D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition

[Lanefan]

True, but a Dragon can't just choose to breathe in 1E, he needs to roll a 50 or below on a 1d100, and then he needs to target the Wizard.

A big ol' Gold can get by with targeting anywhere in the Wizard's general neighbourhood, the Wiz is still going down.

That's the biggest danger of some Dragon breath attacks - not the damage they do per se, but that they do that damage to everything in a fairly big area; and in 1e, "breath weapon" is generally the hardest save category. Blues and Blacks are a little nicer in that their breath weapon is a line rather than a cone or cloud and thus doesn't usually hit as many people at once.