How dangerous are the dragons in your setting? Legendary god-like beings? Mere footnotes in a knight's career...

How dangerous are the dragons in your setting? Legendary god-like beings? Mere footnotes in a knight's career? Or something in-between?

inb4 hammerspace autism

It is said for a dragon to be born, something else must meet its death

so

I'd say closer to the god like beings side of things, being one of the few if not only naturally magical creatures in the setting who even without their talent in their arcane can easily wreak havoc/destruction/death that cannot die from sickness or time.

Of course there are a few that do the opposite and are closer to the other end as they aid the more mortal races.

But to give you an idea of what they're like

in my setting they are a race cursed by the gods for their pride and other deviancy/sins. Cursed to last a single generation more. The gods hoped the knowledge of their creeping extinction would fix their attitude problem so to speak and have them do something with their basically endless lives.

However the way the gods cursed them was basically a hack job. They didn't make them sterile, instead they made it so any dragon hatched from the curse onwards would be disgusting, limbless horrors known as wyrms that acted as the beasts they saw the dragons as. This was due to the fact they refused to give the gestating dragons a soul and so the sins of their mother and father twisted and ruined the unborn.

This of course infuriated the proud and hubris filled dragons, they couldn't take the blow to their ego and many went insane with rage against the gods and all their creation, rending the newly born world a new asshole...or several. They were eventually culled, of course. The kinder and more "Human" did however follow the gods path, becoming hermits or sages in penance for their actions. And it seemed that dragons were done for. The gods patted eachother on the back, and went to get coffee and check on their new near immortal sages in a century or two.
cont

There are levels of dragons
From Wyrmling, Wyrm, Young Dragon, Drake, Adult Dragon etc

Also there are feral dragons (Drakes and Wyrms) and intelligent dragons

I tend to portray dragons as just another group of reptiles akin to snakes or turtles. The hundreds of species range on the deadliness scale from "really pissed off goanna" to "firebreathing tyrannosaurus"

extremely rare and older than civilization

However the wiser, craftier and more clever of them began to experiment, realizing that indulging in their new found spite would only get them killed by some pounced up asshole blessed by the gods. And through trial, error and ritual experimentation sark and terrible, these clever dragons found the answer. They just need to steal the soul of another creature and implant it into their unborn children via a ritual that involved various salves, herbs, arcane marks carved into the sacrifices/soon to be dragon's flesh and a fuck ton of chanting. By devouring the souls former body they could transfer it to their children, with the personality in tact if they didn't rip the old body apart or break its mind in some other way.

The presence of a soul made the dragons come out right, as dragons. And what were once a dying race thrived once more. This is why dragons kidnap princess' because most of them are much too prideful to sire anything besides a royal child. This is why in general dragons are still so prideful and often sinful, because they beat the god's curse....more or less.

The process also work with animals, making wryverns/ drakes/ lindworms depending on what animal they devoured, which are about as smart as dogs/the animal the was used to create them. But no dragon would give birth to a souless child, as that would bring rise to wyrms, the one thing besides those blessed by the gods that can hunt dragons. Beside other dragons of course.

So, how dangerous a dragon is depends on their personality. A serial killer turned into one would be a most dangerous and destructive beast, but one made from a kind soul that was not "taught the right way" or had its old personality ripped to shreds by its new mother will often be anything but. But all of them are some of the strongest creatures on the planet when they grow older and they will often have magical abilities unfound anywhere else due to their inherently magic saturated natures.

Dragons were once worshipped as gods, remnants of that civilization can still be found (it’s also why they have hoards, they were once tithes) but they are normal outside of being dragons. They simple had a numbers advantage back in the day.

The Gods tried to wipe everything out, including dragons, and they didn’t recover their former prestige, but never acted like it.

The last vestige of their civilization (outside of the far west) was restricted to a series of islands the size of the British Isles. They raised the hell out of everything nearby. An order of knights from all corners banded together to conquer the last bastion of dragons (there were other ‘wild’ dragons who operated mostly on their own) and succeeded through a combination of flying mounts, a great navy, determination, and being great dragonslayers.

However there were still a ton of dragons left to be accounted for. So the Dragonslayers became dragon riders to further fight for justice.

Wild Dragons are still a concern, and could take on an entire village if they wanted. But they try not to bite off more than they can chew, and can be negotiated with.

True dragons are apocalyptic, ancient beings that predate the gods. They are spirits of pure Chaos ensnared in old god's act of creation-forging. Each one is an element of the doom of the universe, and each one is the progenitor of a whole host of monsters. A knight could spend his whole life fighting the spawn of a particular dragon and rise to legendary heights in the process, and still be chaff in the storm of the dragon's awakening. To kill one is an act of titanomachia that will save the world in the short term, but hasten the undoing of reality in the long

I run an Exalted-style game so dragons are still within reach of the players, just as sort of a major foe/capstone type deal

Stupidly ancient, wealthy, and secluded beings that look like cute anime girls because reasons. They just want the young races to fuck off while they enjoy their days. They generally grew out of the rampaging force of chaos thing a long time ago but if they catch even the slightest whiff of someone after their wealth they will drop the loli shtick and rip that poor bugger six ways to sunday. Since dragons stopped rampaging a long time ago, the world in general believes them to be either a myth or extinct.