Dragonet

A dragonet looks like a miniature dragon built for speed and agility rather than raw strength, colored in various shades of blue.

It bites for 1-6 and claws twice for 1-4 each, or lashes and squeezes with its tail for 2-8. Pinning a fallen foe (attack roll of 12 or better) adds two 1-4 rakes from its hind feet. Its fiery breath is a cone 20 feet long, 1 foot wide at the mouth and 10 at the end, dealing 1-12, half on a save vs. breath weapon. Fire harms it only half as much as normal, and not at all if it saves.

Its bite carries no venom, but its blood is toxic. Wounding it in melee forces the attacker to save vs. poison (Class N); full armor with gauntlets and a closed-visor great helm grants +2.

Dragonets live alone except during breeding, when a mated pair share a den to guard their 14 young through the roughly 4 months of late spring and summer they take to mature. Young start at 1 HD, add 1 HD a month until reaching 5 HD, and are then driven off.

Where larger dragons are absent, dragonets are often the top predators of hills and mountains in arctic and temperate lands. Their blood goes into the ink for scrolls of poison, the reversed priest spell neutralize poison; a leg bone can become the hilt of a dagger of venom, and alchemists use the blood in poison cures that build resistance from a tiny, survivable dose, a feat requiring healing or herbalism proficiency. Eggs and young sell for 1,000 gp each, as they train into excellent guards.

Buyers of guard beasts should beware a favorite wizard's swindle. The seller never calls the creature a dragonet; instead he claims to have found a way to make polymorph other last indefinitely (still breakable by dispel magic) and offers a 'blue dragon' shrunk to save on feed. In an emergency, he explains, the owner need only cast dispel magic, or use a rod of cancellation or wand of negation, to unleash an adult blue dragon on the intruders. Since the trick works once and only as a last resort, the fraud can go unnoticed for years, and a swindler planning to loot the buyer someday may sell one deliberately to keep him from buying a real guardian.