Mist Dragon

Shiny blue-white at hatching, a mist dragon's scales darken over the years to blue-gray, sprinkled with silver flecks that glitter in sunlight.

A mist dragon would rather vanish than fight, and usually turns to mist to dodge any meeting. Forced into battle, it breathes quickly, then becomes mist, hides within its own vapor and attacks with spells; its casting level is 6 plus its combat modifier. It is immune to fire and heat.

The breath is a 90 x 30 x 30-foot cloud of scalding steam; a save vs. breath weapon halves the damage. In calm air the cloud hangs for 1d4+4 rounds. By the second round the steam has cooled into a clammy, choking fog: air-breathers inside are blinded for 1d4 rounds and take 3d4 drowning damage each round they stay in it, though a successful save vs. breath weapon spares them both.

Once per round the dragon can shift into or out of a coherent mist form. Observers have only a 25% chance to tell it from natural fog. In this shape its Armor Class improves by 3, its magic resistance rises 15%, and it flies at speed 9 (maneuverability class A); it may still cast spells and use innate powers but cannot make physical attacks or breathe.

Powers by age, each 2/day: water breathing (very young), wall of fog (young), create water up to three cubic yards (juvenile), solid fog (old), predict weather (very old), airy water (ancient).

Philosophical loners, mist dragons like nothing better than sitting still and thinking, and they resent interruptions and idle talk. They speak their own tongue and the common tongue of neutral dragons; 15% of hatchlings can talk to any thinking being, plus 5% per age category. Nine encounters in ten are with a single dragon; groups are a parent with young.

They settle by waterfalls, rapids and coasts or in very rainy country, in big damp grottoes thick with mist. Forest mist dragons put up with green dragon encroachment for a long time, then lose patience and wage all-out war. Bronze neighbors cause no trouble, since both prefer to be left alone.

They can eat almost anything, even wood and mud, but most of their nourishment comes straight from spray and fog, and they spend long hours lying in damp places, thinking and soaking it in.