Why are dragonborn hated and/or dismissed?

Why are dragonborn hated and/or dismissed?

Depends on group.

Grogs hating anything not pure-LOTR-tier. Which is kinda weird considering TES has commonplace Argonians and Dragonlance had Draconians, they're not exactly some newfangled snowflake marysue special unique race thing.

Because it's not a human polearm fighter.

The Male Human Fighter crowd dismisses them as weaby snowflake bait.

Personally they just kind of confuse me more than anything else. I don't know the lore too well but they seem to me like just "humanoid dragons" and lack any kind of real racial identity. I find their default culture boring.
They're like a mix of dwarves and orcs with a draconic flair.

I'm not opposed to including them in my settings but they need some serious homebrewing imo.

I heard it had something to do with boobs on a lizard. I say it's a buncha boobs complaining about a thing that isn't that egregious for a race. Then again this is the same place where people argue about snakes having tits, so your mileage may vary.

I know what you are trying to do

This thread doesn't need any of that

Even though they predate Skyrim I feel like they were somehow made to appeal to the Skyrim crowd. Everything about them screams "this is something 13 year olds will think is cool".

I don't like the idea that their dragon people. I do like the idea that their just another type of lizard person but, thanks to arrogance, call themselves DRAGONborn

Argonians are probably the least popular race in the entire franchise.

I get what you're saying though. As they exist "in box" they're boring. They need a better visual and cultural aesthetic.

All wrong

The real reason is that they are a core race, meaning players are more likely to want to play them even if they are rare or non-existent in your setting. It's about as retarded as making a vampire or werewolf a core race. What if you don't want it to be a player option? Since it's in the core rule book you have to explain to the player "yeah I know it's one of the options in the book but you can't play one"
No reason tiefling and dragonborn couldn't have been in the setting specific books where they fucking belong.

not enough good lore
>They are somewhat related to dragons and can do a little dragon stuff
>They look like retarded spiky desert lizards without tails
>They live in tight clans
and that's kinda it

>Since it's in the core rule book you have to explain to the player "yeah I know it's one of the options in the book but you can't play one"

Unless you're gaming with manbabies this shouldn't be a problem at all.

Its a combination of retardation, ignorance, grognardery, and various flavors of autism.

Some people struggle with the concepts of how a scaled race should look, basing all forms of such on a simplistic category of anything scaled should always look lizard like. This means no boob, tails, no ears, and basically always coming back to a lizardfolk body shape. They struggle with any form of unique or different body shape for a scaled race.

Another is simple grognardery, it's not Tolkien or Gygax and therefore its terrible. We can dismiss this as the autistic shit it is. There are variations on this by way of campaigns being humanocentric (with gygaxian fantasy being human like fantasy) and so they hate that there is now an option in the core that is explicitly not human looking and how it fucks with their setting despite the fact that the only thing holding them back from disallowing that race is their own lack of spine. Why they would want to run a human only campaign in a system designed for settings that have multiple nonhumans as options, I don't know.

Then there is basic idiocy about the race and discounting it based on severe misinformation. Some think they are half dragons and so dismiss them as snowflake shit. Some think they are ultra rare, when they are explicitly called out as uncommon, in many ways they are more common than redheads should be in these settings. Some think they are lizards despite the clear evidence of not being such, using their simplistic grade school biology knowledge to understand these things.

Some want lizardfolk to be the core race instead despite nearly all official D&D settings that have been used as the base for the game relegating lizardfolk to neutral antagonists who live in swampy regions as simplistic hunter gatherers with no urge to civilization or leaving their homelands. Core races must have civilization and its trappings as part of their identity.

It saddens me that everyone is only familiar with 5e's simplification. There's so much lore on them it's insulting how much was gutted.

I prefer their transmutational Bahamut egg sack body horror origins to anything else that's come out for them.

>but they seem to me like just "humanoid dragons" and lack any kind of real racial identity. I find their default culture boring.
It's amazing how human thought can be so compartmentalized. With a clear identity somehow being thought of as unclear or lacking, but also boring and bad. And it's really easy to understand their archetype, they are the klingons of D&D. Non human warrior race with odd biology. And their default culture is light weight deliberately, 4e had a strong call for DMs to homebrew much of the setting details so that each race could better fit your own campaigns, with what is supplied being a basic bit of inspiration you can take or leave as you want.

Fuck 5e for all the awful shit it's done to D&D.

Fuck that. It was awful and dumb and really fucking dissonant with the rest of the game.

argonians are not dragons tho

I'm not too big on the weird tendril dreads in their official art myself.

Dragonborn are a disappointment for me. I find them lacking. Their difference between each other are lackluster.

Their physical trait leave much to desire. I am disappointed that they lack tail in raw. I dislike tailless dragonborn because there no way to get a tail unless I use magic. Tentacles hair are cool and all, but I was hoping for the crown of their draconic ancestor. And a dragon face without the symbol of their color is just not d&d's dragon. Their racial bonus is static through all their variant when the elf of every place get their own racial bonus. Their life expectancy is shorter than human, about 80 year, and they call themselves dragonborn.

Tdlr disappointing but would still play.

Heard at one point that they're tree people that just look like lizards. Also that they're a hivemind controlled by the hist in times of great danger.

Your petulance never gets old. I'm sorry your players don't respect the purity of your D-grade lord of the rings knockoff. But you remember fun? that word you ignore or raise to protect yourself from these accusations? yeah that cuts both ways. You need to sit the fuck down and meet people halfway for a collaborative effort

>has scaly skin
>wears scale mail

I can think of one reason

>has smooth skin
>wears smooth plate
What the fuck were they thinking?

That is curious. Would you prefer them to be a but more monstrous? Less man-lizard and more in line with their actual heritage?
>black dragonborn
>sunken, skull-like face, wierd bone structure
>underbite, uneven teeth
>similar diet
now as for the lifespan..well you could explain that as a "twice as bright, half as long" situation where being closer to dragons is destroying them. Say dragonborn literally burn out because their blood is not diluted enough to last for any length of time in a lesser vessel

What everyone's saying, shit lore and they kinda stick out among the core races, which are all the traditional human-but races. You kinda have to give them a niche in your setting that the game doesn't provide.

I made mine a pseudo-Islamic/Ottoman caliphate deal. There is but one god called Rexa, and B'aha-mut is his prophet!

The tentacle hair and no tails is a dealbreaker, they look awful

This guy gets it

there are people who dismiss them as special snowflakes.

I personally just dont understand why they are a core race and not lizardfolk. Imo core races should not be boring, but mundane. Dragonborn imo arent realy mundane simply by beeing draconic.

Like I said above, many can't conceive of a scaled race without a tail for some weird reason.

They aren't half dragons. Why would they be like half dragons when they aren't ones. Half dragons are the ones with tails, and differently colored scales, they are the ones who look like specific dragons instead of being a generic dragon race. Why would you want to steal a component that makes elves unique (specialized subraces for specific environments via fey ancestry) and repurpose it toward the generic dragon people?

What the fuck is up with the 80 years for a lifespan though, that's some silly bullshit considering humans get 120 max.

Why? Why must they replicate the incredibly common bipedal lizard form? Why must every scaled race have lizard tails?

actually argonians tend to poll on place 3 after Nord and Dunmer, least liked race is Orc followed by Redguard.

Everyone maladjusted enough to frequent this site plays with at least one manbaby.

>They're like a mix of dwarves and orcs with a draconic flair.
Fantasy krogans. How hard is that?

I like Dragonborn a lot. I made one as my first 4e character and had a great time.

I do think their association with 4e is part of the problem though. People have an astonishing degree of hate towards that game.

No matter how many times you post it, no one's going to read it. It has 4E cooties, you see

Speaking for myself.. what else would there be? a quadruped, more yiff-y shape? a harpy inspired design with arms that are mostly wing? your posts suggest you're looking for something quite radically removed from the standard "bulky human" template

>I made mine a pseudo-Islamic/Ottoman caliphate deal.
Huh. Did the same, though with elements from Akkadia (very very old empire) and made them polytheistic still (and the true gods are Apsu and Tiamat, the Primordial Serpents, progenitors of all other gods including the humans and dwarves and others. I wonder how common that is to make them vaguely middle eastern?

No, im actually in favor of them remaining bulky human but without the tail. I wonder why so many get stuck on them not having a tail and why they must replicate the near universal idea that lizard like scales and head automatically means lizard like tail.

You just proved my fucking point, user.

In 4e, where DB were first a canon, unified 'race' (as opposed to weird egg ritual) the "default" setting, PoL, they WERE a core race, in the fluff and all.

Because Dragonborn are suppose to be Diet Half-Dragons, they should have different colored scales and horns, and head shapes albeit not exactly the same as their ancestry.

But they do have different coloured scales

>Diet Half-Dragons
Except they aren't. They are supposed to be a generic dragon race. If you read the description for them in 4e they also note that some dragonborn are born with small markers of certain draconic ancestries. Such as streaks of gold (or white or green) scales, or other patterns (which also have no bearing on their breath weapon, they can be gold colored, with a lightning breath). But none have horns or different head shapes, because they are all the same race, not a smattering of half dragons that are collectively called a race. They are the same as elves, as humans, as dwarves, as all those other races which have the same general shape and form, but with variation in coloring.

Heck it's possible to be a half-dragon dragonborn dragon sorcerer if you really want to go crazy on the dragon part.

Oh, that's it. Probs just a "well lizards and dragons have tails" thing. Plus we are BIG on stupid ears, every elf and nonhuman tends to get knife-ears but i dont think dragonborn even have visible ears. So the tail is another flagrant sign that we're dealing with the not human

I don't care if other scale race have tail or not bipedal tailless snakeman are better than lamia snakeman. I care about draconic race having tail.

They are dragonborn. Why would their dominant blood not shape them into the form of their draconic ancestor best fit for an environment for say ancestor.

It the same thing with tort 80 year life expectancy. You would think fantasy humanoid turtle and dragon would live longer than 100. Who the most long lived race anyway beside elf?

That won't explain half dragon who live double the age of their non dragon parent nor draconic bloodline sorcerer whose theme is to become more dragon like. And also it could kill the blood legacy pride thing becoming more of a curse. The only reason I can think they have it that low was because they were meant to be use as cannon fodder in war which they were. As for appearance that not bad.

It not part of the fluff. You can have whatever color you want and still use the different type of breathe. A free permanent character customization.

Maybe dragonborn were made to be harmonious looking to stop dragon from pickering about which whose draconic crown look better. At least give me tail. It all I ever wanted on my dragonborn.

>dragonscales are as soft as human skin I tell you!

>tfw playing dragonborn dragon sorcerer dragonsoul heir draconic incarnation
Ah, those were the days

>dragonborn scales should be hard as actual dragon scales!
No Paul, you can't have unarmored AC 20 just from racials

I was expecting it to be better than Lizardman's scale

Why?

lizardmen are broken

They exude an aura of boring to me but I don't hate them, I'd simply rather have lizardfolk.

Because lizard men were done first without being shit

>boobs on a lizard
Scaled animals can have tits user. Besides Dragonborn are of particularly magical stock.

I support this!

What's better about lizardmen? Aren't they just tribal barbarians but with scales? Couldn't dragonborn fit the same niche AND spit fire to boot?

Nope.

I like my deviant humanoid races divided and subjugated. All non human races should be the other. And non LotR races should be rare and persecuted.

Hail Torqumanda! Purge the unclean!

Not him but, tail! and dragonborn have many competition with draconic sorcerer, half dragon, kobold, and lizardman.

They just have more flavor and more racial variants from classic Conan style snake-men to Yuan-ti to Egyptian crocodile people over the years through editions. Put simply they have clout the Dragonborn don't.

Dragonborn are just bigger more boring Kobolds. If they were given some serious distinction besides draconian breath weapon variants they would be better. Make them the venerated champions of the various Lizardfolk cultures or something.

Because they cheapen dragons. Dragons were so fucking awesome. They're like the Lightsaber of DnD- iconic and beloved, but quickly cheapened by having too many of them in too many goofy-ass forms. I don't want bullshit cartoony dragon-men.

Also they reek of sueness with their fluff making them seem like inherently noble beings, despite being related to creatures that literally embody avarice and tyranny.

They also encourage PC's to think that it's better to play outlandish, rare beings or super special entities, which distracts from them focusing on making their character likable or compelling in any way.

Also they are like a tiny step away from being Full Furry.

Really just fuck Dragonborn.

It's funny how few people in this thread know anything about how they were actually implemented. It's mostly just false assumptions. It's doubly funny when someone posted a pdf explaining it in the exact same fucking thread.

Snakemen/Yuan-ti aren't lizardmen though, they're snakemen. rolling them together is like saying humans and orcs are the same race; they only vaguely share appearances.
>If they were given some serious distinction besides draconian breath weapon variants they would be better.
Like ?

>despite being related to creatures that literally embody avarice and tyranny.
So metallics were never a thing in your settings? Bahamut isn't a lawful good dragon god of justice and virtue and all that goody goody shit? Well that's nice but pretending like all that isn't default D&D makes you just seem kinda retarded.

Because dragons and lizardmen already exist

And that means you can never do anything else conceptually similar?

There was even a whole book on them. You'd think with all the printed material on them someone, anyone would bother looking it up before saying "there's no lore".

In game terms. Snakemen are the genesis of Lizardfolk, the Lizardfolk came after them and only exist because of their Snakeman pedigree. Similarly to Dragonborn only existing because of Lizardfolk pedigree due to people wanting to play as an official non-monster scaled race. Problem is, while Dragonborn give players a sanctioned scaled race to use without having to dig into special rules or a monster manual, the Dragonborn are often just knights with scales whereas Lizardfolk can range from Asian to middle-eastern inspired like the Snakemen, as well as western. In that, basically the Lizardfolk didn't get anything taken away from them from in terms of flavor. You look at Lizardfolk art and it can look like anything culturally, but Dragonborn seem to be intentionally pigeonholed into being a musclebound race in western fantasy armor with a dragonhead. You have to go out of your way to find Dragonborn art that doesn't just look like pic related.

...Art for a eurofantasy game tends to look like eurofantasy art? Oh no, what a shock.

Although you do have something of a point. I've noticed an odd tendency in D&D and its ilk, to generally weight player options very much to european fantasy cliches, but to make enemies much more varied. You can usually find some character options based on other myths and cultures here and there, but they overwhelmingly tend to be used for adversaries instead.

>Why is there so little dragonborn art that isn't D&D specific?
There I rephrased your art problem better. Lizardfolk come in a huge variety of shapes and colors and cultures because they are older and exist in multiple systems, all with competing ideas of what they should look like. Dragonborn are a specific thing with a specific culture from a specific system.

And that armor looks pretty middle eastern.

Why make a clone of something already existing when the original is just as good

But dragonborn are neither dragons nor lizardfolk, and therefore aren't clones of something that already exists.

Literally right in and are dragonborn in leather armor wih bone weapons. The entire art design principal behind them in 4e circled around their use of scales/bones/leathers for gear, with flame and dragon motifs for obvious reasons. They had a fucking book specifically pointing it out even, with any article on their general culture making mention of it too. The western knight motif almost never came up. They were a martial culture with a savage bent despite having widespread civilization. If anything they were like romans meet mongols culturally with an aesthetic all their own.

I know about the 3.5 stuff, them beign chose and most devoted warriors of Bahamut that sacrificed big part of their free will was pretty cool.

I mean shit, 4e was full of art with them not looking anything like a typical western knight.

Dragonborn are basically lizardfolk in everything that matters.
They are bipedal lizards with scaly skin, who can work well as warriors, clerics and basically all classes you want if you put some effort into it. It doesn't matter if you change the Lizard- in their name with Dragon-

...

Except they look nothing like lizardfolk (beyond having scales and that means nothing to looking like a lizardfolk), have completely different stats, and have a completely different culture and civilization.

...

But that's explicitly false. There are two different pdfs in this thread that disprove your statement.

Really I can't grasp how you have trouble finding this. Do your search engines just have some "exclude all 4e art" feature?

Their art just makes them look boring and bland compared to Lizardfolk who are often portrayed with wider appeal. Lizardfolk also have the benefit of variable size category.

You want to play a small lizard man? Go based Poison Dusk as an example. You wan to play large? You can do that too (Emberscale Lizardfolk or Blackscales). Dragonborn simply cannot compete with the variability that Lizardfolk have enjoyed over the years in terms of player options. Taking old ass splats as examples because they're the easiest to reference: Asabi in Monsters of Faerun, Dragonkin in Monsters of Faerun, Firenewts in Monsters of Faerun, Khasta in the Fiend Folio, Ophidians in Fiend Folio, Pterafolk in Monsters of Faerun, Sarrukh in Serpent Kingdoms, Muckdweller in Serpent Kingdoms, Tren in Serpent Kingdoms and those good old Troglodytes in the now ancient 3.0 Monster Manual. And that shit was years ago, Dragonborn struggle to add flavor like this even now whereas the Lizardfolk have added dozens more variants since 3.5 died. Dark Talons, Lizard Kings, Malpheggi, Quanak (Psionic lizardfolk), Shazak and Viletooth which were just literally Dragonborn with black dragon ancestry. It's clear to me at least that Lizardfolk benefit greatly from still being monsters that are optional to play as a PC race, rather than a standard requiring simplification.

What you should be wondering is where the fuck are all the Dragonborn variants if you people interested in them.

Literally the first result for googling "dragonborn"

Why do you need variants if the core concept is good?

Also, at this point your argument is basically just 'I don't like them as much'.

>Do your search engines just have some "exclude all 4e art" feature?

Yeah, because the design is trash

I don't get the Lizardfolk love they are literally "DUDE REPTILIAN BRAIN LMAO", 1D as you can get.

...

Trash or not, it ain't a western knight

What if their dreads are their ears?

I don't know about 5e, but in older editions, they are just as one dimensional too, being really basic pragmatic hunter gatherers who live in the swamp. Thats their entire culture and personality. Mostly emotionless lizards who will eat the dead after combat and aren't afraid of killing whatever trespasses their swamp. Civ wise they are literally stone age. They have literally nothing going for them, except as neutral antagonists for PCs.

Some have ear-like frills, does that count?

>Why would their dominant blood
There is no dominant blood. They're not half-dragons

Anyone else remember the "Ecology of the Lizardfolk" article that says they actively revere being as feral and bestial as possible, because Semaunya is nothing more than a hermaphroditic godbeast and they believe going back to pure instinct will let them shed the curse of being monogendered mortals and reascend back to being Semaunya's mate, whom they represent the scattered fragments of?

>If I compare dozens of different species to a single species, there's more variety!

No shit.

Well they make great base for making some of the coolest shit in game, for example, mine are incapable of having gods and instead became psionic, this lead to lone members of a tribe leaving and because they need no food or water, they can settle anywhere, leading to tribes in some of the oddest places ever.

Also amazons - with humans you can make them work, but it might be a bit hard based on enviroment - with lizardfolk, oh it's easy, just do away with males all together and make them so horrifying only something like dragon with a thing for "musclegirls" would like them.
(Also reason you can do away with males is because lizardfolk could possibly naturaly reproduce asexually and you can then say...psionics or druidic magic fixes any problems that might come up)

Huh, I made my dragonborn have a similar religious obsession with hermaphroditism, completely unaware lizardfolk had that going for them already. Fuck all that primitivist shit tho.

I always liked them because they were alien in a mundane way. They weren't evil or magical they were just a cool imaginary creature. They weren't evil just animalistic and you could use them in a lot of different ways. Dragonborn, with their inherent magic and basically divine heritage seemed made for people who wanted to play the special race. Also the art really sucks.

>Because dragons and lizardmen already exist

Didn't stop WotC from releasing dozens of prestige classes, base class, LA+ races, and unbalanced templates that let you be some kind of Dragon-person.

Then they just went "fuck it" and made Dragonborn, so they could finally have a balanced dragon-person race with a consistent origin.

Dragonfolk have always been a rather popular concept among players in Dungeons and Dragons.

Just like Tieflings and Aasimar/Daeva are now the go to for Fiendish/Celestial folk without having to come up with a dozen classes/options/feats/templates.

Up-scaled Kobolds as a race isn't a very good concept, even Half-Dragons, the older versions of Dragonborn, was more interesting.

But that isn't what they are. Either you're lying or wilfully ignorant.

yep this

>4e
found your problem

>Also reason you can do away with males is because lizardfolk could possibly naturaly reproduce asexually and you can then say...psionics or druidic magic fixes any problems that might come up
But you can say that for any fantasy race. Really all your ideas don't take advantage of anything unique to lizardfolk. If anything your generic coldblooded lizardfolk would actually have less environments they could reasonably be found in even without need of food or water, just because they still need to keep warm. You could handwave away that handicap, but again now nothing ties to the lizard traits.

>Dragonborn, with their inherent magic and basically divine heritage seemed made for people who wanted to play the special race.
The same could be said for elves, and dwarves, and gnomes, and even humans. All the races claim divine heritage, heck we do that right now with many of our religions. And dragons are about as magical as the other races too, it's just their magic expresses itself via a gout of elemental energy from their mouth, spectacular but not all that interesting. Gnomes get to talk to animals and several other spells, dwarves have darkvision, an expressly magical way of seeing, and elves are immortal. All claim divine heritage, being created by their gods as the chosen people.

>their fluff making them seem like inherently noble beings
Are scottish highlanders inherently noble beings in your book?