Baby black dragon
D baby black dragon 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 13 |
| Attacks |
Bite 2d6 |
| Base level | 12 |
| Base experience | 200 |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | 2 |
| Base MR | 10 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1500 |
| Nutritional value | 500 |
| Size | Huge |
| Resistances | Disintegration |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A baby black dragon:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line1085 |
A baby black dragon, D, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is a juvenile black dragon that is associated with disintegration. Like all dragons, baby black dragons are strong, carnivorous, thick-skinned, and capable of flight - they will also seek out gold and gems to pick up among other items.
Baby black dragons have a single bite attack and possess disintegration resistance.
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated baby black dragons are always hostile. A baby black dragon can grow up into a black dragon, and black dragon eggs can hatch into baby black dragons.
Baby black dragons are only randomly generated within levels and branches that are biased towards a particular alignment, e.g., the Oracle and Sokoban.
Strategy
While they have decent AC and a somewhat nasty bite, a character sufficiently prepared for the mid-game should not have much trouble with baby black dragons. As pets they can be decent fighters and used as flying steeds, but their low speed makes movement while riding and raising them to adulthood time-consuming - making a baby dragon fast raises their speed to a respectable 12, and a magic whistle or blessed eucalyptus leaf may be especially necessary if a character has their own source of speed. Baby dragon corpses can be decently filling for meat-eating pets and characters.
History
The baby black dragon first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.
Variants
Many variants alter the baby black dragon and other baby dragons to make them more varied and/or threatening.
SLASH'EM
As with most other baby dragons in SLASH'EM, baby black dragons have their base level lowered to 4 and difficulty lowered to 5. They hit as a +1 weapon, and can be randomly generated on ordinary levels with a frequency of 2 - this makes them somewhat of an early-game danger for SLASH'EM characters.
Baby black dragons are also eligible for generation on many levels that place random D at level creation, and can appear in dragon lairs and the Wyrm Caves.
GruntHack
In GruntHack, baby black dragons have their difficulty slightly increased to 14, and possess two claw attacks and a strong bite attack.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack and DynaHack, all dragons have their breath weapons, resistances, and names randomized each game, allowing any non-chromatic dragon to appear as black - the default baby disintegration dragon is the baby sirrush.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack, and notnotdNetHack, baby black dragons are not randomly generated on any dungeon levels, and they have the same changes to base level and difficulty as in SLASH'EM.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, baby black dragons are chaotic like their adult forms, and like all baby dragons they are buffed similarly to GruntHack: they have a strong bite attack and two claw attacks (rearranging the same damage dice from GruntHack).
Encyclopedia entry
In the West the dragon was the natural enemy of man. Although preferring to live in bleak and desolate regions, whenever it was seen among men it left in its wake a trail of destruction and disease. Yet any attempt to slay this beast was a perilous undertaking. For the dragon's assailant had to contend not only with clouds of sulphurous fumes pouring from its fire breathing nostrils, but also with the thrashings of its tail, the most deadly part of its serpent-like body.
"One whom the dragons will speak with," he said, "that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It's not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk to you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you're a dragonlord."
