OK so to investigate a little further I went ahead and install k3b on my own box. When I ran it for the first time (as user) this is what I got

cdrecord does not run with root privileges
cdrecord needs to run with root privileges to be able to access the cd devices, use real time scheduling, and set a non-standard fifo buffer. This is also true when using SuSE's resmgr.
Solution: Use K3bSetup to solve this problem.
cdrdao does not run with root privileges
cdrdao needs to run with root privileges to be able to access the cd devices and use real time scheduling.This is also true when using SuSE's resmgr.
Solution: Use K3bSetup to solve this problem.
OK so run k3b setup..
sudo k3bsetup

On Step2 under the Programs tab it shows /usr/bin/cdrdao, /usr/bin/cdrecord, /usr/bin/mkisofs, /usr/bin/normalize, /usr/bin/readcd. You may have more apps installed but I beleive these are the bare minimum requirements.

Step3
It shows my cdrw drive. There are options to 'Add Device' or 'Refresh' or you can even manually enter your drive if it isn't detected.

Step5 Add your user name here. Make sure "let k3b make changes' is checked and hit next.
You can see wjhat k3b is about to do like so:

These are the permission changes K3b Setup will perform and why:

change permission for cdrecord, mksiofs, and cdrdao to 4710
cdrecord and cdrdao require write access to all the CD drives and have all three programs run with higher priority. That is why they need to be run as root.
add cdrecord, mkisofs, and cdrdao to group 'cdrecording'
not everybody should be allowed to execute these programs since running a program as suid root is always a security risk.
add the selected users to group 'cdrecording'
these users will be able to run cdrecord, mkisofs, and cdrdao
change permission for all detected SCSI drives to 660
K3b requires write access to the SCSI CD drives in order to detect writing speed, for example
change permission for all detected ATAPI drives to 620
K3b only requires read access to the ATAPI drives since it is not (yet) able to detect speed and other parameters for ATAPI devices.
add all detected devices to group 'cdrecording'
since write access to devices is always a security risk (although one cannot do much harm with writing to a CD device), only the selected users will be able to access the drives
Step6
Hit finish.

All settings have been saved.
If you added new user to your config you may need to login again to let the changes take effect.
If the configuration of your system changes, just run K3b Setup again.
Thank you for using K3b. Have a lot of fun!
You may also need to do this:

Setting>Configure K3B