My longest-played character is Jax Sardare, a blue dragonborn Eldrtich Knight Fighter. He's built to tank, and while the entire party just got dumped in the Nine Hells with all of our equipment left behind (hopefully a briefly temporary situation - we'll see) generally speaking, here's how he's built:
He started with a +3 to Strength, a +1 to Con, a +2 to Intelligence, a +1 to Charisma, and +0s to Wisdom and Dex (yes, the most common saving throws. Shush.) And he's got the Defensive fighting style, giving me a +1 bonus to AC while wearing armor (which makes his current predicament all the more frustrating.) At level 12, he's bumped his Strength to +5, his Con to +2, and taken the Tough feat. I prefer to take the "average" amount of health when I level (randomness in play and at character creation is fine, but I don't want a character ruined because I've been unlucky with rolls years after I first started playing him) so at level 12, he's currently got a max health of 124 (he'll be going up 10 per level for a bit, as I'll be getting Warcaster next, but will probably get at least one more bump to Con and possibly push it to +4 at level 19 if I don't go for Shield Master.)
His most important equipment is a set of adamantine plate, a +1 shield, and a +1 battleaxe. So he has a passive AC of 22, but with the Shield spell (which I technically have to drop my axe to use until I get Warcaster, but I can always just scoop it up or Weapon Bond it back to my hand in a pinch) he can regularly bump it up to 27 (given that I'm rarely casting non-cantrip spells, I typically cast it any time I'd take a hit, so I almost have a practical AC of 27.)
Anyway, that's probably not super relevant. He's a pure Fighter (much as I had wanted to possibly multiclass into Wizard, we're at a point where I can't actually get any of the super-cool high-level spells anyway, so I figure I'll focus on his tank-fighter build.)
As a PHB Dragonborn, beyond the +2 to Strength and +1 to Charisma, you get two other racial features - resistance to the damage type of your draconic heritage (so lightning for my blue boy) and then a breath-weapon based on that ancestry (for me, a 30x5-ft line of lightning.) The breath weapon does 2d6 at level 1, then goes up to 3d6 at level 6, 4d6 at level 11, and 5d6 at level 16. The target makes a Dex save against a DC determined by your Constitution (so, 8 + PB + Con). This takes an action and recharges on a short rest.
The new Unearthed Arcana version, however, improves various things.
First off, the ability score bonuses, in keeping with the new rules for such things, simply become a +2 to any score and a +1 to any other (which is also how existing Dragonborn can be made in this post-Tasha's world.) So, for instance, I might have put that +1 to Con or Intelligence instead of Charisma, had that been the case.
You still get resistance to the damage type of your ancestry, so that's a wash.
There are also new options for ancestry, though, which include Gem dragons. But I'm going to look at this simply from my established character's perspective. While his neutral alignment (though frankly I play him as more Lawful Good than his official Lawful Neutral) might suggest he could actually be a Sapphire, rather than Blue dragonborn (and thus get thunder damage and resistance, as well as a different new racial) we'll just assume he's still a Blue. (Also, of course, humanoids have always had free will when it comes to alignment, and dragonborn, to my understanding, have never had their alignments particularly connected to the corresponding dragon types.)
So, there are really only two changes here (aside from the aforementioned ASI.)
The first is Chromatic Warding. As an action, Jax could become not just resistant, but immune to Lightning damage for 10 minutes. This ability can be used once per long rest. Lightning's not super uncommon, but it's not as common as, say, fire, so this might be a bit situational. Still, it's better than the literal nothing I have compared to this, so I'd take it.
Now, however, we're going to look at the breath weapon.
The UA breath weapon works differently. While it's the same shape (not so for, say, a Red Dragonborn, whose breath goes from a cone to a line) we have three major changes to this.
The first is that it's now d8s instead of d6s. The average roll for a d8 is 4.5, compared to a 3.5 for a d6, so at level 1 it's doing 2 more damage on average per breath. By my current level it's 4 more, and at max it's 5 more. Not a huge amount, but significant, and the other changes are a bigger deal.
The second change is that a dragon breath can now happen once each time you take the Attack Action, and it takes the place of one of your attacks. If you don't have any extra attack feature, it basically just means that you do it as a full action. But as a Fighter who's past level 11, that means that I can use this and follow it up with two weapon attacks. And if I action surge, I can do so again, meaning two breaths and four weapon attacks. 4d6 is a little underwhelming when I'm giving up three 1d8+6 (I have a +1 battleaxe) attacks or my Green-Flame-blade/war magic attack combo (which becomes 3d8+6 and then 2d8+2 to a second target, plus another 1d8+6), but if I can weave a 4d8 blast of lightning potentially hitting two targets, that becomes a lot more appealing. (Even against a single target, the 4d8 comes out to about 18 damage on average (or 9 on a successful save) while to do so I'd only be losing a single attack that does on average 10.5 damage on a hit - and if I can hit more targets, that starts to multiply.)
The third change is that you now get to use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and recharge them on a long rest.
This is the one area where the ability is technically not strictly better than the existing one, as you can get the old version back on a short rest. However, given that at level 1, you've got a PB of 2, that means that you need to have at least two short rests per day to get more breaths out of it. At level 12, my PB is 4, and it's going to be hitting 5 when I next level up, so unless you're taking an absurd number of short rests per day, you'll still get more breaths in a day with the new version.
This is, of course, playtest material, but I think it's a huge improvement over what is a thematically awesome but mechanically underwhelming race from the PHB. As a race that lacks darkvision but doesn't get any of the crazy cool features that other night-blind races get (like a variant human's level 1 feat or a Halfling's lucky feature) the Dragonborn could use some love. Really, the change to the way the breath weapon works sells this for me, as I can imagine using it far more than I currently do.
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