How much weight could an adult dragon, or an ancient dragon lift, realistically?

But can dragonfire melt steel beams?

it doesn't look as bulky as an elephant but it's roughly a little smaller so i would put it at around 8-9 thousand pounds. An average person can comfortably lift about half of their weight, but that's with their arms and legs. If a dragon was lifting something with it's mouth it would be a lot less. Again comparing it to an elephant, it could lift about 700 lbs with it's trunk.

About the flying thing...magic did it.

Dragons fly using magic, the wings just look pretty. So with magic they could in theory lift anything that they can grasp.

Dragon fire is actually magic fire, so yes.

A good hammer would easily crush the bones of such a beast. They surely have fragile hollow bones filled with air sacks to save weight.

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What would happen if you nullify the dragon's magic?

>How much weight could an adult dragon, or an ancient dragon lift, realistically?

A Dragon can drag/tow (I.E: pull something with it's mouth while it's walking on the ground) double it's given weight.
A Dragon while flying, however, can only carry off half of it's own weight.

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What do you mean: an african or an european dragon?

We are not talking about migratory patterns, so that information is irrelevant annon.

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A D&D dragon, so pseudo-European, I suppose?

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Depends on what you mean by "Dragon," seeing as they aren't actually real, nor could they be by our current understanding of things.

It doesn't count as so. at least not in 5e
they don't have magic anything, at least not unless you use the variant block

It depends on the fucking setting, as always, but for this to work "realistically", I think we'll have to figure out how much lift can a dragon's wings produce, first, then how much of said lift is contrarrested by the dragon's own weight, and then determine the difference between those two factors.
But, since all that is actually irrelevant, I will go with "as much as the plot requires".

How much do you weigh?

The issue is that none of those things are consistent; or that they really say much about how strong the creature is. I mean, Condors are pretty heavy, but I could probably outbench one.

Ancient red and gold dragons have a STR score of 30, the highest among dragons

A creature's carrying capacity equals their strength times 15, doubled for each size category above medium

So 30*15*2(large)*2(huge)*2(gargantuan)
=3600lb

A creature can push, drag, or lift up to twice their carrying capacity, so an ancient red or gold dragon can lift a grand total of 7200lb

That's only for a creature on the ground. To fly, a creature can't carry more than its light (or is it medium) load, which I'm not patient enough to look up right now

Realistically, it is unlikely that an adult dragon could lift itself.

If you use the variant encumberance rules to houserule some kind of flight restriction then it's 1200 (str×5 instead of str×15 for a light load)

However that would be DM discretion, as by RAW, encumberance has no effect on flight other than the creature's speed becoming 5 feet if carrying more than its maximum

Dependent on the nature of dragons in your setting. Assuming “7-10 meters long with head and tail tucked in”, I’d assume they could carry about as much as a small box truck.

Whether or not your setting is full of flying alligators running their variant of “Drake’s Delivery Service” is dependent on their commonality, temperament, and living conditions. No need to do glorified trucker work if you’re a demigod or already have a hoard big enough to sleep on with ample food nearby.

Square-cube law is a bitch

For a large Red Dragon the measurements would be:

Overall Length: 33 ft.
Neck Length: 12 ft.
Tail Length: 9 ft.
Body length: 12 ft.
Standing width: 7 ft.
Max. Height: 9 ft.
Max. Wingspan: 45 ft.
Min. wingspan: 18 ft.
Weight: 2,700 lb.

Apparently the manual says that they fly at 9 mph and may be able to push it to 18 mph.
This looks way too slow to keep it airborne, in a realistic sense it would probably be harder for a large dragon to fly so slow because it would have to generate most of the lift using it's muscles instead of aerodinamics. But we are dealing with fantasy creatures, magic and other bullshit might be involved.

I can not math very good, so I hope someone in here is more capable to deal with this data.
If the dragon is capable of flight carrying it's own 2.700 lb at a speed of 18 mph, it should be able to carry more weight causing it to go a bit slower ... I assume.

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Square-cube law is the most anti-fun law ever.

>Dinosaurs never existed the post
Whew! Pseudo-intellectuals!

First. Don't call people pseudo-intellectuals followed by incorrect information, it just makes you look dumb.

Second. Dinosaurs did not fly. The flying ones are Pterosaurs. Unless you're talking about the tiny gliding raptors or Yi Ti, the real life wyvern dinosaur, but even then, they were very, very smol.

Third. Even if you are talking about Pterosaur, they were extremely lightweight, with air pouches, hollow bones and slim body structure.
The largest ones, like the Quetzalcoatlus were huge but were very lightweight, the size of a giraffe but weighting 440 lbs, and even then, there are still debates about the possibility of it being a terrestrial predator with vestigial wings that walked on all fours and may have only used it's wings for wing assisted running at most.

None of them is a huge muscular, six limbed flying lizard that should not be able to fly without using magic.

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>Yi Ti
Yi Qi, actually, more a cockatrice than a wyvern.

Yi Ti is from Game of Thrones.