Refluffing the Dragonborn

This was originally going to be part of the campaign setting project, but I decided to give it its own post.

In my home campaign, I’ve never used the out-of-the-box, fourth-edition Dragonborn. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, I just think there’s a lot of other cool stuff you can do with the concept.

To start with, in my home campaign Dragonborn have completely absorbed the half-dragon concept. It was something I liked about 3.5, and I knew Dragonborn were the closest port-over we were going to get, so I ran with it.

In my campaigns, Dragonborn aren’t a distinct “race” the way that, say, Orcs and Eladrin are. They’re the result of Dragons’ well-documented habit of interbreeding (magically) with humanoid creatures. As such, characters with Dragonborn stats vary wildly in appearance. For one thing, they tend to more closely mirror the appearance and coloration of their draconic ancestor, as opposed to the universal reds, browns, and golds of the standard Dragonborn.

Also, Dragonborn don’t have to be precisely one-half Dragon. On the other hand, many people (often sorcerers) have dragon ancestry but aren’t considered Dragonborn. The guideline I give my players is that Dragonborn are draconic enough that people can tell at a glance (plus, you know, they have Dragonborn racial stats as opposed to another race’s). Essentially, Dragonborn exist on a spectrum from just-barely-humanoid to just-barely-draconic. On one end, you can have a creature that looks like a miniature, mostly-bipedal dragon, pushing the upper limit of the medium size and towering over their party members. On the other, you can have someone who looks almost human (or elf, or whatever) but for some little sign—golden, slitted eyes or a small patch of scales on the face, something to that effect (basically you can look however you want as long as you understand that people will be able to look at you and know you’re packing a breath weapon).