PHB & Wildemount Dragonborn
by Prince Phantom
The Player’s Handbook Dragonborn has been commonly seen as the worst race option in that book, and honestly it might actually be just the worst race overall. This is such a shame, as the flavor of this is probably the single coolest race option in many player’s eyes, so thank goodness Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons fixed Dragonborn completely. Those revised races will get their own review as they are so drastically different and better that including them here would honestly be an insult.
Base Dragonborn Features
Ability Scores: +1 Charisma, +2 Strength: If you aren’t playing with Tasha’s new rules for racial ability scores, this is what you’re stuck with. These stats scream Paladin, and not a lot else. Maybe a Valor or Swords Bard that wants to use strength instead of dexterity? That’s probably not a great build idea though…
Draconic Ancestry: This lets us pick a color of dragon for us to resemble, and the flavor here is off the charts. Adopting some of the characteristics of your color dragon is a super easy way for a new player to come up with a personality for their first character. It also directly leads into our final two abilities.
Damage Resistance: We get resistance to the damage type associated with our Draconic Ancestry. This is the best feature that Dragonborn get, and it’s one that a ton of other races also have access to. The difference here is the large amount of options we have. Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison, and Acid are our options. Fire and Poison are easily the most common of the options that you’ll run into, but if you are playing a wintery campaign like Icewind Dale, Cold resistance may suit you better. You should probably never take Acid or Lightning.
Breath Weapon: Wow this is pitiful. I feel for all the new players who picked this race so they could feel like a mighty dragon, only for their breath weapon to deal single-digit damage on average and scale horribly. Worst of all, this takes our whole action, meaning martial characters with extra attack will basically never want to use this and casters have cantrips that outpace this in terms of damage. The only upside is that it can hit multiple creatures at once, but the odds of getting more than 3 enemies in a 30ft line or 15ft cone are not great, and I would never use this on less than 3 opponents at once, and even then I would probably never use it once cantrips scaled or I got extra attack. Thankfully, new players won’t be tricked into using this constantly instead of better options, because you can only do it once per rest. The fact that this made it to print is deplorable, and thank goodness they eventually realized their mistake and fixed it later.
Final Rating: 1/5
Draconblood Subrace
Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount gave us two new Dragonborn subraces. The features on each of these replace the ability score increases with new ones (hardly matters since most tables use Tasha’s rules now), and remove the Damage Resistance. Yikes, these are removing the biggest and best ability that this race gets, this better be good.
Ability Score Increase: +2 Intelligence, +1 Charisma: Who is this for? I can count on one hand the amount of BUILDS I’ve seen that want both a good Intelligence and Charisma, and there are certainly no actual classes or subclasses that would inherently want this. Just use the Tasha’s rule.
Darkvision: Oh, did you not notice that the PHB Dragonborn lacked darkvision? You’d be forgiven for assuming it, considering how nearly every other race in that book and on books since got it. This is of course a nice feature to have, but nothing special. I wouldn’t even normally make note of it on a review like this if not for its absence on the PHB Dragonborn.
Forceful Presence: This is pathetic. We traded a damage resistance for advantage on a persuasion or intimidation check, once per LONG REST. This subrace somehow managed to make arguably the worst race option into definitively the worst race option.
Final Rating: -1/5
Ravenite Subrace
The other subrace option from Wildmount doesn’t fair much better.
Ability Score Increase: +2 Strength, +1 Constitution: These scores are at least widely applicable, as pretty much any strength based martial will work well with these.
Darkvision: (see previous statement)
Vengeful Assault: Yeah, I don’t think one retaliatory attack per rest is what I’d classify as a “vengeful assault”. This is at least better than what Draconblood gave us, but is still leagues worse than a damage resistance. Most melee martials don’t even need this anyway, especially if they have Polearm Master. That feat gives a reaction attack nearly every round in the right circumstances. The only real thing to note is that it does work with ranged weapons, so that’s neat I guess. Still very bad.
Final Rating: 1/5
In summary, all of the options provided here are so objectively bad that I cannot in good faith recommend these for any build. Even the small bright spots like the damage resistance are also available to a myriad of other, better races. I highly recommend you instead look at the Fizban’s selection of Dragonborn instead.
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