How many adult dragons (and other high level threats) in a typical dnd world?

[flamewolf393]

Im planning to build literally an entire world as a mega project, and Im wondering... how many total adult dragons do you think live in a typical dnd campaign world?

And what about other threats like end game bosses, liches, master (lvl 15+) wizards? What kind of population densities should these things have if I want to take into account all the high level adventurers across the world needing level appropriate adventures to fight?

[Bobur]

There is no "proper" amount.

Look at dragonlance for example, therer are tons of dragons and everything is about them in a way. The world is rather low magic with very very few people that wield higher power.

In Faerun ther is a lot more magic available, less dragons though.

Think aboout what you want your world to be, what is common and what isnt, high magic or is magic rare? And start from there.

[martixy]

Can't answer that question, but can give you my process.

1. Figure out demographics. How many humanoids in your world. How many non-humanoids.
2. What's the magic ratio? 1 in 100? 1000? 10,000?
3. What's the PC class ratio? How many creatures have PC classes?
4. What's the power curve? Level X are 5 times more than level X+1? 2 times? 10 times? Exponential, quadratic, linear?
5. Relative rarities? E.g. dragons are extremely rare, dragons are fairly common?

Then, based on CR you can figure out a pretty good distribution of your setting's powers.

[Zaq]

Honestly? There's no such thing as "typical" here. I've played in worlds where there were about four dragons (realistically, there were about two, but we acknowledged that there were probably one or two more somewhere else), and I've played in worlds with rather a few more.

D&D ecology (and economy, for that matter) only even pretends to make sense if you don't drill into it at all and if you just keep things very surface-level, which is relevant because you're not really going to be able to figure this out from first principles. Even if you start with a set of assumptions and just extrapolate from there, you're still not going to come up with something that's really robust and logical and consistent all the way through. The D&D universe doesn't have strong enough internal logic to support that. So what it comes down to is what makes sense for the story you're interested in exploring.

I know, I know, that's a non-answer. But I believe it to be the only thing here that's really true. How many dragons (etc.) there are is solely determined by how many dragons the GM (or the devs who wrote the setting, if you're using a published setting) wants there to be. This is even more true for high-level NPCs—gaining XP is, while extremely dangerous, also really fast in the grand scheme of things when you're talking about people with PC classes who can take on challenges appropriate for people with PC classes. So if you're really trying to be super logical about how many high-level NPCs there are, you need to address both why any given high-level NPC reached the level that they did and then why they stopped advancing. Yeah, it's super dangerous to go out and risk your neck in life-or-death struggles the way PCs do 3-5 times per average day, but if the high-level NPC is afraid of risk, why did they get as high as they did before they stopped? I've honestly never found a satisfying answer for both sides of that question, so I stopped trying to make it make sense. The high-leveled folks are there simply because it's interesting for them to be there and not because it makes logical sense from an in-world historical perspective for them to be there. (And let's not forget that a lot of players, myself included, gripe about published settings like Forgotten Realms where there's supposedly high-level NPCs tripping over each other all the time.)

And what that means is that you're not going to be able to figure out what's "typical," because "typical" would imply that there's some kind of method to the madness. Not only is this all made up, it has to be made up, because there just plain isn't a way to do it with any kind of consistent internal logic.

I suppose if you had some way of gathering the data, you could just look at how many high-level NPCs or dragons or whatever are actually in any given world from a sample set of worlds, but that makes two impossible assumptions: first, that you could actually hear about enough campaign worlds for this to be meaningful, and second, that even the GMs who write these worlds really have actual numbers for these kinds of things—I'm sure that such GMs exist, but there's plenty of GMs with their own campaign worlds who are just plain making it up as they go. I don't GM much anymore, but when I did, I will freely tell you that I never really sketched out much of the whole world, and I never even thought of trying to catalogue all of the high-level power players in the world. Maybe I'm lazy, but there's no shortage of lazy folks out there, and even though I certainly encountered problems while GMing, I don't think that most of them stemmed from that particular deficiency.

My ultimate point is that I think it would make more sense for you to approach this from the opposite angle. Figure out how many power-player NPCs you can make interesting, then use that as your baseline. Don't try to meet a quota, don't try to reverse-engineer it from population densities, and don't try to make the world more top-heavy than it needs to be to support the story you want to explore with your group. You don't have to know in advance just how many of these folks there are. It barely makes sense for them to exist in the first place. You can come up with new ones as needed, you know? It's not that much stranger to have another one a kingdom or two over than it is to have whichever ones the players were aware of in the first place. The more you nail down in advance, the more potential inconsistencies you set up. Just lay out enough to give yourself a sense of direction and enough to give your players a feeling that there is in fact a world here.

(This... got preachier than I wanted it to. I apologize. You're not having fun wrong if you find this to be fun. My style is obviously a little different from what your style appears to be. I do still believe that you're not going to be able to really figure things out logically here, bit please, don't take this as me trying to tell you that you're doing something dumb, because that's not my intent!)

[doctor doughnut]

A lot.

Something like a couple of them every couple miles.

The trick is to rememer that they are not all active 24/7.

Dragons mark huge areas as thier domain, maybe like 100 miles. Then comes the domain of the next dragon. But dragons also do sleep a lot.

Others like a wizard can sure be talking like a YEAR off to make a magic item. Or any intelligent creature might 'take off' a huge strech of time to say read a book or write a book or learn something.

So really the answer is: as much as you want.

If you get worried that ''oh they will destroy my world"....don't be worried: you can always just fix it so that does not happen.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Give the world a lot of wilderness regions, and you can have as many or as few as you want. Many dragons could just want to be left alone, and grow old without ever touching civilization. Maybe a nation expanding and settling in or harvesting natural resources from an otherwise unsettled area encroaches on an otherwise unknown dragon's territory and brings its wrath on a nearby city.

This also gives you plenty of space for tribes of goblins, orcs, ogres, wild elves, wood elves, etc. who wouldn't normally have any interaction with PC races. Areas could be left largely unwritten with only rumors of what lies in store for an explorer to discover, and a given DM can populate it with whatever they want, at whatever level is appropriate for their players.

[hamishspence]

Ecological niches might allow dragons a certain amount of overlapping territory. In the far north, a region could have both marsh, and ice, with white dragons living in the icy area, and black dragons living in the marshy area, and them not quarrelling much over prey.

[Biggus]

One of the key questions you need to ask yourself is "what level do I want PCs to reach in this world?". If you're planning on letting campaigns go to epic, there needs to be a lot of powerful monsters for them to fight. If you're planning most/ all games to stop by level 15, there need only be a handful.

Of course, another thing which affects the total number is the size of the world: roughly Earthlike worlds could have anywhere from about ten times less surface area than the actual Earth to ten times more.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by hamishspence
Ecological niches might allow dragons a certain amount of overlapping territory. In the far north, a region could have both marsh, and ice, with white dragons living in the icy area, and black dragons living in the marshy area, and them not quarrelling much over prey.

It’s a good notion in theory, although I seem to recall that some of the chromatic dragons are extremely territorial and attack other dragons on sight. And I would expect dragons of all kinds to have a lot of overlap in their prey, which would certainly lead to interspecies aggression.

[Torpin]

lets just say a gargantuan+ dragon had an denisity average of 1 per 500 miles by 500 miles squaee, or 250,000 square (roughly the size of texas) miles for those playing the home game, and your campaign world was the size of the earth. there would be around 800 gargantuan + dragons on the material plane alone

[MisterKaws]

Biologically, Dragons can chuck babies faster than rabbits. Seriously, they're described as liking to use their Transmutation magics+innate abilities to make all sorts of offspring. And they're hermaphrodites.

You can just go nuts with your number of dragons and you wouldn't be wrong. The usual limiting factors for number of True Dragons+False Dragons is usually their gods telling them to stop or keep at it. Most of the times it's only Tiamat who encourages her Dragons to madly shag everything in existence.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by MisterKaws
Biologically, Dragons can chuck babies faster than rabbits. Seriously, they're described as liking to use their Transmutation magics+innate abilities to make all sorts of offspring. And they're hermaphrodites.

Where are you getting all this?

[Yogibear41]

. And they're hermaphrodites.


Ugh I don't think so. Draconomicon specifically lists male and female examples.

[Palanan]

And in Faerûn, the Wyrms of the North (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/archfr/wn) series lists a couple dozen dragons, all of which seem to be either male or female.

(Even the ghost dragon with disembodied jaws.)

[noob]

It’s a good notion in theory, although I seem to recall that some of the chromatic dragons are extremely territorial and attack other dragons on sight. And I would expect dragons of all kinds to have a lot of overlap in their prey, which would certainly lead to interspecies aggression.

In dnd hunting is not much important for dragons as they can eat anything(including rock and dirt).
How rare or common dragons are should depend on whenever the first few people to reach high power likes dragons or not.

[Jay R]

I like to base this on a quote from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:


And there is nothing a dragon likes so well as fresh dragon. That is why you so seldom find more than one dragon in the same county.

I assume that dragons, or at least dragons of different colors, are very likely enemies, so there won't be any blue dragons near the lair of a gold dragon family.
.

[MisterKaws]

Where are you getting all this?

Monster Manual, p146:


A dragon’s magical nature allows it to breed with virtually any
creature.




Ugh I don't think so. Draconomicon specifically lists male and female examples.

Pretty much all variants of Polymorph let you choose gender too :D

Though I did remember reading that they were true hermaphrodites somewhere...

[StevenC21]

It can breed with any species, but it can't breed with any sex.

This is relatively obvious.

[DrMotives]

It can breed with any species, but it can't breed with any sex.

This is relatively obvious.

Well, sure, unless you assume shapechange works like it does in Norse mythology. Loki is male, and has fathered children with both of his wives. But he also shapechanged into a female horse, and became the mother of Sleipnir the 8-legged horse that way.

[StevenC21]

But that involves magic.

Being able to cast Polymorph doesn't make you a hermaphrodite.

[King of Nowhere]

Can't answer that question, but can give you my process.

1. Figure out demographics. How many humanoids in your world. How many non-humanoids.
2. What's the magic ratio? 1 in 100? 1000? 10,000?
3. What's the PC class ratio? How many creatures have PC classes?
4. What's the power curve? Level X are 5 times more than level X+1? 2 times? 10 times? Exponential, quadratic, linear?
5. Relative rarities? E.g. dragons are extremely rare, dragons are fairly common?

Then, based on CR you can figure out a pretty good distribution of your setting's powers.
Rather similar to mine, but I am more concerned with fixing the world power level, and then figuring out a distribution from that:

a. what spell level is available to the high priest of a major religion?
b. how many people are there that can cast wish or true resurrection?
c. what's the highest level guy that may be found in a kingdom?
d. what's the highest level guy that may be found in a reasonably large city?
e. what's the highest spell level that you can reasonably find without too much hassle?

from those kind of questions, i figure out a rough distribution.
from that distribution of powerful humanoids, i extrapolated dragons simply assuming that all dragons together would be a bit more powerful than all humanoids together. not that any of them is likely to ever get together, unless they were facing a really dire common threat.

[noob]

Rather similar to mine, but I am more concerned with fixing the world power level, and then figuring out a distribution from that:

a. what spell level is available to the high priest of a major religion?
b. how many people are there that can cast wish or true resurrection?
c. what's the highest level guy that may be found in a kingdom?
d. what's the highest level guy that may be found in a reasonably large city?
e. what's the highest spell level that you can reasonably find without too much hassle?

from those kind of questions, i figure out a rough distribution.
from that distribution of powerful humanoids, i extrapolated dragons simply assuming that all dragons together would be a bit more powerful than all humanoids together. not that any of them is likely to ever get together, unless they were facing a really dire common threat.

From where do you draw the intensely silly conclusion that dragons could be more powerful than all the humanoids together?
Are you forgetting the existence of kobolds?

[flamewolf393]

But that involves magic.

Being able to cast Polymorph doesn't make you a hermaphrodite.

I think sex with a dragon is going to involve magic anyway. A human woman is not taking that dragons **** if hes in his natural form/size without magical assistance or a a resurrection :smallamused:

[King of Nowhere]

From where do you draw the intensely silly conclusion that dragons could be more powerful than all the humanoids together?
Are you forgetting the existence of kobolds?

I'm not even sure there are kobolds in my campaign world. They fill no role that cannot be taken by goblins.

Anyway, only high level ones matter for this kind of calculation

[twistedraja]

I was thinking about this too recently, it would definitely depend on how high fantasy you wanted the world to be. The more of these types of beings there are the more affected and changed the world would be and if it isn't changed by them then what is keeping them from using their magic and strength to influence the world around them.

[noob]

I was thinking about this too recently, it would definitely depend on how high fantasy you wanted the world to be. The more of these types of beings there are the more affected and changed the world would be and if it isn't changed by them then what is keeping them from using their magic and strength to influence the world around them.

the world could stay unchanged because somehow the magical creatures takes the slots that were taken by humans before(example: the evil king is now a vampire then 50 years later it gets burned with the rest of the kingdom by adventurers which would have happened no matter whenever the king was a vampire or not)

[magic9mushroom]

Im planning to build literally an entire world as a mega project, and Im wondering... how many total adult dragons do you think live in a typical dnd campaign world?

Dark Sun has no natural dragons, only the Dragon Kings (six in the Tablelands, probably double-digit in the world entire).

Eberron has over fifty thousand dragons (Dragons of Eberron, p.26), with a total world population of about 35 million (there's 33.37 million in all the population figures, but that doesn't count the drow or giants).

These are opposite poles; TTBOMK, every other campaign setting falls somewhere between those.

As for your own setting - there isn't really a minimum number of dragons, except if you want to use dragons in which case there will obviously have to be at least some (if you want to be super realistic about ecology, there'd have to be at least a hundred or so of each type worldwide to maintain a breeding population). On the other hand, Eberron-like proportions of dragons to humanoids tend to result in a dragon-ruled world unless there's something stopping dragons from taking over countries (Dragons of Eberron uses Tiamat to do this) - note, however, that Eberron's population is about 10-20% of RL Earth's during the ancient and mediaeval periods.

Between those issues, I'd say that a decent number of dragons for an average planet falls somewhere between a thousand and thirty thousand (though as I said, there are ways to go outside this).

Epic dragons (force and prismatic) are a very different kettle of fish. Unlike ordinary dragons, they have access to Greater Teleport and even epic magic during their fertile age, which means they only need a breeding population to exist across the whole universe rather than on any given world. I'd expect there to be no more than two epic dragons on the same planet at the same time, and that's if they're a mated pair (more likely would be one or zero).


And what about other threats like end game bosses, liches, master (lvl 15+) wizards? What kind of population densities should these things have if I want to take into account all the high level adventurers across the world needing level appropriate adventures to fight?

High-level adventurers are pretty rare. Your average metropolis has what, 44 PC-classed characters past level 10? That's about one in a thousand. And people who aren't the PCs generally took a long while to get there.

Liches in particular can have a pretty decent population density, because they don't, in a manner of speaking, take up much space. Most liches are reclusive, so all that happens is there's some dungeon in the middle of nowhere from which nobody returns - and even if they get killed in an accident or something, well, that's a minor inconvenience. Liches last until somebody of enough power gets sufficiently annoyed with them to actually hunt down their phylactery, which is likely to take centuries or even millennia depending on how active they are. So the standing population of liches should be at least comparable to the amount of humanoid casters of equal level, and probably more (this still isn't a lot).

[noob]

Also if you have a grisgol based civilization where you encourage your citizens to be patriotic and learn spellcasting to become liches you can increase a lot the number of potential liches while having few free liches.
But I wonder: do undying wizard spam destroy the normal structure of society?

[Rebel7284]

What do you define as a world? Past a certain level, easy access to Plane Shift/Gate/Greater Teleport/Genesis/etc. leads to a lot more things being easily accessible. Some of those planes are explicitly endless too.