Could an adult green dragon tear apart a castle? (Per RAW)

[Pinjata]

And thus a wooden house - like the ones that are common in standard D&D settings? More specifically, could a dragon tear apart a fortress in Greenest (https://www.keenandgraev.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/greenest-dragon-attack.jpg)?

thanks

[Lombra]

Buildings have hit poits so yes, it can if it deals enaugh damage. I think that the DMG has the tools to determinate the HPs of structures.

[Idkwhatmyscreen]

Yes, if you want to make it faster give it the Siege monster trait ( if it does not already have it )

That will allow it to do double the damage of it's attacks to the structure

[Dudewithknives]

Yes, and easily.

An adult green dragon has the int and wis to correctly use tactics.

Fly by raid at night. With its much better senses and a breath weapon that should auto kill anyone under level 5.

Now if it was a big stupid white dragon, probably not, but greens are tactical.

[SharkForce]

most anything can tear apart a castle, given sufficient time.

a green dragon is probably not totally suited to destroying buildings... they are quite large, but not incredibly so, and they lack anything like the sorts of tools you'd expect would be highly efficient for dismantling buildings... their claws are not like pickaxes, nor are they particularly like battering rams.

still, i would expect that from sheer size and strength, a dragon would be able to inflict some damage to a stone building, and given sufficient time, to destroy it (or to destroy its usefulness). a green dragon in particular would probably need to drive off defenders first, and then start wrecking the building second, or possibly drop boulders from a great height; something like a blue dragon with lightning breath or a black dragon with acid breath that could gradually dissolve the building (and especially the mortar that is holding the blocks together, if it is built in the usual way) would likely be better at the job.

still, broadly speaking, i do think a green dragon could destroy a stone building. typical guards are going to have a very hard time doing anything to stop the dragon, which means the dragon most likely has the time to do so, if it wants to take that time.

[RickAllison]

From an engineering persepctive, an adult dragon certainly can damage the castle in ways that don't seem obvious. Stone fortifications like that are designed to absorb compression forces, like siege weapons. A dragon just trying to push over a wall will have a rough time. But the dragon has an advantage that siege engineers, to exert its force in any direction at the weakest points. A dragon can fly over to the towers and pull apart the roofs that were designed to deflect and absorb the siege weapons that could reach them, but have comparatively little tensile strength. Wipe out those in the tower and let out your breath weapon down the stairwell. Repeat with the other towers. Note that this doesn't directly compromise the castle, but renders its defenses null, leaving the dragon able to take down the rest with impunity. For the main hold, a dragon just has to break into the roof a bit to rip it apart from the inside much more easily. Even better if the castle dared to have windows, as breaking apart the sections of wall supporting said windows can compromise the upper levels.

[Hrugner]

Damaging buildings gets a solid "DM decision" entry in the DMG. Not very helpful if you're a DM looking for more info. Looking at the creautre's entry, it can push 2,760 pounds so it can reduce a castle to rubble provided it can break off chunks no heavier than that. As a huge creature it weighs between 2 and 16 tons(I think, I'm using an old version for the weight), if the building can't support an additional 16 tons of weight spread out over a couple of limbs, then the creature can land on the building and just start pushing the broken parts off. Modern building codes for a second floor put min safe weight at 1.5k pounds, collapse is hard to predict, but 3k pounds is likely to punch a hole in the floor if you don't move from joist to joist. Since our dragon is between 4k and 32k pounds, it's going through the floor joist or not. So he should fall through the floor without trying, and I imagine hanging from the walls and pulling with his weight should unsettle some castle walls.