worlds and monsters is in my hands

[Plane Sailing]

Every time someone suggests Mercury dragon I'm thinking "why would I want a dragon which is liquid at room temperature??

 

[Klaus]

No, not the Bronze! It had the coolest design of all 10 core dragons!!!

 

[Professor Phobos]

Every time someone suggests Mercury dragon I'm thinking "why would I want a dragon which is liquid at room temperature??

Think the T-1000, only with wings.

 

[Stogoe]

How many of you remember the Realms when the books you bought for it were full of details and only a apendix or so of rules?

You mean the vast majority of 3e FR books?

Anyways, I don't see Adamantine or Mithril as 'perfected' metals at all. Just like titanium and aluminium (or platinum) aren't 'more iron than iron' or 'more silver than silver'. They're different metals.

 

[JohnSnow]

Yes But. That's just not what it means in D&D, especially in the context of metal. But, yeah, it's a pretty kickass word

Doesn't stop Mithril from being more poetic in this specific context, to me. I wouldn't want a Mithril dragon, either -- more silver than silver.

Sure it is. In D&D:

Adamantine = hard, dense, easily enchantable metal.

In a D&D world, adamantine and mithral are elemental metals as real as gold, silver, copper, tin, mercury, lead, zinc, nickel, chromium, platinum or a host of others. By contrast, brass and bronze are just alloys, like steel.

I think that's why they chose to go with iron and adamantine. I admit mercury might have been compelling, but most of the other metals aren't exactly "sexy."

Tin dragons? Lead? Zinc? Please.

Bronze and brass were fine for legacy value...but that's about it. On the other hand...can dragons of different colors interbreed? Is it possible there is a "tin dragon" out there somewhere, so that the offspring of a copper and a tin dragon would be brass? :\

Personally, I liked the presentation of dragons in Dragonheart and many other places, where color wasn't necessarily indicative of anything. Although I generally make an exception for the one variant dragon type that makes sense to me - the "frost" dragon.

Everything else seems so...arbitrary.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Howdy!

Mercury is an underused metal in D&D. We got every kind of Golem imaginable, including absurd things that should have been oozes or undead instead, but never a Mercury Golem?

Mercury golems would be cool- all liquid metal killing machines like the T-1000...

There are Mercury Golems (along with Mercury Guardians, Mercury Sentinels, Mercury Gargants, Mercury Colossi and Mercury Leviathans) in the Immortals Handbook - Epic Bestiary: Volume One.

The Mercury Golem in that book is CR 19, although the Mercury Guardian (Medium Size: CR 12) is probably more the T-1000 you are looking for.

/End Shameless Plug.

 

[Lackhand]

Sure it is. In D&D:

Adamantine = hard, dense, easily enchantable metal.

In a D&D world, adamantine and mithral are elemental metals as real as gold, silver, copper, tin, mercury, lead, zinc, nickel, chromium, platinum or a host of others. By contrast, brass and bronze are just alloys, like steel.

I think that's why they chose to go with iron and adamantine. I admit mercury might have been compelling, but most of the other metals aren't exactly "sexy."

Tin dragons? Lead? Zinc? Please.

Bronze and brass were fine for legacy value...but that's about it. On the other hand...can dragons of different colors interbreed? Is it possible there is a "tin dragon" out there somewhere, so that the offspring of a copper and a tin dragon would be brass? :\

Personally, I liked the presentation of dragons in Dragonheart and many other places, where color wasn't necessarily indicative of anything. Although I generally make an exception for the one variant dragon type that makes sense to me - the "frost" dragon.

Everything else seems so...arbitrary.

While I see your point, mine was that the classically alchemical metals are cool for dragons, but as you drift from that, I become a sad panda.
Adamantine Dragons just sort of channel the Turbonium Dragon (from Hackmaster) for me.
And as for "not more iron than iron" -- you described adamantine as a hard, dense, and easily enchantable metal.
So then what's steel? What's iron? My point is that the magical qualities of iron and steel are precisely those, and so while it's not ridiculous to have an adamanatine dragon, it's not as good (for me) as a Lead dragon.

But, yeah. A Tin or Zinc dragon would be ridiculous. At least they avoided those

 

[frankthedm]

Edit: deleting this, posted after reading a few pages, then saw mods have asked the issue to be dropped...

 

[zen_hydra]

Bronze and brass were fine for legacy value...but that's about it. On the other hand...can dragons of different colors interbreed? Is it possible there is a "tin dragon" out there somewhere, so that the offspring of a copper and a tin dragon would be brass? :\

I am pretty sure that bronze is an alloy of tin and copper (not brass).

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.

 

[Stogoe]

Mercury always makes me think of horrible, debilitating brain damage. I really don't like mercury as a fantasy metal.

And Iron has a pretty boss anti-magic vibe going on. Cold iron vs fae, for example.