Dragon (Dungeons & Dragons)
Dungeons & Dragons creature type
In the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game, dragons are an iconic type of monstrous creature. As a group, D&D dragons are loosely based on dragons from a wide range of fictional and mythological sources. These dragons, specifically their "dungeon ecology", have implications for the literary theory of fantasy writing. D&D dragons also featured as targets of the moral panic surrounding the game.
In D&D, dragons are depicted as any of various species of large, intelligent, magical, reptilian beasts, each typically defined by a combination of their demeanor and either the color of their scales or their elemental affinity. For example, a commonly presented species of dragon is the red dragon, which is named for its red scales, and known for its evil and greedy nature, as well as its ability to breathe fire. In the game, dragons are often adversaries of player characters, and less commonly, allies or helpers.
Overview
Powerful and intelligent, the fictional dragons of Dungeons & Dragons are reptiles with magical abilities and breath weapons. The different sub-species, distinguished by their coloring, vary in power.
Despite the variety of dragons in D&D, a number of traits are common to nearly all types of dragons.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dragon (Dungeons & Dragons)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.