sure. that's not even in 5E's top 50 problems

The concept is okay, the design was awful: with club-shaped heads and dreadlocks and looking like shit because WotC needed the race to look distinct and unified enough that they could sue people over it.
See also the bullshit they did with Tieflings.

>>96944793
>worst troll can't stop shitting himself even about something introduced in 4e

>>96944777
Yes

>>96944777
For 4e it was fine, had issues when they seemingly mandated shoehorning them into every other setting but that's a minor issue at best.

>>96944777
Dragonborn are fun, but they should've gone back to the original concept of them being other races transformed into dragonborn by Bahamut.

Fuck no, fuck that freakshit!

>>96944885
Only trolls say freakshit. Might as well give up using a signal phrase.

>>96944777
I don't care what wotc considers core races and I don't understand why you seem to.

>>96944996
Here's the thing, you can say that all day long but when it comes to recruiting players, you are going to end up with people upset and confused they can't play a race that's IN THE BOOK.

>>96945030
Sure. I've also had players upset they couldn't play a Simic experiment without having an idea about why a Ravnica bioengineered person was bumming around our setting stabbing goblins. Didn't even realise what the race was, they just turned on all the books in Beyond and picked the one with interesting stats/abilities.
Part of running a game is being able to explain basic concepts to people, just like part of playing is understanding the environment you're in and making appropriate decisions.

>>96944777
Not really, the problem is that literally nobody gives a single shit about whatever the original lore of the race was and just plays them as dragons but people.

>>96945226
>original lore
Do you often reference Arkhosia and Bael Turath? You can make them important if you need them to be. Or have them be chosen by Bahamut if that's your preference. But players won't respect something written in a book 20 years and multiple editions ago unless you tell them it matters.

>>96945226
>the problem is that literally nobody gives a single shit about whatever the original lore of the race was
More of an issue that they have different lore depending on the setting. 4e just made them essentially klingons with scales which FR does as well for the most part. But then like say Dragonlance they are just draconians, or drays in Dark Sun. And in general they have too little lore to draw from by way of being so new compared to everything else.

>>96944777
>Create lizardmen, call them dragons
Just have a different game mode where the party plays as dragons.
Write an adventure path or whatever D&D calls it with modified rules that allows you to play as a real dragon.
You can start off young and weak where the gameplay is like standard D&D. And when you reach a certain level, age the party up and have them be overpowered monsters that terrorize kingdoms and destroy castles.
People want the overpowered fantasy, not lizardmen by any other name and a shit breath weapon.

>>96944777
In my game they were wiped out and turned into luggage by the 17th Zarusite Crusade.

>>96944777
No.

>>96944793
Dragonborn were made core in 4e, you witless fucking mongoloid.

>>96944839
>destroying the underlying logic of an ostensibly internally consistent universe in order to accomodate gay skinsuits is a minor issue ecksdee
Absolute retard moment.

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>>96945626
>Dragonborn were made core in 4e, you witless fucking mongoloid.
Oh, cool. Did either of 4E's players ever play one?

>>96945677
bodied that freak.

>>96944903
Only trolls say "Only trolls say freakshit. Might as well give up using a signal phrase". Might as well give up using a signal phrase.

>>96944777
No.
Should've been draconians instead.

>>96945626
It's a minor issue because most settings already had stand-ins for them. It's really only forgotten realms that decided to take NV dragonborn and shoehorn them into the lore.

>>96945626
>is a minor issue
It is because most settings already had them in one form or another, or are you also be mad that dray and draconians exist?

>>96945626
>logic of an ostensibly internally consistent universe
You know we are talking about D&D here right?

>>96944777
They fucked up by not making a dungeomborn race as well.

>>96945193
why would a simic hybrid be a ravnica bioengineered person if that's not the setting? just refluff and say they're the scions of an aboleth empire, or they're what happens to people who grow up near those weird giant spears that fall out of the sky sometimes, or it's a one-off a wizard did trying to hybridize his apprentice with his familiar, or it's a changeling "subrace," or whatever the fuck

it's all so easy

>>96945533
Now that you mention it, how was there never a World of Darkness splat where you play as dragons?

>>96946803
BtP started as this but got broadened to the point of uselessness.

>>96944777
Lizardmen are cool, but I do not like the idea of dragonborn.

>>96944777
No. Tolkien races are core with a bias for Humans everything else is setting specific or monsters, as God intended

> was making Dragonborn a good idea
no

>>96944777
They're not particularly offensive because they barely even get mentioned most of the time, but since they were basically made up for 4th edition (dragonborn as a concept existed before, but had a completely different backstory, being individuals transformed by Bahamut instead of a race of draconic humanoids) they had to be awkwardly shoehorned into existing settings (at least tieflings already existed, even if they were made a lot more common after becoming a PHB race). I don't think they were handled very well. Also I just prefer PHB races to be the sort of generic fantasy races that can be expected to be found in any setting, while more exotic or setting-specific races should appear in the appropriate supplements. People tend to assume the stuff in the PHB should always be playable, which leads to people having to shoehorn dragonborn and tieflings into their homebrew settings as well.

>>96946956
Tolkien races are setting specific to Middle-Earth, no-games. You don't have hobbits anywhere else.

They never finished the job.
The name is in the PHb, what the fuck they are is not. Are there Dragonborn cities? Do they live in a certain biome? Do they speak draconic? Do they derve dragons? Hate them? How do you roleplay one? What does it mean if the players get to a dragonborn town?

They were the first step into the "races are just skins for quirky human" mentality, and people didn't even care.

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>>96947584
>t. Never read the book
They do speak draconic, and you get info on their clan structure and roleplay tips. Specifics like city names and locations are not given to you by a generic guide but decided on at the table, no-games.

>>96944777
>was making Dragonborn core a good idea?
Yes. They were immediately identifiable as making the game and setting thoroughly fantastic and magical. They were fun, had lots of cool stuff, and were one of the big reasons I liked playing 4e. Hell, dragonborn have stuck with me so much I've translated them to other editions and settings I run.

>>96944883
>but they should've gone back to the original concept of them being other races transformed into dragonborn by Bahamut.
The template was universally lampooned as weird furry shit when it released. That there are people who think it was somehow better than the race version these days is weird and fucked up. The template was shit and a bad idea.

>>96945533
>Create lizardmen, call them dragons
Youre retarded, there were already "lizardmen". That they weren't playable in 4e didn't matter. And dragonborn are far more draconic in appearance anyway, and have a fucking dragon breath weapon. They also get dragon powers as they level, unlike lizardfolk.
>Just have a different game mode where the party plays as dragons.
You can have dragonborn and dragons. There is nothing stopping you from having both and allowing play of both at the same time. Hell, I've seen groups that use homebrew dragonborn alongside third party playable dragons in PF2e. There is no reason to restrict people to one or the other except some weird shitty bias.

>>96945926
>Should've been draconians instead.
Draconians are a strictly Dragonlance thing, and are stupid bullshit anyway. Fuck draconians and their retarded death mechanics.

>>96947584
>The name is in the PHb, what the fuck they are is not.
Players Handbook Races: Dragonborn and Dragon #365 Ecology of the Dragonborn article would like a word. Also, read any of the other books too. There is plenty of shit in the PHB if you actually fucking read it.

Unless you're talking about 5e, and then of course you need to refer to any 4e book on the subject.

>>96948757
>making the game and setting thoroughly fantastic and magical
They were not doing most of the legwork here. Or much at all, really. The game is already called "Dungeons & Dragons"

>universally lampooned as weird furry shit
4chan's hateboner for "furry shit" was never universal. People here might've shit themselves over it and trolled people with it, but most people didn't (and still don't) really give a shit about where dragonborn came from... because none of the origins are very compelling. They just seen as "dragon-like humanoids with a breath weapon," that's it.

>Draconians
Dragonborn should've been a rename of half-dragons. There's a decent chance new players unfamiliar with dragonborn "lore" will assume that dragonborn are descended from half-dragons (or literally ARE half-dragons).

>muh read the 4e supplemental books
Waste of time. It takes a special kind of autism to still be desperately clinging to 4e contrarianism in 2025, and anybody doing that is not someone that reasonable people should want anywhere near their table.

It's a small but useful filter for /thatguy/s.

>>96948951
>Dragonborn should've been a rename of half-dragons.
Absolutely fucking not. Half dragons should remain half dragons, a thing entirely separate from a race of dragon people. And these days I'm honestly on the side of getting rid of half dragons altogether.

>There's a decent chance new players unfamiliar with dragonborn "lore" will assume that dragonborn are descended from half-dragons (or literally ARE half-dragons).
These people are retards. Assuming something without reading up on it is always the domain of retards and lackwits. If they do so, you tell them they're stupid and to read up on the actual thing and stop assuming shit.

>Waste of time.
No it isn't. Its usable lore you take and remodel to your hearts content, and any good DM steals from all sources they can get ahold of.
>4e contrarianism in 2025
Just because you hate the edition like a good little 4chan sheep doesn't mean the edition is shit. Dismissing an entire edition because of 4chan tribal bullshit is the height of idiocy and retardation. I wouldn't want to be in your games anyway with the amount of stupidity you display.

>>96947553
Halfings are Hobbits don't a be disingenuous leftist

>>96948757
>That there are people who think it was somehow better than the race version these days is weird and fucked up.
They're fucking boring the way they are today. Literally just a standard-ass race that don't even have a connection to dragons. They're DRAGON-BORN. They should be connected to fucking dragons.

>>96949707
Why did f.a.g.g.o.t. turn into leftist?

>>96947553
>no-games
The majority of people who play races other than humans don't roleplay their races or their fantasy it's all stats wanking and freakshit

>>96949707
Nah, key difference loser. Halflings aren't hobbits the same way that Raistlin isn't a Maiar and Ilyrana Moonflower would have no place in Valinor. You are literally "All video games are Nintendos", someone without even enough knowledge of anything involved to know how little you understand.

>>96944777
Yes, because dragons are cool, and being able to play a guy who looks like a dragon and breathes like a dragon and flies like a dragon is also cool.

>>96950070
>flies like a dragon
kek
they get sparkly cosplay wings at best (and only in 5.5e afaik)

>>96949137
>Just because you hate the edition like a good little 4chan sheep doesn't mean the edition is shit.
Odd you think it's a 4chan thing when 4e was so universally panned that they fully backtracked on it in 5e and NV has gotten zero support since. Literally everyone including wizards considers it a failure, only it's dedicated cultists still defend it.

>>96944777
Oddest thing with them is they brought them into 5e and then proceeded to do literally nothing with them. Like all their development started and stopped with 4e. So now they are just an odd vestigial tack on to the PHB that wizards refuses to expand on like the others or get rid of. Like so much of an after thought they were almost not included in licensed stuff like BG3.

>>96950357
They don't fit very well in Forgotten Realms. Truth be told, they didn't even in 3.5e with the transformation "rite of rebirth" half measure. People didn't like it because they didn't want the characters to have been something else before, they just wanted to be dragonborn - a race that requires another race's baggage carried along is not very appealing. You have to basically make two character backstories for it or ignore what the pre-rebirth dragonborn was entirely... at which point why bother with the whole rebirth thing?
With 4e, since the 4e license is still in play with Nentir Vale stuff, they can't properly port all the 4e origin lore/context into an OGL edition without exposing that lore to a different license. So now they're from a setting you can only ever get distant snapshots of. That said, the Nentir Vale dragonborn lore is... not very impressive. While we do lose a lot of it in 5e, there wasn't much to lose. As >>96945351 correctly points out, they are just your bog-standard warrior race sort of thing. Klingons with scales and breath weapons (who can't see in the dark).

At a meta level, their racial/species traits were notoriously bad in 5e. It's quite grim when a player race is so starved for utility and lore that *lacking darkvision* is one of the most memorable parts of playing them for the few people who tried.

Unironically, making playable kobolds (plus the dragonwrought/urd variety) core would have fit better in Forgotten Realms than dragonborn did.

>>96950070
With how many players wanted to be a dragon in older editions, it makes sense. So many homebrew versions existed, and all were total bullshit. WotC made a good decision to placate that urge just a little bit. There needs to be more unique species though, and fewer at the same time. It's a conundrum!

>>96950156
In 2014 there's a Feat from I want to say SCAG that gives you wings.

In 2024, you get per-rest flight, which is far more balanced than aarakocra being able to just fly 50 feet with no real restrictions.

>>96951137
>more balanced
NTA, but DMs are just very bad at building/playing ranged threats. Not totally their fault, you don't get good options from the core books (and published stuff is also rarely or poorly designed for flying PCs, so the usual copy/paste strategy for encounter selection breaks down fast). But D&D online communities have memed aarakocra into being much more of a pain to deal with than they actually are. They're fine as long as the DM isn't constantly forgetting that "up" exists.

You can no-sell it completely (outside of hazards on the ground, which can already be avoided or ignored in other ways) for many encounters with nothing but a ceiling or even a thick forest canopy. There's no excuse to be afraid of wings as a DM.

>>96951232
I mean that's generally fair, I run/play other systems where flight can be purchased on your character from the get-go, and is almost mandatory beyond the very early game, but 50 feet is a lot, especially when you remembe Aaracokra are statted to be top tier monks and 2024 monk is absolutely utterly insanely good.

My solution to try and adhere to 2024's wing powers for some homebrew I made was to have it be 1 minute at 1st, 10 minutes at 5th, and permanent at 10th, but I could 100% see either 10 minutes at 1st/permanenet at 5th or just permanet fly speed equal to speed when not wearing heavy armor being the norm. As you said, it's not a huge issue, it gives players another avenue to solve problems (IMO a good thing), and makes combat more interesting by necessity.

Again, the 2014 rules which are compatible with 2024 do have a feat that just gives you wings full stop, and I see no reason not to grab that since it also gives an ASI - though by the time your dragonborn has wings all the time... why not just make them half-dragons? At least, that's my thought process.

>>96951895
>50 feet is a lot
just spam reskins of the 2024 cloud giant stat block. their second basic attack is a 240ft one turn stun (incapacitated) on hit (+12 ranged attack roll modifier) with no save, and they can use it twice per turn
your players can only play the game if you allow them to, anon - never acquiesce

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>>96951137
>>96951232
Of the 3 aarakocra PCs I've ever had to deal with, all were put down quite easily by their enemies. Not that I deliberately targeted or tried to kill them, the players just strategized like shit. Thinking flight is something super duper hard and too game-breaking to deal with is just a GM skill issue.

>>96944777
Eeeeeh
I mean in principle, no, but the execution still isn't great, and there's some strange knock-on-effects of these joining the ranks of "normal" people.
Execution-wise, they inherited too much lore from when being a Dragonborn was like. Big business, and without that anchor, kinda struggle to fit in anywhere. Their color coding also presents some awkwardness, especially on whether the color is supposed to influence the personality.
Then, the whole, "shitty predator" aesthetic kinda turned a bunch of people off, and made them even more offputting from a bunch of perspectives. Enough players either accidentally or intentionally memory hole the design to be better, that it's kinda embarrassing. Also, enough people mentally aid tails to them that fucking Larian cannonized it, which, for whatever other complaints exist, based. People want the scaly race, and people want dragon shit. That's fair enough, and WotC seems to be doing everything in their power to fight that dream and concept though.
I generally buff them in 5e 'cuz they're dogshit. I throw a bone to most unpopular races, but Dragonborn need the most help, since their entire kit is nothingburger, to pay off the shitty breath weapon that sucks dick.

In my worldbuilding, I've.. mostly, been able to incorporate them pretty well, though this os a bit of as a bastard race that lives mostly among others. I always make them lay eggs because fuck you.

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>>96944777
Why yes, I do only accept elves, dwarves, halflings, and humans as player characters, how could you tell?

>>96948951
>4chan's hateboner for "furry shit" was never universal. People here might've shit themselves over it and trolled people with it, but most people didn't (and still don't) really give a shit about where dragonborn came from... because none of the origins are very compelling. They just seen as "dragon-like humanoids with a breath weapon," that's it.

The Dragonborn flavor text in 3.5 Races of Dragons was widely criticized on the now lost WotC forums for being uncomfortably close to a very niche and creepy furry subcommunity while the design was well liked. This is why the 4e drops the rebirth stuff and made them a standard race.

>>96950341
>Odd you think it's a 4chan thing when 4e was so universally panned that they fully backtracked on it in 5e and NV has gotten zero support since. Literally everyone including wizards considers it a failure, only it's dedicated cultists still defend it.

4e wasn't universally panned you idiot. It was a victim of company politics and unreasonable profit demands from Hasbro and was then assassinated by a guy who hated 4e in order to publish his own edition.

>>96952707
>flavor text whining on WotC forums
i guarantee this was one forum thread you remember that had maybe half a dozen posters in it. that anon is right, 4chan tends to vastly overestimate the prevalence of furry hate historically because 4chan had a brief zenith of online influence in the peak of online furry hate. people online were such a minority of ttrpg players even at the time of 4e's release that one of 4e's greatest blunders was a marketing statement that people took to imply playing the edition would require a computer
>4e persecution complex
it wasn't fucking sabotaged, it just flat out didn't sell. almost nobody used it, and almost nobody still uses it. third party content is nonexistent as a result. there has never been much content to work with for the edition because WotC doesn't fill out that part of ANY D&D edition by themselves.
there was no single-man conspiracy to somehow 1. stop all third party adventures
2. accidentally imply in marketing that people would need computers to play
3. cause a high profile murder-suicide to be committed by a dev on the digital side of the product
4. cause the global financial crisis to occur a few months after the edition launched
...just because one dude disliked it or something. pull your head out of your butt.

4e couldn't stand on its own merits, and nobody wanted to touch it even after all those controversies had been forgotten. but i suppose it's foolhardy to expect rationality from someone beating on the skeleton dust of a horse that died nearly 20 years ago.

>>96952844
>it wasn't fucking sabotaged, it just flat out didn't sell. almost nobody used it, and almost nobody still uses it.

All that is blatantly false. 4e was the best selling TTRPG up until the stopped publishing stuff at which point Pathfinder managed to overtake it during a period where nothing new was published by WotC and it was still in 2nd place in sales.

>third party content is nonexistent as a result.
Third party content doesn't exist because the GSL was a massive trap that required anyone doing 4e stuff to not publish products for other systems and there was a application fee associated with it. 3rd parties pretty much abandoned 4e the day the GSL was revealed and they didn't return even after it was revised an improved.

>>96952844

>but i suppose it's foolhardy to expect rationality from someone beating on the skeleton dust of a horse that died nearly 20 years ago.

You are the one who keeps waving around a 20 year old strawman that 4e failed rather than admitting to what actually happened. 4e died not because it failed to sell but because of Hasbro politics.

>Hasbro decided to not view WotC as a single major brand and started analyzing MtG and D&D each as their own major brand each with their own budgets. D&D's lower profits are no longer hidden by MtG's massive profits.
>4e's lead up to launch is a mess due to a lot of different factors including but not limited to canceling the print magazines, insulting ads, the GSL and the VTT murder-suicide. The mess even creates 4e's biggest competitor.
>4e launches and the products sell pretty well staying as the top TTRPG brand through out it's life.
>Hasbro executives are upset. D&D is selling well but not the "major brands well" that the D&D design team promised.
>The executives keep replacing the lead dev until Mike Mearls ends up in the seat.
>Mearls does not like 4e, but is crazy good a brown nosing so talks the executives into letting him completely change 4e's direction, stop existing product plans, canceling a ton of books and put out "Essentials"
>Essentials flops hard. Upsetting the existing 4e playerbase and not attracting enough ex-customers back.
>Hasbro downgrades the D&D to a minor brand and the dev team is cut to a skeleton crew including Mike Mearls who somehow managed to keep his job by promising to make a new edition.

That is how 4e died. It was standing fine on it's own merits until it's feet were kicked out from under it by a lead dev who didn't want to work on 4e.

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>>96952577
>Why yes, I do only accept humans as player characters, how could you tell?

>>96944777
They were great in 4th ed but absolutely ruined by 'modern audiences' 5th ed taking away their stat bonuses and massive lizard milkers from the official art.

It's my wizards reason for adventuring, curing the blight, splicing in Holstein genes for the good of the species. We're talking serious mambas, gratuitous gobsmackers. Species wide average of a failing grade. "You're gonna need that strength bonus for your lower back" levels of overcompensation. Hatchling obesity? A small price to pay.

>>96952999
The same guy that does 13th age, rob heinsoo, was also the lead on 4e. Based on what he's said in the past, the reason 4e was so 'WOW lite' was due to executive meddling in the design process. They had to make do with what corporate told them. When that didnt immediately please the fan base, mearls weaseled his way in to tear down the basic foundation to clear his own ascension.

Mearls fucked over heinsoo and essentially took 3e and stripped most of the guts to try to feed off the carcass like the vulture he is. Which, not coincidentally, meant chasing out all the actual talent so he could rule the now empty nest by sucking up to management and screwing the competent people.

All 'people' like that are just parasites in pastel.

>>96945226
I must be the only person who preferred when dragonborn had dreadlocks, no tails, no horns, muted colors, to make it clear they're NOT half-dragons.

>>96952999
>revolving door of lead devs
>GSL collapsing the broader ecosystem and creating a direct competitor in Paizo
>economic downturn putting pressure on shareholders and Hasbro executives acting like Hasbro executives ALWAYS do
>fans upset that 3.5 wasn't getting published anymore
I just don't see a way to blame Mearls for all this. Selling best in a struggling market doesn't mean it was justifying the cost of its dev team, and a lead dev revolving door suggests very strongly that it wasn't justifying its budget. There's a reason 3.5 still has a bigger cultural cache than 4e. That never really changed even while 4e was being published. 4e sales weren't competing with 3.5 sales because people had already bought 3.5 - and it wasn't being sold anymore, yet demand for something like it was high enough among TTRPG players that Paizo was able not only to stay afloat but keep pace with 4e to the point of rapidly overtaking it when 4e stumbled. D&D had stumbled before but it hadn't ever stumbled so badly it got overtaken.

You may not want to hear this because you think of Mearls as D&D antichrist or something but the odds are what functionally stopped 4e publishing wasn't Mearls, it was executives looking to downsize already. If Mearls doesn't quickly promise a new edition with the skeleton crew, D&D 5e might take too long to appear and Paizo might end up essentially taking over. 5e is unavoidably a success story whether 4e contrarians like that or not - it sold WAY better than 4e did.

>>96954419
>There's a reason 3.5 still has a bigger cultural cache than 4e.

Yes, 8 years of product for WotC 3.X and 9 years of Paizo pathfinder verses 2.5 years for 4e.

>4e sales weren't competing with 3.5 sales because people had already bought 3.5 - and it wasn't being sold anymore, yet demand for something like it was high enough among TTRPG players that Paizo was able not only to stay afloat

3.PF sold more on Paizo's adventure paths and being the only source of new 3.X rulebooks for those playing those paths. It had very niche sales when you actually look at the sales data.

>but keep pace with 4e to the point of rapidly overtaking it when 4e stumbled.

Pathfinder didn't keep pace. It was a sold second well behind 4e, and that "stumble" that allowed Pathfinder to overtake it? A complete halt to production any and all product releases. Pathfinder only overtook 4e after had been pulled out of a race it had been winning by a fair amount because the sponsors wanted more profits than 4e was generating.

>5e is unavoidably a success story whether 4e contrarians like that or not -

D&D 5e didn't actually start selling till nearly 3+ years after it released when Stranger Things and Critical Roll gave the brand mass market visibility. If 4e had been the active edition at the time it would have been getting the bump instead. 5e fanatics want it to be a good edition but won't admit that their success is more on external factors turning it into a mainstream fad rather than it being a success based on it's own quality.

>it sold WAY better than 4e did.

Only because it was on the market for 10 fucking years rather than 2 and a half. Even 3.0 had a longer lifespan than 4e.

>>96949723
New filter, I guess. Think they filtered tranny too?

>>96953580
Pretty much.

>Antagonistic Ads built on cringe humor
>GSL being massively anti-3rd party
>Dragonborn and Tieflings having unified designs
>Monsters having names designed to be IP protected
>the Dragon and Dungeon magazine licenses being pulled from Paizo to be turned into eMagazines

All of these read like mandates from executives and bean counters who don't understand the TTRPG market.

>>96955692
>Pathfinder didn't keep pace. It was a sold second well behind 4e
We only have 4e sales data for the first month. This is something 4efags will never tell you (or don't realize).

The fact of the matter is Pathfinder was close enough to keeping pace that a pause in 4e publishing resulted in D&D being overtaken on tracked store data - that was a big deal. Stores still had inventory of 4e books, they just weren't fucking moving; there was no massive demand that made the supply bottleneck 4efags imagine. People weren't going to stores and asking "where is your 4e shelf?" 3rd party publishers didn't fill the gap because they didn't (and still don't) want to touch the GSL. The GSL is not at all Mearls' fault, and it alone arguably goes further towards explaining the failure of 4e than anything else.

Again, the best litmus test we have for how well it sold overall is its long-term impact in the space. Which was shitting itself so hard it drove people to PF when WotC stopped printing 3.5.

>D&D 5e didn't actually start selling till nearly 3+ years after
Incorrect. It got a boost then and had a high tail that eventually exceeded its launch after 3 years (very unusual for any product), but it still sold better than 4e did at launch. It did not break the "1st month of new edition is the new best 1st month" pattern - not even 5.5e broke that pattern and most people are just pulling pieces out of it and shoving them into 5e rather than the intended other way.

All indications are that 4e had a precipitous sales dropoff shortly after launch, MUCH faster than other editions. This was BEFORE Mearls ended up in charge. It also explains why there was so much desperate turnover - absolute numbers don't scare executives NEARLY as much as the first derivative of the sales curve. A bad sales trend line will make any management team shit themselves and pivot to panic mode. Essentials was a desperate attempt to relaunch, and the last chance 4e was going to have, Mearls or no.

>>96954419
>I just don't see a way to blame Mearls for all this.
It's an odd stance to take, like occam's razor would make it easy to figure out what happened. Like which of these scenarios seems more likely.
>one guy who wasn't even a major employee for too long gained a massive amount of power over a massively corporatized entity like hasbro and no one stopped him from shutting down a product that was doing well
or
>a mix of poor fan reception and poor business moves fucked support for the system leading to not meeting sales expectations leading the company course correcting

If dragonborn are core, kobolds should be as well.

>>96956150
Given >>96953580 I'm starting to suspect Mike Mearls might be a scapegoat for certain loud former employees because he was their immediate boss when they got laid off during the recession. Apparently at least Rob Heinsoo has held a grudge against Mearls over 4e for 15 years or more now.

A contrarian position is attractive to a certain kind of person, and acting like 4e was a good edition that was sabotaged is very much a contrarian position. It had at least 4 years to find its footing and had so convincingly failed that Hasbro okayed pausing publishing for a soft relaunch, then gave up when that also failed - Mearls is not some evil mastermind controlling his own Hasbro bosses and making these decisions in a vacuum, people (and we already know said bosses had been meddling beforehand). People in a contrarian headspace tend to give way more credence to grudge-fueled ramblings of jilted former employees if they fit the contrarian position.

Unfortunately for contrarian positions, jilted former employees talking about 15-year-old grudges with their former coworker, then boss (adding possible jealousy for Mearls' career path) over a system they personally designed (that had failed before said boss was even in charge, hence the boss turnover)... are probably not very credible.

>>96956079
>We only have 4e sales data for the first month. This is something 4efags will never tell you (or don't realize).

We have multiple years for distributor sales rankings based on data taken from the stores themselves.

>Stores still had inventory of 4e books, they just weren't fucking moving; there was no massive demand that made the supply bottleneck 4efags imagine.

It wasn't a bottleneck dumbass. All TTRPG products do the majority of their sales in the first few months. No new products mean no new sales. The 4e playbase had nothing to buy which is why 4e sales dropped after Essentials released when nothing followed after. Pathfinder continued releasing new products so it maintained it's normal level of sales.

>>96956150
>one guy who wasn't even a major employee for too long gained a massive amount of power over a massively corporatized entity like hasbro and no one stopped him from shutting down a product that was doing well

That is a poorly applied Occam's Razor that misinterprets the facts of the situation.

>new lead dev announced.
>a large number of already announced products are cancelled shortly after
>a bunch of new products with the new lead dev's name on them are announced
>new products fail hard
>no follow up products are announced
>lead dev announces a year later that they have been working on a new edition for the past year which will have a very limited product line

That isn't a course correction. That is someone running a ship aground and then some how getting put in charge of building a new ship.

>>96950885
>>96956350
>kobolds core
You know what? Agreed. Gnomes are already a precedent for this, and there is arguably more you can do story-wise with kobold backgrounds. They are common pretty much everywhere, have very flexible potential origins/backstories, and they are canonically more dragon than dragonborn are. Framing their rivalry with gnomes as a historical difference in access to resources/stability and hostility from "civilization" would also be quite interesting, I think. IMO they're better "unjustly downtrodden 'monsters'" than tieflings are, precisely because they are both less human-looking and physically easier to abuse.
Dragonborn are just kinda... around, I guess. There's almost nothing to work with, no hooks to use... besides copying the half-dragon and potential kobold association to a specific type of dragon (and thus potentially a specific INDIVIDUAL dragon) that dragonborn... technically don't have.
They're so half-baked, lol.

Wait you guys are playing a game where you have to have specific rules for every playable species? LMAOOOOO

>>96945226
Why is that a problem? They're using their imagination differently from you? lol

>>96956602
>It had at least 4 years to find its footing and had so convincingly failed that Hasbro okayed pausing publishing for a soft relaunch,

It did not have 4 years. The first products started selling in June '08. The last "4e" product was released August 2010 that is 25 months. Essentials comes out September 2010 and only 8 more product are released in the 18 months between November 2010 and May 2012. No non-Essentials products are released during that period.

Due to the lead up in publishing Essentials began development 1 year into 4e lifespan and put out practically nothing in the year and a half post launch. 4e was dead in August 2010.

>>96944777
Hey puckee, are you still spamming your threads over and over?

>>96956735
>the production pause that apparently let Pathfinder overtake DND 4e was only 2 months long
...you can't possibly be serious about blaming that for getting overtaken, anon
it hadn't happened ever for any DND edition AFAIK, including competition with previous editions
it shouldn't have even been possible

or maybe mike mearls broke into stores and burned 4e sourcebooks just to spite rob heinsoo

>>96946300
If they added dungeonborn, they'd have to add &born too

>>96957234
>&bornfags still seething about the CANON ampersandborn name
You lost. Alphabetchads won.

>>96956602
Read the post.

4e was screwed by corporate meddling from the start. Mearls just played up the fear from, then took advantage to ax the actual talent. Heinsoo is a good example, because his name is on the actual edition and made for a convenient scapegoat for decisions no one on the team actually made.

You're being the contrarian.

>>96956615
Is right on the money

Clearly, 4e failed because everyone who likes it is retarded and autistic.

>>96957696
If that were true, then no RPGs would succeed.

>>96957735
Some autists are more retarded than others.

>>96958307
I dont see how they're being annoying. Seems more like one guy is butthurt other people dont like how things turned out for a game from a decade ago

>>96958729
If 4e was good, people would play it. Simple as.
What the thread looks like is one dude samefagging over how unpopular his hyperfixation is and derailing a thread about dragonborn to do it. It's the retard that shits up any thread that so much as mentions 4e.

>>96958765
I'm one of the two people still talking to you itt that you responded to talking about the internals of wotc and never played 4e lmao. I was playing Call of cthulhu and homebrew as all the shit was going down, but also hate current management for what happened and how dnd was coopted by hacks.

It's the same sort of thing that keeps happening to vidya using the same mechanisms.

>>96959000
Who do you think I am, anon? I just fucking got here.

>>96959021
I think you're a SNAKE, a LIAR, and a man with LITTLE DECENCY. A COLD man, a CALLOUS man.

One who has a project you should probably be working on.

This thread is no longer about dragonborn anyway, so you should tell me what it is.

>>96944777
I don't get it, it has always the case that some time has passed since any point in the past. What does that have to do with whether or not dragonborn should be core?

>>96945533
You don't know what anyone in particular wants.

>>96947041
There's no such thing as a generic fantasy race.

>>96958765
Nah the CIA stopped it from succeeding, real 4e has never been tried

>>96947584
Why would they care? Nothing in your post is killing monsters or getting treasure.

>>96960396
lmao

>>96951137
You guys can't even buy Flight in your games? holy shit lol

>>96951137
Nobody should be flying in D&D except for someone who just found an extremely rare flight potion, or a mid-level magic-user.

Fucking gay.

>>96960755
LOL

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>>96944777
Yes. Dragonborn were awesome and they finally made the "dragon-based" race playable from the get-go without the absurd hoops of the other dragon-kin races that D&D dabbled with across its history.

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>>96946030
Actually, even the Realms' dragonborn had a lot of lore to them if you actually looked into it.
Even the simple fact that Arkhosian DB revered dragons and considered them kin, but Abeirian DB despised them as their former slaver overlords was a pretty major change.

>>96944777
shouldve been Lizardmen but theyre ok.
the 4e iteration was great and well integrated
>muh dreadlocks
theyre cool.
The weirdly oversized heads less so.

>>96950885
>>96950357
you say that but remember DnD didnt have a Klingon race in the baseline lineup yet.
And the "klingon" is a stereotype of fantasy and sci fi for a reason.
However, due to the way Halforcs are, Halforcs never were that, they were the rapebaby / tragic race.
They were a warrior race by stats not by culture.
Dragonborn filled the niche of Warcraft Orcs / klingons

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>>96969851
>muh dreadlocks
The odd lips they had going on were the bigger issue for me, still I find the current look is better for them. Or how BG3 did them, probably the best depiction for them we've had, though probably chalked up to having a company of scailies working on it.

>>96969905
am i the only one that doesnt realy like the BG3 depiction?
If you use any of the crests the heads are oddly big, only the default durge head looks any good and the proportions look wrong.
Like a too big head on a toddler body

>>96960180
Human, elf, dwarf, maybe halfling and (half-)orc as well.

Swing and a miss.

>>96956602
People aren't scapegoating Mike Mearls, they're going off of the man's actual fucking statements and positions that were and are anti-4E. He literally and openly did not like 4E's base design.

>>96969905
Nah, BG3 dragonborn are a clear downgrade to DOSII lizardmen. They look like some kind of animatronic head stuck on a human and helmets look stupid on them.

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>>96944777
I prefer hardcore

>>96971380
>Nah, BG3 dragonborn are a clear downgrade to DOSII lizardmen
Well that is true but the comparison was to 4e dragonborn.

>>96970034
Bigger issue is they were clearly rushed since they only seem to have been added around act 3 development.

>>96944793
daring today

>>96944777
They had/have issues but are over am pretty neat and far from the worst issue in both 4e and 5e

>>96944777
I just made them lizardmen in my game, which everyone liked.

>>96944777
They could have put a small (optional) tag next to them, and we would've played them anyway.
I just wonder how a dragonborn or a tiefling can play in Ravenloft without being hunted by peasants.

>>96970034
>am i the only one that doesnt realy like the BG3 depiction?
No.
There are like two, maybe three, good heads in the entire lineup. They removed their breasts. They gave them standard human dick and balls because Larian is lazy (its supposed to be a front facing genital slit similar to a crocodiles, as presented in official internal Dragonborn anatomy art). They gave them tails that don't really work. Their heads are indeed too fucking big and you can tell they just stretched the helmets instead of making dragonborn specific ones. They are not good dragonborn but 5e babies dont know any better, so they drink up the slop.

>>96974459
>They gave them standard human dick and balls
wait what, are the sex scenes in BG3 uncensored? whenever I looked at videos they were always wearing granny underpants

>>96944903
>Only trolls say freakshit.
They are freakshit, sorry it upsets your local pride chapter, faggot.

>>96974536
>wait what, are the sex scenes in BG3 uncensored?
Yes. You can uncensor them and have full view of dick, pussy, and breasts. Of course, videos on Youtube are going to be censored. So yes, if you want to see Shadowhearts, or any of the other women including your own character's, pussy you can. Or the guys dicks if you're into that.

>>96974571
but they don't really fuck, right? are you saying the made full blown porn scenes?
I'm not going to check first-hand simply because I don't find anything in that game attractive. I'm just curious about the fact they actually put SFM porn in the game, though it's probably going to be animated like shit like all porn

>>96974735
Yeah they do, it doesn't fully show penis in vagina but does get pretty explicit. Hell the Drow sex scene basically shows her fully doing oral on the player.

>>96974747
Like a movie I guess. The Drow is Minthara? Fucking ugliest Drow I've ever seen
I don't want to see these people fuck

>>96944777
No. None of the freak races were a "good idea" from a product quality PoV.
I liked dragons 20 years ago when I was a teen, now they're lame and overused.

>>96944777
Meh, I think they should just made it the classic elves, dwarves, gnomes, humans, half-orc, half-elves, halflings, and maybe tieflings. Though with the queers making it the gay race. Maybe better to treat them like the furries and keep it from core too.

>>96944777
Yes, needed more unique lore tho.
we got like 50 "proud warrior race" architypes.

are dragonborn just ripped off of skyrim?

>>96981170
Skyrim is originally a homebrewed d&d setting, n'wah.

>>96977466
I'd support wizards looking into this. I like the implication that evil dragonborn fight good dragonborn while some try to shake off this stigma. Instead we get the "proud warriors," a total loss of opportunity.

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>>96981375
That WAS kind of their thing in 4e. Because they considered themselves children of Io, they acknowledged both Bahamut AND Tiamat as having claims on their souls. Some tried to find a way to balance them out to closer emulate Io, some devoted themselves to one or the other, and some found other religions entirely - hell, the Imperial Church of Arkhosia, the big dragonborn empire, was actually a triumvirate religion honoring Erathis (Goddess of Civilization), Ioun (Goddess of Knowledge & Magic) and Kord (God of Strength & Glory), whilst Bahamut was "just" a very popular but secondary cult.

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>>96944777
>>96944793
Anything outside of Tolkien's races shouldn't been in a Humanoids Handbook like what AD&D 2nd ed did

>>96946803
>Now that you mention it, how was there never a World of Darkness splat where you play as dragons?
Draconics are one of the Clan/Bloodline equivalents in Changeling the Lost. They're people who, upon being taken to Arcadia, were shaped by their Keeper into either a literal giant fire breathing dragon to guard a treasure horde or something similar that's both majestic and frightening.

>>96981346
Though that setting pre-dates 4e. It is kind of interesting to see what was holdovers from it though, like the dunmer having a woman queen in Daggerfall that carried over since pre-kirkbride they were far closer to drow.

>>96995237
Do you feel the grave calling you, old man?

>>96953030
Dwarves are based tho

>>96995237
>Prey-eyed boomer vs Predator-eyed Zoomer

>>96944777
They were nowhere near as damaging to the hobby as a whole as tieflings.

>>96949707
>conserving historical precident is leftist
Actually kill yourself.

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>>96944777
I make my dragonborn look like humans but with wings and horns and tails and patches of scales, but they can look more or less draconic than this. also they are basically just dragons in humanoid form, there's almost 0 difference between a high-level dragonborn and a true dragon

>>96947553
How much of a faggot must you be to not know that "halfling" was always just a way to avoid the Tolkien estate's well-know litigiousness? It worked as a name precisely *because* halfling use used as a reference to hobbits within Tolkien's work itself.

>>96948757
>Yes.
Wrong retard opinion.
>I liked playing 4e...
Retardation confirmed.
>...because it had a draconic race but not draconians those are bullshit haha
You can stop talking about how fucking retarded you are already. You're just beating a dead horse.

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>>96944777
>Now that some time has passed was making Dragonborn core a good idea?

Yes, they're a good substitute for when your DM doesn't want to deal with the hassle of a player requesting to play an actual Dragon.
Their issue though is that they were piss weak back in 2014 5e because WotC didn't even try to meet players halfway when designing the Dragonborns 5e mechanics and decided a breath weapon and damage resistance was good enough. Don't understand why they got rid of the tail either but it's not like anyone really went along with it
The Fizban rework and the 2024 rework are all better in comparison

Anyway, people who claim you should just play Lizardfolk or Kobolds are retards who don't have an actual argument

>Kobolds
The person who wants to play a Dragon doesn't want their only playable option to be a race of swamp/cave dwelling midgets who depending on the PC stat has a built in "Beg for mercy and shit yourself" ability and not a breath weapon ability

>Lizardfolk
"Please larp as a Lizardfolk larping as a Dragon" No fuck off

>Draconian
I want to play a Dragon, not a suicide bomber

>Dray
lol

>Half-Dragons
Nope, want to play a full blooded race, not a "My human parents got funky with a Dragon" that is already overplayed and overmeme'd

Current Dragonborns are tailor made for what people want in a Dragon race, Kobolds and Lizardfolks fill their own niche and are not proper substitutes for what people want

>>97007010
Half dragons are better than dragonborn and closer to what people want. You prefer the latter just because you are a contrarian who likes le subversion "want to play as a dragon? ok play as this ugly furry who doesn't look like a dragon and isn't related to dragons"
When I gm there are no dragonborn. you are an half/quarter dragon or you don't play as one. (same for tieflings)

>>97007168
>Half-Dragon is closer to what people want
It's not, specifically because Half-Dragons aren't a uniformed race
>You prefer the latter just because you are a contrarian who likes le subversion
Weak argument from a weak bitch, wanting to play anything other than the core race is the "le subversion"
>When I gm
You don't, nigger

>>97007860
>Half-Dragons aren't a uniformed race
and no one who wants to play as a dragon want to play as an "uniformed race" that's not "dragon"
>anything other than the core race is the "le subversion"
nope, it's not. you aren't subverting anything. playing as a race except it's not actually that race it's my furries with dreadlocks actually ;) is the contrarian subversion
>You don't, nigger
i do. and i don't give two shits about the retarded subversive ""lore"" of any d&d edition, so i have an insurmountable superiority over you (if you do at all)

>>96946803
Beast has one, I think. You spend most of your time as just a person-shaped person, though, so I guess we’re on Supernatural rules.