tl;dr Dragons

If you don't care about nerd numbers, skip to the picture, if you don't care about deep lore, skip to the end for some advice on using dragons as a GM.
OG Dragons
Dragons have a lot of interesting mechanical details compared to other monsters, presumably due to being among the greatest risk and reward D&D has to offer. They have 3 varying HD per color, total HD being determined by a d8 die roll that indicates whether they are small (1-2)average (3-7) or huge (8) though this variation is only a +1 or -1 HD. Next, dragons do not roll their HD, but instead have 1-8HP per HD based on their age category, which is as follows
HP Per HD

1. Very young- 1-5 years
2. Young- 6-15 years
3. Sub adult- 15-25 years
4. young adult 26-50 years
5. adult 51-100 years
6. old 101-200 years
7. very old 201-400 years
8. ancient 400+ years

They come with a laundry list of powers, including 60' infravision, excellent sight, smell, and hearing, the ability to detect hidden or invisble creatures within about a meter per age level, and an aura of panic at young adult or greater when it charges or flies overhead that panics 1hd creatures and untrained domestic animals for 4d6 turns, forcing creatures with less that 3hd to save vs panic or freezing in in place, creatures above 3hd needing to pass a save or fight at -1 to hit (a brutal penalty considering the already high AC of dragons), with creatures of 6+HD disregarding the effect.
These effects are saved against at +5, +3, and +1  for adult, old, and very old dragons, with ancient dragons having the full effect. I am personally not the biggest fan of mind-influencing effects, but this does explain why dragons cannot be easily shot down by legions of mercenary archers. I think it fair to rule dragons as terrifying without all these mechanics, however- NPCs will rightfully fear for their lives and refuse to do the fantasy equivalent of trying to fight an attack helicopter with a pocket knife.

Dragons are given a chance of Speaking, meaning they know language, which is accompanied by a chance of being magic-users, and a chance to be sleeping- though this sleeping is not as big as a debuff as one might imagine, as they will awaken if loud noises are made within 30-120 feet (depending on terrain), when attacked, and randomly on a 6 on a d6. Sleeping dragons cannot be coup-de-graced, instead attacked at a mere +3 to hit, making sleeping dragons far from an easy target.

Dragons are encountered in groups of 1d4, but the terror of 4 ancient dragons is lessened by the caveat that dragons only travel in groups of 3-4 as sub-adults, other combinations being either a mated pair of age categories 5-8, or a mated pair and offspring (Very Young) or (1 in 10) eggs. Of some note is that Dragons are ferociously protective of their young and their mates and get a berserk +2 to hit and +1 to claw and +3 to bite damage if the young are attacked or their mate is attacked (if attacks are spread between the dragons they do not become enraged). This is kinda interesting

Unlike many other monsters, dragons are given elemental resistances that reduce to hit and damage, though this information is rather awkwardly presented in a breath-weapon based chart and including such things as tritons counting as 'water attacks.' They are also given a special caveat for their saving throws- once a dragon reaches age category 5, its HD for saving throws is not determined by actual HD, but by HP/4 determining HD for purposes of saving throws, to avoid high HP but low HD dragons being easily defeated by save vs spells.

The most important thing about dragons is surely their breath weapon, which I think is far more interesting in the AD&D form than later editions- it deals flat damage equal to a dragons current HP score, making an ancient dragon capable of casually inflicting upwards of 60 damage easily at the beginning of a fight, but beaten dragons incapable of dealing much damage. Dragons are said to use their breath attacks but 3 times per day, with about a 50% chance of doing so per round. Their claws are not too dangerous, and their bite attacks range from dangerous to almost as likely to kill a character as the breath weapon.

Almost as interesting and lost (at least in the 3.5 monster manual) is the idea of Subduing dragons- Intelligent creatures may strike for subdual damage, a form of nonlethal damage which has a chance to make a dragon surrender and serve those bullying it out of fear for its life, the chance being percentile odds calculated from the ratio of maxHP to Subdual Damage, and  checking at the end of each round a dragon has been non-lethally battered, unless subdual damage exceeds HP in which case subdual is immediate. Statistically, this will cause dragons to surrender twice as fast as killing them assuming only standard attacks are made, but excludes the use of murderous spells and siege engines Importantly, this damage does NOT reduce the power of a dragon's breath weapon, so subdual is considerably harder to pull off.

Subdued dragons can be sold in larger towns and cities, presumably along side the crying giant beaver children from earlier in the Monster manual, with offers typically being 100 to 800 coins per HP the dragon has, and of course they can be ridden, explaining where all those dark lords riding dragons get their dragons from. The most powerful Good dragons cannot be subdued, presumably due to the gygaxian idea of slavery being ok when you do it to 'bad guys.'(this, among the 'slaughter orc babies is Lawful Good is why no one should be taking D&D alignment seriously) I will note that the monster manual I am examining is from 1978, and the TSR code of ethics only started mentioned that slavery should only be depicted as an inhuman institution to be abolished by sometime around 1994. The line between slavery, animal abuse,  and animal training gets real fuzzy when you have intelligent animals and monsters, and if you are an animal rights advocate, its probably not fuzzy at all... but I digress from the main point.

Subdued dragons will, if not strongly held, well treated, given ample treasure, and allowed ample freedom (some of which seem a bit at odds with the initial presumed beating and robbery of the dragon, and with each other), attempt to kill their captor and escape. This might imply the relation between a dragon and a dragon-puncher might be more like pokemon and pokemon trainer, where the dragon respects the human for the strength and is more like a new member of the adventuring party like any other retainer who is given a full share of treasure, rather than a slave master and their abused slave. It is also mentioned that evil dragons do not serve good masters for long, and vice versa.

This leads me to my next point, the psychology of dragons. Though later editions seem quite happy to constantly increase the intelligence and untamable power of these bully-lizards, making them more like chinese and japanese god-like dragons and of course, Smaug, rather than medieval european dragons which were basically poison crocodiles who were also symbolic of sin. Dragons in AD&D are mentioned to be cowards more prone to surrendering to subdual than even the smallest kobold, egotists vulnerable to flattery and fighting other powerful creatures for perceived dominance, and of course, greed for more and more treasure, which it is said only 40% of silver and 80% of gold dragons are above.

And finally, when speaking of treasure, one must not forget the fabulous Treasure Type H that makes any dragon hoard a tempting prize for all adventurers... however, it comes with some stern caveats applied to limit the potential for dragons to become loot pinatas.
Very Young dragons have only a 10% chance of having 1/4th listed treasure, Young Dragons a 25% chance for 1/4th, Sub-adults a 50% chance for 1/2th treasure, with Young Adults and Old dragons having normal treasure and Very Old and Ancient dragons having, respectively, a 50% and 75% chance for 150% and 200% treasure. A few dragons have the potion treasure subtype added to H, and some the scroll type as well. White dragons have treasure type E, O, and S, making them curiously better for magic items, but far worse for monetary hoards- no real explanation for this is given, but one might surmise this is because, due to the desolate lands they live in, they are more likely to rob polar adventurers than caravans of gold.

Dragon spell determination is weird and also color coded probably not worth getting into, and of curious note is, at the end of the dragon section, the Dragonne, a half brass dragon half giant lion monster which is largely unremarkable save for the implication of dragons breeding with non-dragons, and the Dragon Turtle, an aquatic, shelled dragon. (The dragon section also includes tiamat and bahamut but as those are more official WotC entities of godlike, I have little to say about them)

3.5 Dragons- after some deeply unsatisfying encounters with dragons in AD&D, I thought the 3.5 dragons were the coolest thing ever, at first. The sentiment that dragons needed some sort of 'buff' was oft echoed by people of prior years, as Dragon Magazine was full of articles about ways to make dragons more dangerous, giving them tail slaps and wing bashes and providing them with terrain tricks, and short fiction about dragons using deadly hit and run tactics and far worse, succumbing to becoming forgotten realm style NPCs who sit around smoking in taverns and being far more mysterious and powerful than you could ever comprehend.

In any case, 3.5 had BIG DRAGONS with BIG NUMBERS and I was super impressed by a mere wyrmling having like 45 hp, and great wyrms having like 565 hp... but nowadays of course that sort of math scaling makes me want to just play a videogame instead. I am sorely tempted to go off on a rant about OSR sensibilities here, but I expect that would be like preaching to the choir. Suffice it to say that not every dragon need be Smaug-leaning-Ancalagon The Black for dragons to be a menace, and buffing dragons ironically made them less a part of the D&D experience for many games.

BFRPG Dragons-
BFRPG is similar to AD&D, with the more modern take of having them have a wider range of HD by age category rather than a flat HD with changing HP scores by age category. While certainly more in line with other monsters, I think this approach does miss out on 2 things-

1- The "to hit" bonus makes younger dragons much less able to fight armored foes- a AD&D black dragon's to hit goes from +6 to +8 and that's merely a matter of how BIG the dragon is, while a BFRPG dragon range goes from +4 to +9, which is based on age.
2- the breath attack. The AD&D HP dependent breath attack is pretty neat, I think- it demands immediate fear, but is not unmanageable with proper planning. The 3/day limitation on uses makes baiting out attacks on decoys a very viable strategem, AND provides a fairly strict limit on power if the players get their hands on a friendly dragon- it may only breathe 3 times, and must be kept healthy to maintain its offensive capabilities.
BFRPG dragons can breathe once per day per HD, which makes breath-baiting less viable for the older varieties, and due to the random damage, less important for younger ones. BFRPG dragons are limited to breathing at most every other round, but maintain the power of their breath even as their life falters, which I think could be unsatisfying if a nearly-defeated dragon can turn around and obliterate its foes after all...

this post has too many words aaaaaaaaaa

Sunset Realm Dragons-
And so light degenerated to insatiable fire, and fire to indiscriminate poison...
Dragons are the spawn of the 2nd Sun, Yg-A, though they are much diminished, and when the first dragons descended with Yg-A from the sky, the Serpent Empire crumbled before their insatiable greed. They had traded their legs for the wisdom of Yg (the snake goddess born of the shed skin of the Dragon-Sun Yg-A) and survived the rain of fire by descending into the earth and becoming small and unassuming, and so the mightiest of dragons, the Fire-Dragons, ruled the burnt and ashen world. However, as the dragons grew bloated on stolen light, some changed, their molten red scales becoming golden. The greatest of these was Ebetheron, and these dragons forsook the ways of Yg-A and became empathetic and kindly to the smaller creatures, and assisted the barbarian Elves and remaining snake people, as well as the other creatures upon the earth that could comprehend charity. When Yg-A attempted to devour the world and became the magma-shrouded Undersun, the age of the dragons grew to a close, as without their devouring sun to defend them, the Moons descended to devour the offspring of Yg-A, and the titanic dragons of old were either slain, or forced to hide and diminish greatly. The ages turned, light degenerated to flame, and flame to poison, and the dragons that remained took different paths, willing or no, and developed certain tendencies.


Red Dragons-  though much cooled compared to their 2nd sun ancestors, Reds trace their lineage to Yg-A and remain the most fearsome and rapacious of dragon-kind. They oft dwell in volcanic regions such as the Beast Islands and the deep earth, close to the heat of their progenitor, and prefer to kill with claws and fangs, as their fearsome breath reduces precious metals to slag, and are known by some as Dwarf-Dragons, for they are known to dig and smelt ores when unable to rob treasure, and a deep secret of Dwarves is that they and their Svart ancestors can sometimes undergo metamorphosis into red dragons if ones greed and wealth grows too great. Gold Dragons are red dragons that have sworn themselves to the charitable gold dragon god Ebetheron and are very rare and somewhat divine. Their preferred prey civilization is dwarves, as the tactics the technologically adept dwarves employ (burning oil, gunpowder) make for amusing pyrotechnics when breathed upon.

Blue Dragons- the descendants of Bai-Szue, an immense desert dragon of the overseas Fault whose cult of wealth and hierarchical obeisance has been a template for other dragon cults for centuries. These dragons hoard not just wealth, but worship and respect, and have been transformed spiritually to spew sacred lightning instead of fire, and dangle the promise of ascending to dragon status to other beings and have created the race of Kobolds (a corruption of the word Cobalt, for Blue). They consider their lightning-souls an upgrade as opposed to the degeneration other non-red dragons endured, and Fault-Dwellers are the most personable of dragons, often sliding into humanoid society as would-be priests, bankers, and rulers. Despite their association with deserts, Saresare is mostly free of blue dragons, and due to their affinity towards lightning, Blue dragons are frequently found in (or the cause of?) stormy regions like open plains and coasts, and are deadly dangerous to Gondazong airships, as the lightning breath spreads through the metal hulls of these ships and electrocutes those within.

Green Dragons- The poison dragons are thought to be less dangerous than the Fire and Thunder drakes, but this is a misapprehension by foolish humans who have mistaken the lesser Wyverns for Green Dragons. Elves, apes, and halflings know well the terror of these beasts... These dragons live in vegetation-dense regions, including the toxic jungles of Spring in the moonlands, and their breath is a billowing cloud of death that leaves plants unharmed and animals dead. They have omnivore teeth that are stained with poison, and some are said to be so poisonous that their sweat can kill and their footprints remain poisonous for days. Accounts of dragons breathing sleep gas, confusion gas, and so on are almost certainly Greens with variant breath weapons, or spellcaster dragons. Thought to be the most gregarious and family-oriented dragons, this is exemplified by the ancient family tree of greens that menaces the northwest of the Fault with multiple generations at once- with not enough treasure to go around, the dragons have developed extremely specific hoards to reduce competition with each other, and dragons are known as the Painting Dragon, the Taxidermy Dragon, and so on. Having the least destructive breath weapon, Green Dragons are known for having hoards of considerably more fragile natures than other dragons, and as such they do not like fighting among their own hoard, even preferring to carefully stalk and poison thieves and recover the treasure later, rather than trying to stop them at the hoard in the first place.







Black Dragons- It is unclear whether acid is a degeneration of poison, or an intermediate stage between fire and poison. In any case, these dragons are even more loathe to use their breath weapons than red dragons, as their corrosive spit leaves basically nothing but raw stone undamaged... and for this reason, black dragons are notorious as gem-hoarders. Black dragons tend to live in swamps (or perhaps, their acid tends to turn their habitats into swamps) and are exceedingly common in the Bog of the Canal. They claim old ruins and sometimes swallow up oozes and vomit them forth to dissolve only what these specialized oozes devour (as opposed to the indiscriminate acid they produce themselves). . It is rumored Black dragons are the experiments of the now defunct Frog Kingdoms, explaining the region they inhabit most commonly.

White Dragons- these frosty creatures live in the Auroral Reaches and the Wrecker Bay, as well as any Winter-Moon dominated area of the moonlands and high mountain peaks. It is widely assumed that they are dragon eggs hatched in the light of the winter moon that, rather than freezing and dying, had their hearts turned to ice. Compared to the overweening pride and grandstanding of other dragons, white dragons are gloomy and introverted, and keep their frozen victims around to talk to like dolls while slowly munching on them. They tend to value treasure based on how it reflects light, and on entertainment value, so tend to have smaller but more interesting hoards than other dragons.

Leviathan Dragons- or Dragon Turtles, or simply Leviathans- these tremendous beasts have HD ranging not in the 6-12 range, but in the 15-45 range. They are the size of small islands and indeed, people have built doomed settlements atop them before. The dragons lost their breath weapon but compensated by being huge, and though an exit strategy is needed, slaying them from the inside is usually more feasible than harpooning them, though this does not prevent fishermen of the Beast Islands from trying. Leviathan dragons are less of a threat to humans as they are to the Ningen of the sea.

Metallic Dragons- Gold Angel dragons aside, metallic dragons exist only in two senses- one being those dragons who have eaten so much metal that they have changed color, and the other in Nightmare dragons, who are monsters of Nightmare that are symbolic of dead civilizations, not actual dragons.

Notes for All Dragons-
Dragons have long necks that can attack everywhere except directly behind themselves, which is what their tails and back claws are for. Their wings can batter people at their flanks, and most are not big enough to swallow anything bigger than a medium dog whole. Climbing atop one exposes one to the wings and occasionally the head, but may allow attacking the eyes to blind the creature and hit vulnerable spots. They have ridges of tough scales, but no horns.

They can smell metal from miles away, making bands of knights unlikely to take the dragon unawares, and rich adventurers and merchants unlikely to come near. They have a natural affinity for spellwisps and language, and frequently will capture wizards and force them to teach them spells. They are likely to notice pieces of their hoard going missing very quickly. They must catch their breath after Breathing and can do so every 1d4 rounds to a maximum of 3 times per day. If a breath weapon is 'ready' they will leak it from their mouth, making it obvious that a breath is likely incoming. Their breath weapons are magical and expressions of their own soul, but if polymorphed or possessing another body or undead or whatever, dragon-souls are still unable to breathe without destroying their new form, and wizards polymorphed into dragons are disappointed to find themselves without this power.

Dragon hunters should consult this post for the uses of dragons, and while generally less valuable than coins by weight, for those wishing to create magical items, dragon bones and blood is generally useful.

Thoughts On Using DragonsDragons are extremely dangerous and potentially extremely rich, so the temptation is to stick them at the bottom of a dungeon with the idea of them being a final boss the players must fight their way to through a bunch of more level-appropriate challenges.

This is a good way to ensure that the dragon never gets seen before the campaign dies due to Ski Camp or whatever, and even if you do make it through, to probably make sure that the one dragon you included will be utterly demolished either in combat or by zany scheme by players who have grown far too experienced and well-equipped to really be threatened by a big lizard waiting to be stabbed in a cave, and have no story impact because, well, it's just some monster they opened a door, met for the first time, and killed and took its stuff.

Dragons should be on your encounter tables from day 1 (I like them at either the 2 or the 12 on 2d6 tables). They show up, flop down in front of the players, and probably don't attack. Instead they rob the players, eating their horses and taking their shiniest treasures. They might ask the players where they got the treasure and go investigate themselves, adding themselves to a dungeon's encounter tables. This is a good way for players to learn how to negotiate from positions of weakness and manipulate powerful but straightforward NPCs, and be a general lesson of how even bad situations (being robbed by a monster that can obliterate the party in one round) are opportunities that it is up to them to exploit, not via rolling initiative, but by thinking about the world. They could follow the dragon to get an idea of where its hoard is, for future counter-robbery. They could suck up to the dragon and offer to serve it, only for a grand betrayal later. Or maybe they really do want to start a dragon cult, or team up with the dragon to rob people. Maybe they want to trick the dragon into fighting some of their battles for them and letting a dragon tear through some Wights is worth losing the wight treasure.
None of this is dragon exclusive, but dragons are charged with dramatic potential due to their overwhelming wealth, power, and symbolism- Sure, bugbears are fine and all but its called Dungeons & Dragons.

That said, dragons need not only be randomly generated terrors plucked from the chaos of drop tables. When actively placing dragons, you should give some thought as to how they would cow and pillage the surrounding regions, and why no one has done anything about it. Dragons are deadly but not unbeatable (unless you're playing 3rd edition or later games, where the excuse 'nobodies math was good enough to beat the dragon's math is sadly an ironclad excuse) so their lair should likely be remote, hidden, trapped, guarded, etc in ways that give the brute solid home-turf advantages, and make the recovery of the treasure an adventure of its own. Like Smaug, like Fafnir, the problem of these treasure hoards is almost as important as the dragon itself- people will come forth from the woodwork wanting a piece of the dragon pie, either out of greed or genuine desire to have what the dragon stole returned to them. The treasure may not be literally cursed to turn those who hoard it into a dragon ala Fafnir, but it is, in a way, figuratively cursed- trying to hoard it all for yourself will lead you into conflict with other people. Again, not a dragon exclusive problem for the players to confront, but one that is magnified to the greatest proportions by the weight of a dragon's hoard.