i've tried to convince my DM about the concept of terminal velocity. and how animals below certain masses can most certainly survive falls at terminal velocity, assuming it can position itself properly.
he still rolled a ton of dice and proceeded to slaughter
I believe it was actually da vinci who disproved the concept of giant by explaining that, assuming they have a similar bone material to other vertebrates, their bones owuld need to be thicker than their limbs. Can't find the references now, so could be wrong.
That is the key though - you could have a huge person without needing magic. A giant whose bone structure was made of a more solid material - possibly solid bone with the necessity to generate bone marrow-like organs elsewhere - would allow them to be taller. I believe this is part of the science of Avater, where they say they have natural carbon fibre in their bones, which would make them strong enough to support themselves. There are snails in the ocean which make shells that are iron, so a giant whose body makes bones out of iron would be strong enough to support his weight, though their muscles would need to be huge and similarly reinforced!
That wouldn’t be enough. A muscle is only as strong as a cross section of the muscle, that’s why bigger = stronger. The muscles themselves would also have to get proportionally thicker to be able to take the strain. Start adding materials heavier than bone to the mix and now you’ve got a “bigger” problem. (See what I did there?😂)
Curious how the chemists and biologists would explain lightning breath or cold....
Cold breath requires some sort of chemical mix that produces a severe endothermic reaction. Lightning breath... really doesn't work because D&D's version of "lightning" is closer to being a particle cannon than anything resembling how real electricity works.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I believe it was actually da vinci who disproved the concept of giant by explaining that, assuming they have a similar bone material to other vertebrates, their bones owuld need to be thicker than their limbs. Can't find the references now, so could be wrong.
That is the key though - you could have a huge person without needing magic. A giant whose bone structure was made of a more solid material - possibly solid bone with the necessity to generate bone marrow-like organs elsewhere - would allow them to be taller. I believe this is part of the science of Avater, where they say they have natural carbon fibre in their bones, which would make them strong enough to support themselves. There are snails in the ocean which make shells that are iron, so a giant whose body makes bones out of iron would be strong enough to support his weight, though their muscles would need to be huge and similarly reinforced!
That wouldn’t be enough. A muscle is only as strong as a cross section of the muscle, that’s why bigger = stronger. The muscles themselves would also have to get proportionally thicker to be able to take the strain. Start adding materials heavier than bone to the mix and now you’ve got a “bigger” problem. (See what I did there?😂)
It is an odd concept indeed that we agree that one could strengthen bones by changing the materials, but disagree that we could do the same with muscles!
I know how to make air muscles using nylon braided cable sheathing and a soft rubber tube, which I imagine could be proportionally stronger than a human muscle (size for size). Natural fibres in the muscles or other reinforcement could, theoretically, cause the muscles to be strong enough without magical intervention!
I believe it was actually da vinci who disproved the concept of giant by explaining that, assuming they have a similar bone material to other vertebrates, their bones owuld need to be thicker than their limbs. Can't find the references now, so could be wrong.
That is the key though - you could have a huge person without needing magic. A giant whose bone structure was made of a more solid material - possibly solid bone with the necessity to generate bone marrow-like organs elsewhere - would allow them to be taller. I believe this is part of the science of Avater, where they say they have natural carbon fibre in their bones, which would make them strong enough to support themselves. There are snails in the ocean which make shells that are iron, so a giant whose body makes bones out of iron would be strong enough to support his weight, though their muscles would need to be huge and similarly reinforced!
That wouldn’t be enough. A muscle is only as strong as a cross section of the muscle, that’s why bigger = stronger. The muscles themselves would also have to get proportionally thicker to be able to take the strain. Start adding materials heavier than bone to the mix and now you’ve got a “bigger” problem. (See what I did there?😂)
It is an odd concept indeed that we agree that one could strengthen bones by changing the materials, but disagree that we could do the same with muscles!
I know how to make air muscles using nylon braided cable sheathing and a soft rubber tube, which I imagine could be proportionally stronger than a human muscle (size for size). Natural fibres in the muscles or other reinforcement could, theoretically, cause the muscles to be strong enough without magical intervention!
I didn’t say we couldn’t, I simply said that just strengthening the bones “wouldn’t be enough.”
I believe it was actually da vinci who disproved the concept of giant by explaining that, assuming they have a similar bone material to other vertebrates, their bones owuld need to be thicker than their limbs. Can't find the references now, so could be wrong.
That is the key though - you could have a huge person without needing magic. A giant whose bone structure was made of a more solid material - possibly solid bone with the necessity to generate bone marrow-like organs elsewhere - would allow them to be taller. I believe this is part of the science of Avater, where they say they have natural carbon fibre in their bones, which would make them strong enough to support themselves. There are snails in the ocean which make shells that are iron, so a giant whose body makes bones out of iron would be strong enough to support his weight, though their muscles would need to be huge and similarly reinforced!
That wouldn’t be enough. A muscle is only as strong as a cross section of the muscle, that’s why bigger = stronger. The muscles themselves would also have to get proportionally thicker to be able to take the strain. Start adding materials heavier than bone to the mix and now you’ve got a “bigger” problem. (See what I did there?😂)
It is an odd concept indeed that we agree that one could strengthen bones by changing the materials, but disagree that we could do the same with muscles!
I know how to make air muscles using nylon braided cable sheathing and a soft rubber tube, which I imagine could be proportionally stronger than a human muscle (size for size). Natural fibres in the muscles or other reinforcement could, theoretically, cause the muscles to be strong enough without magical intervention!
I didn’t say we couldn’t, I simply said that just strengthening the bones “wouldn’t be enough.”
Ah gotcha!
So yes, everything would need to be stronger. I imagine then that giants may be susceptible to muscle injuries, with the weight they are moving!
Regarding endothermic reactions, a quick google implies that citric acid and bicarb of soda reacts endothermically, but not enough to be more damaging than just beins preayed with citric acid!
I suspect a high flashpoint solvent may be the answer - something which evaporates fast, usign the einstein refrigerator effect to leech heat out of the bodies of the target. Holding such a solvent under pressure would probably increase its potency, as it will decompress when sprayed, cooling itself down, meaning it needs more heat from the target to evaporate. Kinda like the liquid nitrogen in Terminator 2. It's the evaporation (changing from liquid to gas) which makes liquid nitrogen feel so cold - and it does this by taking the heat from anything it touches. Ever notice how a tanker full of it isn't covered in frost? It's because the gas can't evaporate in the tank, so it stays liquid, and therefore isn't naturally cold.
I dont know if nature can realistically compress gas inside a livign thing, but perhaps an evolved swim bladder could be the root of it?
Yes an evolved “swim bladder” would sort of work. Think of it as an additional lung chamber that evolved to compress air and hold it under pressure allowing it to be “bled off” to the lungs for breathing while diving. Essentially a biological equivalent of a compressor, SCUBA tank and regulator(s) system that compresses and stores plain old air when at the surface and then releases it on demand. If the original need for compressed air when deep diving no longer exists but the system is retained the fine control might be lost while the gross control is converted into a breath weapon with the expanding jet of high pressure air cooling adiabatically and drawing heat from anything it touches. Lightning is a little harder but not much as we already have the “battery organs” in creatures like electric eels. A 4-6’ eel generates about 600 V and 1 A. If a wizard’s bolt represents a 600,000 V, 60 A discharge then a dragon’s breath represents a discharge of 2-3 times that (1.2 to 1.8 million V and 120-180 A worth of stored electrons being released. As for giants we know from the fossil record that earthly flesh, blood and bone are capable of supporting functional creatures p to 100’ long and over 25’ tall. So a giant is not impossible but it would have considerably larger bones and muscles as well as internal organs. Dragons are harder as they have to be both large in size and capable of flying which means light of weight. Large “swim bladders” (flight bladders?) filled with hydrogen gas from digestion is one possible way to offset at least a portion of the weight. (It would also provide a fuel source for fire breaths). More can be done (for both dragons and giants) with good structural engineering of the skeleton and muscle systems ( think ribbed structures like bridge supports and the holes drilled in the low stress sections of F1 frames etc. in order to stand, move and fly dragons have to be incredibly well engineered creatures but there is little or nothing in the engineering to forbid them.( but a real world version might not look quite the way we picture them) For what we can’t engineer ( like the mechanism of flight in oriental dragons) we can always fall back on “ Magic”.
We all apply some science to our campaigns. Basic things like gravity are written into the rules. The thing that varies is how far we go to try to explain how things work in our world.
Depending on how you view it, this can either be a fun way to allow players to find creative solutions to problems or a it could constantly be causing issues that the DM was not ready for. For example, if dragons can fly because they inflate with hydrogen then should probably be possible to ground them by piercing their "flight bladder." Players would not consider this if dragons could fly because they just can.
When you introduce mechanisms for how things work, just be ready for players to engage with those mechanisms. You need to think out the consequences of your explanations and be ready to be surprised about ones you didn't think of. If giant bones have incredible structural properties, they are probably valuable items. If dragons can create hydrogen with limestone and stomach acid, the party is going to try to use that same reaction to make an airship. Again, depending on how comfortable you are with improvisation and the tone of your campaign getting a bit silly, this can be a very good thing or a pretty bad thing.
Yes an evolved “swim bladder” would sort of work. Think of it as an additional lung chamber that evolved to compress air and hold it under pressure allowing it to be “bled off” to the lungs for breathing while diving. Essentially a biological equivalent of a compressor, SCUBA tank and regulator(s) system that compresses and stores plain old air when at the surface and then releases it on demand. If the original need for compressed air when deep diving no longer exists but the system is retained the fine control might be lost while the gross control is converted into a breath weapon with the expanding jet of high pressure air cooling adiabatically and drawing heat from anything it touches. Lightning is a little harder but not much as we already have the “battery organs” in creatures like electric eels. A 4-6’ eel generates about 600 V and 1 A. If a wizard’s bolt represents a 600,000 V, 60 A discharge then a dragon’s breath represents a discharge of 2-3 times that (1.2 to 1.8 million V and 120-180 A worth of stored electrons being released. As for giants we know from the fossil record that earthly flesh, blood and bone are capable of supporting functional creatures p to 100’ long and over 25’ tall. So a giant is not impossible but it would have considerably larger bones and muscles as well as internal organs. Dragons are harder as they have to be both large in size and capable of flying which means light of weight. Large “swim bladders” (flight bladders?) filled with hydrogen gas from digestion is one possible way to offset at least a portion of the weight. (It would also provide a fuel source for fire breaths). More can be done (for both dragons and giants) with good structural engineering of the skeleton and muscle systems ( think ribbed structures like bridge supports and the holes drilled in the low stress sections of F1 frames etc. in order to stand, move and fly dragons have to be incredibly well engineered creatures but there is little or nothing in the engineering to forbid them.( but a real world version might not look quite the way we picture them) For what we can’t engineer ( like the mechanism of flight in oriental dragons) we can always fall back on “ Magic”.
There are two problems with the idea of an organic air compression system. First is the insane amount of stress it would have to be able to endure in order to compress a gas that hard: there's a reason that air tanks are built really sturdy. Squishy organic parts just can't handle that kind of pressure, they don't break, they liquefy under that kind of force! Second, once you expel the compressed gas and it super-cools, the internal organs around said structure are also going to be super-cooled.
Now there are some organisms that have evolved the ability to generate an electric shock, that's true. However, all of them only have the ability to deliver an omnidirectional shock at a very short range around them. Nothing has the ability to aim a shock at a distant target while avoiding shocking anything that's closer to them. Additionally, they're all fish that (duh) live in the water. There's nothing that's evolved to live on land that can deliberately produce electric attacks that way, because air is a considerably less conductive than water is: an electric eel can shock you from several feet away in the water, but out of the water it needs to be touching you.
As far as giants go, yes there are animals bigger than D&D giants that have lived on Earth. And none of them look remotely like a giant, because the need to deal with the effects of carrying around that much body mass requires a different physiology than you can get from an oversized human.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I do apply real-world physics and fact-checking when it comes to subjects I know well, e.g. medieval European arms and armour, travel times on foot and horseback, low-tech, Old World foods and rations, town/village/city life, etc.
Usually not to the point of needless pedantry and the annoyance of my players, but just to keep things grounded in reality, as long as they have real-world analogues.
Theoretically giants could have a built in cooling system not entirely dissimilar to the respiratory systems of insects with bladders to bellow the air through special tubes in their thoraxes to act as an air cooling system.
Theoretically giants could have a built in cooling system not entirely dissimilar to the respiratory systems of insects with bladders to bellow the air through special tubes in their thoraxes to act as an air cooling system.
Since you didn't quote my post, I'm not actually sure what this is a response to.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Theoretically giants could have a built in cooling system not entirely dissimilar to the respiratory systems of insects with bladders to bellow the air through special tubes in their thoraxes to act as an air cooling system.
Since you didn't quote my post, I'm not actually sure what this is a response to.
While SCUBA tanks are typically pressurized to 2500-3200 psi a diving creature doesn’t actually need that much pressure . Assuming the deepest they are going is 3300 ft the max pressure the “tank” would have to reach is 100 atmos (1500 psi). While difficult this could potentially be held in a muscle encased sack and if they were originally diving to lesser depths it becomes easier to hold the pressure. the point with electricity is that a large creature with similar “battery cells” could generate sufficient voltage and amperage to potentially create sparks. How? Possibly with a metallic “lightning rod” protrusion in the mouth and a metallic faraday cage around it limiting it to a single path out of the mouth like lightning generators used for vehicle/materials testing use. The reality is that all of this is speculation - but it’s speculation trying to stay within the bounds of known science and technology but being applied to fantasy situations. On Earth it simply doesn’t happen, but is it within the realm of possibility elsewhere? Who knows.
As for giants and the cube/square problem one fairly simple solution is gigantothermy - their metabolic rate (and food intake) is considerably lower than a human’s so they don’t generate as much heat but because of their size they retain a larger proportion of that heat keeping their bodies at a near constant temperature.
Theoretically giants could have a built in cooling system not entirely dissimilar to the respiratory systems of insects with bladders to bellow the air through special tubes in their thoraxes to act as an air cooling system.
Since you didn't quote my post, I'm not actually sure what this is a response to.
Yes, I was talking about the problem with the idea of creatures that had some sort of freezing breath weapon that depended on compressing gas, then releasing it to take advantage of how a gas's temperature lowers as a result of lowering its pressure. The problem is trying to compress a gas, presumably nitrogen because good old N2 is really, really plentiful in the atmosphere, to get to that point is also going to subject the cells in the organ doing that to the same pressure. While there are organisms that can survive much greater pressures than that, they do so by having the pressure be equal across their body- they don't have an internal pressure that's vastly higher or lower than their external pressure: when organisms are subjected to that, it usually results in things like massive internal trauma. That's why I recommended an endothermic chemical reaction for the freezing breath: the creature has two different glands that release chemical agents that mix together as they're being sprayed out and cause the freezing to occur outside of the animal's body, not unlike how bombardier beetles' defensive spray works.
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"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Regarding the issue of the copressed gas organ also freezing, the dragon could partially regurgitate the organ, opening it within or just beyond its mouth. The spray from the organ would freeze parts of the organ, but my original idea was that the freezing effect is also caused by a solvent that evaporates rapidly, drawing temperature out of the targets, so the organ may get very cold, but not frozen, and if it retracts rapidly enough to prevent the solvent on it from evaporating then the organ will probably not be excessively damaged. As many creatures (including alligators) can survive being frozen, the groundwork is there for a creature to survive the temperatures.
Regarding the organ liquifying under pressure (a much more troublesome thing), I believe (but may be wrong) that if a liquid gas is stored where there is nowhere for it to evaporate to, it requires a lower pressure to hold it there compared to if it were still a gas. The principle (IIRC) is that if you compress it enough to become a liquid, then it requires energy put in to change back, whereas purely compressed gas will simply try to expand. I suspect that a specially adapted second heart-like organ which compresses the gas to liquid in small amounts and then pushes it into a storage organ may help to alleviate the problem. The pump organ could use bony plates to compress the gas, which would withstand the pressure better.
I agree on the mixture of 2 chemicals to create an endothermic reaction, but I cannot find any such violent endothermic reaction for all my googling, so I suspect that such a combination of chemicals is either unknown or non-existent!
For the electrical breath, it is possible to create a cloud of water in your mouth (close your mouth full of air, click your tongue on the roof of your mouth a dozen times, compress that mouthful of air as much as you can, and then open your mouth and gently push your cloud out with your tongue). It's not unreasonable to assume that an organ could easily evolve to create a large cloud of water vapour, which could carry the electric charge. Yes, the creature would probably also electrocute everyone touching them as well, but as said about the electric fish - they need to touch you on land to shock you. This is likely why it never evolved on land, because it had no framework to build up from. creating an ionised cloud and then sending a current into it would, I believe, work.
Some more recent and clever fantasies have tried to create scientifically accurate what if scenarios that would explain how magic or fantastical elements would work. For example, the fantasy book Flight of the Dragons and it's animated adaptation sees a scientist and writer go through a series of events that not only get him stuck inside a fantasy setting, but also forces his brain and soul to share a body with a living dragon. And while he searches for a way back to his human body, he has to learn what being a dragon is like and how dragons work. And the story writes an interesting scientifically explainable way how dragons do what they do.
In order to fly and breathe fire, a dragon needs to eat two things. Genstones and limestone. The former is for grinding up the latter in the dragons craw. The latter is filled with calcium. And when calcium meets stomach acid, it creates hydrogen. And dragons have a unique body feature in their mouths called a thor thimble which conducts electricity. The electricity in turn, ignites the hydrogen when it's breathed out, causing it to become fire.
As for how they fly, the story reveals that dragons have very strong and supple chest and rib muscles and bones that can be expanded and decompressed like a balloon. So when they expand, the hydrogen makes the dragon lighter then air, and up they go like a balloon or blimp. The wings are for steering, like a propeller on old airplanes and hot air balloons. And in order to land, a dragon has to blow the hydrogen out, or belch.
Have you ever done something like this with the monsters and magic or your setting? Apply real world science to them?
Some things do work, and I do apply them in my games. Like acceleration due to gravity means that the further you fall, the more d6's of damage per 10 feet. Barbarians that fall 100 feet don't just brush themselves off in my game. But much of the game does not lend itself to real physics and bio-mechanics. A dragon can simply not fly due its mass. (in fact, virtually none of the larger flying creatures in the game can). The square/cubed law means that 20 foot tall giants can't stand. BUT, clearly, the game is designed around Earth-like gravity since the term "pounds" is used, which is weight, which is based on mass x gravitational pull.
I also cut way way back the weight that chars can carry. By RAW, a Halfling with a 15 Str that weighs 40 pounds can carry all day 225 pounds of gear. That is beyond ludicrous. It is beyond ludicrous for even a 6'6" 300 pound Half-Orc to carry that much all day. I use common sense, and cut back the base level to 10 pounds/ Str point, and then add further restrictions based on size. It really should be more like 5-7 pounds/ Str point to emulate the real world, but as I said, much of the game just does not translate that well to real world physics and bin-mechanics.
Oh, and BTW, your real world example of how dragons fly using hydrogen? I am not sure about chemical reactions of various stomach acids mixing with calcium to create hydrogen. Lifting capacity of hydrogen is 1.2 kg / cu metre. To lift a Huge Dragon, say 20 metric tonnes = 20,000 kg, would be 16,667 cu metres of hydrogen, at sea level. A single gas bladder would have to be about 26 metres on a side, for a perfect cube. The gas bladder alone would take up a 16 x 16 square on a 5 ft square grid. Unless the muscles of that dragon are so immensely powerful enough to compress various gas bladders holding the hydrogen to such an extent that the hydrogen liquefies, the dragon can never land, as the hydrogen will remain a gas. If you go with the idea of dragons belching hydrogen to land, that also means they have to do the same to stay on the ground, and that means flight is not an at will thing. Plus, the physiology of said dragon is pretty odd. That hydrogen is either transferred to the lungs, or some other unique organ, or it is vomited from the stomach.
Well, that's what the book and movie say about dragons.
Welcome to the limits of science and the need for magic. White and silver dragons ( cold breath dragons) are also immune to the effects of cold so freezing organs etc don’t have to be considered. Now this immunity is not possible for organic (water and carbon based) organisms under the known rules of chemistry and physics so their immunity is a (and must be) a product of their enherent magical n&atures.some things in fantasy settings can’t be explained by science and we sometimes do have to fall back on “magic”. Dragon flight is probably one of those things. The same can be said for dragon flame and immunity and really for all the immunities of dragons (and pretty much everything else). Scientifically, I would have to ask “at what points does the immunity convert to resistance and then to normal effects? If the immunity is total then cold dragons can withstand temperatures down to absolute zero , while fire dragons would have no problems in the cores of suergiantstars at temperatures above 1billion K. This seems fairly ridiculous to me. I could see homebrewing limits that interact with feats that allow you to ignore damage resistance and immunity. The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was -89 *C and the hottest flames are oxy-acetylene flames at 3600 *C while the highest temperature of evaporation is also 3600 * C while the surface temperature of the sun is @ 6000 * C. So I could see house rules of immunity down to -100*C, resistance down to -200 C and full damage for temps below that for cold immune critters. Similarly fire based creatures could be immune up to 3600 C, resistant to temps upto 6000 C and take full damage beyond that - makes a lot more sense to my scientific thinking anyway. Then the feats mean you have learned to generate spells that are hotter or colder than normal allowing them to bypass the resistances and/or immunities.
There are places where science could provide explanations but it may well be better to just let be and let the game rules be the reason. An example would be the difference between “daylight” and normal light and their impacts on various undead. Because daylight/sunlight is produced at @ 6000 *C while incandescent lamps, torches, candles and oil lamps operate at much lower temps (@225-2500 *C) they don’t produce much if any ultraviolet light maybe it is this ultraviolet that actually damages undead and so light sources and spells that include UV damage undead while those that don’t do not. Do we actually need the description ? No and maybe we should just let it be that if the spell says day/sun light it damages undead and if it doesn’t it doesn’t - without explanation.
i've tried to convince my DM about the concept of terminal velocity. and how animals below certain masses can most certainly survive falls at terminal velocity, assuming it can position itself properly.
he still rolled a ton of dice and proceeded to slaughter
That wouldn’t be enough. A muscle is only as strong as a cross section of the muscle, that’s why bigger = stronger. The muscles themselves would also have to get proportionally thicker to be able to take the strain. Start adding materials heavier than bone to the mix and now you’ve got a “bigger” problem. (See what I did there?😂)
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Cold breath requires some sort of chemical mix that produces a severe endothermic reaction. Lightning breath... really doesn't work because D&D's version of "lightning" is closer to being a particle cannon than anything resembling how real electricity works.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It is an odd concept indeed that we agree that one could strengthen bones by changing the materials, but disagree that we could do the same with muscles!
I know how to make air muscles using nylon braided cable sheathing and a soft rubber tube, which I imagine could be proportionally stronger than a human muscle (size for size). Natural fibres in the muscles or other reinforcement could, theoretically, cause the muscles to be strong enough without magical intervention!
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I didn’t say we couldn’t, I simply said that just strengthening the bones “wouldn’t be enough.”
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Ah gotcha!
So yes, everything would need to be stronger. I imagine then that giants may be susceptible to muscle injuries, with the weight they are moving!
Regarding endothermic reactions, a quick google implies that citric acid and bicarb of soda reacts endothermically, but not enough to be more damaging than just beins preayed with citric acid!
I suspect a high flashpoint solvent may be the answer - something which evaporates fast, usign the einstein refrigerator effect to leech heat out of the bodies of the target. Holding such a solvent under pressure would probably increase its potency, as it will decompress when sprayed, cooling itself down, meaning it needs more heat from the target to evaporate. Kinda like the liquid nitrogen in Terminator 2. It's the evaporation (changing from liquid to gas) which makes liquid nitrogen feel so cold - and it does this by taking the heat from anything it touches. Ever notice how a tanker full of it isn't covered in frost? It's because the gas can't evaporate in the tank, so it stays liquid, and therefore isn't naturally cold.
I dont know if nature can realistically compress gas inside a livign thing, but perhaps an evolved swim bladder could be the root of it?
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Yes an evolved “swim bladder” would sort of work. Think of it as an additional lung chamber that evolved to compress air and hold it under pressure allowing it to be “bled off” to the lungs for breathing while diving. Essentially a biological equivalent of a compressor, SCUBA tank and regulator(s) system that compresses and stores plain old air when at the surface and then releases it on demand. If the original need for compressed air when deep diving no longer exists but the system is retained the fine control might be lost while the gross control is converted into a breath weapon with the expanding jet of high pressure air cooling adiabatically and drawing heat from anything it touches. Lightning is a little harder but not much as we already have the “battery organs” in creatures like electric eels. A 4-6’ eel generates about 600 V and 1 A. If a wizard’s bolt represents a 600,000 V, 60 A discharge then a dragon’s breath represents a discharge of 2-3 times that (1.2 to 1.8 million V and 120-180 A worth of stored electrons being released. As for giants we know from the fossil record that earthly flesh, blood and bone are capable of supporting functional creatures p to 100’ long and over 25’ tall. So a giant is not impossible but it would have considerably larger bones and muscles as well as internal organs. Dragons are harder as they have to be both large in size and capable of flying which means light of weight. Large “swim bladders” (flight bladders?) filled with hydrogen gas from digestion is one possible way to offset at least a portion of the weight. (It would also provide a fuel source for fire breaths). More can be done (for both dragons and giants) with good structural engineering of the skeleton and muscle systems ( think ribbed structures like bridge supports and the holes drilled in the low stress sections of F1 frames etc. in order to stand, move and fly dragons have to be incredibly well engineered creatures but there is little or nothing in the engineering to forbid them.( but a real world version might not look quite the way we picture them) For what we can’t engineer ( like the mechanism of flight in oriental dragons) we can always fall back on “ Magic”.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
We all apply some science to our campaigns. Basic things like gravity are written into the rules. The thing that varies is how far we go to try to explain how things work in our world.
Depending on how you view it, this can either be a fun way to allow players to find creative solutions to problems or a it could constantly be causing issues that the DM was not ready for. For example, if dragons can fly because they inflate with hydrogen then should probably be possible to ground them by piercing their "flight bladder." Players would not consider this if dragons could fly because they just can.
When you introduce mechanisms for how things work, just be ready for players to engage with those mechanisms. You need to think out the consequences of your explanations and be ready to be surprised about ones you didn't think of. If giant bones have incredible structural properties, they are probably valuable items. If dragons can create hydrogen with limestone and stomach acid, the party is going to try to use that same reaction to make an airship. Again, depending on how comfortable you are with improvisation and the tone of your campaign getting a bit silly, this can be a very good thing or a pretty bad thing.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
There are two problems with the idea of an organic air compression system. First is the insane amount of stress it would have to be able to endure in order to compress a gas that hard: there's a reason that air tanks are built really sturdy. Squishy organic parts just can't handle that kind of pressure, they don't break, they liquefy under that kind of force! Second, once you expel the compressed gas and it super-cools, the internal organs around said structure are also going to be super-cooled.
Now there are some organisms that have evolved the ability to generate an electric shock, that's true. However, all of them only have the ability to deliver an omnidirectional shock at a very short range around them. Nothing has the ability to aim a shock at a distant target while avoiding shocking anything that's closer to them. Additionally, they're all fish that (duh) live in the water. There's nothing that's evolved to live on land that can deliberately produce electric attacks that way, because air is a considerably less conductive than water is: an electric eel can shock you from several feet away in the water, but out of the water it needs to be touching you.
As far as giants go, yes there are animals bigger than D&D giants that have lived on Earth. And none of them look remotely like a giant, because the need to deal with the effects of carrying around that much body mass requires a different physiology than you can get from an oversized human.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I do apply real-world physics and fact-checking when it comes to subjects I know well, e.g. medieval European arms and armour, travel times on foot and horseback, low-tech, Old World foods and rations, town/village/city life, etc.
Usually not to the point of needless pedantry and the annoyance of my players, but just to keep things grounded in reality, as long as they have real-world analogues.
Theoretically giants could have a built in cooling system not entirely dissimilar to the respiratory systems of insects with bladders to bellow the air through special tubes in their thoraxes to act as an air cooling system.
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Since you didn't quote my post, I'm not actually sure what this is a response to.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Your last post about how they couldn’t have a pressurized cooling system because squishy bits.
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While SCUBA tanks are typically pressurized to 2500-3200 psi a diving creature doesn’t actually need that much pressure . Assuming the deepest they are going is 3300 ft the max pressure the “tank” would have to reach is 100 atmos (1500 psi). While difficult this could potentially be held in a muscle encased sack and if they were originally diving to lesser depths it becomes easier to hold the pressure.
the point with electricity is that a large creature with similar “battery cells” could generate sufficient voltage and amperage to potentially create sparks. How? Possibly with a metallic “lightning rod” protrusion in the mouth and a metallic faraday cage around it limiting it to a single path out of the mouth like lightning generators used for vehicle/materials testing use. The reality is that all of this is speculation - but it’s speculation trying to stay within the bounds of known science and technology but being applied to fantasy situations. On Earth it simply doesn’t happen, but is it within the realm of possibility elsewhere? Who knows.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
As for giants and the cube/square problem one fairly simple solution is gigantothermy - their metabolic rate (and food intake) is considerably lower than a human’s so they don’t generate as much heat but because of their size they retain a larger proportion of that heat keeping their bodies at a near constant temperature.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Yes, I was talking about the problem with the idea of creatures that had some sort of freezing breath weapon that depended on compressing gas, then releasing it to take advantage of how a gas's temperature lowers as a result of lowering its pressure. The problem is trying to compress a gas, presumably nitrogen because good old N2 is really, really plentiful in the atmosphere, to get to that point is also going to subject the cells in the organ doing that to the same pressure. While there are organisms that can survive much greater pressures than that, they do so by having the pressure be equal across their body- they don't have an internal pressure that's vastly higher or lower than their external pressure: when organisms are subjected to that, it usually results in things like massive internal trauma. That's why I recommended an endothermic chemical reaction for the freezing breath: the creature has two different glands that release chemical agents that mix together as they're being sprayed out and cause the freezing to occur outside of the animal's body, not unlike how bombardier beetles' defensive spray works.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Regarding the issue of the copressed gas organ also freezing, the dragon could partially regurgitate the organ, opening it within or just beyond its mouth. The spray from the organ would freeze parts of the organ, but my original idea was that the freezing effect is also caused by a solvent that evaporates rapidly, drawing temperature out of the targets, so the organ may get very cold, but not frozen, and if it retracts rapidly enough to prevent the solvent on it from evaporating then the organ will probably not be excessively damaged. As many creatures (including alligators) can survive being frozen, the groundwork is there for a creature to survive the temperatures.
Regarding the organ liquifying under pressure (a much more troublesome thing), I believe (but may be wrong) that if a liquid gas is stored where there is nowhere for it to evaporate to, it requires a lower pressure to hold it there compared to if it were still a gas. The principle (IIRC) is that if you compress it enough to become a liquid, then it requires energy put in to change back, whereas purely compressed gas will simply try to expand. I suspect that a specially adapted second heart-like organ which compresses the gas to liquid in small amounts and then pushes it into a storage organ may help to alleviate the problem. The pump organ could use bony plates to compress the gas, which would withstand the pressure better.
I agree on the mixture of 2 chemicals to create an endothermic reaction, but I cannot find any such violent endothermic reaction for all my googling, so I suspect that such a combination of chemicals is either unknown or non-existent!
For the electrical breath, it is possible to create a cloud of water in your mouth (close your mouth full of air, click your tongue on the roof of your mouth a dozen times, compress that mouthful of air as much as you can, and then open your mouth and gently push your cloud out with your tongue). It's not unreasonable to assume that an organ could easily evolve to create a large cloud of water vapour, which could carry the electric charge. Yes, the creature would probably also electrocute everyone touching them as well, but as said about the electric fish - they need to touch you on land to shock you. This is likely why it never evolved on land, because it had no framework to build up from. creating an ionised cloud and then sending a current into it would, I believe, work.
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Well, that's what the book and movie say about dragons.
Welcome to the limits of science and the need for magic. White and silver dragons ( cold breath dragons) are also immune to the effects of cold so freezing organs etc don’t have to be considered. Now this immunity is not possible for organic (water and carbon based) organisms under the known rules of chemistry and physics so their immunity is a (and must be) a product of their enherent magical n&atures.some things in fantasy settings can’t be explained by science and we sometimes do have to fall back on “magic”. Dragon flight is probably one of those things. The same can be said for dragon flame and immunity and really for all the immunities of dragons (and pretty much everything else). Scientifically, I would have to ask “at what points does the immunity convert to resistance and then to normal effects? If the immunity is total then cold dragons can withstand temperatures down to absolute zero , while fire dragons would have no problems in the cores of suergiantstars at temperatures above 1billion K. This seems fairly ridiculous to me. I could see homebrewing limits that interact with feats that allow you to ignore damage resistance and immunity. The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was -89 *C and the hottest flames are oxy-acetylene flames at 3600 *C while the highest temperature of evaporation is also 3600 * C while the surface temperature of the sun is @ 6000 * C. So I could see house rules of immunity down to -100*C, resistance down to -200 C and full damage for temps below that for cold immune critters. Similarly fire based creatures could be immune up to 3600 C, resistant to temps upto 6000 C and take full damage beyond that - makes a lot more sense to my scientific thinking anyway. Then the feats mean you have learned to generate spells that are hotter or colder than normal allowing them to bypass the resistances and/or immunities.
There are places where science could provide explanations but it may well be better to just let be and let the game rules be the reason. An example would be the difference between “daylight” and normal light and their impacts on various undead. Because daylight/sunlight is produced at @ 6000 *C while incandescent lamps, torches, candles and oil lamps operate at much lower temps (@225-2500 *C) they don’t produce much if any ultraviolet light maybe it is this ultraviolet that actually damages undead and so light sources and spells that include UV damage undead while those that don’t do not. Do we actually need the description ? No and maybe we should just let it be that if the spell says day/sun light it damages undead and if it doesn’t it doesn’t - without explanation.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
If we followed real world physics, invisible creatures would not be able to see.