Riding on the short coattails of WOTC’s past Races series of sourcebooks comes Races of the Dragon. While Races of Stone, Wild and Destiny focused on the seven core racial choices, Dragon really only fleshes out the optional racial choice of Half Dragon and everyone’s favorite pathetic opposition that even first-level characters can clobber, Kobolds. It shares the previous three books’ annoying trait of adding yet another unwanted, unwarranted and uninteresting race. This time it is the Spellscales. There are also details on a fourth possible race which is really the PC races going through a transformation to become more dragon-like. Personally I think the Good-aligned humanoids would stick with their traditional deities and keep Bahumut (the patron deity of Good-aligned dragons) as an ally, not undergo the transformation to be his agent.
One huge frustration with this book is that it lacks details about any other races that have ties to dragons. The past books covered races related to the title. For example, Races of Destiny contained a chapter on the planetouched races, Doppelgangers, Mongrelmen, Half Ogres and human offshoots from theMonster Manuals. That was in addition to the title races which received the more thorough explanation. Dragon should have at least fleshed out a page each on other races known for using Draconic as its primary language: Lizardfolk, Troglodytes and Yuan-Ti quickly come to mind. I know there’s aForgotten Realms book covering the Yuan-Ti in greater detail but those books are too expensive and too geared toward the bloated world of Faerun.
There are still positive aspects to the book. Namely feats, spells and prestige classes to give Kobolds a fighting chance and your players a rude surprise. Five years have passed so the veterans of earlier editions of D&D have become accustomed to Kobold sorcerers amongst the rather feeble opposition the rank-and-file Kobolds offer. Now there are even nastier abilities they have which probably could explain why Gnomes and Dwarves never seem to eradicate them from their nearby communities. The additional materials also apply to Half-Dragons including the campaign-busting feat which allows them to use their breath weapon every one to four rounds like regular dragons can. The only prerequisite is the character having at least six hit dice. With the +3 ECL on them, this is too easily achieveable for PCs in my opinion. What’s a DM to do then? The player will open this can of whoop-ass constantly (even I would, only a fool wouldn’t). So you can only overcompensate on the opposition to make the fights more challenging. At least I already worked out a compromise with my current player with a Half Dragon cleric, the Extra Breath Weapon feat from Savage Species is required. Obviously the feats, prestige classes and spells also apply to the two boring additional races but I’m not going to dwell on them since I’ve already expressed my disdain for them.
The Bottom Line: Races of the Dragon is a huge disappointment. It comes in 40 pages short of its predecessors yet has the same $30 price tag. It doesn’t follow the same format or content either. I also found myself asking why this material wasn’t covered in Draconomicon? Maybe they could have taken more time to flesh out a sequel book instead of lumping this in with the Racesseries. Besides, Half Dragon isn’t a race per se due to their rarity so it is impractical to give them the same treatment as other crossbreeds. Dungeons & Dragons is drowning in volumes of sourcebooks, most of which are crap. I would only recommend this book if you have a Half Dragon and you’re seeking options or you’re a DM who feels that Kobolds have always received a raw deal in the game. Otherwise, your $30 are better put to use on good battleboard or PDF versions of the great adventures D&D used to have published. The game needs material to keep it moving along, not more optional source material
Man, sounds abysmal! Now, to be fair +3 ECL doesn’t effect hit dice, so six hit dice isn’t reached until the group is playing 9th level characters. That’s not a bad place to start getting a breath weapon once per four rounds, when your buddy the wizard is chucking a fireball every round.
Still, your overall comments spell it out for me: 30 pages short, no sense of connectivity with the rest of the D&D milieu monsters and races, “official” power creep as often occurs in the latter years of any edition of D&D and stealing a concept from Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed (the mojh) to barely make sales just isn’t a good marketing plan.
Now, I like kobolds, and think they are a lot of fun at lower levels and as characters, so I might pick this up, but only if I can find it at a greatly reduced cost at a used bookstore or something.
Thanks for the warning,
Flynn