I really appreciated the contextualization that Fizban's Treasury of Dragons brought to the dragon creature type. While dragons are the most iconic creature in the fantasy genre, their role can sometimes feel ambiguous. Fizban's established a great mythological niche in the D&D multiverse, and I really like that they represent the primordial, most ancient beings of the Prime Material Plane, who have a very different relationship with the gods than mortals do.
Going back I'd assume to AD&D, if not earlier, Dragons are divided into to camps (well, three when the Gem dragons were introduced). Chromatic are your evil dragons while metallic ones are your good dragons. Again, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, but broadly speaking, the metallics are meant to be more benevolent and the chromatic ones are the destructive tyrants.
Every color of dragon is distinct, with different breath weapons and damage immunities. The new Monster Manual has also further distinguished them by granting adult and ancient variants spellcasting abilities, which they weave into their attacks when they aren't using their breath weapons. And, of course, each of the ten colors/metals represented in the Monster Manual comes in four age categories (which also, conveniently, cover four different sizes.) This pattern of fours also kind of helps you place them in different tiers of play, though because not all dragons are of the same challenge rating, you might find it more reasonable to put a young white dragon against a group of tier 1 characters than a young red dragon.
Notably, one major distinction other than alignment between Chromatic and Metallic dragons is the existence of a secondary breath attack. Chromatic dragons simply have their destructive elemental breath, whether it be cold, acid, poison, lightning, or fire. Metallics have these as well (though rather than poison, two of the metallic dragon types have fire breaths) but they also have a secondary breath weapon that doesn't do damage, but instead inflicts various conditions.
Brass dragons can put creatures to sleep, Bronze dragons can push creatures away and knock them prone, Copper dragons can slow creatures down and limit the actions they can take on a turn, Gold dragons can weaken creatures and reduce the damage they deal, and Silver dragons can paralyze creatures.
Notably, these secondary breath weapons do not have a recharge, so you can use them on every round in combat. And I think that is one tool you can use to have a fight with a metallic dragon.
While you can play a bunch of amoral treasure-seekers who will fight anything that gets in their way, in my experience, most D&D parties try to be heroic and moral. Most characters are either good-aligned or morally neutral in a way that still bows to the social utility of generally not killing people who don't deserve it. (In my long-running Ravnica game, there's even a Chaotic Evil character who is a literal cannibal that is still eager to fight against the greater evil the party faces, and is still a loyal friend).
And so, the obvious problem when presented with any creatures that are good-aligned is that, well... surely we can talk things out instead of having a fight to the death, right?
Obviously, not all fights in D&D must be to the death - I think it's very reasonable for creatures to surrender if, say, they become bloodied (which is now an official status in the rules as of 2024). Still, you run into this issue where goodness, as I think most people would define it, often has as one of its core tenets the idea that we can settle things through dialogue and come to a consensus, rather than having it out as a big fight. Certainly, in the face of true evil, good people can be lured into bad-faith negotiations, like when the UK agreed to allow Nazi Germany to take over the Sudetenland, hoping that this appeasement would sate the fascist state's hunger for conquest - which, obviously, did not work. But I like to believe that actually good people can usually find some common ground, and thus we come to this conundrum:
There are all these really cool creatures that would be fun to run, but they're good guys.
This goes beyond Metallic dragons, and includes things like most Celestials, as well as creatures like Storm Giants and other creatures. There are, I think, fewer of these than evil or neutral-aligned creatures, but that's probably because it's easier to justify a fight with something that is not benevolent.
So, what scenarios might we concoct where our heroic party comes into violent conflict with a creature that is good?
Not So Good After All:
Alignments on D&D creatures are really more examples of what is typical than what is inherent. While good Fiends are practically unheard of (given that fiends are more or less made up of the essence of evil) and Celestials are typically good or neutral, and more often good (as many are beings of the upper planes and thus made up of the essence of goodness,) creatures like dragons, fey, and the like are still ultimately beings of free will.
Thus, a creature could be a resplendent gold dragon with all the trappings of a serene guardian of sacred places and enemy to evil, but they might harbor a vindictive, covetous, contemptuous heart, and perhaps use the assumptions people make about them to hide a villainous agenda.
Likewise, a good-aligned creature might become corrupted somehow, either via mind control or some kind of spiritual corruption. (Whether this then changes a Celestial into a Fiend is kind of up to you - I think there are some evil-aligned Celestials here and there, though I don't know of any non-evil Fiends.)
The Greater Good:
Honestly, much of human history's greatest crimes have been justified (sometimes after the fact) by claims that what dirty deeds were done were all done in the name of a greater good. This can be an ends-justify-the-means mentality, or even a whitewashing that refuses to even acknowledge that a crime was committed in the first place. But even if we're not talking about things in retrospect, a character who at least believes themselves to be good might commit acts that they regret even as they do them, but still feels that they are the right thing to do. A good-aligned creature might, for example, have faith in an institution and thus work to cover up some misdeed done in the institution's name. They might sanction the mistreatment of a class of people or beings, fearing that, were such a class not restrained or even eliminated, that some far greater catastrophe might befall the world. The party might have a different perspective, or might believe that the good-aligned villain has actually lost perspective, and that the net effect of all their compromises on behalf of this greater good are actually outweighing the benefits. (As an example, an arc I never got around to in my first campaign was going to have a gold dragon attack the holy city of a powerful church that was leading a rebellion against the continent-spanning empire. The dragon figured that the empire, for all its faults, had done a great deal to maintain peace across the world, and that after years of war, the revolution had to be ended definitively.)
You could also flip this: the party might be trying to destroy some sacred site is going to be corrupted by an evil villain or otherwise doing something in the name of a greater good while a good-aligned monster is fighting for some more narrow good.
Honor:
Philosophical principles can sometimes override morality. If the party discovers that a king or other respected leader is engaged in some great evil, they might come into conflict with a good creature who is honor-bound to defend, for example, an office, regardless of the person occupying said office. A great example of this can be found in World of Warcraft. General Nazgrim, an orcish warrior of the Horde, has sworn to defend the Horde's Warchief, and in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, the Horde is run by the brutal war criminal, Garrosh Hellscream, who, among other things, is using the heart of one of the Old Gods (eldritch monstrosities embedded in the planet trying to corrupt its soul) to empower himself and his soldiers. Nazgrim is well aware that what Garrosh is doing is abominable, but he has dedicated his life to serving the Horde, and so, even though we've fought alongside him in the past, we have to fight him to the death to progress to our confrontation with Garrosh. (Ironically, he receives his "redemption" by becoming a Death Knight two expansions later - but WoW has good Death Knights, including playable ones.) This example would certainly lean toward lawful good characters, but I think you could easily have chaotic good ones as well - some druid who, say, is dedicated to preserving the pristine and untamed wilds, keeping it free of any artifice, might feel they must stop a party from interfering with an Elemental Cataclysm that threatens some city on the edge of the forest.
Sacred Guardian:
This could be seen as a combination of the Greater Good and Honor ideas, and I think is probably the most obvious option: D&D characters have a tendency to delve into ancient tombs, shrines, vaults, and such, often to retrieve some unique and powerful or important item. And it's likely that if that item is in such a dungeon, it was probably put there for a reason. The party might want or need, say, the staff of an ancient archmage who bound a powerful demon. A good-aligned monster might, then, have the sacred charge of safeguarding the item.
They might have the attitude that simply no one should be able to take it - maybe they feel it's too dangerous to be allowed back into the world. Or, perhaps, they are there as a test, to ensure that whoever takes the item is strong enough to keep it safe and use it properly (Guardian Naga are great for this, because they aren't really worried about dying since they can just come back to life.)
There are tons of other scenarios that will let you use these good-aligned monsters, and the limit is really just what you can come up with as a DM. Another thing to always consider is that these creatures might be fighting alongside the party. This can be tough, as you'll need to seriously increase the number or power of the monsters the party is fighting to compensate for the power of their new ally, but it is an opportunity to get to use these creatures. Also, if you're running a campaign with morally-questionable or even flat-out evil characters, you'll of course have plenty of opportunity for them to face good-aligned foes.
But I figured I'd just share some of my thoughts on how you could make use of them.
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