Mantidrake

A mantidrake looks like a scaly manticore with dragon wings and a dragon's head in place of the human face. It keeps the manticore's lionlike mane. From afar, or to an untrained eye, it can pass for a common manticore or even an eastern earth dragon. The dragon parent's hue shows on its face, head, wings, belly scales and hindquarters, while the rest is manticore tan and brown, sometimes striped or spotted in the dragon's hue.

Ideally it strikes first from hiding or from above, loosing 1d6 tail spikes, each dealing 1d6 at up to 180 yards like a light crossbow bolt. Since the spikes regrow quickly, it can do this four times a day. Then it closes with claws and bite.

Its breath weapon is its deadliest attack, but it inherited enough draconic sense to save it for real need. Breath damage equals the creature's normal hit point total, regardless of current wounds or healing, and magical hit point boosts do not increase it. It may breathe as many as four times daily and is immune to attacks resembling its own breath. Weapons and items made to slay dragons do it no extra harm.

A poor flier, it avoids aerial battle or keeps to long-range spikes and breath when aloft.

Like manticores, mantidrakes turn up in any climate but prefer warmth, so their dragon parent is usually a heat-loving blue, brown or yellow. Wild ones speak the tongue of whichever parent raised them, usually the mother, plus a halting grasp of the other parent's if it helped raise them. Those raised by a dragon-worshiping cult know common and their dragon parent's tongue.

Free mantidrakes are solitary brutes, each claiming a range no smaller than 25 square miles, ravenous appetites and a draconic love of treasure. Two together are a mated pair, bonded for life. The cult can train them only if taken shortly after birth, and uses them to guard cells and hideouts and to distract snoops. Wild ones form only partnerships, which last only while food and treasure flow.

A wild mantidrake lives much like a manticore, preferring human flesh but eating any living thing to survive. Confined to less than 25 square miles, it soon empties the area of large animals and people, devouring some and driving off the rest. Cult-raised ones can be stabled and ridden as clumsy mounts. The oddly supple hide sells for 5,000 gp.