Dragon subdual was the second thing - after alignment languages - to fall to my sense of "this is frickin' stupid". I'm not nostalgic for it in the least. Gygax and the other early D&D designers got a lot more right than they're sometimes given credit for, but that doesn't mean every element of early D&D was a good idea.
This is not to deny that better rules for concluding combat nonlethally would be welcome. But the last thing they should be is specific to dragons.
This is not to deny that better rules for concluding combat nonlethally would be welcome. But the last thing they should be is specific to dragons.