Fizban’s Dragonborn
by Prince Phantom
The Dragonborn, more than any other racial option, desperately needed to be revisited. Thankfully, WoTC actually has a very good track record with revisiting underwhelming content. Both the Beastmaster Ranger and Undying Warlock got either revised abilities or just a brand new subclass with the same flavor that vastly improved their effectiveness and made them really attractive options. So, did the Dragonborn also succeed in this respect? Yes, and emphatically so. We get three options here for Chromatic, Metallic, and Gem dragons. Each of these share some abilities and have at least one unique ability of their own. We’ll go over the shared abilities first.
Base Dragonborn Features
Breath Weapon: Wow. This is one heck of a glow up. To compare this to the PHB Dragonborn’s Breath Weapon, we get better scaling for more damage on average, and it doesn’t cost our whole action. Rather, it merely replaces one of our attacks on our turn. This means that characters with extra attack can attack normally once and use the Breath Weapon all in one turn. We also get more uses, proficiency bonus times per day to be exact, further scaling this ability and making the old breath weapon look like a cigarette lighter. Chromatics get this as a 30ft line and Metallics and Gems get a 15ft cone. I’d say the cone will be more generally useful as it will more easily hit multiple enemies, but the 30ft line isn’t terrible either. As a final note, this Breath Weapon works amazingly well with the Dragon Fear feat, as not only do we have more uses, but we can also now frighten and attack our opponents on the same turn. Conquest Paladins in particular can get a ton of mileage out of this.
Damage Resistance: The one good feature from the old Dragonborn thankfully makes a return, with the neat addition of the Gem Dragonborn being able to select different resistances than usual. There’s an interesting balance with our breath weapon, as our resistance and breath both associate with the same damage type. Fire, for example, is a great resistance, but a fairly unreliable damage type to inflict on enemies. Conversely, Acid is a stellar damage type for our Breath Weapon, but the resistance won’t come up very often. Ever since Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse, a lot more creatures deal force damage, but none got resistance or immunity to it, so if you want a balanced option I’d say Force is your best bet, however the optimal play is to pick the best resistance of the Dragonborn type you want to play (Poison for Chromatic, Fire for Metallic, Necrotic for Gem), and then just not using your breath weapon on creatures that it won’t be effective against.
Special Note: Access to Dragon Hide and Dragon Fear: One of these is an amazing additional option that synergizes incredibly well with our new breath weapon, and the other one is Dragon Hide. Eh, one out of two ain’t bad. Big points for Dragon Fear though, that feat is a genuine reason to pick these new Dragonborn for some builds.
Chromatic Dragonborn
Chromatic Warding: Straight-up immunity to a damage type is pretty hard to come by in 5e, but the limitations placed on this make it a bit lackluster. First, we already have resistance to the damage type that we are gaining immunity to. Next, it takes an action to activate, only lasts one minute, and can only be used once per day. This makes it pretty clunky to get the most use out of, but it’s still certainly a fine ability, just not as broadly applicable as what the other two Dragonborn are getting. Red Dragonborn do have the honor of being the only race that can swim through a pool of lava unharmed though, so they’ve got that going for them.
Chromatic Dragonborn are generally considered the weakest of the three options, but by no means does that make them a bad selection. Their exclusive access to poison resistance might be reason enough for you to play a Green Dragonborn, and immunity is genuinely hard to come by in this game. This is a solid race that is just outshone a bit by its brethren.
Final Rating: 3/5
Metallic Dragonborn
Metallic Breath Weapon: This feature gives us two alternate uses for our breath weapon. Notably, this does not consume uses of our normal breath weapon, but can rather only be used once per day.
Repulsion Breath: This is the Fus-Ro-Dah in everything but name. Everything in our 15ft cone makes a strength save or is pushed an enormous 20ft and knocked prone! This is one of the largest shoves in the entire game, and thanks to it knocking the creature prone, it will take at least a dash action for most creatures to make it back to melee range. That’s just the floor of this ability though. Ideally, you’ll be using this to push creatures off ledges (how fitting) or into harmful areas like those created by many spells. This is a fantastic way for either a caster to maximize the impact of their own spells, or for a martial to assist in doing the same.
Enervating Breath: Where Repulsion Breath is situationally excellent, this option is almost always consistently great. Incapacitating a group of enemies for a whole round is stellar, potentially completely turning the tides of a battle by denying your opponents their turn. This being a Constitution save is a bit of a bummer, but the effect is so strong that I feel the gamble is worth it. If you don’t have a situation where Repulsion Breath would shine even brighter than this, Enervation Breath provides a fantastic fallback option to make sure you find a use for this ability every day. In fact, the only downside of these abilities is that we only get one use per day, which means that we will be less about building around these features and more about incorporating them into our build, which is still very effective.
The Metallic Dragonborn is an extremely solid option for most any build, especially those who get extra attack. Both breath options are very strong and excel in different scenarios. I don’t think this race is necessary for any builds considering that we only get one use of our special breath weapon, but it will be a fine addition to just about any build that it can fit on.
Final Rating: 4/5
Gem Dragonborn
Gem Dragonborn notably associate themselves with different damage types than the other two options. Our choices are Psychic, Radiant, Necrotic, Thunder, and Force. With Psychic resistance, a Bear Totem Barbarian would resist all damage types. All of these are great damage types for our breath weapon, though necrotic may struggle in undead heavy campaigns. On the other hand, Necrotic is definitely the best resistance offered here.
Psionic Mind: This is one of the best racial telepathy options in the game. 30ft range and we don’t need to share a language, our target just needs to understand at least one language. This allows us to talk to basically anything except beasts, and has tons of roleplay and utility potential.
Gem Flight: The fact that it took us this long to get a DRAGONborn with a flight ability is frankly absurd. This is one of the best racial temporary flight options available, giving us 1 minute of flight equal to our walking speed with hover (meaning we can’t be knocked prone or restrained and fall out of the sky). This costing a bonus action is just perfect. Melee martials can use this flight to engage flying or high up enemies, and ranged characters can stay far away from their enemies melee attacks. DMs also don’t have to structure their whole campaign around flight with this, as it is limited to 1 minute per day. This can trivialize a single encounter each day and solve a ton of environmental puzzles. This is a fantastic ability that any character would love to have.
The Gem Dragonborn is a standout option among its peers, literally flying over the competition in a dazzling display of translucent glory. One minute of flight can auto-win some encounters, and the telepathy is one of the best versions of telepathy on a race we’ve ever seen. While I don’t think any of these features are necessary for any particular build (there are a few races with limited flight, and of course some with unlimited flight), this race will massively empower just about any build that you put it on.
Final Rating: 5/5
All three of these options are fantastic races that massively improve upon the old Dragonborn, so much so that I don’t ever see a single reason to touch that old Dragonborn again. The Chromatic is definitely the weakest of the three, but it’s still very respectable and a fine choice for a lot of builds. Metallic has a ton of synergies and works really well on casters that also get extra attack like some Bards, Hexblades, Bladesingers, and many more. Gem would be a great selection for literally any build (except maybe ones that get flight inherently like Genie Warlocks) and is easily in the top 10 races period.
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