Talk:Dragovian (5e Race)

Credit for the image goes to Deviant Art user:koutanagamori

Dragon Ancestry. You may not be able to breath an element, but your blood still sings with its magic and can alter your spells. When you cast a spell you can choose for it to match the element of your draconic ancestry (chosen in the sorcerer class) this converts the spell to an element that matches one of your parents. For example: If you have a blue dragon bloodline then your fireball can become a lightning ball dealing lightning damage instead of fire. (You

Seems unfinished. What my GM has decided to do is treat it like the Dragonborn trait by the same name, sans the breath weapon, so damage reduction in whatever type I choose. Tersia (talk) 23:54, 6 July 2016 (MDT)

Also, again this'll likely vary by the GM, but mine has decided that unlimited flight at level 1 is too OP, so they're putting the stipulation that my character was injured younger and it never healed properly. I'll have to end each round either on land or falling. Tersia (talk) 23:54, 6 July 2016 (MDT)

Looking at wings first, there's this clause about needing a "space wide enough". This makes an assumption about DM adjudication. There are lots of winged creatures in D&D, if you make a rule about wingspan here, what about everything else? It's a campaign-level decision. It also doesn't work well with the 5-foot increments of 5e spacing, if you do use this rule you may as well say "there must be no obstructions in a 5-foot radius around you" (the difference between a 5 ft. tall and a 6 ft. tall dragovian is trivial)

Yes, flight at 1st level is great trait, you can just fly up there making ranged shots without fear of melee reprisal. It's not until about 5th level when typical adventure design assumes that PCs can regularly fly.

Having said that, if they don't have any other powerful traits, it might be okay. Let's take a look (with my rating system I'm aiming for 4)

• Versatile ability score - (0.25)
• Flight (3) (normal speed, can wear medium armor)
• Darkvision (0.5)
• Dragon type (0.25) - grants protection against a limit number of spells such as hold person
• Dragon Ancestry (0.5) - only of use to spellcasters, but can be useful for overcoming damage resistance of enemies.

The 14th-level sorcerer trait should be moved to a "notes" section or just removed. There are race-class combos that will sometimes result in redundant traits, especially when dealing with homebrew. You can't predict them all, so this should fall under DM adjudication.

It needs a little rewriting but it's not too overpowered. It might be leaning a bit too heavily towards a Cha-based spellcaster. Marasmusine (talk) 02:37, 7 July 2016 (MDT)

I fail to see the issue about something being similar to another race. If the point of creation is an idea to flesh out but still has differences to other races, why the header pointing out similarities? Seems redundant and rather pointless for a wiki that houses any sort of homebrew. You are going to have similarities and pointing them out isn't going to change that. Ecthaelion (talk) 08:21, 29 January 2018 (MDT)

So one of my players is using this race in our campaign. I happily accepted it as Dragonborns and Draconids in general play a large role in my setting so adding another race to the mix to help expand things is welcome. However, I find the dragovian to be pretty unexciting as a race. As mentioned previously the level one flying is pretty OP so we worked out tying it to his Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, dragon wings ability. We decided to delay his flying until 10th level(by that point the party will have a flying item anyways so it felt balanced). However I found that at first glance the flying sticks out as a massive flaw which hides how many of the other abilities that stack on top of it. Most of these abilities seem to specifically be made to optimize the dragonborn race into the perfect sorcerer. +2 charisma modifier, flying for spell sniping, and the spell conversion all work to make this class perfect for a sorcerer. I appreciate the concept of a dragonborn equivalent to the elves but its quite annoying to see the race keep all the mary sue-ness that plagues the elves and to pidgeonhole itself into one obvious class pick. My suggestion for anyone seeking to use this race in their game, nerf the flying, drop the darkvision(it makes sense considering dragons have it as well but imo too many races have darkvision so I'd rather cut it), and remove spell conversion. This essentially balances them against the dragonborn without making either seem like a better option. I think it has the side effect of making them so similar that other than their lore(which I scrapped entirely to fit them into my setting) they're the same race just with different ability modifiers. In hindsight I think it would've been better to just start with the dragonborn and tweak it instead of starting with this race and basically working my way back. --69.9.198.66 02:02, 1 March 2020 (MST)

I actually did this purposely. This was both my first attempt at making a race, and combined it with fixing one glaring issue with the PHB. The lack of evocation spells that weren't fire. I agree with a few things you've said except for the flying bit. I've never found flying OP and it is extremely easy to deal with. And with so many ways to either fly or make climbing or seeing long distances an easy thing, it feels like a very silly thing to complain about. But the rest I can agree with. I need to brush up some. Ecthaelion (talk 12:54, 1 March 2020 (MST)

Some possible brush ups

Definitely super super average dragon race, with lore set similar also to dragonborn (calling back to the various random beings born of the battles between Bahamut and Tiamat in their tussles). Flavor is generic enough to be easy to slip into some random setting. The traits are sort of okay, since it's largely flying being the budget eating in terms of balance, but it's not loaded with other things in addition. The ability to change any spell damage type is kinda interesting. In my opinion, it may be redundant but it never hurts to just have the fully written traits associated with draconic history (notice that the original dragonborn has an additional resistance trait!). Also, since this is a pure dragon type, a trait should be added to inform players that this means certain spells targeting humanoids will not work (like crown of madness).--Yanied (talk) 18:32, 21 March 2024 (MDT)