The whole “the bard seduces the dragon” thing is only implausible if you’re assuming that all dragons are wise and powerful ancient wyrms.
This ain’t necessarily the case: D&D dragons have age categories.
Maybe that dragon is only two hundred years old – which is the equivalent of like twentysomething in human terms – and therefore makes bad life decisions.
Maybe your bard can be one of those bad life decisions.
I feel they’re made too intentionally dumb that it makes fights with them uninteresting.
As stated by Monsier Meuble in their thread on a French version of the 3.5 E monster manual:
Indeed, he’s cold-themed. He starts life with an immunity to cold (and a corresponding vulnerability to fire) and Icewalking, allowing to adhere to any icy surface with no regard for the inclination of said surface (this include being upside down on a frozen ceiling ; this put in mind one of such dragon having contracted the local kobold tribe to trap literally every square of the floor of his lair while he himself circulates on the ceiling and walls to meet the intruding PCs ; or, for purely aesthetic reasons, while they cross a frozen lake, the PCs realize that something is walking in their steps on the other side of the ice (at least a Huge dragon with Water Breathing) ). Later it will acquire Fog Cloud thrice a day to make to blind everybody with Blind Sense (and still be able to drop his breath cone on a zone anyway), Gust Of Wind thrice a day (probably while shouting something, anything), Freezing Fog that is like Solid Fog but also covers anything it touches with ice, just so the dragon is still at home even if you choose your own battlefield, Wall Of Ice for breaking the party (and, in an incongruous scenario in which the PCs managed to stop the dragon from flying, still giving him some manoeuvrability) and finally, as a Great Wyrm, Control Weather once a day to show those pathetic mortal druids who thought they could have a nice winter for once.
Really, with those capacities, I can imagine a “fun” dungeon-fleeing game, were the murderhobos enter an apparently normal grotto with no appearance of ice or anything like that, a few obvious traps here and there, only a few wandering monsters, until finding the Lair, with a surprise white dragon at the bottom announcing “Let’s play tag. I’m it. I give you thirty seconds.” before dropping his powers to turn the tunnels into an icy, fog-filled death-trap where the dragon can come from the ceiling and the chasms and rifts the group barely paid attention to when coming in.
Alas, the text itself insists that the white dragon is not clever, no even cunning, only ferocious and bestial, and that frost giants hunt them as game animals or to make them guard dogs.
I’m fine with them being “dimmer” than other dragons as an energy saving adaptation, but a well fed one or one that has to deal with being prey to giants should be craftier and capable of traps. Their downfall should likely be in most cases that they are used to finding challenge in opponents that are their size or larger, so adventurers are an outside context problem they may underestimate or not be mentally prepared for the tactics they use.
Also, I can’t help but think of them as the most playful of the chromatic dragons ever since I read how they happily frolic in water.
Still, there is the issue of their breath weapon not being completely effective in their biome. and how adventurers will already have cold resistant spells prepared just for the environment. I feel a secondary breath weapon of hailstones would help, allowing a thematic method of bludgeoning damage.
edit: Also they are written very inconsistently. Are they honey badgers with a photographic memory, or will they yield and submit to another that defeats them?
edit 2: Commentary from the user Sleeper in the same thread
I’m not a fan of the some of the granted powers given to dragons in later editions. For the white dragon, it’s the icewalking ability.
A dragon that skitters across the icy translucent ceiling, like a giant spider on a bed of glass? That’s cool.
But making every white dragon a cross between a water strider, a drop-bear and Legolas really changes how they fit into the world.
I’d prefer some guidelines on how to give each dragon their own unique schtick, instead of giving all white dragons a once-cool trick
Scholars believe these weirdos herald the end of the multiverse by entropy.
Personally, I agree with Bogleech these guys should not be a natural part of the rust monster life cycle, but I do like the idea of them having a connection.
My favorite idea is they are descended from dragons who were cursed into the form of rust monsters, and managed to partially beat the curse, creating a new variety of dragon, with a larval stage almost indistinguishable from rust monsters.
also make the wings more like shrimp fins and less butterfly
Personally I would put them on the material plane and make them sort of unwanted self-help guides with ulterior motives: they want to free you of your material possessions… by eating them.
Lizardfolk have quite the reason to be suspicious of most other races
Also ties into an interesting idea of a cosmic “retcon” from an rpg.net (included in sour ), proposing the the planes were more reptile-focused in a now mostly erased past.
It relies on the same logic as time paradoxes in Terry Pratchett’s work :“Yeah you had that sheep for years.. but did you always have that sheep for years?”. History itself was rewritten.
It leads to some interesting idea that the reason the genetic memory of most dragons varieties causes them to gravitate to default alignments (interaction with other beings in formative years could lead to a different alignment of course), is that before the multiverse realignment, they weren’t mortal, but outsiders. The fiends and celestials of the time, or maybe even the fragments planes of the old wheel themselves given mortal form.
It also lead to interesting ideas (starting on page 52) of counterintuitive philosophies for dragons to reclaim the mantle of
For Red Dragons, they have to give up having a treasure horde and devote themselves to experiences…specificially the experience of power over other living things.
Black dragons must make their territory attractive to settlers and torment rathher than kill
Green dragons must put aside their distate for socialization and openly rule with an iron paw.
Brass dragons must stop avoiding unpleasant things and experience life in its totality, laughter and pain together.
Silver dragons have to stop fleeing town and pay child support.
White dragons need to stop being adorable and bestial and start being more calculatingly cruel with the goal of bringing others down to their own level.
Possibly of unnatural origin. Their own creation myths claim ancestry from black dragons, but few find this plausible.
Truly chaotic neutral. Love salt, the ocean itself cannot satisfy them. Patches of salt encrusted in slime that prevents from dissolving are scattered on their hides. No instinctual parental behavior, they’re honestly winging it when they have kids. Have an alkaline breath attack that that often forces black dragons to grudgingly tolerate their presences lest mutually assured destruction occurs, unless of course the Black Dragon determinedly finds a way to break the stalemate. Adults in Dragonlance 2e had the ability to cast acid-arrow three times a day,
Nasty and aggressive, often nihilistic, they lack the sadism to be called a truly evil race once one accounts for their carnivorous nature.
While not explicitly stated, the fact they can’t go on land and lay eggs hints their eggs are very unusual for dragons. Perhaps fishlike, or having other adaptations to survive in the ocean, such as gill-slits in the shell.
Sea Dragon
A shockingly mostly herbivorous evil tyrant of the ocean.
Said to be related to the Dragon turtle, though not as reasonable as the dragon turtle in the tolls they exact upon ships passing through their terrirtory.
How its related to the dragon turtle is puzzling, one’s a dragon another is a turtle? They also have very different diets. Possibly a race of turtles got themselves the honor of becoming dragon? There are tales of various fish becoming dragons and . This also supports the idea of some sages of dragons being a paraphyletic group biologically, tied together only by a shared list of magical traits that the cause spells to acknowledge “this is a dragon”. Dragon may be an objective category recognized by the fabric of reality itself.
As stated, their diet is not that of an apex predator, but more similar to that of a sea turtle, witch occassional additions more expected of a dragon upon a whim
They’re also basically aquaman to anything with scales.
Often live in underwater castles. Use steam breath as a weapon.
More dragons below
Amphi dragon
supposedly a hybrid of a green dragon and sea dragon, despite looking like neither and the two varieities, having little obvious reason to encounter each other. And they spit acid like black dragons.
They are covered in acid secreting warts that have a strong rotten-egg smell outside of water yet somehow don’t give them away to sealife.
These guys as written are even more antisocial than the brine and sea dragons. Like the sea dragons, if it weren’t for the genetic memory of dragons its doubtful they’d be able to speak given how the females give only a few days of parental care to their young.
Like many frog monsters, it has a biologically-inaccurate (for a frog at least, dragons can be like anything) chameleon-like tongue, but hilariously also possesses a camouflage ability.
So its a seagoing frog/chameleon dragon with vestigial wings, that scavenges on seabeds and attacks ships.
Honestly the only change I’d make is make them a bit more social and willing to share territory , because that color changing combined with vestigial wings allows for a lot of interesting intra-species body language.
In a setting where dragons don’t have inborn alignment, they could make I could see them running mercenary salvage buisnesses for wreckages.
from basic 2e Sea linnorm
“Sea linnorms are cold and vicious, viewing land dwellers as a threat to all marine life.”
One part I find very dubious got my gears turning
“Sea linnorms require little food. As herbivores, they eat primarily sea plants and are especially fond of dried seaweed, gathering it and placing it on rocky shores, then waiting for it to become its tastiest in the afternoon sun.” I’ll believe the seaweed, but its powers point more to an entity that evolved to hunt on land and escape into the water as needed. Its breath weapon of acidic cloud strangely doesn’t even work in water. Its hunting surface creatures. Its a sea creature getting its required protein almost entirely from land.
Unlike Sea dragons, they don’t have the ability to mind control fish and reptiles, but often have animals serving them nevertheless, as they can communicate with all sea life and thus come to arrangements.
I suspect they may have been created as a weapon in an ancient war by an underwater civilization, and they are continuing things even though the conflict is long over.
Tend to have not one singular hoard, but multiple scattered hoards in their territory, guarded by sea-life.
Like the amphi dragon, they are capable of changing color, but not from birth. At birth are transparent like many fish. They gain color changing ability as pigment develops.
From dragon magazine 134, one year before second edition Ad&D came out
The simply named aquatic dragon
Like the sea-elves, it can probably be argued to be an underdog in their biome compared to its terrestrial brethren (especially with later introduced dragons above). Despite having a mostly terrestrial build, they cannot survive long outside of water without magical aid as they cannot breath air, they can hold oxygen rich water in pouches of their body to sort of “hold their breath”.
Breath attack an powder that reacts with surrounding moisture in a delayed chemical reaction to produce electricity. Very likely they can develop spells to neutralize this, and thus extort others to quickly give in to their demands. Actually very likely given the fact they are weak to their own breath weapon which could be turned against them by a creative party.
They tend to be collectors of magical items, especially cursed ones that cause people to drown on dry land. Their lairs tend to have an air pocket chamber where the keep books and other loot not resistant to water.
Catching them when asleep is tricky, because they often set up tripwires tied to their tails to alert them of intruders.
Also that is a nasty looking thagomizer
Icthyodrake,
A fully aquatic true dragon with a supposedly completely animalistic mind. None are known to cast spells Basically a mosasaur with gills and a sonic blast. Vibrates fins to attract prey, but could easily see it doing so as a way to communicate with symbiotes considering how often teamups appear in ocean ecologies.
However, its favorite food appears to be other apex predator vertebrates.
Normally ignore ships and people unless starving, which means if its attacking you might have a plot hook. Might also be befriendable by rangers.
Monsters and Stuff 
