The steel dragon is a traditional monster in both fantasy fiction and role-playing games.

Steel dragons are one of the smallest species of dragons. They are extremely intelligent and they spend almost all of their time polymorphed into human forms. Most steel dragons live amongst humans full time and take on roles as wizards and scholars. It is not unusual for steel dragons to own significant property in human lands. Nor is it strange for a good percentage of the local wizard's guild to secretly be steel dragons.

Steel dragons are hatched from eggs and they come out deep-blue with only steely highlights, as the dragon ages it takes on the appearance of burnished steel. They have the ability to breathe forth a cloud of poison gas strong enough to kill almost anything. They have great control over the size of this cloud and its potency and maximum size increases with age. Steel dragons all have the natural ability to change forms, and are almost never seen in their true forms at all. They are almost universally spellcasters, and as they age most will gain many natural magical abilities relating to mind control.

Steel dragons love to live with the company of men. They usually take on personas of various learned men, with wizards, librarians, and alchemists all being prime choices. Their long lifetimes and dragon nature assure that they are fabulously wealthy. They keep their riches in their homes as they do not keep traditional dragon's lairs at all. They will almost always have a vault or strongroom in which they keep their most valued possessions.

These dragons raise their young in pairs and will often introduce their young into human society as human children. It is not all that strange for steel dragons to travel far and wide in human lands while their children grow up, as dragon children grow far too slowly for them to masquerade as human children in one place for too long. They will fight to protect their own young, and will die in the process if it comes down to it.

Your average steel dragon lives on as much human food as possible. But they cannot even begin to ingest enough food in human form to support their real bulk. Because of this they have to frequently slip away from the cities to hunt larger animals.


My monster nodes are usually based upon material in the various AD&D rulebooks. But they are my own work, as I often expand the information. In some cases I will blatantly disagree with the source material. None of these nodes are cut and paste. You are free to use my descriptions in any material of your own (even commercial material), as long as I am credited as the source.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.