Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Dragonborn are terrible, regardless of class, they need a buff

So, with Patch 1 now live, Dragonborn's breath actually scales now. That's a good thing, but the rest of the race is still below average.

In fact, I would argue that Dragonborn are probably the worst race right now, even worse than humans and half elves, who get simple armour proficiency and shields, which is great on classes like Wizards and sorcerers.

In comparison, Dragonborn get no darkvision, no skill proficiencies, no advantages, etc.

All they get is a resistance to a single type of damage and a breath weapon once per long rest.

In comparison, new variants of Dragonborn from Fizban's Tresury of Dragons get:

1. Breath Weapon. When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can replace one of your attacks with an exhalation of magical energy in a 30-foot line that is 5 feet wide. (Chromatic). Usable once per turn, can be used a number equal to proficiency bonus, recharges at long rest.

-This makes them viable for fighters or any other martial class, as you can do some AOE damage and not use a whole damn action for a skill, that is often weaker than Burning Hands.

2.Draconic Resistance (same as current dragonborn, so no changes needed here)

3. DARKVISION

4. A level 5 feature like Chromatic Warding or Metallic Breath Weapon, both of which give some extra stuff at level 5.

So, please, add more stuff for them, both dialogue and mechanics wise.

Darkvision really has no impact at all. I'd rather take a random resistance, so Dragonborn resistance wins over darkvision.

The breath weapon is a wasted action that could have been spent doing something more powerful. So that's a minus in the Dragonborn column.

They are worse than some other races, but... Are you going to have any problems keeping up with the difficulty scaling because you picked Dragonborn over Half-orc? Certainly not!

LOLWAT????

You really don't have any idea do you?

For characters without darkvision, its the only buff I care to give them from a camp characater.

Try playing on tactician and having disadvantage stacked with darkness penalty, you will never be able to hit anything without darkvision.

I agree with ninja. I picked deep gnome for my first playthrough (directly went for tactician) and I was quite disappointed that my superiour darkvision almost never mattered. I had Lae'zel in the party the whole time and in the entire game there were maybe three fights where not having darkvision gave her a disadvantage.

In my opinion, given the powerful items and the fact that we can long rest as often as we want, race is mostly a cosmetic choice.

At least your Dragonborn racial got fixed this patch to scale with level and use a constitution save.

My Mephistopheles Tiefling druid got a useless mage hand that can't interact with most things, including levers and buttons. It got a duplicate conjure flame blade that is actually worse than the one my druid gets because the tiefling spells STILL SCALE WITH CHARISMA INSTEAD OF YOUR MAIN CLASS ATTACK ROLLS. This makes the Tiefling racials in general just worthless for any non-charisma class as the spells will never land on enemies if you're on a class with like 12 charisma.

And the other tiefling racials? The darkvision that everybody but humans get, and a Hellish Resistance fire resistance that's obsolete because the game showers you with fire resistance elixirs and magic items that grant fire resistance. The Tiefling racial should stack with normal resistance to give invulnerability to fire at least. Conjure Flame Blade is terrible anyways because it unequips your weapon, so you lose the passive effects of your magic equipment to equip that blade. Burning Hands is also terrible, it doesn't scale well at all.

Not that it matters because almost no one in the game but Raphael uses powerful fire spells on you. Tiefling racials are absolute trash. Zero weapon and armor proficiencies.

Meanwhile Halsin, who is also a druid like my tiefling, gets advantage against charm, cannot be put to sleep by magic, dark vision, extra movement, stealth check proficiency, weapon proficiencies, including being able to use a bow while my tiefling druid cannot use a single ranged weapon, and on top elves get a very powerful Perception proficiency racial in a game where perception checks are so important.

Simply put, elf and orc racials are stupidly overpowered compared to everyone else. Half orc gets a cheat death mechanic and a massive damage boost on crits. It's crazy how bad the racial balance is in favor of elves and orcs. Humans and half elves are really good too because civilian militia allows human and elven casters to use medium armor and shields while wielding a staff, so they are the highest AC casters in the game.

Lack of darkvision should be affecting you in all of the underdark, shadow realm, and sewers in act 3.

Or alternatively you were using a light source, either option is fine. You get a ring that lights up targets, and theres several weapons with perma light on them, or you can cast the light cantrip on any weapon, but the range of the light is only about 6m so only works for melee and not ranged.

Now for a caster without darkvision, you are going to have a lot of disadvantage attacking from range, as well as with ranged weapons.

I use Lae'zel for most of the game too and she suffered a lot without either darkvision or a lit up weapon.

But technically no you don't need it as a racial as the spell for it lasts until long rest anyway and isn't concentration based, since I don't use gale much I use him to buff non elf party members with the spell.

No offense but if you have complaints about racial bonuses, bring the complaint to wotc.

The game would come out with the phb options and things like variant human are still missing. And honestly anything but variant human is complete and utter trash. The feat was the only thing that made the race a viable option for...anything.

If one cares for mechanical boost like stats and darkvision anyway.

Lack of darkvision isent the end of the world either. You can easily bypass it with lightsources or by getting closer.

Anyway with previous games Larian has been known to perodically release new things or qol patches so if id have to make a guess I think theynwill eventually introduce all the optional rules from the new(er) sourcebooks.

Larian has homebrewed a lot of things, including monk and making druid wildshapes weaker than they are in the sourcebook.

I don't understand people's obsession with treating some table top rulebook as some unerrant bible we must abide by.

Gameplay design and balance comes first in any videogame before any faith to some rulebook. A table top game is very different to the needs of a PC game.

They are using dnd 5e as the rules sets. Some of the areas where they deviated were because the new edition for dnd wants to go that route. Other areas because they homebrewed some things. That said the more they deviate from the rules as they are in the books the less it becomes dnd and just becomes dos III.

Dragonborn are fine. Dont like their bonusss pick another race whos bonuses you do like?

I'll say that breath weapon can be decent enough, good even, but you have to regard it as an actual part of your build, not just a random bonus thing.

So your basic melee fighter is generally better off ignoring the breath weapon, using it only at an especially opportune moment. A bunch on enemies grouped up in front of you, the kind of moment where an eldritch knight would cast a cone spell like Burning Hands instead of doing a melee combo.

Conversely, one of my runs is a green (poison) dragon caster, on whom I'm putting the gear that makes for a poison build. That staff with a poison spell, the robes for extra poison damage, the gloves where poison damage might give poison status, whatever else I'm not remembering right this second. For that character, the breath weapon isn't just a random racial, it's how I trigger the effects of my poison build equipment in a cone, and without using a spell slot to boot.

I've seen all this gear around for for other elements, especially that gear set for lightning damage and charges.
Do your lightning gear build on a dragonborn with lightning breath.

Am I the only one that picks races for almost nothing?

My sorcerer is a half elf because my last Pathfinder character was a sorcerer half elf.

My paladin is a Githyanki, my bard a tiefling, and my monk a dragonborn because they look cool as hell.

Basically every location is conveniently lit up by some light source. Someone kindly goes around and lights torches, candles and braziers in every dungeon, cave and tomb across Faerûn. Even in the rare instance that they are not, that is easily overcome by the sheer amount of items, potions and scrolls that you are showered with.

If you have encountered a fight where darkvision had an impact I'd be interested to know which one, if you can put it under some spoiler tags. Because I explored all of the underdark with a ranged githyanki character on tactician and almost never suffered from disadvantage (and when I did I still had 90% chance to hit).

I like the aesthetic of them as Draconic Sorcerers. That is genuinely the best thing about them I can think of.

They look good, especially as Draconic Sorcerer. But that's about it.

But don't you know, in an RPG the true endgame is looking good while kicking ass.

Yes I also love how they look. But their breath weapon is not a selling point for me to play one.

Honestly even Humans which are pure garbo in this game are better cos you can use a shield on a caster. But Half Elf does it better so.

They need their Fizban implementation.