Races of the Dragon

You're gonna love this sourcebook a lot more than me if (a) you love playing half-dragons, or (b) you love kobolds as a race. While the earlier Draconimicon focused on dragons, this one focused on dragon-y characters.

Half-dragons and the draconic templates get a closer treatment here, with more role playing ideas thrown in. I've always found them to be odd, as it implies that dragons are really kinky and just love to polymorph into fertile members of other races. And given the small number of actual dragons... well, they seem to prefer non-dragon species... Given that there's discussion of dragon-descended communities, I think this is what WotC believes to be mainstream.

But anyway, the other big race is the kobolds. They get a slight improvement to make them for viable for PCs, and their culture and beliefs get fleshed out into something that makes sense. So I think it's kind of a win here, depending on how much you like kobolds.

The last under the races section are the dragonborn and a new spellscale race. This latter race is just horribly unpredictable and flighty. They're sorceror-focused, and to me they feel like wild magic made flesh, all whim and contradictory behaviours. I just couldn't buy how such race could have progressed beyond individuals to a community. While I'm ok with the back story for dragonborn being divinely inspired, I don't see why they decided that spellscales need this “transformation” option as well.

The rest of the sourcebook is as you'd expect. There's lots of spells here, which is cool, and there's a couple of new items, and feats for dragon-y characters. The prestige classes here are pretty lacklustre, with some of them having little to offer to PCs (unless we're talking about short campaigns). An interspersed throughout are simple maps that serve as adventure hooks. Throw in an appendix on the draconic language and another on the draconic pantheon and you round out the sourcebook.

Overall, the utility of this sourcebook depends on what you're looking for. It's a little light on new content, to me. For dragonblooded characters and kobolds, this is it. For actual dragon stuff, stick with Draconimicon.