Races of the Dragon

The bad news about Races of the Dragon: The two new races, the dragonborn and the spellscales are just awful. Apparently, someone out there thought that the default dwarf race wasn’t serious or grim enough, and gave us the dragonborn. Likewise, if you’ve ever thought that elves weren’t flighty and magical enough, the spellscale are for you. *gag*

The good news? Those only take up 31 pages of a 158 page book, making Races of the Dragon a very good 127 page book.

Kobolds, who are the stars of the book, get a lot of believable fleshing out, boosting both their links to dragons (but in a low-key way) and their status as underground low level menaces. (It turns out there’s a perfectly valid reason for them being cannon fodder in so many games.) The core kobold is also mildly tweaked to be a more playable race, and by burning a feat, there’s a mild variant kobold race that’s even better.

Half-dragons and the draconic template from the Draconomicon (reprinted here) get a chapter, including a monster class that allows a character to turn draconic and then eventually into a half-dragon without having to wait for the Dragon Disciple prestige class. The book also discusses the issue of exactly how, and why, there are so many draconic and half-dragon creatures running around. (Dragons are less kinky than you might have feared.)

The prestige classes aren’t as flavorful as the ones in the Draconomicon, there’s a counterpart to the Dragon Disciple, turning the character into a draconic character instead of a half-dragon (and more quickly). There are also prestige classes for most classes, although some of them are a bit quirky, like the Singer of Concordance, which is a plane-shifting hotel clerk of Io, or near enough.

Then follows a bevy of feats, which especially ones that boost sorcerers, kobolds, and other “dragon-blooded” characters.

There are also the now-obligatory substitution levels, with kobolds getting access to four of them (including the dragon-blooded sorcerer levels).

There are more spells than in the other races books, although Power Word: Pain is an overly powerful first level spell that you’ll likely see fixed in errata on the official Wizards of the Coast Web site very soon.

The new items and magic items are fairly nice, and include new-to-me draconic grafts.

The book is rounded out with more words in Draconic and a slightly different take on the Draconic pantheon (Kurtulmak is also detailed earlier in the kobold section).

While it’s not equal to the wonderful Draconomicon, Races of the Dragon finally makes kobolds a viable player race, makes them a really interesting foe and adds a lot of nice new stuff for sorcerers.

This is obviously a very targeted book, and if you’re not in the audience for what it’s got to offer, the book will offer little value. If you are interested in more draconic content or especially are interested in kobolds (as all right-thinking people are), Races of the Dragon is a home-run and a must-buy.

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