Pink dragons were created by Jeanne McGuire for dragon magazine issue number 156, published
in April 1990, the contents of this issue were April fools themed with lots of nonsensical
and hilarious articles and such weird monsters as the Blink Mammoth (let me know in the comments
section below if you want me to make you an ecology and lore video about them!).
Pink dragons, according to the article; can be found almost anywhere, most frequently
in some form of underground lair.
Many hapless adventurers have been fatally fooled by the dragons dopey appearance and
delicate pink coloration.
This isn't often depicted well, but the ends of the wings an often some flared fins around
the head and neck can appear sort of dianty and floppy, like a butterfly wing or something,
The pink dragons tend not to have a lot of extra spines and horns, they have sleek limbs
and their scales are smooth, like a glossy tile in delicate pink with reflective glossy
white highlights, they look slick and they usually are, thanks to their unique bubble
breath weapon.
When they have the opportunity, pink dragons are quite talkative, they tend to be just
as haughty and arrogant as any other dragon, even the most benevolent of them consider
it quite an honour that they are not instantly killing everyone and taking whatever they
want.
Pink dragons are on the Chromatic side of the family, so their jokes can take on a deadly
twist, pink dragons who start to get more and more sarcastic with their jokes, which
get more and more belittling and objectifying of creatures smaller than themselves?
Yeah, time to back off or better yet, leave the area entirely.
Pink dragons are known to tear the arms and legs off underlings who don't find it's jokes
amusing enough.
While most pairing of chromatic dragons result in a chaotic blend of features, the pink dragons
display the wicked ambush tactics of the white dragon, with the bullying need to dominate
and physically harm others of the red dragon, so they set you up to be the object of a very
mean joke, something very insulting, and if you take the bait, you fight to the death,
you never stood a chance you fool, you should have grovelled before me while you had the
chance!
If you don't?
well then, you fight to the death you snivelling coward!
When a mighty dragon challenges you, refusing the challenge is a mortal insult.
You are doomed either way, either get out of there or fight until the dragon has bested
you, by killing or more than likely capturing the player characters like pets and playthings.
I've been the captive of a few dragons, its never fun, but you can live to tell the tale.
Pink dragons tend to be Chaotic Neutral, they are not intentionally evil, they don't kill
out of sadistic enjoyment for the most part.
Their neutrality extends to their treatment of other creatures, once they have a species
figured out they tend to just be very selfish and self centrered, they are not empathic
toward the needs of other creatures, they expect everything to be about them, their
wants and needs should be the main topic of conversation.
Changing the topic away from the dragons wants and needs will not be tolerated for very long.
--------------- The breath weapon of the pink dragon is highly
unusual.
A special stomach serves to mix fatty secretions with a fluid closely resembling lye.
Elemental air is this dragons planar affinity so, the resulting goop combines with a huge
volume of air and produces the breath weapon, a massive, obscuring, slimy bubble cloud similar
to that produced by a horn of bubbles.
This cloud is 60 ft long, 50 ft wide, and 20 ft high, and it lasts 2d6 rounds.
Anyone trapped in this cloud is potentially painfully blinded unless they make a saving
throw or have on good eye protection due to all the soap in their eyes.
All attack rolls, spell casting, concentration and skill attempts are made at disadvantage
unless they are not impeded by soap and slime at all.
Avoiding all that is as simple as making a DC 10 Dexterity check right when entering
the foam, or on having good eye protection, this will avoid getting totally blinded by
it, needing Constitution saving throws and probably having the eyes bathed in fresh water.
Even wearing goggles is not going to improve the heavily obscured area, so all attacks
are still made at Disadvantage.
When the bubble cloud is in place, the dragon merely closes its protective eyelids and navigates
with ease using sonar-like clicks and its very sensitive hearing, the dragon prefers
to have the advantage when attacking and can take an opponent apart with the precision
claws and bites each round, while staying protected from counter attack by the slick
bubble mass all around it.
This hunting technique is actually highly effective and adventurers should be very wary
of it, its funny right up until you just end up another red smear amoung all those pretty
rainbow hued bubbles.
I have seen one of these dragons simply shover it's smooth scaled snout into a window open
on the side of a building and whoosh!
The whole place is filled up with the deadly foam in a split second, blowing out the rest
of the windows and doors, tossing all the furniture and people from their beds, they
couldn't tell where the exit was, couldn't breathe, all of them died slowly and the dragon
just moved from one building to the next, making that deep, bubbling and burping sound,
then another family dies.
The pink dragon unfortunately takes after its white parent in that it prefers to hunt
without making a sound, you can tell when you confront one and it gives you that annoyed
hiss, like a grumpy boa constrictor, suddenly huffing up it's size, arching that long spine
and turning the flats of the tail and wings to intimidate, but that is the best they can
do, pink dragons notably do not possess supernatural dragon fear.
They are low magic in general, this sub species, I'm not sure if it is a result of the cross
breeding, they are strangely uniform really, considering the chaotic chromatics would normally
either not be able to concieve or the result is always a random, unprictable monster, sometimes
a dragon but often what is best described as a spawn of Tiamat.
Pink dragons have no greater resistance to magic than any comparable size of dragon,
but also only about 20% of all pink dragons learn how to unlock their innate magical ability
at all, and only those who do have that innate power will take the time to collect and study
magic.
If a pink dragon is making a boast about how powerful it's magic is, and you don't see
a single spell book tossed into the great treasure hoard, the dragon may very well be
lying.
Just watch yourself though, as pink dragons love deception.
Pink dragons tend to favor the illusionist style of magic, they do a lot of sneaking
around and prefer to attack from ambush or attack a very confused foe.
Better to win the fight before it even begins, and only a fool would fight fair against such
a resourceful and intelligent opponent, who just happens to also want to eat you.
Let's not forget that dragons eat people.
Pink dragons are slim and dextrous predators, they move like weazels, not brutes, but they
can still cut a grown man to ribbons the moment they have full advantage, in the case of the
pink dragon, they do show a lot of restraint, but falling into the deadly bubble mass?
With that dragon in there?
Let's just say its not going to bother telling friend from foe, unless you are a very good
friend of that dragon, they do enjoy killing people, it's what their body is made to do.
They are not very well designed when it comes to defending themselves from other dragons
though, so they tend to gravitate toward creatures of low intelligence that they can convince
to fight their foes for them.
Pink dragons favor giant kin, verbeeg, feral firbolg of the frozen north, not the tree
hugging southern hippies, ogres, trolls, various troll kin, if near swamps they attract grung
or bullywug, not both, otherwise there are always lizard folk, in the underdark the troglodytes,
grimlocks, quoggoth, also combining the great webs of ettercaps, chittane, aranea and any
other sort of clever arachnid with giant bubble slime death pits is a nasty trick, particularly
if you throw in wrestling slimy, highly irritated and irrational Carrion Crawlers or perhaps
even a chuul or two, if you really want to murder someone.
Pink dragons don't grow particularly fast once they get to adult size, not compared
to other dragons, they spend a lot of their life at huge size and only rarely get to gargantuan
or beyond.
A typical adult pink dragon reaches 36 feet long, here is a basic stat block for an adult
using 5th edition, note that the author of this stat block included the theme of the
pink dragon being obsessed with telling jokes to the extreme, which I fully approve of and
just goes to show how you can include that pretty easily.
The bubble breath being treated more like a slime pit environmental hazard is also good,
though I would include the effects for having vision impaired by it.
I'd drop the legendary actions aside from the tail attack, something like sweeping the
tail or wings to slam a whole area with already exhaled foam, knocking opponents prone, miring
them in goop, obscuring vision and creating a new area of difficult terrain it has no
disadvantages in.
I'd also give the dragon the ability to cast some basic illusions, just uncomplicated sounds
or images, mirror image is always a good choice for egotistical dragons, because of course
they want to see duplicates of their own gorgeous form!
Oh yes, organic things exposed to the bubble slime for a long time will break down in it
eventually, taking one point of damage per minute until they dissolve.
To add a nice horror element to your pink dragon, give it some gross mutations that
put bit on the outside that should normally remain on the inside and have it digest its
food externally like that, eventually slurping back up all that revolving slime, full of
... slurry.
Special shout out to long time channel supporters Derrick and Jessica Dell, happy birthday Jessica,
this one is for you, as for the rest of you, don't forget that I am able to take requests
for monster video and location topics, but my list is very long at this point, I will
get to those topics eventually.
In the meantime, thanks for listening and as always, i will be back with more for you,
very soon.