Size of a Dragon?

How big is a 12hd dragon? how much could it carry as a mount? Several people?

Lairs and Encounters tells us that a draconine body form has a BME of 1.98 and a CCF of 0.020.

This means that a 12 HD dragon weighs 13,085 lbs and can has a normal carrying capacity of 26 stone.

I swear we had something for calculating dragonsize - length and wingspan - by HD, but I can't find it. It's likely there's enough different dragon sizes in L&E to figure it out...

[quote="koewn"]

I swear we had something for calculating dragonsize - length and wingspan - by HD, but I can't find it. It's likely there's enough different dragon sizes in L&E to figure it out...

[/quote]

I touched on it slightly in my drakes thread, but I think the main point of reference would be the table in Monster Weight, Size Category, and Armor Class from L&E (it's page 150 of the final sneak preview; I don't have the hard copy at hand to check page references). 13,000 pounds is about 1/6 of the way up the size scale for Gigantic (8k-32k), so I'd put it around 1/6 of the way along the length chart, or 22' in length, with a wingspan around 66'.

  • Dragon, Adult: 9000lb, 35' body length, 12' tail, 104' wingspan
  • Dragon, Ancient: 30,000lb, 64' body length, 21' tail, 191' wingspan
  • Dragon, Hugest Venerable: 60,500lb, 93' body length, 31' tail, 280' wingspan
  • Dragon Juvenile: 5900lb, 27' body length, 9' tail, 82' wingspan
  • Dragon Mature Adult: 13,000lb, 42' body length, 14' tail, 125' wingspan
  • Dragon Old: 17,750lb, 49' body length, 16' tail, 147' wingspan
  • Dragon Spawn: 400lb, 7' body length, 2' tail, 20' wingspan
  • Dragon Venerable: 36,000lb, 71' body length, 24' tail,  213' wingspan
  • Dragon Very Old: 23,000lb, 56' body length, 19' tail, 169' wingspan
  • Dragon Very Young: 1,500lb, 13' body length, 4' tail, 40' wingspan
  • Dragon Young: 3,300lb, 20' body length, 7' tail, 61' wingspan

For comparison purposes:

  • 747-8I has a 244' wingspan
  • Hughes Spruce Goose has a 320' wingspan
  • Blue wheel is up to 100' long and weighs 380,000lbs
  • Argentinosaurus, the longest sauropod dinosaur, was 130' long
  • Quetzalcoatlus, perhaps the largest pterosaur, had a body length estimated at 26' to 54', a wingspan estimated at 33' to 69' feet, and weight estimate of 150lb to 550lb

 

 

 

[quote="Aryxymaraki"] Lairs and Encounters tells us that a draconine body form has a BME of 1.98 and a CCF of 0.020. This means that a 12 HD dragon weighs 13,085 lbs and can has a normal carrying capacity of 26 stone. [/quote]

Wow, cool.

man, for something that size it seems pretty weak. Or are it's carrying capacity break points different? I don't have my L&E handy.

And Alex, I think those details should really be included in the dragon chart in any hypothetical 2nd edition!

 

 

I mean seriously, pack animals can carry more than something 5-10 times their size? and 26 Stone is hardly enough to carry a heavy rider in plate armor. ;(

Aryx either typo'd or made a mistake in his math, 12hd dragons have a normal load of 260 ​stone, enough to carry 8 men in plate, though if it really had to it could carry 16 men in plate, but it would not have nearly the maneuverability

Thanks! That makes so much more sense!

Here are the normal loads of the dragons (in same order as above). They are f***ing beasts.

182.0
584.0
1,210.0
117.0
262.0
355.0
8.0
720.0
463.0
30.0
66.0

To add a fun note, eggs are listed as 5% of 'adult' weight according to L&E pg 126.

Above, adult dragons are listed at 9,000 lbs. 

That's 450lbs; indicating the size of the egg is probably Large - alternatively (I'm still looking for data on lizards) chicks are about 70% of egg weight, so the brand new hatchling might weigh in at only 315 points.

Another fun fact I found : with enough dangerous-seeming vibration late in the gestation process, many lizards will erupt from their eggs early to escape danger. Keep that in mind when your party thinks they can grab an egg or two...

 

Yup, my bad! Meant 262 but the 2 got lost. (I calculated 261.7, which isn’t exactly Alex’s 262.0, but that’s almost certainly rounding error since I used exactly 13,085 for its weight in the formula instead of the decimals at the end.)