In times of old, human ancestors killed the dragons. In their dying breath, the last ancient dragon proclaimed that dragonkind would return once more, and that their return would take root in the hearts of their murderers.
This prophecy was forgotten over time, and the dragon slayers carried on with their lives, growing rich on dragon treasure and passing on the tales of their exploits to their children and grandchildren. But over time, one generation after another, they began to change.
First it was a few scales, or a change in eye colour. Then came the sharper teeth, the forked tongues, the sharpening of claws. From this came the dragonborn.
The current dragonborn people vary in how distinct their features are. Future generations of the dragonborn - or perhaps more recent members, with enough inbreeding or exposure to magic/dragon thoughts/ancient treasure - will become dragons entirely, bringing them back into the world once more.
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| Dragonarii by Rodrigo-Vega |
What this means for your game:
Mechanically, dragonborn remain the same as usual. If you wanted a 'lower' dragonborn with less prominent traits or a 'higher' dragonborn with more prominent ones, you could look at the Shed Skin trait given as an optional ability for Yuan-Ti (Volo's Guide to Monsters) or lizardfolk traits for inspiration. You could optionally look at giving some feats that exemplify these traits further if plot-reasons came up for the metamorphosis to speed up.
This lore works well for games where dragons are more prominent individual entities as opposed to a large-scale presence. Think more Lord of the Rings than Flight of Dragons. Dragons that exist likely have names and stories to tell, either of how their non-dragon parents raised or abandoned them, or of how they were once more human, but changed into what they are now. You could also draw inspiration from games like Skyrim, where dragons are returning to the land and there is history and lore associated with their sudden return.
In this lore, dragons returning is a gradual process over multiple generations, but there's no harm in having this be a more erratic process. It could alternatively be based on time rather than generations; a planetary event could induce the direct descendants of the dragon slayers to metamorphose at once in a cicada-esque day of screaming and fire.
Dragonborn and half-dragons are essentially one and the same as far as anyone is concerned; only dragon-lore scholars would be peculiar enough to distinguish the two. Humans are sort of well known for trying to bang anything that moves, so it is also feasible to get dragonborn/half-dragon giants, minotaurs, elementals, elves etc.
For more recent dragon emergence, current dragon statblocks would instead represent how 'pure' a dragon is; dragon wyrmlings are akin to dragonborns with wings, whilst adults and older become more obviously dragon and less humanoid.
Not quite sure what this implies for draconic sorcery. If you have any thoughts, leave a comment and let me know!
