Is the Dragonborn’s Breath Weapon from Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons an attack

attackcombatdnd-5edragonborn

Fizban's Treasury of Dragons presents an alternative version for dragonborns. One of the features that have been changed is the Breath Weapon:

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. Each creature in that area must make a Dexterity saving throw (DC = 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus). On a failed save, the creature takes 1d10 damage of the type associated with your Chromatic Ancestry. On a successful save, it takes half as much damage.

The above description refers to a Chromatic Dragonborn: the other types have similar text, but the shape of the Breath is different.

Then, once the character has taken the Attack action one of the attacks can be substituted with this Breath Weapon. Despite the name, it is not clearly stated that such option constitutes an actual attack.

Is this version of the Breath Weapon from FToD an attack?

For a possible scenario where this could matter, consider a Goblin Boss and their Goblin minions: the Boss has the following reaction available:

Redirect Attack. When a creature the goblin can see targets it with an attack, the goblin chooses another goblin within 5 feet of it. The two goblins swap places, and the chosen goblin becomes the target instead.

Suppose that the Boss is next to a Goblin, and the former is targeted by the Breath Weapon of a Chromatic Dragonborn (see the scheme below, where D stands for dragonborn, B for Goblin Boss and G for the Goblin): can the Boss use its reaction and switch position with the other Goblin?

Best Answer

It’s not an attack

If there's ever any question whether something you're doing counts as an attack, the rule is simple: if you're making an attack roll, you're making an attack.

This is the general rule. Specific rules that break it, like the grapple or the shove, are explicit that they are attacks notwithstanding the general rule. The breath weapon description doesn’t do that, so the general rule applies.

Yes, if the second Goblin is not within the Reach of the thing making the opportunity attack

It seems a bit weird, however the criteria for triggering an opportunity attack are:

You are moving out of the reach of a hostile creature
This movement is from one of your Actions, Bonus Actions, Movement or Reaction
You have not taken the Disengage action
You are not Teleporting

For this question we can discount Point 4, as the Goblin Boss can't teleport.

We'll also ignore Disengaging for now.

For Point 2, the movement is by the Goblin Boss' Reaction, which fulfills that criteria

For Point 1, if the swapping with the second Goblin does not cause the Goblin Boss to leave the Reach of any hostile creature, it will not trigger an Opportunity attack. In the diagrams below, the first set of movement will not trigger an opportunity attack, while the second set will.

EG    ->    EB
B           G


EBG   ->    EGB

E - Enemy; 
G - Goblin; 
B - Goblin Boss

Note that wherever the second Goblin is moved from, it does not trigger an Opportunity attack from anything as its movement is forced by the Goblin Boss.

As for using Disengage (via Nimble Escape), it only stops OAs for the rest of your Turn, not the entire Round.

So, if someone had Readied an action to hit the Goblin Boss when the Boss did a specific thing, then the Goblin Boss did that thing on the Boss' turn, and in Reaction the Boss used Redirect Attack, that would not trigger an OA, wherever it moved, as it is still the Boss' Turn so Disengage is still in effect. But normally, Disengage would not help for this.

[RPG] Is this version of the dragonborn race unbalanced

It is fine

Stronger than the original, about the same as a half-elf, which itself is not the best race, so this cannot be overpowered.
This homebrew race is so far from the original in the PHB that I would call it something else entirely, but it is not too strong.

Why is the original weak?

It is not about the number of features a race gets, but how often they come into play and how much they matter¹:

Resistance is rare and powerful in 5e, but of course it is hard to know at character creation what will come up most
Breath Weapon is used with a tertiary stat, has horrible damage, and takes up an action
The abilities are not complementary, only a combination of mental stats (like Int+Cha) would be worse. Beside Paladins, only some niche builds find Str + Cha useful

To make matters worse, Resistance goes against Breath Weapon, in that for the first you should pick something common like fire or poison, for the second something rare like acid. With the current setup, you should prefer Resistance, as Breath Weapon is close to useless for the following reasons:

For any reasonably optimized character, about 3 enemies have to be in the area just to break even with your usual damage output²
- Most of the time so many enemies cluster only around one of your fellow adventurers, whom you do not want to hurt
It costs an action, and very few characters can do something useful with just a bonus action

Yours compared to the original and half-elf

Dragonborn

You replaced the dragonborn's best feature (Resistance) with some new, less useful ones. They come up rarely, and are not really powerful. All things considered, I would say the overall usefulness decreased.

The big change here are the ability modifiers, now dragonborns are good choices for Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and Paladins.

Other features

Size. Same as original
Speed. Same as original
Breath Weapon. Same as before (pretty weak, see above)³
Draconic Swimming Training. Very niche, close to inconsequential
Horns. Very few weapons are worse, so why would you use this?
Goring Rush. This is closest to useful from all the features, still significantly worse than Resistance would be. Above level 4, doing 1d6+Str damage is not much better than 0, compared to your usual damage output
Glider Wings. Similar to swimming. Inconsequential compared to Aarakocra
Languages. Same as original

Half-elf

Same ability modifiers, different features.
For most classes, I would still prefer the half-elf, two skills and darkvision come up much more frequently than gore attacks.

Simple fix to the original

Breath Weapon should either do decent damage, or should cost less.

If you want tactics to be relevant, increase the damage die to d10 from d6. In this case 2 enemies are usually worth an action⁴.
If you want it to be easy, leave the damage, but make it a bonus action.

Do not change anything else.

Variant Humans were still the best race for most builds even without the extra skill, with only one feature (the bonus feat)
Dual wielders for example lose their bonus action attack too, if they use their action for breathing
Actually a bit better than the original, at least it does not clash with the Resistance now
Unless you would have advantage on your attacks. Similarly, Breath Weapon can be useful if you have disadvantage on your attacks