D&D General Which edition had the deadliest dragons?*

[Zaukrie]

1e. Heck, a wizard would die almost every time a dragon got near them. d4 hit points........and all.

 

[Azzy]

Early dragons (1e/B/X): they might look weaker by the numbers, but so were the characters. And they were encountered at much lower levels. A 9th level party could expect to see an ancient red dragon. Breath weapons were 3x a day (so you could do 3 rounds in a row), and they did the dragon's hp in damage. So that ancient red dragon would do 88 points on a failed save, 44 on a made one, each round for 3 rounds. For reference, a 9th level fighter with 16 CON would have 60ish HP, a 9th level MU would have the low 20s in HP.

The Forgotten Realms boxed set also added a couple age categories, doubled the number of attacks, made the breath weapons more flexible, and such. Essentially, it turned the 1e dragons up to 11.

 

[R_J_K75]

The Forgotten Realms boxed set also added a couple age categories, doubled the number of attacks, made the breath weapons more flexible, and such. Essentially, it turned the 1e dragons up to 11.

FR Dragons could use their breath weapon more often than dragons in other settings if memory serves me correctly.

 

[Gadget]

Hmmm. It has been a long time since AD&D. I remember Dragons having an option to have spells, I don't recall them having spells right out of the box. In fact, I remember in early 3e someone saying that Dragons were no longer relegated to being mounts to the evil archmage, ymmv. The problem with 3.x dragons, like many 'boss' monsters in that edition, was the massive list of spells and other abilities that they had, not all of which was relevant, which made them difficult and tedious to run well. I think I prefer the 4e dragons, as I do with most monsters, as they were powerful, interesting, and flavorful, even if it did several MMs to get them quite right. 3e dragons seemed to devolve into archmages with scales sometimes, but that was kind of the nature of 3e. Though I am partial to 1e's dragons with their very deadly breath weapons as well.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In the current Dragon Magazine there is a young white dragon at the end of the adventure... while I was able to beat it, the breath weapon hurt... and just didn´t drop me, because I had cold resistance and it luckily didn´t recharge...
So while it was not deadly, it felt quite so, but it is a very limited view. 2e Dragons were deadly enough for my tastes and 3e and 4e Dragons were so too. It just depends, at what level you meet which age category.