D&D General Are dragons wings too small/little?

[Oofta]

And magic is not a suitable explaination for the flying ability of dragons since it lacks in empirical evidence and explaination. Although I do like the super strong bones, carbon fiber like skin, etcetc. Weapons out of Dragon Bone can even be better then steal or titanium etc.

Huh? This is a world where incorporeal spirits are walking around, beholders float, hounds from hell breath fire. Why would flying dragons that breath fire, acid, lightning, cold and various other nasty things not be magical?

Don't get me wrong, it's interesting to speculate how they could be more mundane, but at some point the D&D dragon has to be at least in part inherently magical. Now wyverns on the other hand might be a different story.

 

[Tonguez]

I was a huge fan of that book as a kid. However, aesthetically, I prefer dragons that fly by wing lift - even if the dragon must be given supernatural strength and lightness to do so - rather than floating along like living blimp..

Also, a dragon that is stabbed by a knight's lance should not pop and deflate like a balloon.

The blimp issue can be easily solved by distributing dragon gas exchange throughout its body in a series of distinct ‘air sacs’ rather than a single cavity. Perhaps like birds dragons have no diaphragm, instead they have a solid armoured breast structure to protect the air sacs and rigid lung structures

 

[TheCosmicKid]

If your talking about making dragons IRL, well you need to get some really advanced degrees in bio-engineering (some which don't exist yet) and maybe a century (or more) of technological advancement before we get there.

And it'd be a pretty inefficient allocation of effort. As impressive as an ancient red dragon is, it's probably outperformed in almost every metric -- size, speed, ceiling, range, durability, destructive capability, you name it -- by the good old B-52.

 

[MarkB]

Huh? This is a world where incorporeal spirits are walking around, beholders float, hounds from hell breath fire. Why would flying dragons that breath fire, acid, lightning, cold and various other nasty things not be magical?

Don't get me wrong, it's interesting to speculate how they could be more mundane, but at some point the D&D dragon has to be at least in part inherently magical. Now wyverns on the other hand might be a different story.

Now I'm imagining this comic immediately followed by the dragon collapsing under it's own body mass.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Now I'm imagining this comic immediately followed by the dragon collapsing under it's own body mass.

I recall some natter in in a Dragon article or something about there being "background magic" or "intrinsic magic" in the world that powered such physics-defying-but-not-labeled-as-magical effects as the flight of dragons and beholders. The idea being that mortal "antimagic" didn't have enough oomph to cancel out magic that deep.

A friend of mine ran a campaign that went the opposite direction: a plot twist was that antimagic meant instant death for anyone, because all life is magical.

 

[Oofta]

Now I'm imagining this comic immediately followed by the dragon collapsing under it's own body mass.

Yeah, anti-magic spells and magical (non-summoned) creatures has always been a bit problematic. But while magical spells can't be cast and item's magic is suppressed in the zone, nothing says it otherwise affects creatures.

I've always interpreted that as dragons and other creatures generate their own magic, it's part of their metabolism.

 

[dave2008]

The blimp issue can be easily solved by distributing dragon gas exchange throughout its body in a series of distinct ‘air sacs’ rather than a single cavity. Perhaps like birds dragons have no diaphragm, instead they have a solid armoured breast structure to protect the air sacs and rigid lung structures

If you think that is true you need to do a lot more research into materials and physics. You need a certain volume of gas to overcome the mass of the body. You can't get that within the standard dragon shape, no matter how efficiently you fill it.

 

[Umbran]

I was a huge fan of that book as a kid. However, aesthetically, I prefer dragons that fly by wing lift - even if the dragon must be given supernatural strength and lightness to do so - rather than floating along like living blimps.

Um... you know how being a living blimp is... making you lighter? Like, supernaturally lighter?

 

[Dausuul]

Um... you know how being a living blimp is... making you lighter? Like, supernaturally lighter?

What is your point exactly? Anything that flies, by whatever means, must be light enough - supernaturally or otherwise - to do so. That does not mean it has to float along like a blimp.

 

[Umbran]

Let's start with a real-life animal that's roughly where we want dragons to be. Quetzalcoatlus is all very well, but I prefer my dragons a bit more robust. Say we use Haast's eagle, a very big extinct eagle that hunted moa: Weight up to 30 pounds, body length about 4 feet, wingspan up to 10 feet, able to take off from the ground.

How big should dragons be? Let's figure the tail is extremely long and thin, more of a steering vane. For the body, say 40 feet. That's on par with the very largest minis (8x8 base). So, this dragon is 10 times the size of Haast's eagle in every dimension. Thus, it must be 10 times as efficient a flier.

You put this as a footnote. It ought to be up front:

If the dragon's body is 10 times the size of Haast's eagle in every dimension, that means it is 1000 times the volume. To first approximation, that means it is 1000 times the mass and weight.

Now, here's where you run into problems. The lift generated by a wing is directly proportional to the wing's surface area. But, at 10 times the size in each dimension, the surface area of this dragon's wings are only 100 times those of the eagle.

Increase the size - you get 1000 times the weight, but only 100 times the lift. That's the problem.

You said you preferred body plans like the eagle. Well, this is why Quetzalcoatlus didn't have the eagle's body plan - keep the same body plan at a larger size, and you can't fly - because for natural animals, you have only a few options for reducing the body mass, and most of those actually negate the point of being physically larger!

This is where being a fantasy creature comes in. I am not sure most of the time that you want them to be 1000 times the physical size, but only 100 times the weight. In our case, 100 times the weight of the eagle is only 3000 pounds - on the order of the weight of a large bull. Aside from blowing away in the wind... it would mean that any predator who could take down a large bull might also have a chance at the dragon.

So, no, let us not reduce the weight. Instead, increase how much you get for that weight. In normal animals, as you say, the force muscles can exert is proportional to the cross sectional area of the muscle fiber bundle - if I am 10 times the size in each dimension, I am 1000 times the weight, but only 100 times as strong. Whoops!

Fix that one thing - muscle power, and it all works. The muscles of our large fantasy creatures are incredibly powerful as compared to our smaller fantasy creatures. Giants, Dragons, and so on, have some force multiplier. Their connective tissues and bone strength (not overall weight, just their strength) must increase to take the larger loads. But then, you're done.

So, really powerful muscle, and dragon and giant bones that are stronger than metals. And that's cool anyway.