poison: 112

Acid wins in my book because it'd be fun to roleplay and as mentioned you can help take down trolls.

I also learned as a DM I need to make up some neat monsters with lightning and poison vulnerabilities. And Wizards really needs to balance the immunities a bit more... Or a dragonborn that breathes fire or poison could do 1d8 + con damage instead of 1d6 to help make up for the disproportionate resistances/immunities.

edit: I have the monster names recorded for each category but I'm not going to post them here, but if you want the list for some reason contact me privately.