Dawn of Hope: On Dragons

[PhoenixPhyre]

seriously hatchlings are people:

Sorry but an creature that can talk and learn new languages quickly is everything but an animal: hatchlings are people (in fact smart people since normal people can not right after birth learn a new language in less than a year and you used a plural meaning that they can even become polyglots meaning they are exceptionally intelligent) and not even sightly animals.
In fact if those hatchlings counts as animals and not as people we could say humans are animals all their entire life and not people.

Oops--you're right about that.

But still, hatchlings only have one way forward. They're intelligent, but they've got a self-destruct mechanism built into them. If they don't find their element (barring some super-rare outside intervention), they'll not survive. And the rare ones that try will find their parents consider them aberrants and cast them out (and a hatchling has no breath weapon, no resistances, and no special traits). I don't know of any such "non-traditional" hatchling, but they'd be *special* in a bunch of different ways. Likely due to an interaction with an entity such as a Great Old One, a demon[1], or a magitech engineer turning them into a monstrosity. As for resurrecting a "failed" hatchling...I'm not sure. I'd have to think about that. My guess would be that they'd end up either being a Black (necrotic) or a Gold (radiant) depending on the details and the personality.

And the rest of the mechanical bits were specific to 3e's progression system, and don't apply to my setting at all. Not to mention that they're mechanics rules, not fiction rules.