Monster population specifik dragons in DnD

[Aldrarad]

In any DnD version there are at least 5 types of dragon red,blue etc. Then you get another 5 or 6 metallic and if you use them some gemdragons. Now as described these dragon types are its own spieces and with the need of specific enviroment and large areals.

I just cant get this to work. To get new dragons and not have edtreme inbreeding every inch of the planet just have to be dragonturf. Dragons arnt discret, sharing creatures even if sleeping. You should be able to ask any local village where the local dragonlairs (plural) are.
The only solutions I see are:
1.the gods pops dragons as needed.
2 types is independent from parents, so mom Red and dad Black gets one Blue and one Green.
3 There is a Dragon continent and the ones encountered are crazy exiles. Possibly local areas like Green Dragon Forest population 200, or Red Dragon Mountain Range pop 320.
4 When a dragon sleeps others move in and squat, so overlapping turfs. Great fun when original awakes.
5 Dragons switch colours as needed.
6 "we only use red dragons in this campaign, problem avoided"
7 **** logic this is fantasy. (I find that logic makes for better gaming thou)

I cant decide how do you handle this?

[Yora]

Populations of animals can do just fine with fairly low numbers of individuals. A couple of hundred and inbreeding doesn't become a problem for a very long time. And with dragons, where you have generation differences of 150 years and much more, it would be even much longer. 10 to 20 times as much.
At the same time, dragons can fly and are highly intelligent, which allows for populations that are extremely widely dispersed, even much more so than bears or lions.

A population of a thousand dragons of one type could stretch across a whole continent. The dragons know how to find each other and have the means to travel huge distances quickly.

Most dragons are also not very big. They outsize a horse only once they are aroun 200 years or so, and the truly big ones are more like 600 years and older. Most dragons in any given area will be more like a big tiger or crocodile with wings.

[Aldrarad]

Populations of animals can do just fine with fairly low numbers of individuals. A couple of hundred and inbreeding doesn't become a problem for a very long time. And with dragons, where you have generation differences of 150 years and much more, it would be even much longer. 10 to 20 times as much.
At the same time, dragons can fly and are highly intelligent, which allows for populations that are extremely widely dispersed, even much more so than bears or lions.

A population of a thousand dragons of one type could stretch across a whole continent. The dragons know how to find each other and have the means to travel huge distances quickly.

Most dragons are also not very big. They outsize a horse only once they are aroun 200 years or so, and the truly big ones are more like 600 years and older. Most dragons in any given area will be more like a big tiger or crocodile with wings.

Good answer. I forgot among other things how far they could travel. And the much lower impact a young would have compared to an ancient. The picture of a big smart tiger, rather then Smaug or Fafner, helped alot.

It evokes(?) new ideas thinking about draconic mating rituals, dangerous travel to find a mate perhaps a Breeding Rock where you leave hints about where you live and what you are. A failed mating or even an ambush could be fatal.

Also the journey from "crocodile with wings" to an a living myth, how that migth affect personality and strategies...

Hell, I could make a lovesick Green or a Brass, to a recuring(?) villain! The reason why this perfectly good keep was abandoned, attacks at seemingly random, confusing changes in the land etc.
THANK YOU!

[VoxRationis]

In 3.5, a gold or red is the size of an elephant (with wings!) by the time it can breed, though. You're going to have a hard time supporting those, especially with a meat-based diet (some may give you crap about how metallics can "subsist off even inorganic fare," but that's poppycock, and it doesn't explain chromatics).

[Everyl]

D&D dragons are giant, flying six-limbed pseudo-reptiles who are so inherently magical that they can exhale one (or more) of a variety of deadly things at will and gain the equivalent of considerable sorcerer levels the same way humans get arthritis - just by aging. At some point in that description, consideration of things like "how much space does a dragon need to have enough prey to support itself" became lost in the high-fantasy shuffle. The answer is as much or as little as you feel you need for your setting.

That being said, I don't see anything wrong with everywhere being a part of one or more dragons' territories. As has been said, dragons can travel rather quickly over long distances, but they can't be everywhere at once - odds are, dragon territories will overlap somewhat, or at least have somewhat fuzzy borders. And whether a dragon considers a given piece of land to be part of its territory may or may not have any relation to whether humanoid races live there. A dragon that has no real political power over a major human city might claim it as part of his territory in the sense that no other dragons are allowed to trade for treasure there to buff up their hoards. Another might allow or encourage villages in her territory as long as the villagers don't get too upset at the occasional "tribute" of a cow or goat being snatched from the fields.

And on top of that, four of the ten core book dragon varieties can breathe water as easily as air from birth. Gold, bronze, black, and green dragons have the entirety of the oceans to squabble if they want. If your world is similar to Earth, that's 70% of the world's surface that humans are basically incapable of doing more than passing through with great difficulty available as turf for dragons. Depending how you count it, it could be even more than that, since the oceans are miles deep in most places, adding a third dimension that doesn't factor in nearly as much to life above the waves.

There's room for dragons if you want there to be room for dragons.

[VoxRationis]

Eh, but most of that ocean is the equivalent of desert anyway—very low productivity. Not to mention that many of the species that can breathe water are noted to keep to much different territory than open ocean.

[Yora]

It's either surface (where you have light) or bottom (where you have ground). And of course at the shore, where you have both. The huge space between those is mostly empty, I believe, except for animals passing through.

If dragons are like crocodiles and spend most of their time lying around doing nothing, they don't even have to eat very much. Crocodiles can go for months between eating anything. But flying should make them really hungry.

[ace rooster]

Eh, but most of that ocean is the equivalent of desert anyway—very low productivity. Not to mention that many of the species that can breathe water are noted to keep to much different territory than open ocean.

Pointing out the oceans is actually a very good point, because it draws our attention to the fact that animals the size of busses do exist, in numbers significant enough that inbreeding is not a problem, and in several different subspecies. Whales, obviously

This works because the world is actually seriously big, and in fantasy land we can make it even bigger. Consider the tunguska event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event). This destroyed 2,000 square kilometers of forrest, and nobody even visited the site for over a decade! This area could easily house a dragon species, and we still might not know about it. Throw in a slightly bigger world, in a young universe so that you still have proper large scale wilderness, then dragons fit in absolutely fine, even with territories in the thousands of square kilometers each.