Thoughts On Dragons

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Frost

The thing is that in a low fantasy environment dragons don't have to be the size of a comuter train to pose a credible threat (assuming that they ever need to be). With this in mind you can get away with some very plausible dragons with body weights between a few hundred pounds and a ton.

Dragons on this sort of scale can be modeled based upon real world predators so many of the issues go away quietly, food demand remains heavy but it is achievable and nobody asks how they haven't destroyed everything.
...

Technology and ability to coordinate plans of attack dictate what enemies are trivial to difficult to impossible to defeat.
Modern people with limited weapons attacked from concealment have trouble with smaller than man leopards now.
Of course making dragons even near human intelligence CAN make them much deadlier. Just knowing when to fly the heck away allows them to fight from positions of strength.

[ak_aramis]

My personal preference is for dragons to run 25-60 feet long, wingspans twice that. Teeth like swords, claws similar; breath weapons, and intelligence superior to men. And Egos that make the Kardashians look humble, and reclusiveness that makes the Ethiopian Orthodox monks look like publicity hounds.

I'll note that SJ apparently prefers his smaller; in TFT, they only go to 7-hex long...

[simply Nathan]

I like dragons ranging from 4" to 200'; anything much bigger than Godzilla and I'll start to have doubts about human-sized warriors slaying them.

[ericthered]

I like variety in my dragons: every campaign that features them will do so differently.

I do have a taste for manipulative dragons: beasts that take an active interest in human society and politics. Generally they are patient about such things and try to be subtle. I don't like portraying them as having super-human intellects, but actually remarkably human-like.

I should also note that in cross world games I portray dragons as being able to project bodies on other worlds, all while sitting in their caves at home. Which is why they seem like recluses to those around them.

[Anthony]

How big my dragons are depends on the flavor of the campaign and what they're in the campaign for. For dragons that I actually expect fantasy PCs to fight, they're generally going to be done at a scale that's practical on a battle map, which means going beyond 5-10x human size is problematic. On the other hand, I don't have a problem with Kaiju scale (100m or so) dragons for modern, ultratech, or supers games, and even larger creatures as plot devices.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

I like dragons ranging from 4" to 200'; anything much bigger than Godzilla and I'll start to have doubts about human-sized warriors slaying them.

That starts at 200'?

You have a lot of faith in squishy humans. :-)

Anything much bigger than men that is nevertheless strong enough to fly under its own power, not to mention having bones and sinews resilient enough to pounce to the ground from a dive... well, that's so much scarier than most human-scale superheroes* that the only reasonable weapons against them are smart bombs or guided missiles from another country.

*Excluding Superman and other God-by-any-other-name types.

[Flyndaran]

It's hard to imagine humans of TL 4 or under taking on a cunning flying white rhino. At 4500 lbs, a humanoid shape and structure would stand/lie almost 18 feet.
I'd consider anything larger to be Godzilla demigods if they had any intelligence greater than dumb-as-bricks actual rhinos. (Wow. Our brains are over twice the size of theirs.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It's hard to imagine humans of TL 4 or under taking on a cunning flying white rhino.

Heck, a pony-sized animal that flies with aerodynamic flight is still going to be a minimum of twice as fast and four times as strong as a mundane animal of comparable mass. Probably even more, since dragons are usually not depicted with the enormous wing muscles of real large birds. Even a human-sized flying critter is going to be terrifyingly fast and strong (though not necessarily very durable).

[Flyndaran]

Adding ANY magic, other than the absolute minimum required to make such monsters fly, adds positive exponents to their "danger quotient". I certainly agree on that front.
Real world flying monsters like the biggest pterosaurs were giraffe sized weighing only as much as 2-4 people each. Adding a zero to that weight for rhino-dragons would be obscene.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Icelander

That starts at 200'?

You have a lot of faith in squishy humans. :-)

I can see a mighty warrior with a vast array of magical weapons at his disposal and years of experience facing death multiple times a day toppling Godzilla, but not the dragons who inhale entire city blocks and whose footprints become deep canyons. ;3