Aluminium dragon? Taupe* dragon? Oooh, oooh, Cheese dragon!

[Piratecat]

Taupe means "mole" (the mammals who make molehills, not the mini-skin-cancers) in French.

Used in English, it's a color (that of mole fur).

I have officially learned something new today. Thanks!

So a taupe dragon would probably burrow, and have blindsight....

 

[Gez]

Not blindsight, but tremorsense.

And now you know that taupe is the best color for moleskin clothes.

I am envisioning blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile dragons...oh, wait, you didn't mean the four elements of the Ancient Greeks?

Those were the four moods. Ancient Greeks, like modern chemiopsychiatrics, thought that mood was related to the overall balance (or imbalance) of fluids in the body. For the Greek, it was blood, phlegm, and both biles. An excess of blood makes one violent and impulsive, one excess of phlegm makes one lazy and unconcerned, an excess of yellow bile makes one bitter and agressive, etc.

The four elements were fire, air, earth and water, on the other hand.

 

[Aeolius]

So a taupe dragon would probably burrow, and have blindsight....

Has anyone fleshed out a puce dragon yet? dictionary.com says that puce is "A deep red to dark grayish purple" and derived "...from Old French, variant of pulce, flea, from Latin..."

So, a puce dragon would be a blood-sucking fine-sized dragon that reddened in color as it fed.

 

[Wippit Guud]

So, a puce dragon would be a blood-sucking fine-sized dragon that reddened in color as it fed.

Ooo.... half-dragon stirges....

 

[Vocenoctum]

Don't forget Mind Flayer Mauve!

For myself, I like the variety of dragons, because I only rarely use dragons, so it doesn't matter how many there are, it's just more options to pick from.
Add to that, I use an old Dragon suggestion, only 90% of red dragons (or whatever) are actually red toned.

The party faced a fiendish white dragon, with deep red scales. Not sure if it's metagaming for them to have buffed against fire, but it sure didn't help!

 

[Aeolius]

Those were the four moods.

True, though I seem to recall reading about a correlation between the four humors and the four elements. Perhaps it was Aristotle? I'll have to do some digging. In my LoBI campaign, I had four daggers named for the four humors, while in BPAA there are four hag coveys bearing their names.

Another dragon I am working on is an orichalcum dragon (orichalcum being the famed metal of Atlantis). The ancient Greeks were known to have items made of both electrum (silver+gold) and orichalcum (gold+tin). As orichalcum is reddish-fold in color, I was thinking of abandoning common sense (as I am often wont to doing) and work on a half-red gold dragon.

 

[LGodamus]

I am doing a kind of IronKingdoms thing where every dragon is unique there breath weapons and magical abilities vary between individuals IE: even if 2 dragons that breathe flame have a child, their offspring would still have a random breath weapon. This is because dragons are connected directly to the wellspring of magic IMC and any number of variations in the flow of magic while they are in their shell , a few centuries, affect them on a fundamental level of their physiology.

 

[Umbran]

I really don't see the need for all these wyrmbreeds.

The "need" is for variety of choice.

If we apply your logic to other critters - we don't need more than one humanoid type. Everything can be goblins with levels. We don't need multiple types of giants. We don't need multiple kinds of constructs. We could, if we wanted, reduce the game to a handful of monsters. Heck, we can get rid of monsters altogether, and run games where the only antagonists are plain old members of the PC races in the PHB.

While the book provides a default "ecology" and organization of dragon species, that's just flavor text. The real reason they are there is to provide a range of choices. A given campaign might never see more than one dragon. But with the choices available, the DM will more than likely be able to find the one right dragon for that encounter.

 

[Nightfall]

I like dragons. Colors, shapes and sizes don't matter. Heck I still believe Slacerian and wrack dragons are the best so far!

 

[Angcuru]

I thing Vocenoctum is on to something with his idea for non-red red dragons. Red dragons are associated with fire, but we all know that fire is not entirely red. Some fires are white, yellow, blue, orange, purple, green, etc., depending on the intensity of the flame and the thing that is being burned. So perhaps if going for elemental dragons, therre can be no set color, but rather a set physicality. Fire dragons can be spikey and aggressive, as fire tends to be. Water dragons can be smooth, flowing, etc. Earth dragons can be rough and rocky. AND Air dragons can be...well...aerodynamic...yeah.