Metal dragons

Metal or ferrous dragons are dragons whose hides are metallic. Like metal armour however, the ones with weaknesses are relatively weak to magic attacks. Instead of dragonhide, the metal dragons drop bars of their type of metal. Metal dragons are unlike chromatic dragons in that their fire breath is a long-ranged attack. Because of this, they will not move into melee range, allowing players to fully protect themselves from dragonfire with a combination of antifire potions and anti-dragon shield or super antifire potions (except rune dragons and their superior variant) and stay out of melee range, often minimising how much they are hit, and in most cases completely immunizing themselves from damage. All metal dragons except bronze dragons have a chance of dropping the draconic visage, and all metal dragons except mithril dragons can drop dragon platelegs and dragon plateskirts.

In their history, as learned during One of a Kind the first metal dragons were formed by the Dragonkin when metal was bound to the dragon eggs. Few of the eggs survived the process. Metal was poured not quite on the eggs, but rather more in them. This process required Dragonkin sorcery.

It can be presumed that Forcae was the creator of metallic dragons, as his journal implies heavily about all types of metallic dragons, such as creating the first bronze, iron, mithril, adamant, rune and elite rune dragons.

Trivia

 * According to the Varrock Museum, metallic dragons are also called ferrous dragons, even though this would logically only refer to iron and steel ones.