xshibax
"BURN THEM ALL" Aerys Targaryen
no what did it sayy
D&D General Are dragons wings too small/little?
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xshibax
"BURN THEM ALL" Aerys Targaryen
Awesome Star Wars reference. However, there are already real life animals, most extinct, but some not, that break so many laws of physics with their ability to fly. I'll post something else when I have more time about how it works.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Nevermind. Didn't notice the necro.
Nice to see lowkey13 quoted (sorta) though.
Nice to see lowkey13 quoted (sorta) though.
xshibax
"BURN THEM ALL" Aerys Targaryen
Alright, so most pterosaurs actually defied physics due to the fact that their wings didn't line up with their body weight/size. If you are to increase the length of an animal, (ex., a dragon,) it would be x. As x increases, the wings would grow by x². This would make it easier to fly, right? Absolutely not. As the body gets longer, and the wings get larger, so does the mass. As the length increases by x, and the wings increase by x², the mass actually increases by x³.
That is a lot of weight to add, right? So you would need something that makes it easier to fly. Hollow bones, like some birds? No, they would weigh too much and crush their own bones. How about solid bones? Well, those weigh more, and would make it even more difficult.
Now say that your dragon looks like Schwarzenegger, as jacked as humanly possible. You would be strong enough, right? Nope, you are just adding weight.
What a dragon may have, though, is some kind of organ, like another lung, that just fills with air. Many fish have these to cause more buoyancy, and some birds have even been known to have them so they can fly easier.
That is about all I can give for how a dinosaur could fly with smaller wings.
That is a lot of weight to add, right? So you would need something that makes it easier to fly. Hollow bones, like some birds? No, they would weigh too much and crush their own bones. How about solid bones? Well, those weigh more, and would make it even more difficult.
Now say that your dragon looks like Schwarzenegger, as jacked as humanly possible. You would be strong enough, right? Nope, you are just adding weight.
What a dragon may have, though, is some kind of organ, like another lung, that just fills with air. Many fish have these to cause more buoyancy, and some birds have even been known to have them so they can fly easier.
That is about all I can give for how a dinosaur could fly with smaller wings.
Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
You can’t use physics for dragons. Their wings would have to be impossibly large to work. Best to go with what feels right. Personally I like when they were smaller and we didn’t pretend that they could actually work - it was magic baby!
Laurefindel
Legend
Heh, almost missed the 2-year necro. While i prefer larger wings for aesthetic reasons, larger wings also make dragon flight ever so slightly more believable and sometimes, ever so slightly more believable is enough to satisfy the need for «realism».
I do like the irony of the « because dragons! » argument used to legitimize dragons however.
I do like the irony of the « because dragons! » argument used to legitimize dragons however.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
The pterasaurs didn't defy physics, though...
Scientists have opposing theories on how the largest of them flew, but even then it's mostly about how long they could fly without landing, and whether they were limited to initiating flight by jumping off of something or if they could get off the ground on wing power. They aren't confused as to like...how they could have possibly flown.
DND dragons are much more massive than any ancient flyer IRL, however. Like extremely so.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Ah, thread necromancy. Almost didn't hit quota for January! 
An actual dragon would need to be made of unobtainium to reduce weight, have some sort of solution for the square-cube law, and (yes) would need wings significantly larger compared to their body size.
They are fundamentally, in almost every way, antagonistic to the laws of physics. Their body size (too large), body weight (MUCH too large), wing size (too small), elemental breath, lifespan, breeding habits, feeding habits, sleeping habits, lairing tendencies, hoarding tendencies, and more are all contradictory to physical law in one way or another. (E.g. the hoards make no sense because an "average" dragon hoard would be worth billions in a world where millionaires are extremely rare. There just aren't enough prosperous political units to support the kinds of dragon hoards you can acquire in D&D. Physical resource extraction rates alone, nevermind the social expertise required for things like furniture, paintings, gemcutting, etc., could never support more than one or two dragons in the whole world, let alone a dragon in every other mountain range!)
As a result of their inherently unrealistic (I personally prefer "fantastical") nature, I've considered an alternative explanation for dragons that I think is pretty neat, if I do say so myself. Dragons as extraplanar refugees. In their home reality, dragons are not the top dogs. That's something like tarrasques (yes, plural) or the like. Dragons have predators in that other world, though they are also predators themselves. While food resources are scarce, mineral resources are plentiful and can be used as a form of protection--perhaps dragons in Dragonhome keep predators away from their nests using shiny crystals.
Suddenly, a whole bunch of weirdness has a naturalistic explanation. Dragon breath is a defense mechanism against predation. Dragons that live longer have more children. Building hoards of shiny, valuable things is a defense mechanism for their nests, and is instinctively recognized as "home" even for dragons that have only lived in "our" world (that is, the "main" world of a setting.) Dragons are naturally magical because everything is naturally magical in their home dimension, they just don't normally live long enough to capitalize on it--and perhaps they can draw on the magic of "our" world in a way no one else can, which is what lets them do their thing. They're naturally solitary in their own world, only rarely forming pair-bonds to mate, but the instinct to hunt and protect a territory etc. evolves into their notorious lairing tendencies. And they can grow as powerful as they do because they have no natural predators in their "adopted" worlds, but they're cunning enough to be aware of, and avoid, the possibility of ecological collapse. (Perhaps this is a lesson learned from a previous world they "adopted" and overran?)
Their hibernation cycles are some kind of natural response to the conditions of their home reality (perhaps there are magical seasons of devastating power, so dragons hibernate in places similar to their nesting sites until the season becomes more hospitable.) Those conditions don't apply in their adopted world(s), but the instinctive hibernation cycle remains. Dragons that reach "great wyrm" stage (well over a millennium, based on what sources I can find quickly) are incredibly ancient by their native world's standards, which allows them to attain mental, physical, and magical heights impossible in their native reality.
So yeah. Dragons as semi-eldritch beings native to a plane of reality where the laws of physics are fundamentally different. Worth a thought for your next campaign!
An actual dragon would need to be made of unobtainium to reduce weight, have some sort of solution for the square-cube law, and (yes) would need wings significantly larger compared to their body size.
They are fundamentally, in almost every way, antagonistic to the laws of physics. Their body size (too large), body weight (MUCH too large), wing size (too small), elemental breath, lifespan, breeding habits, feeding habits, sleeping habits, lairing tendencies, hoarding tendencies, and more are all contradictory to physical law in one way or another. (E.g. the hoards make no sense because an "average" dragon hoard would be worth billions in a world where millionaires are extremely rare. There just aren't enough prosperous political units to support the kinds of dragon hoards you can acquire in D&D. Physical resource extraction rates alone, nevermind the social expertise required for things like furniture, paintings, gemcutting, etc., could never support more than one or two dragons in the whole world, let alone a dragon in every other mountain range!)
As a result of their inherently unrealistic (I personally prefer "fantastical") nature, I've considered an alternative explanation for dragons that I think is pretty neat, if I do say so myself. Dragons as extraplanar refugees. In their home reality, dragons are not the top dogs. That's something like tarrasques (yes, plural) or the like. Dragons have predators in that other world, though they are also predators themselves. While food resources are scarce, mineral resources are plentiful and can be used as a form of protection--perhaps dragons in Dragonhome keep predators away from their nests using shiny crystals.
Suddenly, a whole bunch of weirdness has a naturalistic explanation. Dragon breath is a defense mechanism against predation. Dragons that live longer have more children. Building hoards of shiny, valuable things is a defense mechanism for their nests, and is instinctively recognized as "home" even for dragons that have only lived in "our" world (that is, the "main" world of a setting.) Dragons are naturally magical because everything is naturally magical in their home dimension, they just don't normally live long enough to capitalize on it--and perhaps they can draw on the magic of "our" world in a way no one else can, which is what lets them do their thing. They're naturally solitary in their own world, only rarely forming pair-bonds to mate, but the instinct to hunt and protect a territory etc. evolves into their notorious lairing tendencies. And they can grow as powerful as they do because they have no natural predators in their "adopted" worlds, but they're cunning enough to be aware of, and avoid, the possibility of ecological collapse. (Perhaps this is a lesson learned from a previous world they "adopted" and overran?)
Their hibernation cycles are some kind of natural response to the conditions of their home reality (perhaps there are magical seasons of devastating power, so dragons hibernate in places similar to their nesting sites until the season becomes more hospitable.) Those conditions don't apply in their adopted world(s), but the instinctive hibernation cycle remains. Dragons that reach "great wyrm" stage (well over a millennium, based on what sources I can find quickly) are incredibly ancient by their native world's standards, which allows them to attain mental, physical, and magical heights impossible in their native reality.
So yeah. Dragons as semi-eldritch beings native to a plane of reality where the laws of physics are fundamentally different. Worth a thought for your next campaign!
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
Dragon flight is definitely based only on magic and not in any way aerodynamics or real world physics in any way. Now just because some artists depict dragons with overly tiny wings perhaps (not in my experience, but then I don't study dragon art that deepy, at least not other people's art). When I create dragons, not that I give any thought to wing size vs. animal size, but I guess I create better versions because I'm not trying design a specific dragon type that was previously determined by other artists - I don't care what other artists have done, and their previous work does not impact my work in any way. Here's a recent 3D dragon illustration I created as a potential Spelljammer ship for a collection I'm working on to publish, but it didn't make the cut as one of the inclusions. Though I called this a Drake and not a Dragon...
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