Dragon Lifespan

[KanedaX321]

I'm planning on having my PCs encounter a Young Adamantine Dragon fairly early on in the campaign. However, in writing the history of the dragon (since he'll be fairly important in the coming story), I have no idea how old he should be.

I've looked through both 4th Edition Dragonomicon books that I own, Chromatic and Metallic, and haven't been able to find any breakdown on a dragon's lifespan. How old is a wyrmling before he's considered a young dragon? How old is a young dragon before he's considered adult? Would a 40 year old dragon be considered young? Barely hatched? Or is that a full adult?

Any links, or location of this conversation elsewhere in the forum, would be helpful.

Thanks!

 

[Aspeon]

Not much in MM1 or Monster Vault, either. MM1 pg. 77 has a sidebar about the age categories, but it talks more about size than age. It does mention that even a Young dragon is mature and out of the nest, at least.

I'd go with "whatever you need it to be"- this might be one of the things that they're choosing not to specify to let the DM's creativity rule.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

If you don't mind using older edition material, there's an age table for dragons in AD&D 2e here:
Dragon-- General (Monstrous Manual)

 

[Zaran]

I would suspect this info would be the Draconomicon. I didn't BUY either of the books though in protest of WotC making every dragon Unaligned. Maybe someone who did buy it could look up that info.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It IS in Draconomicon. Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons discusses this in the section "Chromatic Dragons In Detail" starting on page 30.

IIRC there isn't really an exactly equivalent section in D:MD, but they do discuss lifespans (Metallics having MUCH longer lifespans than most Chromatics, a Gold Dragon can reach 10k years or more).