Something I think is often unappreciated about D&D is the sheer lengths it’s willing to go to in order to make sure every kind of dragon – and it has rather a lot! – has a unique breath weapon. Anybody who’s played a D&D-inspired JRPG will be familiar with the standard options: some dragons breathe fire, others breathe ice, other shoot lightning out of their mouths, and so forth. Then we get to these guys:
- Amethyst dragons hork up an enormous gemstone that can be spit with pinpoint accuracy up to 75 feet, and explodes on impact with a sixty-foot blast radius
- Black dragons just fire-hose a sixty-foot-long stream powerful acid out of their mouths, like HWAAARRRF
- Brass dragons exhale either a stream of blisteringly hot air, or a jet of narcotic gas that puts living targets to sleep
- Bronze dragons can spit lightning bolts, or alternatively exhale a mind-altering gas that compels people to run away
- Copper dragons also have the acid-barf option, or they can exhale a gas that slows down time in the affected area
- Crystal dragons exhale a spray of razor-sharp shards, which is expected, but the shards also glow brightly, forcing anyone in the area to save versus blindness
- Emerald dragons just scream really loudly
- Fairy dragons burp up a cloud of euphoria gas that inflicts no damage, but makes everyone in the targeted area high
- Green dragons huff deadly clouds of chlorine gas
- Mercury dragons shoot giant lasers
- Sapphire dragons have a sound-based breath weapon, like their emerald counterparts, but theirs is an ultrasonic “brown note” that causes psychological as well as physical damage
- Steel dragons exhale a deadly poison, with the twist that the vapour always fills a perfectly cube-shaped volume, regardless of surrounding barriers; the dragon can exercise perfect control over the cube’s dimensions
- Topaz dragons have a reverse breath weapon that sucks water out of anything in the targeted area, inducing dehydration in living victims
- Yellow dragons sandblast their victims
#What the fuck is up with Emerald Dragons
(via @skamortuus)