Dragon breath weapon and subtype inconsistency

[messy]

Black dragons’ breath weapon is acid, which is typically associated with earth. Yet black dragons have the water subtype.

Blue dragons’ breath weapon is lightning, which is typically associated with air. Yet blue dragons have the earth subtype.

Green dragons’ breath weapon is acid, which is typically associated with earth. Yet green dragons have the air subtype.

Is there an explanation for this inconsistency?

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Dragons don't care about your puny human understanding of the world.

Honestly, I thought giving dragons elemental subtypes made no sense in the first place, so I just ignore that.

[Mysterious Stranger]

The real reason is that the chromatic dragons predate Pathfinder by decades. They were originally written up in the 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual and the terrains they typically inhabited are a carryover from then. Black Dragons were found in swamps, Blue Dragons were found in the deserts and Green Dragons were found in forests.

Bjorn is right about it not making sense for them to have elemental descriptors. For the most part the elemental type does not really add anything to the creature except fire. Fire is the weird one because it is both and elemental type and also is the opposite of cold which is not an elemental type. That is the real inconsistence here. Red and White dragons are the only chromatic dragons that take extra damage vs an opposing energy type because they have the fire and cold subtype.

[JiCi]

A Black's Acid... kinda resembles swamp unfiltered water ^^;

A Green's Acid... is more of a poisonous gas, and forests and jungles have their share of venomous plants.

Blue either bury themselves in sand to hide... or fly high up. Since their scales match the color of the sky (usually clear), they can hunt easily. Then again, wastelands tend to somehow attract more thunderstorms, hence a Blue's lightning being close to that idea :P

[Azothath]

RAW is what it is...

GMs are free to "fix" things according to their taste and style. It is part of creating your own home game.

[KahnyaGnorc]

JiCi wrote:

A Black's Acid... kinda resembles swamp unfiltered water ^^;

A Green's Acid... is more of a poisonous gas, and forests and jungles have their share of venomous plants.

Blue either bury themselves in sand to hide... or fly high up. Since their scales match the color of the sky (usually clear), they can hunt easily. Then again, wastelands tend to somehow attract more thunderstorms, hence a Blue's lightning being close to that idea :P

This. The elemental type and breath weapon may be inconsistent with each other, but ARE consistent with the dragon types themselves and their typical environments.

[Sysryke]

JiCi wrote:

A Black's Acid... kinda resembles swamp unfiltered water ^^;

A Green's Acid... is more of a poisonous gas, and forests and jungles have their share of venomous plants.

Blue either bury themselves in sand to hide... or fly high up. Since their scales match the color of the sky (usually clear), they can hunt easily. Then again, wastelands tend to somehow attract more thunderstorms, hence a Blue's lightning being close to that idea :P

All valid points. Also important to remember that in original D&D, the green dragon's breath weapon was chlorine gas, not acid at all. That conversion happened in 3.x I think.

As to the acid=earth, lightning=air inconsistency. That's always been a bit of an issue. I tend to agree that the chromatic and metallic dragons should NOT have an elemental subtype.

As far as elements and energies go, it's all super subjective. To the original designers, those pairings made sense. Air or Earth as an energy could just as easily be force or sonic though. At the end of the day, air, water, and earth, should really all be physical. Fire (plasma) is the only matter state that really crosses into the energy category. Fire blurring the lines is the biggest contributor to the confusion. Really no point in screwing with the system, but for better consistency and distinctness between elements and energy types, Fire should be the element, and Heat or Radiation should be the energy type.

[Azothath]

waayyy back a designer used a d6 configuration for the four classical elemental planes and + & - planes... they were very impressed and used that concept for many years.

Later when writing about the intersection of those planes, they came up with ash, radiance, salt, etc and from that creative writing came the mephits.

The damage types also evolved with time.

Then there were dragons. Those evolved through the editions with the planes and energy types as shouldn't every plane have their own types of dragon?... thus things were worked in as they went along.

[Derklord]

messy wrote:

Black dragons’ breath weapon is acid, which is typically associated with earth. Yet black dragons have the water subtype.

Blue dragons’ breath weapon is lightning, which is typically associated with air. Yet blue dragons have the earth subtype.

Green dragons’ breath weapon is acid, which is typically associated with earth. Yet green dragons have the air subtype.

Is there an explanation for this inconsistency?

I'd say the explanation is that the "lightning = air" and "acid = earth" association is wrong. Yes, many things based on the "classical elements" concept have acid and electricity shoehorned in as the damage types for earth and air respectively, but this connection is entirely one-sided: Earth based abilities may default to acid damage, but acid damage does not in itself indicate a connection to earth. The dragon's breath weapon damage type is not based on their elemental subtype, nor vice versa, rather both are independently based on the dragon's natural habitat.

Plants are build out of material they've drawn from the air, which makes air a natural subtype for a dragon living amidst plants. And the oldest known and til today most used acids come from fermented plants, so that does make sense for the breath weapon damage type. In the original D&D, green dragon's breath weapon was a cloud of chlorine gas*. 3.5 has it as "cone of corrocive (acid) gas". Pathfinder retains returned the gas cloud thingy in the form of the Miasma ability.
Swamps and bogs are defined by their abundance of water, so that makes sense as the elemental type of a dragon living in them. Bogs also are naturally acidic (again due to fermentation of plant matter), so the breath weapon damage type makes sense.
I have no idea why blue dragons live in sand deserts. If the coloration is supposed to be camouflage, it's literally upside down - the blue should be on the underside, the sand colored scales (shown in the paitings in both the Bestiary and the 3.X MMs) should be up top. Maybe they're based on the moroccan city Chefchaouen?

Funny fact: In alchemy, which put a great deal on the clasic elements, acid was associated with water. Which actually makes sense from a chemical standpoint.

*) And now I imagine a setting where green dragons are used in WWI trench warfare...