A Dragon's Alternate Form

[SpuneDagr]

When a silver or gold dragon is in its alternate form, can it still use its breath weapon? As a humanoid, is it proficient with weapons? I'm guessing no.
Heh. The gold dragon turns into a rat. Breaths a cone of fire dealing 200 damage. Fun.

 

[Centaur]

From the 3.0 Players Handbook.....

The subject retains its Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores, level and class, hit points (despite any change in its Constitution
score), alignment, base attack bonus, and base saves. (New Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores may affect final attack and save
bonuses.) The subject retains its own type (for example, "humanoid"), extraordinary abilities, spells, and spell-like abilities, but not its
supernatural abilities. The subject can cast spells for which it has components. It needs a humanlike voice for verbal components and
humanlike hands for somatic components. The subject does not gain the spell-like abilities of its new form. The subject does not gain the
supernatural abilities (such as breath weapons and gaze attacks) or the extraordinary abilities of the new creature....

The Dragons Breath weapon is is "Su" so I would say no, it does not retain it. However, interpreting directly by this, most of it's other abilities including it's frightful presence is an "Ex" and therefore would be retained...

As for weapon proficiencies, there BA is so high in many cases, does it really matter...

Not sure about 3.5... Anyone else?

 

[SpuneDagr]

I'm playing the dragon as a character, so his BAB is going to be quite a bit lower than everybody else's. His ECL is much higher than his HD.

 

[shilsen]

In 3.5 the dragon would actually retain the breath weapon. The description of the alternate form in the 3.5 MM specifically says that the ability "functions as a polymorph spell cast on itself". Since 3.5 polymorph allows a creature to retain its Sp and Su abilities (as long as it has an appropriate body part to use it, like a mouth for a breath weapon), it does retain the breath weapon. No non-class Ex abilities are retained, so no frightful presence, SR, immunities, blindsense, keen senses, etc.