How big are our dragons?

[Natayah]

I really appreciate the chart and how much work went into it! There is only one thing I get confused about. A lot of dragons eat "small mammals and bugs or mostly bugs and tiny things." Now I've seen large animals that graze, but there aren't a lot of grazing dragons.

 

I don't know of any animal (non-ocean) that is larger than a human but subsists on tiny animals and bugs. Unless they are the giant roaches and rats in the remote tropical jungles....

 

Edited to add: I do take that back there are quite a few plant only eating or plants and something else... but ... you get what I was saying... still making the point that many don't have the Ungulate build and stomach to support the size of plant eating giant machines. I know about giraffes and hippos and elephants, but many of these dragons don't seem to be built on those systems.

Edited May 16, 2014 by natayah

[Stromboli]

I don't know of any animal (non-ocean) that is larger than a human but subsists on tiny animals and bugs. Unless they are the giant roaches and rats in the remote tropical jungles....

 

sorry I had to

[edwardelricfreak]

The only thing I'm not sure of is in the Mint's description it describes them as much smaller than other dragons (excluding pygmies and drakes) but there's quite a few that surpass that.

Mints are a much older breed. At the time when it was only a few breeds, Mints were indeed the smallest (or at least one of the smaller) dragons in the cave.

 

They still are rather small compared to most of the other dragons.

[xeyla]

Any chance we could have the new dragons added?

[Nine]

Ok, here's the chart updated with some breeds. The new ones are at the back, because I'm lazy and didn't alphabetize them.

 

Tried to add dragons that either had a direct size stated by the artist/conceptors, or ones I could try to approximate with the given descriptions. I'll see about adding more later, or if artist/conceptors happen to release additional info.

 

For the breeds that didn't have a set size described...

 

Blacktip and Black-capped Teimarr are written as being small and having seabird characteristics, so I put them as the size of a goose. Speckle-throats are said to gather in numbers up to 60 and nest in open fields, so I put them as an even bigger goose. Two-headed Lindwurms were matched to be close to regular Two-headed dragons, but a little smaller because... I don't know, they like caves? The description for the Yellow-crowned says they like to eat small antelope so they can't be all that big, but whether 'small' is in comparison to humans or dragons it's hard to say. Hellhorses seem to get much of their physique from their Horse parent, so I assumed they'd be close to that size albeit a bit bigger thanks to the Hellfire genes.

[xeyla]

I was hoping their creators would add to the info, and thank you Nine for the updated chart.

[annageckos]

I really appreciate the chart and how much work went into it! There is only one thing I get confused about. A lot of dragons eat "small mammals and bugs or mostly bugs and tiny things." Now I've seen large animals that graze, but there aren't a lot of grazing dragons.

 

I don't know of any animal (non-ocean) that is larger than a human but subsists on tiny animals and bugs. Unless they are the giant roaches and rats in the remote tropical jungles....

 

Edited to add: I do take that back there are quite a few plant only eating or plants and something else... but ... you get what I was saying... still making the point that many don't have the Ungulate build and stomach to support the size of plant eating giant machines. I know about giraffes and hippos and elephants, but many of these dragons don't seem to be built on those systems.

DC isn't on earth, it's in it's own fantasy world. Many things may be based off reality but everything isn't going to be 100%. I think many people forget or overlook that when wanting everything to exact and working in our world. There is magic and dragons, anything is possible. So just because it works one way in our world doesn't mean it has to work that way in DC.

 

I'm surprised at how some though, some of our dragons are, and some I can help but picturing a bit larger then shown on the chart.

[Nightwatcher]

I always imagined the water and stone dragons to the biggest, the water ones being bigger than a blue whale.

 

The Gray dragons vary in sizes depending on where you found the alpine and the coast would be the biggest ones, the ones found in the forest and jungle are the smallest and the volcano and desert are medium sized.

They biggest ones I imagine would be around half the size of an African elephant, which is 10 feet or 300 cm.

The smallest ones around the size of a shire horse which would be 5 feet or 173 cm.

The medium size would be between 10 to 5 feet.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Nightwatcher

[VioletWhirlwind]

Here's the way I tend to see dragon sizes:

 

Pygmies (all of the pygmy breeds): range from cat-sized (like in the description) to dog-sized

Pumpkins: small enough to fit in a pumpkin, but large enough to breed with pygmys (since they do)

Stone: Mountain-sized

Wyverns, Drakes, Stripes (all colors), and Black Tea dragons: slightly smaller than horse-sized

Ampheteres, Lindwurms (Opals and Blusangs): Maybe tiger-sized? I dunno, this one needs a bit more thought

Mints: gazelle-sized, but stockier

Skywings, Deep-Sea, and Water (blue): whale-sized

all others: range from horse-sized to indricotherium-sized (prehistoric giraffe-rhino), or even sauropod-sized

 

Aaaaand...I'm gonna keep this post for future reference. *copy-paste into text document*

Edited October 3, 2014 by VioletWhirlwind

[Lumikkja]

VioletWhirlwind's size chart is my current favorite, I always thought Stones were big... maybe not that big... but one of my personal Dragon Cave favorites - the Tsunami Wyvern - I imagine to be about the size of a Blue Whale.

 

My other favorite is a Magma, and I definitely think they are huge, big and dinosaur-sized. They do live in volcanoes, after all!

[Vain.3805]

Maybe with the encylopedia release they'll get a chart in as canon.

 

Ima keep this here...

Edited January 6, 2015 by Vain.3805

[TCA]

With that chart, my current headcanon for Pyralspites is that Almandines are about Whiptail height and Spessartines are a little shorter than Hollies, with Pyropes at the halfway point between the two. Obviously this might change with any official stuff, and those are shoulder heights, so with heads lifted they'd be taller.

Edited January 6, 2015 by TheCompleteAnimorph

[Riannon]

I'm sorry if this is considered necro-ing, but I have a question. Is this how tall they actually stand? Or from nose to tail, the length? It's a bit deceiving for dragons like the Deep Sea who don't actually have legs. I'd be very interested to know just how big they are, not just in height but from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Riannon

[MaskedDeath]

My biggest dragon would probably be Rez, my Astrapi Xeno. I'm thinking that a normal-sized tooth, not a fang, would be as big as an adult human hand. Well, that's as big as my brain will let me think an Asrapi would be. I think whiptails are small, horse-sized. And a tinsel would be the size of a small cottage.

[xeyla]

I'm sorry if this is considered necro-ing, but I have a question. Is this how tall they actually stand? Or from nose to tail, the length? It's a bit deceiving for dragons like the Deep Sea who don't actually have legs. I'd be very interested to know just how big they are, not just in height but from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail.

These heights are up to the dragon's shoulder, while standing on all fours. Just like when you measure a horse or dog, you go up to the shoulder.

[Meg_752]

Forgive me if I missed it somehow, but do we have sizes for the two Prize dragons?

[Nine]

These heights are up to the dragon's shoulder, while standing on all fours. Just like when you measure a horse or dog, you go up to the shoulder.

Well, when I originally made the chart, I based it off of how dinosaurs are measured-- which can be either shoulder height or head height. Since not a lot of breed info clarifies and some species are bipedal, I just took it to mean to the top of each dragon's head, or their max. resting height. I guess it really doesn't matter though, since shoulder and head height can end up being pretty similar anyways!

 

So you could imagine the Deepsea being in a position a little like this guy.

 

 

 

Forgive me if I missed it somehow, but do we have sizes for the two Prize dragons?

The first prize dragon is listed under 'Tinsel'. The second prize, or Shimmers, hasn't been added (I'm pretty much constantly on mobile), but they look pretty big if the conceptor's fan art of a human riding her dragon are to be used as a comparison. About the size of a Pebble, maybe?

[Tango]

I'm planning on making a size chart on my own headcannons, if anyone is interested please say so! Encouragement makes me work faster. I will need suggestions on which dragons to do first

[xeyla]

Well, when I originally made the chart, I based it off of how dinosaurs are measured-- which can be either shoulder height or head height. Since not a lot of breed info clarifies and some species are bipedal, I just took it to mean to the top of each dragon's head, or their max. resting height. I guess it really doesn't matter though, since shoulder and head height can end up being pretty similar anyways!

 

So you could imagine the Deepsea being in a position a little like this guy.

 

 

 

 

The first prize dragon is listed under 'Tinsel'. The second prize, or Shimmers, hasn't been added (I'm pretty much constantly on mobile), but they look pretty big if the conceptor's fan art of a human riding her dragon are to be used as a comparison. About the size of a Pebble, maybe?

Ah, forgive me Nine. I thought it was up to the shoulder. You make a good point about the biped height-measurement, i didn't think about that.

[Renhart]

With all the dragons that were released since the chart was made, I think it could use an update. I'm willing to help fix it up if Completely Different doesn't have spare time.

[KarrotKake]

Does anyone have an idea about the length of Striped Rivers and the height of Whiptails? I don't think Vines and Sunrise/sets are on there either. I'm not criticizing just trying to see if anyone has ideas for what I'm imagining.

With Whiptails you'd think they'd be small and fast but not like drake size. I have no ideas for the rest

[xeyla]

Does anyone have an idea about the length of Striped Rivers and the height of Whiptails? I don't think Vines and Sunrise/sets are on there either. I'm not criticizing just trying to see if anyone has ideas for what I'm imagining.

With Whiptails you'd think they'd be small and fast but not like drake size. I have no ideas for the rest

Vine is to the left of the pygmies, Sunrise/set is 2 slots to the right of the Stone. I think whiptails were the size of racing horses, I don't know about the Striped Rivers. You could try PM'ing JOTB about them?

[syth]

my idea is that most dragons are the size of a normal school bus (that way they're not so big we look like ants riding them )

 

as for pymies... I imagine they're the size of a medium sized dog... like a german shepard.

 

if the advent game is anything to go by... then my assumption is probably not far off wrong as there was a scale size character that interacted with dragons, both big and small if memory serves.

[Melomancer]

Hi! Necrobumping this thread with some content that's hopefully still relevant in the modern day. It's an evergreen topic, after all, and all the good discussion is in here. 

 

Here's a size chart I whipped up based off the measurements from the earlier one, with scaled sprites. Right click and open in new tab to see the full resolution. Quite a lot of things are arbitrary, such as my measurement of snake-like dragons. There were also lots of dragons who were at angles, or whose leg length had to be estimated. I tended to go with what I recognised to be a dragon's default resting pose. That's why Striped Dragons are sitting on their haunches, while Neglected Dragons are measured from toe to tip of spine, rather than the base of skull. I also can't uncurl things like the Skywing, Deep, and Two-headed Lindwyrm to measure their pixels, so this was the best I could do for 'em.

 

And if any creators of new dragons want to chime in and set out a height for their dragons, that would be splendid as well, since this one only goes up to 2014 (+ the adventuring party that had a perfect size chart already)

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Melomancer

[blockEdragon]

On 10/25/2023 at 8:47 AM, Melomancer said:

Hi! Necrobumping this thread with some content that's hopefully still relevant in the modern day. It's an evergreen topic, after all, and all the good discussion is in here. 

 

Here's a size chart I whipped up based off the measurements from the earlier one, with scaled sprites. Right click and open in new tab to see the full resolution. Quite a lot of things are arbitrary, such as my measurement of snake-like dragons. There were also lots of dragons who were at angles, or whose leg length had to be estimated. I tended to go with what I recognised to be a dragon's default resting pose. That's why Striped Dragons are sitting on their haunches, while Neglected Dragons are measured from toe to tip of spine, rather than the base of skull. I also can't uncurl things like the Skywing, Deep, and Two-headed Lindwyrm to measure their pixels, so this was the best I could do for 'em.

 

And if any creators of new dragons want to chime in and set out a height for their dragons, that would be splendid as well, since this one only goes up to 2014 (+ the adventuring party that had a perfect size chart already)

 

Wow, this is pretty cool. Must've taken a while and a fair bit of effort to compile!