D&D General Chromatic Dragons and Elemental Planes

[Mephista]

So, dragons. I always like trying to do elemental theming with the different chromatic dragons, but i always tend to run into hiccups. Black, for instance, lives in swamps and breathes acid. What kind of element is that? Blue, for all that they're wind-coded, live in deserts. Don't get me started on poison.

But I had a shower-thought moment and realized something.

Red dragons live in active volcanoes. Magma

White dragons in icy tundras.

Black live in swamps, and oozes are the main source of acid monsters. They love forgotten ruins. Swamp of Oblivion is a great match. Also might explain how those lizardfolk end up as elementals - they been chillin' with some black dragons!

The Cinder Wastes make up faux-deserts in the plane of fire - earthward leads to mountains and volcanoes, wind-ward leads to the sea of fire and the plane of ash. If we swap out sand and sandstorms for cinders and ashstorms... its kind of a match for blue dragons. Okay, this one is kind of a stretch.

Green dragons are tied to forests and love picking on elves; their poison is resonant of the more vicious side of life's overabundance. And overabundant life is both a hallmark of the positive energy plane and the feywild.

Purple dragons, meanwhile, are actively tied to the Shadowfell, which ate the old Plane of Shadow and Negative Energy Plane.

So, while you can't quite tie the chromatics to the four elements, you can tie them to the four quasi-elements and the new versions of energy poles. Enough to pull off a story arc, anyways.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

One of the new bits of 5e lore that I like is that dragons are, effectively, the "outsiders" of the material plane (insiders?); they are to physical reality what devils are to the hells and fire elementals are to the plane of fire.

Most normal mortals have bodies that are composed of elements and a soul that has energy from the outer planes. When a mortal dies, their body decomposes into elemental matter and eventually returns to the elemental chaos and the soul transmigrates to the outer planes. Dragons don't have that; their bodies and souls are a bit more emulsified, they are tied to the material plane in ways that even other creatures native to the material aren't. Their souls are instead joined into a hive-mind on the material plane, and their remains conspicuously also often stay tied to the material plane (how many dragon bones and dragon scales have been incorporated into magic artifacts that last forever?) after death.


As such, I wouldn't make dragons explicitly tied to the elemental planes, but rather I'd look at the ways a red dragon, a gold dragon, an efreeti and a balor all differ despite all being "fire themed" creatures from different worlds.

 

[Zaukrie]

Making them elementals is an interesting idea. It might explain why they don't just go conquer everything, they can't stray far from their region. It also means as they grow in power, they make the connection between the other planes and the world closer.