Addressing Race Imbalance: Human and Dragonborn

[TheoryInfinity]

I was originally planning on posting this on the Larian forum, but the website refuses to send me a confirmation email to verify my account. So here we are.

One strand of dialogue I have noticed floating around is the weakness and lack of verisimilitude of the human racial abilities introduced on the release of the game. Except in a very limited sets of circumstances, I’m looking at you sorcerers or wizards, their features are just very weak.

The light armor and shield proficiency is pretty powerful when adding AC onto squishy spellcasters and is pretty much a full feat by itself for them, but provides no benefit to nearly any other class. This is a bit counterintuitive since humans thematically are supposed to be generalists capable of selecting any career path successfully. Meanwhile, anyone who would want to actually use a spear probably already can, and anyone with medium light armor and shield proficiency loses out on almost all of a human’s racial features. Next up is their versatility option, which makes thematic sense when giving them an extra proficiency, if a bit underwhelming. Attached to that is a carry weight multiplier, which when viewed through a world which includes dwarfs, half orcs, and dragonborn, seems immersion breaking at best and insulting at worst since carry capacity becomes a quality of life issue the moment we get access to the camp’s storage

When we compare the humans bonuses to those that most resemble their current racial bonuses, the half elf and Githyanki, their weakness becomes even more jarring.


Human
Spears, Pikes, Halberds, Glaives, Light Armor, and Shield
One of any skill proficiency
No Darkvision
Carry capacity +25%

Half-Elf (Wood elf)
Same as Human
Stealth
12ft Darkvision
10.5 movement, elven resistances

Githyanki
Shortsword, Longsword, and Greatsword. Light and Medium Armour.
All of any attribute, changeable every day.
Up to 5 skills which you can change every day
No Darkvision
Mage hand (level 1), Jump (level 3), Misty step (level 5)

Half wood elf, besides not being able to choose their skill, is nearly a direct upgrade from humans. Githyanki on the other hand… is something I'm honestly surprised made it into the game in this powerful state, so while it is technically unfair to compare really any race to them, they still share many similarities to the human’s overall kit.

A common thread of thought I read was to include variant humans, but that also introduces another complication. Feats often provide power much more valuable to a character build due to specialization than racial features are likely to provide. Just look at 3.5 and pathfinder, where a human’s bonus feat made them nearly mandatory for most powergaming. Meanwhile, we also have the concern of half feats potentially allowing humans to start with a +3 on an attribute unless choosing the feat also did something like remove the character’s +2 attribute allocation (which in all honesty might balance that out while still increasing the power of humans).






Now we get to the dragonborn.

First and foremost, I would like to complement Larian on their wonderful rendition of dragonborn models and textures. They are by far the best depiction of d&d dragonborn I have seen in any setting. Even with my first glance in the character editor I could tell just how much love and effort went into designing their models and customizations. Plus, their facial animations are also a pleasant surprise. Part of me was worried about how their faces would look considering that for other races it was possible to take scans of a human face and mildly adjust it for slightly fantastical features. Happily, my concerns here were immediately dashed and shoved off a high cliff. Less happily, dragonborn and half orcs came out after the early access period and therefore shipped with the player’s handbook features before there was a chance for feedback.

Dragonborn are widely regarded to be the weakest race in the core rulebook, and for good reason.

In D&D there commonly exists the concept which I have heard called “ribbon features”. In general a race will have a few central abilities that make them desirable. In some cases these are core features which synergize exceedingly well with a build identity to the point of sometimes being better than class features, such as a half orc’s savage attacks. In other cases they are abilities that are so good that no build can go wrong by picking up the ability, like the halfling’s lucky trait that nearly erases all critical failures. Having one more total ability score can also sometimes be considered a core feature. Ribbon features on the other hand are abilities that exist only to look pretty on a race or character’s stat block. They usually have little to no bearing on a character’s actual viability and sometimes are actually so much worse than your class options that you are indirectly punished if you have the gall to actually try using them. Fortunately, ribbon features are usually added in among a variety of core features to add life and flavor.

Unfortunately, in the player’s handbook dragonborn are a race with zero core features and two ribbon features.

First, let's look at the Dragonborn breath attack. Which for many characters, especially well built ones, is about on par with or even worse than using next to no resources.

The following spoiler is just some musing on the actual numbers behind dragonborn breath


As an action, they can breathe in a cone of 2d6 at 5m range once per long rest (which is technically already a nerf from the player’s handbook which is usable per short rest, but that hardly matters). In experimentation, the range and cone shape mean that you can reliably hit 2 characters, sometimes hit 3, once in a blue boon hit 4, and when I sacrificed my dragonborn to the god of chokepoints I hit 5. It’s a constitution saving throw for half damage, which is unlikely to be more than +2 or +3 on even high constitution characters. In practice, I've observed this to mean about 40-60% chance of the enemy saving, or let’s assume 50% chance for full damage and 50% chance for half even on mooks. That means about 5.25 average damage per target and if you are skilled around a reliable average of 3 targets for 15.75 damage. This increases to 3d6 or 7.85 per at 6th level or 10.5 at 11th. Or a skilled reliability of 3 targets of 23.625 at level 6 or 31.5 at level 11.
Let’s ignore the fact that this is worse than the 3d6 of the first level spell burning hands for a moment and the fact that some other races get one or more spells of first or higher level as features and focus on what the character gives up when using this instead of an action that requires little to no daily resources.

In cases where a character has +3 to attack roles with their classes primary attack i’ve observed a 60-80% chance to before bonuses like high ground are factored in. Most commonly these attacks deal a d8 or d10 of damage plus their primary attribute (+3) though almost every build has a may to boost this damage with little to no resource expenditure. A ranger will almost always have hunter’s mark and a warlock will nearly always have hex. This usually ends up looking like a 70% chance of 1d10+5, a 1d10+3+1d6, or a 1d8+3+1d6, with a 5% chance of crit. Or about 7.7, 8, or 8.8 average damage respectively. Most frequently, this will in some way or another get another attack around level 5 for 15.4, 16, or 17.8 damage respectively and again at 11 for 23.2 24, and 26.4. Note that this is before considering subclass features, magic items, applying poison to your weapons, bonuses you might have gotten from choosing another race, attribute increases, or even dipping a character’s weapon in fire. Optimized builds can often exceed 50 damage per action while using minimal resources. Without those bonuses, dragonborn breath barley outpaces the options that use for all intents and purposes no resources, and once you start stacking on bonuses, a archer’s basic arrows or a fighter’s sword will always be better than a breath attack in all but the most ludicrous situations.

Once you look at limited resource abilities like spellcasting, the main characters that would even consider using a breath weapon are spellcasters that have run entirely out of spell slots. Also known as at least about 30 minutes after one should probably have taken a long rest. One solution presented in fitzban’s was to allow the dragonborn to use breath in place of an attack during an attack action, allow it be used once per long rest for every point of proficiency bonus, and increase its damage scaling, though that may have technical limitations as well as heavily biasing the race towards martial classes. Another commonly suggested change is to adjust the damage as in fitzban’s and make the ability a bonus action, which would make the action more available to martial and magical characters alike.

In the meantime, for players looking for a fix that just about matches the power level of other races, the most balanced adjustment I have found for dragonborn has been https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/556 with the let there be versatility and dragonbreath unleashed modules bring the race about on par with the average.
Also you can grab the let there be sight module if you care about the discrepancy of dragonborn being one of the few races that seem like they have eyes anatomically designed to see in the dark as well as dragons themselves having darkvision.
The savage attack module might be overkill if you are looking for a balanced version though.

Meanwhile elemental resistance is slightly more useful, but has a bad habit of being completely replaceable by a well paced potion, swappable magic item, or resistance ritual.

Human proficiencies can be argued to be better than dragonborn’s entire kit, as light armor and shield proficiencies are at least useful for spellcasters.

[Voldski]

Yah wish some races were better, feel dragonborn look really amazing but would probably never play one with their weak racials.

[Arryan]

I really liked dragon born designs, specifically skin colors ( didn't like the horns much ... and female's feel like a downgrade). I started playing with a friend and since ıt was just for fun we didn't care much about how weak it was.... hooo boi how wrong we were.
It is totally playable but that's it you can walk is not really a bonus and since breath is horrible ( max damage I did is 5 btw ) and resistances rarely work at the start, I am gold and he is blue, we barely felt that resistances were nice I barely get hit by fire since I play paladin with shield and will get shield mastery it will be even less useful. I barely get hit and if I get hit it is another element.

Tbh I like my gold boi but at the same time it feels like I am a clown that just goes and dies like a goblin.....

If dragonborn gets some buffs I will paly them again but how it is atm is just boring..