Arboreal Dragonborn Race
A downloadable game
Inspired by Ross Leiser's Dragonbornomicon and the new arboreal dragons in Mage Hand Press' Book of Extinction, I've created the new arboreal dragonborn for your 5e games.
A more serpentine race of dragonborn based on different types of trees, these peoples have been hunted to near extinction because of a myth about their bark-like scale's restorative powers.
Included is a brand new race with 4 options for different arboreal ancestries (bamboo, cherry blossom, oak, and pine), and a new feat for them.
The screenshots show the PDF in it's entirety, so you can gauge if you're interested before downloading, and if you have any feedback or any thoughts, drop them down below, I'd love to hear any and all comments, and if you feel inclined to support me, every penny helps!
Update 1.01: Minor typo fix
Download
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Development log
- Just dropped a new Race, come check it out!Sep 03, 2023
Comments
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idk how attached your are to the “creating your character” page, but i don’t think it’s needed. For creature type: what prereq’s need to be considered dragonborn? Think about renaming the Arboreal Ancestry ability names to be something thematic of their nature, as opposed to just their arboreal type. Give more flavor. Does pine mean to have the DC base as 3? For breath weapon it should be arboreal instead of “Your arborieal ancestry…”. What’s the utility behind the increases damage levels for dragons breath? I saw it skimming through the subraces in the dragonbornomicon, but there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason why it was added to some and not others.
Thank you so much for your comment, I'll respond to it point by point.
I personally prefer the creating your character page to including information like languages rather than being racial traits, though a big reason for this was the ability score which I've since moved back to traits. Will think more on this, though I think I'm more likely to move the typical ASI to that page rather than removing that page.
There's a few feats that require creatures to be dragonborn (including those in the dragonbornomicon), it's the same wording that Monsters of the Multiverse uses to Make it explicirly clear that its Eladrin, Shadar-Kai, even Sea Elves are considered elves.
The arboreal ancetry names are their type more for clarity than anything, only cherry blossom dragons can transform, and having it laid out as it is will ensure that people dont' try to take one breath weapon and another trait.
The lower DC for pine is more there for balancing than for any thematic purpose, though that's due to the fact that I wanted to keep pine's paralysing as the thematic thing they get from their type as it's something their ancestor dragons get in Book of Extinction. All the traits are based on those monsters, though with changes made to fit on a player race and retain balance.
Thank you so much for catching the typo, going to fix that immidately after making this comment!
The utility behind the damage levels for breath weapon is keeping it useful and balanced at different levels, there's some differences in how much damage breath weapons get in the dragonbornomicon, though that's because the ones that don't deal as much have secondary effects of varying levels. Because (most of) the dragonborn here don't have secondary effects, I went for the best scaling of the breath weapons to use here.
Thank you so much for the feedback, and I hope I was able to answer all the questions you had, sorry if it's a little long and rambly!
no worries, i’ll take a long and rambly response any day. i think there’s a lot of potential for this thematically (as well as mechanically) that’s being limited by the sources you’ve copied from. i’m really interested in the theming of the subrace, but i’m not coming from a place where ik about the specifics of what an oak, or pine dragonborn means. there’s a lot of space for improvement here. it really just depends on what your goals are for the brew. There’s another spell check right below the previous one. “Breath” instead of “when you use your reath weapon”.