Fire Drake [Dark Sun]

A fire drake is a massive four-legged reptile more than 25 feet long, covered in glossy, bead-like scales mottled red and black like the coals of a dying campfire. Its forelegs are short and armed with wicked hooked claws; its hind legs are long and heavily muscled.

In battle the drake snorts and wheezes in a way most survivors describe as laughter. It fights with two claws (1d10+10 each), a bite (3d8) and a lashing tail (4d8). When it can, it seizes a foe in its jaws and swings the struggling body around as a living shield, more for its own amusement than for protection. If a fight turns against it, it escapes psionically with shadow form or ectoplasmic form.

Its psionic powers revolve around fire, light and pain. It can seize and control flames, which makes torch-carrying explorers especially vulnerable in its lair, and it uses inflict pain and double pain freely.

Like all drakes of its world, it can tear open a gate to the elemental plane of fire, once per week. The gate fills a 50-foot sphere with flame for 1d6+4 rounds. Anyone caught unprotected takes 4d10 fire damage each round they remain inside (save vs. breath weapon for half). Burnable items touching the flames catch fire, dealing a further 3d6 to whoever holds or wears them (save for half), and flammable objects within 10 feet must also save. Ordinary metal in the sphere glows white-hot and melts within 2 rounds, inflicting 2d4 damage on its bearer in the first round and 3d10 each round after.

Fire drakes seek out heat. They den near volcanic vents or on open ground where they can bake all day in the sun, then burrow into warm sand or a sheltered lair when the desert night turns cold. They are equally at home in humid jungle borderlands and in bone-dry wastes.

These drakes eat meat, chiefly humanoids, pack beasts and other large animals, though they insist on charring some prey before eating it. Every three years, or whenever its hide is damaged, a fire drake sheds its beaded scales and grows a fresh coat. Shed scales are valued components for fire magic, and a full hide is the most prized of any drake's: a creature wearing it, or riding in a wagon covered by it, needs only about half its usual daily water in the desert heat. The hide is not magical, but it grants +2 to saving throws against fire and will not burn in ordinary flames.