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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8910622" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Ah, thread necromancy. Almost didn't hit quota for January!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />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!</blockquote>

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