Online galleries for the preview books?

[Conjurer]

That's essentially why I hate chromatic and metalic dragons. The fact that the color came first in terms of design, and legacy effects guaranteed that all dragons, from now until doomsday, have only one color. No patterns. We'll never see a dragon with poison green tiger strips on a black field. We'll never see a dragon with brown spots over a lava red undercoat. The MOST elaborate color scheme we will ever get is going to be different shades of blue on a blue field.

That's a good point, but I wonder how usefull would Brown(ish) patterns be to a Green Dragon, for camouflage, considering said dragon can get as big as a house... But then again, it wouldn't hurt, would it?

 

[Nymrohd]

I personally love Bronze dragons not because of the cool artwork but rather because their personalities and interestes make them useful in a campaign. They love strategy and I can imagine them as advisors to war generals shifting through the battle to pursue just the right strategic advantage.

What I wonder about the new adamantine and iron dragons are how they feet in the hierarchy. Adamantine must be stronger than gold right? And where will iron fit, between copper and silver? or after gold and before adamantine?

 

[The Little Raven]

Adamantine must be stronger than gold right?

No. They just have to be good at what they do, like the gold is good at what it does. This need for "X dragon is always stronger than Y dragon" doesn't need to exist when we have "X dragon is better at X role than Y dragon, which is better at Y role."

 

[Gold Roger]

Well, I can also see Copper and Bronze being removed because seriously, it's mostly a differentiation by color and I don't see someone saying this one looks like copper, that one's brass and that one's bronze. Those metals don't look very different, especially not on first glance.

Meanwhile Iron and Adamantine look strikingly different from gold, silver and copper.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That's essentially why I hate chromatic and metalic dragons. The fact that the color came first in terms of design, and legacy effects guaranteed that all dragons, from now until doomsday, have only one color. No patterns. We'll never see a dragon with poison green tiger strips on a black field. We'll never see a dragon with brown spots over a lava red undercoat. The MOST elaborate color scheme we will ever get is going to be different shades of blue on a blue field.

Arcane Evolved has some interesting material on Dragons in the Diamond Throne default setting. Supplements like Ruins of Intrigue and Legacy of the Dragons probably give some interesting stuff, too. Off course, AE didn't use the alignments, so the "color-coded for your convenience" approach didn't matter/work for them anyway...

 

[SkidAce]

The reason brass and bronze were removed is because they're alloys. All other dragons are primordial beings, composed of base elements like gold and silver and copper... then we have dragons that are based on technology (alloys)? Hm.

I realize I take game fluff and design my home brew sometimes versus the other way around...however the "alloy" thing v. base elements is a concept I ran with.

Humans developed bronze, an alloy, and it seems that bronze dragons are the most friendly and involved in human affairs. "How odd" say the philosophers, "After all it must be a coincidence, since what impact could something like that have on dragons"

If only they knew...