Converting D&D to GURPS: Combat Comparison

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Well, I can't tell you exactly what a 'level 30 red dragon' means, but according the the 3.5 Draconomicon they can grow to SM+7 or +8 (40 yards) and mass 640 tons.

Having done quite a bit of work dealing with dragons for my campaigns and such... A typical western-styled dragon of human size would be about 10 feet from tip-to-tip (With about half that being tail), and weigh 150-200 pounds. Scaling up to 120 feet and keeping proportions the same, the weight goes up to 260,000-350,000 pounds (130-175 tons). 640 tons seems way too high. Working backwards, a 10-foot dragon that had the same proportions would weigh 740 pounds, which is far too high for a tip-to-tip length of 10 feet.

I imagine that 40 yard figure is it's "base" size, as in, how large its base is on the battle map, not its actual tip-to-tip length. 640 tons with consistant proportions seems to be more like 180-200 feet in length.

In either case (And assuming the same proportions, again), ST tends to simplify to about 1 per foot of length, barring supernatural strength. But that would just be a racial average, and a supernatural-by-nature dragon would likely have even higher.

(Basically, this is all assuming square-cube-law holds for weight, and then completely ignores it for purposes of flight, movement, etc. And yes, I probably put too much thought into this.)

In general, I'd recommend taking monsters from D&D and putting them in GURPS as being less of conversion, more of inspiration. Take what D&D presents, lay them out in real-world terms (Size, weight, speed, and descriptives of special powers), and then design that in GURPS. It takes a bit more work, because you can't simply convert some numbers instantly to stats, but it makes for far more detailed and realistic results in the end.