I had been thinking for a while that dragons, the ones depicted in fantasy artwork, are really big. When it comes to combat you’d think they could just crush even strong humanoid opponent. It’s just a matter of mass. Think about arrows. Shooting a massive dragon with a human sized arrow would be like shooting a human with something like a toothpick.

This seems ridiculous. How do these huge massive creatures get into caves, and castles. Why don’t they rule the planet. They should be unstoppable, beyond the massive hit points. Even a well trained fighter could not stand against something that big, they would just get pushed aside or crushed.

I understand the concept of heroic fantasy, and the problems of too much realism in fantasy role playing games but, work with me here for a moment. Just because artist have been slowly bloating the size of dragons over the last 500 years doesn’t mean that we have to buy into this. And, the less handwaving I can do at the gaming table the more buy in I feel I get from my players.

Consider this image.

Here is Saint George and the Dragon, Albrecht Dürer 1471–1528. Looks about the size a horse. This drag is smaller than the smallest dragon in the first chart.

Here is a picture of a very real alligator. The dragon in the image of St. George, and the alligator are big but, neither of them is the size of a house or larger. Both appear to have plenty of hit points, especially the alligator.

Okay so we can have a dragon (dragogator) that is the size of a small horse. Note the gator weighed in at 910 lbs. Horses range from 840 to 2,200 lbs.

They say this alligator had bullets from the civil war embedded in it’s hide. That’s some tough hide, and the lizard was 185 years old! Still less massive than a large horse.

The point here is that dragons don’t need to be that big. Even 200 year old dragons might be smaller than the size of a horse, and still be very tough formable creatures. Imagine the alligator in the picture with a longer legs and a longer neck. It could easily fit in smaller caves and dungeon settings than you might normally expect to find a dragon. It would also be able to use all of the same attacks without looking like it should really be able to just crush it’s opponents outright.

What about younger dragons? There are some big dogs that can be very dangerous. Imagine something the size of a rottweiler with a long sinuous tail and neck, and a breath weapon. Still pretty formidable and you can place it anywhere in a dungeon. It could even slither down a narrow passage that would be hard for humans to navigate.

I think the medieval depictions were ‘correct’. At their largest dragons should be the size of a horse. I don’t need hollywood bloating the dimensions of monsters, or do I need to inflate the size of monsters to increase the heroics of my characters.

Here are few more images of medieval dragons. Notice most are man sized to horse sized.