New fire dragon

[name]

OK, so the noble, equine dragon makes more sense, I guess?

If so, should it be naked? A horse with any sort of armor is clearly a subjugated beast, not a wild stallion. Or it could make sense that a sentient, speaking being can wear whatever their claws can manage - they already gather gold.

(Sorry, missed your post until now...)

Yeah, it seems like a fearsome-but-noble, heraldic approach would fit the fire dragon well.

Equine may be a good starting point, though (IMO) perhaps a bit more lithe and serpentine, putting the emphasis on its powerful jaws and tail (the only two melee weapons it uses) and its vast wings (since it is a tremendously agile flyer for its size, going by its overall movement and defense stats). Its legs could be quite a lot smaller by comparison, since it does not seem to use these to fight or get around that much (as evidenced by its high defense and mobility stats over unwalkable terrain where legs are useless).

In nature, gliding animals tend to have small or ordinary sized chests, whereas true flying animals have proportionately large ones for their much greater cardiovascular needs, so you could use this as an indicator of whether you want it to be more of a flyer or a glider. The fire dragon may be somewhere in between the two, a very large soaring animal, given that it loses mobility over water.

I agree naked/unarmored seems more fitting.

[Magical_Noob]

Opinions:
-Great art work, the art style seems to fit the game more than the other two
-Could be a bit bigger (although I agree that the official one is way too big, but it is a dragon after all; so it needs to be more imposing maybe a 10% size increment?)
-Pose, four legged pose is probably a bit better compared to hunch (alternatively maybe it can stand like a T-rex with 2 legs while the front 2 don't touch the ground?), the reason being is that the dragon needs to appear more confident looking.

Suggestions:
-If you plan to animate it, perhaps you can have the dragon do the iconic Charizard pose while breathing out fire.

Overview:
I think its the best one out of the three, so I am hoping this becomes the official fire dragon one day.

[doofus-01]

Sorry for the slow response. The fire dragon is still something we need to deal with in this release cycle, and name is one of the authors of Winds of Fate so their input does govern the direction this takes. I'm currently thinking the fire dragon will resemble the wyvern more than the drakes. I'm not saying it will be a wyvern recolor, just that body shape will be more like that than the drakes, probably keep a similar fancy head as the current fire dragon.

hunter_z - your sprite is still pretty good, it could still be a mainline drake unit available for campaigns if it gets a decent melee attack animation.

[hunter_z]

Sorry for the slow response. The fire dragon is still something we need to deal with in this release cycle, and name is one of the authors of Winds of Fate so their input does govern the direction this takes. I'm currently thinking the fire dragon will resemble the wyvern more than the drakes. I'm not saying it will be a wyvern recolor, just that body shape will be more like that than the drakes, probably keep a similar fancy head as the current fire dragon.

hunter_z - your sprite is still pretty good, it could still be a mainline drake unit available for campaigns if it gets a decent melee attack animation.

I still think a quadrupedal dragon would fit better. The red unofficial one has many animations, if they were cleaned up a little by BfW's contributing sprite artists, it might be the best fit.

As for my sprite, perhaps it could become an entirely new thing - the Drake Brute? Relies purely on its natural strength instead of weapons and armor; less intelligent but hits hard.

[beetlenaut]

Relies purely on its natural strength instead of weapons and armor

Maybe that's just what happens in the rare cases that a drake gets old. They just keep getting bigger and stronger with a thicker hide. I think this would make a good level-5 drake or alternate level-4, depending on the stats. It is a good sprite I think.

I used the pose of the old skeletal dragon

I think you were misled by that image. It's from the time that sprites had to fit entirely inside a hex, and that's why it has the hulking stance that it does.