Has anyone converted the Dragonborn from 5th ed to Starfinder yet? If not, I'll take a crack at it.
Has anyone converted the Dragonborn from 5th ed to Starfinder yet? If not, I'll take a crack at it.
Hey, I'm quoting myself. Alright on to Dragonborn. Dragonborn are reptilian in nature, and their name for themselves is unpronounceable to humans. Located on a Earth-like planet that orbits a distant star in a well-known Constellation, the Dragonborn are like humans. Gamemasters of Starfinder can decide if they are in an early period of development (circa 10,000 BC), or if they are in a later period of development (circa Pact Worlds). Their world can be reached by an Constellation Orrery, but is located in the Vast. Either way, it's a first contact situation between the Pact Worlds and the Dragonborn.
+2 to Strength, +2 Charisma, -2 Wisdom | 6 HP
Size and Type Dragonborn are taller and heavier than humans, standing well over 6 feet tall and averaging almost 250 pounds. Your size is Medium. Your type is Dragonborn.
Draconic Ancestry The dragons have visited the Dragonborn planet in the distant past and introduced their DNA into Dragonborn DNA. Choose one type of dragon from the Draconic Ancestry table. Your breath weapon and damage resistance are determined by the dragon type, as shown in the table.
Breath Weapon You can use your action to exhale destructive energy. Your draconic ancestry determines the size, shape, and damage type of the exhalation.
When you use your breath weapon, each creature in the area of the exhalation must make a saving throw, the type of which is determined by your draconic ancestry. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. A creature takes 2d6 damage on a failed save, and half as much damage on a successful one. The damage increases to 3d6 at 6th level, 4d6 at 11th level, and 5d6 at 16th level.
Table: Draconic Ancestry Dragon Damage Type Breath Weapon
Black Acid 5 by 30 ft. line (Dex. save)
Blue Lightning 5 by 30 ft. line (Dex. save)
Brass Fire 5 by 30 ft. line (Dex. save)
Bronze Lightning 5 by 30 ft. line (Dex. save)
Copper Acid 5 by 30 ft. line (Dex. save)
Gold Fire 15 ft. cone (Dex. save)
Green Poison 15 ft. cone (Con. save)
Red Fire 15 ft. cone (Dex. save)
Silver Cold 15 ft. cone (Con. save)
White Cold 15 ft. cone (Con. save)
After you use your breath weapon, you can’t use it again unless you spend a resolve point or after a 10 minute rest.
Damage Resistance: You have resistance to the damage type associated with your draconic ancestry.
There's already the dragonkin in starfinder. I'm not sure why you would also want dragonborn?
Though, you should copy the dragonkin's breath weapon and rules text if you're dead set on it. 8+prof is a 5e thing, and the damage is really bad if it caps at 5d6.
There's already the dragonkin in starfinder. I'm not sure why you would also want dragonborn?
Though, you should copy the dragonkin's breath weapon and rules text if you're dead set on it. 8+prof is a 5e thing, and the damage is really bad if it caps at 5d6.
Yeah, I'll change it. Although to answer your question with another question. Do you believe that life exists elsewhere in the Universe?
Yeah, I'll change it. Although to answer your question with another question. Do you believe that life exists elsewhere in the Universe?There's already the dragonkin in starfinder. I'm not sure why you would also want dragonborn?
Though, you should copy the dragonkin's breath weapon and rules text if you're dead set on it. 8+prof is a 5e thing, and the damage is really bad if it caps at 5d6.
Eh, I'm probably having a knee-jerk reaction because it's stat line is just so similar to the dragonkin. I would think about adding abilities to it to differentiate a dragonborn from a dragonkin. I'm not sure off the top of my head though... maybe a unique ability based on dragontype beyond the stereotypical dragonbreath? Like vocal mimicry and blue dragons.
Maybe an intimidate bonus? Maybe spell resistance?
Yeah, I'll change it. Although to answer your question with another question. Do you believe that life exists elsewhere in the Universe?There's already the dragonkin in starfinder. I'm not sure why you would also want dragonborn?
Though, you should copy the dragonkin's breath weapon and rules text if you're dead set on it. 8+prof is a 5e thing, and the damage is really bad if it caps at 5d6.
Eh, I'm probably having a knee-jerk reaction because it's stat line is just so similar to the dragonkin. I would think about adding abilities to it to differentiate a dragonborn from a dragonkin. I'm not sure off the top of my head though... maybe a unique ability based on dragontype beyond the stereotypical dragonbreath? Like vocal mimicry and blue dragons.
Maybe an intimidate bonus? Maybe spell resistance?
Spell resistance? Maybe. An intimidate bonus might work too. Thats a direct conversion from D&D 5e. Are you looking for something more in the spirit of 5e and doesn't step on the Dragonkin's toes?
Spell resistance? Maybe. An intimidate bonus might work too. Thats a direct conversion from D&D 5e. Are you looking for something more in the spirit of 5e and doesn't step on the Dragonkin's toes?Yeah, I'll change it. Although to answer your question with another question. Do you believe that life exists elsewhere in the Universe?There's already the dragonkin in starfinder. I'm not sure why you would also want dragonborn?
Though, you should copy the dragonkin's breath weapon and rules text if you're dead set on it. 8+prof is a 5e thing, and the damage is really bad if it caps at 5d6.
Eh, I'm probably having a knee-jerk reaction because it's stat line is just so similar to the dragonkin. I would think about adding abilities to it to differentiate a dragonborn from a dragonkin. I'm not sure off the top of my head though... maybe a unique ability based on dragontype beyond the stereotypical dragonbreath? Like vocal mimicry and blue dragons.
Maybe an intimidate bonus? Maybe spell resistance?
No, I'm saying that it's somewhat lackluster as a race on it's own. Most races have more racial abilities and uniqueness of their own.
If you were to stick to the straight conversion, I wouldn't bother converting and just take the dragonkin stats, change it's size to medium, ability modifieres to +2 str, +2 cha, -2 wis and call it a day.
If I wanted to make an actual new race, I'd look at other races in the AAs and give the dragonborn more racial abilities, specifically ones suited to dragons.
I am told that 5e dragonborn are considered one of the weakest races in that edition. Don't know, haven't played. But I'm told they get fewer racial abilities than most.
Some spit-balling recommendations would be to pull a bit from their incarnation of previous editions to round them out a bit.
4e gave them +2 skill bonuses to intimidate and "history" which I think could be substituted with culture easily enough.
Their breath weapon was the equivalent of a swift action in 4e where as it's a full action in 5e. Being that we're talking about damage that's about on par with a pistol shot of it's level that's usable only once an encounter and offers a save, and everything has some kind of energy resistance, I don't think it being a swift action would be too big of a deal.
Speaking of their breath weapon, their energy resistance needs a specified number attached to it. Maybe give them something that scales with level.
I'd give them low light & darkvision even though I don't think they get them in any edition, just because they really should have them since I don't think there's a dragon that doesn't get 'em.
Just some ideas.
I think I would go with +2 intimidate, resist 5 to their type that stacks with one other source, dark vision, then a type based ability.
Blue - vocal mimicry +2 to bluff when verbal only
Black +1 to fort saves vs. Disease
I really can't think of minor but thematic abilities for the other colors, but that's what I would do.
From a game world perspective, I feel I'd be most likely to take Dragonkin stats and place a medium sized dragonkin race elsewhere in the universe (besides Triaxus) and give them a culture unique to them, with some sort of mechanical bonus to represent that.
So I'd remove the partner bond feature and substitute some sort of feature that would be based on whatever cultural background you give them. Or it could be things like adding a minor buff to a skill and resistance to the type of breath weapon they have.
Also, probably modify the dragonkin breath weapon option to have options other than fire with other shapes as appropriate for the dragon color they're based off of.
To me it's a lot less of making a new race, and more like making a new subtype race.
My thing is that aside from being vaguely draconic humanoids, dragonborn & dragonkin don't have a whole lot in common.
On top of changing size, you'd be changing the ability score allocations, dragonborn generally don't have flight standard, it's usually something they get from feats or that they have to pick between flight or the breath weapon, and the partner bond thing would need replacing.
So basically the only thing they'd have in common would be the breath weapon(which would be altered) and maybe the type.
Which actually, looking at it, I can't imagine this hasn't been brought up at some point but dragonkin actually having the dragon type makes one of their racial abilities redundant; "draconic immunities" says they're immune to sleep and get a +2 against paralysis but having the dragon type just makes you straight up immune to paralysis.
But that's a whole different can of worms.
I may have to change things around on this race. Everyone is suggesting something a little different to do.
Well if nothing else the initial conversion you did is going to have to change one thing; dragonborn can't be a type, it would have to be a subtype. Question is whether their creature type should be humanoid or dragon.
That doesn't look like it was really a thing in 4th or 5th edition, but it's worth pointing out that in 3.5 - where dragonborn was a template without a cr increase, not really a race - they retained their original type, presumed humanoid, and gained the "dragonblood" subtype that I'm not familiar with off the top of my head.
They also gained immunity to frightful presence, and got to pick between the breath weapon, flight, or immunity to sleep/paralysis coupled with lowlight & darkvision with a +2 bonus to the perception skills.
3.5 also gave them +2 con -2 dex on top of whatever their initial racial ability modifiers were. It's actually the only negative ability score they ever got, with 4e & 5e not handing those out.
On that topic, 4e eventually gave them a variable score with +2 to either str or con with cha being their fixed +2. Also gave them a +1 to attack rolls when at half health or lower, don't know if that's something that can be factored in or not.
Just throwing out information at this point, no suggestions.
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My thing is that aside from being vaguely draconic humanoids, dragonborn & dragonkin don't have a whole lot in common.
That's true, but dragonborn have no lore in Pathfinder either. So unless you're going to import their lore too, they don't make as much sense.
And we do already have humanoid shaped dragon people.
Sure, they're different.
What are we trying to accomplish by adding another humanoid shaped dragon race?
My personal take, for the setting, is that it's easier to take an existing race and tweak them and come up with a backstory for how that happened rather than shoehorn in a race that doesn't exist and somehow convert their story into something compatible.
Introducing a new option for dragonkin that are medium sized and have some different bonuses instead of telepathic bond is easy, and you can say that these were the result of the first dragonkin to explore space. The size of the vessels they used to explore space (in generational space ships prior to FTL travel) caused them over generations to get smaller. Being separated from their home planet and their typical ryphorian partners caused them to loose the ability to form psychic bonds.
My thing is that aside from being vaguely draconic humanoids, dragonborn & dragonkin don't have a whole lot in common.
That's true, but dragonborn have no lore in Pathfinder either. So unless you're going to import their lore too, they don't make as much sense.
And we do already have humanoid shaped dragon people.
Sure, they're different.
What are we trying to accomplish by adding another humanoid shaped dragon race?
My personal take, for the setting, is that it's easier to take an existing race and tweak them and come up with a backstory for how that happened rather than shoehorn in a race that doesn't exist and somehow convert their story into something compatible.
Introducing a new option for dragonkin that are medium sized and have some different bonuses instead of telepathic bond is easy, and you can say that these were the result of the first dragonkin to explore space. The size of the vessels they used to explore space (in generational space ships prior to FTL travel) caused them over generations to get smaller. Being separated from their home planet and their typical ryphorian partners caused them to loose the ability to form psychic bonds.
Well I imagine that isn't terribly unlikely to happen if we get a Pact Worlds II book or an equivalent to the Advanced Race Guide/Inner Sea Races for Starfinder that just gives a bunch of alt racial abilities.
But in lieu of waiting for Paizo to publish that book which won't be happening until 2022 at the earliest, and none of the announced AP's look likely to have specific articles on dragonkin like how Threefold Conspiracy had for barathu, this is what we're left with.
Now personally I don't have too much problem with redundancy within reason. I'm not a huge fan of settings where they decide they need twenty distinct flavors of elves, but there are levels of overlap that I'm perfectly okay with and having two to four distinctly dragonlike playable races is within my bounds of reason(dragonkin, a homebrew write up of dragonborn, wyvaran, and kobolds if they ever get around to writing them up).
As for incorporating their lore, well, I don't imagine I'm the only person who has the vague headcanon of pathfinder/golarion being part of the same larger cosmology as the WotC published D&D settings, with the understanding that they can never officially confirm that due to legal reasons. Hasn't stop them from alluding to it with things like Iggwilv being implied to as the daughter of Baba Yaga who managed to escape Irrisen alive, and Demogorgon being namedropped but never appearing because while the name is open source, his depiction isn't.
So with that headcannon in mind and applying it to starfinder, you'll have a planet with dragonborn on it that's advanced into the space age. Done.
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I guess it's just a different way to look at it.
I prefer the Pathfinder/Starfinder cosmology to WotC. Not to say there aren't great things, but I got into table top at the end of 3.5 and there was there huge swath of stuff I didn't know about the universe.
When Pathfinder was released I got to be on the ground floor so to speak, and while I don't know all the lore I feel less like I'm out of the loop. So I have little desire to add in stuff from WotC.
Well that's the lovely thing about homebrew; s'not canon. Someone else making it & using it doesn't demand you do the same.
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Well that's the lovely thing about homebrew; s'not canon. Someone else making it & using it doesn't demand you do the same.
Sure, I was just coming at it from a place of "why add a redundant (IMO) race when you could modify an existing one?".
They fit pretty similar niches from my view. But if you want WotC Dragonborn instead of Dragonkin, it's not going to harm anything.
You do have to change the lore about Triaxus and the Skyfire Legion though as the bond ability is often referenced.
If you're modifying Dragonkin as I suggested then yes, and I believe I mentioned needing to do so.
If you're adding in Dragonborn into the setting I don't see why you need to.
You do have to change the lore about Triaxus and the Skyfire Legion though as the bond ability is often referenced.If you're modifying Dragonkin as I suggested then yes, and I believe I mentioned needing to do so.
If you're adding in Dragonborn into the setting I don't see why you need to.
This is going to sound rude and I don't intend it to be, but you don't need to. None of our approval or understanding is required for this.
I'm not sure if you were referring to Ixal or myself, but in any event my understandig of Ixal's suggestion was in reply to my statements about changing Dragonkin to have an set of alternative racial traits. So they suggested that if you do so, you would want to get rid of the bond ability (which I agree with).
If Ixal's statements were with regard to something else I've misunderstood.
And so, I think your statement about "not needing approval or understanding" is more missing out on what was a suggestion about maintaining verisimilitude of the setting.
I was referring to you.
And my point was that while your desire to maintain the verisimilitude of the setting is valid and good for you, it's irrelevant in the current context until it comes up at a table you're a part of. If someone wants to home brew in dragonborn or qunari or draenei or teletubies into the setting, that's their prerogative. You - or anyone else, myself included - doesn't need to understand why they'd want to because we're not involved in the equation.
Ah, thank you.
I was referring to you.
And my point was that while your desire to maintain the verisimilitude of the setting is valid and good for you, it's irrelevant in the current context until it comes up at a table you're a part of. If someone wants to home brew in dragonborn or qunari or draenei or teletubies into the setting, that's their prerogative. You - or anyone else, myself included - doesn't need to understand why they'd want to because we're not involved in the equation.
And that's all well and good, but when someone posts online they're looking for feedback I'm going to give my open and honest thoughts.
They certainly don't have to take it, and I don't believe I've at all implied that the OP is a bad person or breaking anything if they don't follow what I've suggested. I'm simply made a suggestion from my perspective.
When you post asking for feedback and ideas, you can't expect everyone will agree with you. It's also worth questioning the need and desire behind it because someone might have a better idea to present based on that information.
Honestly, I was enjoying our discussion on the merit of including a new race vs the merit of expanding the purview of an existing one. But you've turned this into a weird question about the prerogative of the OP, and I don't get it frankly.
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My general opinion on ported races from other IPs for homebrew: if you're going to make a new race, make sure it's a new race.
If it's basically the same as another race, reskin it. If it's similar, make sure there's enough uniqueness to make it stand out.
My general opinion on ported races from other IPs for homebrew: if you're going to make a new race, make sure it's a new race.
If it's basically the same as another race, reskin it. If it's similar, make sure there's enough uniqueness to make it stand out.
Yeah, I guess that's what I was trying to get at.
To me adding in Dragonborn when you already have Dragonkin just seems redundant. If you really want that specific flavor of course no one can stop you from adding it in. I was just personally trying to express that I don't see a reason.
I was referring to you.
And my point was that while your desire to maintain the verisimilitude of the setting is valid and good for you, it's irrelevant in the current context until it comes up at a table you're a part of. If someone wants to home brew in dragonborn or qunari or draenei or teletubies into the setting, that's their prerogative. You - or anyone else, myself included - doesn't need to understand why they'd want to because we're not involved in the equation.
And that's all well and good, but when someone posts online they're looking for feedback I'm going to give my open and honest thoughts.
They certainly don't have to take it, and I don't believe I've at all implied that the OP is a bad person or breaking anything if they don't follow what I've suggested. I'm simply made a suggestion from my perspective.
When you post asking for feedback and ideas, you can't expect everyone will agree with you. It's also worth questioning the need and desire behind it because someone might have a better idea to present based on that information.
Honestly, I was enjoying our discussion on the merit of including a new race vs the merit of expanding the purview of an existing one. But you've turned this into a weird question about the prerogative of the OP, and I don't get it frankly.
Sorry for the delay on the response to this, it's been a hell of a week.
And like I said, it was going to sound more rude than it was intended. I was just seeing the pattern of us going around in circles emerging at that point & wanted to cut it off. Apologies for that.
Anyway, I'm certainly not opposed to giving honest feed back and even negative feed back and stating opposition to something. I do that all the time.
But to me the difference is in this particular scenario and in the context of it relating to homebrew is, if someone's asking for feeback on homebrew and I don't have anything to offer aside from "don't do it", then I'd probably forgo posting in that thread, because end of the day that's a homebrew thread making it even more optional than everything in the game already is.
I think that if we were in a "Alien Archives Wishlist" thread and someone said they wanted as close to dragonborn as one could get without getting WotC's lawyers involved and you countered with that being redundant with dragonkin & the concession you'd rather see is dragonkin getting alternate racial trait to make them medium sized & get rid of the partner bond thing to fill that niche, I think that is a very valid argument to make and something that contributes to the conversation.
Where as I feel your point here is, essentially, fairly hair splitting in the difference of making a couple alternate racial traits instead of straight conversion or building from the ground up. Especially in this case where EltonJ has already done the thing, made the strait conversion, and your advice is to scrap that entirely & go back to the drawing board of tweaking the racial traits of an existing race that is mechanically speaking actually quite different from what's being sought after here.
It's just not a hill I'd choose to die on, and I can die on some pretty low hills.
Having said all of that, I think this ultimately comes down to a disagreement over how redundant dragonkin make dragonborn, which I don't think is very redundant at all. I see dragonborn as almost more draconic equivalents to aasimar or tieflings, or half-orcs/dwarves/goliaths/kingons/insert honorable warrior race here with a dragon paint job, where as dragonkin's main thing to me was playing as the dragon half of the dragon riders of pern partnership(I've never read dragon riders of pern), or otherwise as close as we're ever going to get to playing as a dragon as opposed to playing as a draconic humanoid, which I do feel are two distinct fantasies to cater to.
And also in terms of maintaining the integrity of the setting, honestly to me it's less wonky with the setting's lore to say that in a galaxy of infinite possibilities there's another planet where, under different conditions a different race of draconic humanoids evolved/were created to serve a different purpose and I'm playing one of them vs I'm playing a dragonkin from Triaxus but for reasons I either mutated or was altered to go from looking like this;
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EW51gO7VcAA4SIu?format=jpg&name=900x900
to instead looking like this;
https://1d4chan.org/images/a/ad/Dragonborn_Warrior.jpg
Like, I don't know, maybe I am entirely off base there, but that just seems like a bigger leap to me. Maybe because it feels like it's the kind of thing being done to satisfy two masters; i.e., wanting to cater to the person who wants dragonborn while also wanting to cater to the person who only wants one draconic humanoid race by saying "we made a variant of that one race that looks like the race the other person wanted".
I swear I just saw a conversion for dragonborn, I don't recall if it was for PF1e or 2e, where they gave them the alternate name "dire kobold" as a way of integrating them into the setting.
Well, I did a direct conversion.