Dragons are the quintessential monster. They're massive in size, incredibly intelligent, can breath fire, and have wings. They're iconic the world over, and are in the very name of "Dungeons & Dragons". The very sight of one should send a bone-chilling panic into any would-be adventurer.
Yet I've noticed in the fifth edition of D&D, dragons have surprisingly low strength. Looking through the monster manual and I see dragons with STR of 19, 23, 26, 22, and so on. The strongest dragon I found only had a STR of 30. Now, this may seem like a high number, but when compared to the average human strength of 10, this means that the strongest dragon is only three-times better?
If we think about why dragons seem so dangerous and scary, it's easy to imagine a dragon being able to crush, chomp, or smash a human with little to no effort. In Lord of the Rings, for example, it took an entire village, equipped with a special ballista, and the fact that the dragon had a hole in his iron-hard scales, to defeat it. Yet in modern RPGs we see a watering down of dragons; an artificial nerfing to human levels to allow for PCs to triumph and defeat them with no more than four to six humanoids.
Dragon's True Strength
All of this got me thinking about what the "true" strength of a dragon should be. How much can they carry? What is their STR score? Here's what I came up with...First a disclaimer: It should be said that yes, there are many different sizes of dragons throughout mythology, and that with that there will also be a wide variation in strength. So, to keep things simple, I'm going to stick with Smaug, the dragon from LOTR; since it's so iconic and seems like a fairly "medium" dragon.
To start, since dragons aren't actually real, we need to find a real-world comparison. I've chosen to look at elephants, since they're both large and are actually a thing. The average elephant is about 20 feet long and can carry 9000 kgs. Compared to a human of 6ft tall who can carry 90 kg (200 pounds) on their back. This means elephants are over three-times longer than humans are tall (foot to head), but can carry 100 times more weight.
Now let's look at this scaled image of Smaug the dragon.
I measured the human to be 66 pixels tall, and Smaug to be 620 pixels tall (from bottom of his front foot to head). One could easily argue that I should have measured the dragon length-wise (including or not including his tail), which would easily make him even larger in pixel count.
So, what do the numbers tell us? Well, for one, Smaug is over nine-times larger than the human; and if we use elephants as a guide, then he'd be able to carry up to 27,900 kg. That makes him an astounding 310 times stronger!
Conclusion
If an average human strength in D&D is 10, then in reality dragons such as Smaug should have a STR of 3,100. Incredible! In fact, it's kind of mind-boggling to think about. However, it makes a lot of sense, as well.For one, as I stated earlier, dragons should be damn-near unstoppable. They live for ages, are colossal in size, are smarter than humans, and breath fire! The idea of an entire kingdom, with torches & pitchforks in hand, marching up a mountain to a dragon's perch to take them on seems so much more epic then some rag-tag band of adventurers.
Second, based off their sheer size, they should be able to crush humanoids like humans can crush cockroaches. So, having a near god-like strength works well.
Thoughts?
Four figure attribute scores remind me of the Immortals Handbook, a third party supplement for 3E.
ReplyDeleteTo me, this article shows the view of one who sticks to much to the numbers.
ReplyDeleteSo what if a dragon has a STR attribute of 19 (like the young green dragon from Lost Mine of Phandelver)? It's a monster and doesn't use the same rules as characters.
Its melee attack has a +7 modifier, with a +4 STR modifier do you automatically assume that it has a Proficiency Bonus of +3 and is therefore at least level 5? It also has a Stealth modifier of +4, so that means it can hide as well as the group's thief?
You can of course go ahead and place a dragon in your game with a STR score of 3,100 who can, therefore, probably lift a mountain around or push the continents apart, a dragon who with 1 touch kills any hero. You wouldn't even need stats, because as you say, it is unstoppable. Now tell us where the fun is.
Dragons in D&D are not like Smaug, at least not every dragon. In fact, few are. There are dragons of animal intelligence not much larger than a horse. These are probably a lot more common than the aeons-old, god-like wizard-dragons who can maybe also leave the planet and go to other planets or dimensions. It probably takes many centuries for a dragon to reach that point. The younger ones may be more like animals until they "awake" to a higher existence, if they live that long.
Of course PCs won't be fighting the immortal dragons who can crush them with a wink of the eye, they're fighting the smaller ones who can be dealt with, because everything else would be no fun at all, unless you want to play a survival game.
If you want dragons to be unstoppable, what about the wizard-lords of legend, or demons and devils? There are enough books and films where they are godlike and unstoppable, too. But you'll end up having a game where being a hero means nothing any more, because half the enemies are much more capable.
Good one! When an actual dragon is only a small bit stronger than a dragonborne? That's a problem.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think it would be more interesting to have a literal dragon in the game. It would force players to rethink their tactics. But I also think that such a large creature would have a tremendously hard time attacking smaller creatures. This is why elephants fear mice and I fear yellow jackets. Every dragon's worst nightmare should consist of pixies, sprites, gnomes and kobolds.
You have to follow through with your ideas and embody them in your design. If dragons have a str of 3100 and are neigh on unstoppable, then how does that affect your world's ecology, and economy (after all dragons horde gold, and that will have an economic impact if gold is as scarce as it is on earth). And can humans actually survive in a world where there are dragons, and presumably other monsters, of that ilk? In legends dragons were able to be defeated by single warriors. But in game terms how would that be possible mathematically? Consider that if you increase it's strength to 3100, you would also increase it's hit points... to ... let's suppose 1000. But human weapons can only do so much per melee. Maybe a critical hit would do it... but you'd have to look at that. So the point is that you need to think about how this plays out in terms of the mechanics and what becomes possible and impossible in that scenario. Because if dragons can not be killed because they have 3100 str and thousands of hits, and armor without chinks like Smaug ...
ReplyDeleteHere's what's likely in that scenario ... Dragons rule the planet and be it's over lords using their vast intellect. They horde the gold out of greed, and human civilization collapses, but the dragons, being cruel, don't care at all. When the humans try to rebel by sending forth their pathetic hero's with their lances, they get fried to a crisp. When the villagers horde together to climb up to the mountain stronghold the dragon releases rock slides and fire and they all die. Civilization can not advance and humans become just another form of more intelligent than usual monkey. Dragons dominate the world's ecosystem, and human civilization never gets off the ground. So advances in metalurgy and architecture? Not likely. Dragons would destroy that before they got far. Humans instead live in hovels or caves. Etc.
In other words you need to think through the implications. I'm not saying that such worlds wouldn't be fun. They very well could be. But you need to craft them based on your premises, and then follow the logical consequences to have a complete world. Otherwise, it will be out of balance, and not make much sense at all ... which usually isn't that fun. So I encourage you to go the distance with this and see what you come up with. I'll be curious to hear where it winds up.
You mean, when a dragon is only a small bit stronger than an ultra-strong (in game terms: maxed STR)Dragonborn? Why not? When you look at warrior brutes in fiction, don't they wrestle seemingly impossible foes? That's your STR 20 character, maybe.
ReplyDeleteIf you only look at the maximum stats possible for PCs, then yes, it's a problem. I know it's become more difficult to resist maxing out characters for more bonuses, but does that mean that every fighter now has STR 20?
What would a "literal dragon" be, JD?
When we played Lost Mine of Phandelver we encountered the young green dragon and boy, did it make us change tactics! One PC died and the others just got away with a whole new respect for even young dragons.
When you have stats above 20, look at them as exponentially stronger than stats in the PC range. Maybe that helps. The stats are pretty much "fluff" anyway, the game mechanics only care for the modifier, so who cares?
If you truly want godlike dragons, make a houserule like the Palladium games' Mega Damage /MDC rules, maybe that'll keep the stats below 3 digits.
Ahem....2nd ed. Problem solved.
ReplyDeleteTrue Story.
DeleteIf you want a mechanically realistic dragon, I suggest GURPS. They will physically annihilate all non-demigods.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is with the artists. The dragon stats are right the art depicting dragons shows them at a larger size. We have history to help us. Classical artist all depict dragons at the largest the size of a horse. Which seems like it might have a strength of 20 to 30.
ReplyDeletehttps://skulltower.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/how-big-are-dragons-anyway/