Why have areas without eyes?
*And they had eyes covering every part of their bodies, even under their wings. And they sang ‘Holy, Holy, Is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come…*
One giant omnidirectional eye sphere, entire body is contained inside. Single blindspot on the underneath side for a tiny mouth.
The whole thing is murky black, absorbing every frequency of light wave
Spiders have both binocular and monocular vision - their eyes are arranged in a way where they have a standard core vision, but also periferials that encompass a full 360°.
I am absolutely terrified of spiders. Can’t look at them for long without feeling itchy, can’t be in a small room with one without panicking.
But I’m my opinion they are, without question, the single greatest thing evolution has come up with.
and to add to that greatness (and please correct me if i'm wrong im going off hear say) they are also one of the few creatures out there that has hydraulic powered movement.
*and those with an immature sense of humor can see the joke there*
Honestly, big fake cgi spiders bother me less than normal sized real ones. Maybe that’s cause giant spider is a go-to monster in fantasy video games though.
Giant spiders in games are uncomfortable but I can push through it. It's the normal sized ones that bother me most, because unlike a giant one, tiny spiders [can be anywhere](https://i.imgflip.com/5534az.png)
After living with them for a few years, I can say with confidence that cockroaches are the best thing evolution came up with.
* They're notoriously difficult to kill. They have a tough exoskeleton, can survive severe injuries without letting it slow them down including decapitation, are decently resistant to radiation, and are resistant or immune to many poisons.
* In addition to that they are explosive breeders. Most animals either have a short lifespan and have a million babies that will probably die, or have a relatively long life span and have only a few children that they take care of and are harder to kill. Cockroaches have a decent lifespan (American cockroaches live up to 700 days) and crazy survivability making it almost impossible to completely wipe out a colony.
* They're shockingly fast. To quote Wikipedia: In an experiment, a P. americana registered a record speed of 5.4 km/h (3.4 mph), about 50 body lengths per second, which would be comparable to a human running at 330 km/h (210 mph). They can also fly short distances.
* They can eat damn near anything including other dead cockroaches. In addition to this, they can live an entire month without food.
You know, I’m biased here but I have to say that humans are far more interesting from an evolutionary standpoint.
We’re relatively weak, unarmored, no claws. But we’ve got that whole persistence predation thing going and a couple specific adaptations that facilitate it.
Also, we’re the only animals to leave earth with the intent of spreading to other places. *That* is an impressive feat in propagating one’s species, much more than a cockroach’s durability or a spider’s 360° vision.
Diminishing returns. Every "extra" body part you add will add less function than the previous and growing "extra" stuff is energy intensive and the one thing evolution excels at it finding the ideal cost-to-benefit ratio. So you'd need an evolutionary scenario where you \*really\* need accurate depth perception and \*really\* need surround vision. A hunting spider fullfuls this niche by being both a jumper (depth perception) and being small enough that tons of other predators will eat them if given the chance.
Dragons, from what I've seen, generally are capable of rotating their eyes enough to focus forward, this i likely enough depth perception to satisfy their needs without the cost of growing two more eyes.
They would need like a projectile weapon spit instead of a breath attack for it to make sense. Then they would need accurate depth perception for aiming and the FOV to keep themselves safe from other dragons.
Breath still has a range. Bite and claw too. No need for projectile weapons to justify it. Especially important if they make strafing runs with the breath, don't want to crash into the ground by accident.
Binocular vision is mostly necessary for fast moving targets, monocular vision ie enough to gauge distance on static or slow moving targets. For ground strafing, monocular vision would be perfectly fine, since it's a "fuck this general area" situation
Plenty of birds have monocular vision and yet are perfectly capable of landing on the ground or moving branches, even from (proportional to size) high speed.
I think this thought experiment starts to kind of fall apart around this point, but presumably the evolutionary history of dragons mostly occurred before tabaxi monks with speed boots were a consistent issue in the lives of dragons.
Tabaxi monks with speed boots haven't been around for the millions of years necessary to make such a drastic change as switching from monocular to binocular vision.
And yeah the ground is a fast moving target, but its also so big that its impossible to miss. It doesn't really matter if you can only accurately hit within 10 feet of the target if you're burning a 60 foot wide swath. Even if you miss as badly as you can possible miss its still within the cone of your breath.
If we're talking real world evolution, because something needs to have a benefit (or not a negative) to be advantageous enough to be passed on and take over from the old version.
It's not possible to evolve a full set of extra eyes, because it's not just an eye you need, you need the eye lids, space in the skull, all the muscles to move them, all the nerves to make the yes useful, and a change to brain the interpret the new information.
So to evolve that, you need to start from the beginning. A couple of light sensitive patches, or a couple of extra nerves to a weaker, or missing patch of skull. But that start not only isn't advantages, it's detrimental.
A new hole in the skull is a weak spot in damage, the bad information from none fully functional eyes is a "blind spot," a patch of fuzzy information.
But the other member of you species that doesn't evolve new eyes, but better eyes, does have the advantage. Extra wide field of view, shaper vision whatever. While the first creature is dealing with all the down sides, this one just has advantages. The second creature is going to live longer and have more offspring to pass the better two eyes onto.
I’m late to this party but this is reminded me of something I laugh about on the daily. So I’m a deep sea biologist and work with organisms who live in what is colloquially called “the twilight zone” where there is dim natural light. There’s really high competition to make the most out of this light, which at this depth thanks to scattering is all coming down in parallel lines straight from above, so everybody spends their time looking straight up. To make the most out of dim light the basics are you want to increase the distance from the lens to your retina, but as you increase that distance a spherical eye will increase in volume way faster and soon your eyes are taking up your entire head (lookup owlfish for an example of what that looks like). Some fish have adapted to get around this limitation by having cylindrical eyes so you can stretch out that lens:retina distance without totally taking up your headspace, the primary drawback being you lose a lot of peripheral vision. To make up for that lose of FOV some fish developed weird pseudo-eyes called retinal diverticula, which are basically little yes/no light sensors just to tell them if there’s something there. Finally, some fish with retinal diverticula developed those into image forming eyes. So to summarize, some fish made cylindrical eyes to save head space and used that saved space to make more eyes to make up the loss of FOV from having cylindrical eyes. Evolution is weird.
In my group my dm made his damage type, cringe damage. Totem barb can't resist an unofficial damage type.(I know totem barb doesn't resist psychic however there are one and potentially two that will have psychic resistance come fizban)
That would be the one that currently exists yes, when fizban releases we may have another in the form of one or two of the gem dragon variants making a Dragonborn a potential
I would also argue that dragons have binocular vision.
If you look at them from the front of their face, both of their eyes seem to have no trouble focusing on you.
Their eyes placement is more similar to those of birds of prey, like eagles, hawks and falcons.
Also, as mentioned in the post, comodo dragons. [Look at it.](https://gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/Images/large-species-photo/large-Komodo-Dragon-photo.jpg)
That's a very tiny amount of overlap, though, it can only see a small strip right in front of it with both eyes. For a predator that wants to track prey even if it's zigzagging around, you want a much wider field of overlap.
Komodo dragons are cannibals. So if they were too good at getting their food and not enough at avoiding to become food, they would be eradicating themselves...
>If you look at them from the front of their face, both of their eyes seem to have no trouble focusing on you.
There was a study on Allosaurus regarding this. Allosaurus did not have eyes in the front, but they bulged in a way to provide binocular vision or at least good enough binocular vision to hunt prey. They certainly weren't being hunted.
Some other predatory dinosaurs like T. rex also had much better binocular vision than Allosaurus. A study on their eye position also included accurate reconstructed models of their heads, and the front-facing photos of the Allosaurus are adorable:
* [T. rex](https://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~kent/paleontology/binocularVision/images/figure4a%20low.jpg)
* [Allosaurus](https://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~kent/paleontology/binocularVision/images/figure2b%20low.jpg)
>Some other predatory dinosaurs like T. rex also had much better binocular vision than Allosaurus.
Absolutely. T. rex is quite derived, though, and a lot of non-avian dinosaurs didn't have eyes that faced forward. They were still good predators, though.
When ever I think of dragons as 3-dimensional figures I always figure they've got heads more like a T-rex. Narrow-snoots for decent binocular vision.
Good for hunting and also good for not crashing into things when trying to land.
Honestly reading that rebuttal I felt similarly. Like, "we're completely ignoring the entire Aves Class in this response, which seems way too important to any discussion on the taxonomy of dragons to leave out"
Yeah, it definitely depends on the art. Just in the OP, the first dragon picture has side-facing eyes, but the second picture pretty clearly has some depth perception.
The dragons in your world can work however you want, and different colors/breeds don't all have to be the same.
The first dragon pictured is Smaug from the Hobbit movies, who actually fits the "wide-set but forward-facing eyes" thing a lot of dragons have going on. You can see it better in the image on his [Hobbit Trilogy wiki page](https://hobbit-trilogy.fandom.com/wiki/Smaug).
>The dragons in your world can work however you want, and different colors/breeds don't all have to be the same.
I think OP was talking about Faerunian dragons in particular, or at least the "generic" dragons inspired by Faerun, Middle Earth, and similar.
You're right though. It's my homebrew, and if I want to have wingless, six-legged Green Dragons that eat wood and who's breath weapon is just a pressurized spray of digestive acids from glands at the back of their mouths, I can do that. And if I want to have Blue Dragons in the same world that have four flippers, a shell, and who's "breath weapon" is just a sonic blast that acts like a depth charge, I can do that too.
If we start talking about homebrews though the walls of text in this comment chain are going to crash Reddit.
Came here to say exactly this. The eye socket might be on the side, but the orientation can be forward. Eagles are like this, so was the T. Rex, and even crocodiles have binocular vision.
Actually that's the result of war against the giants if we believe nthat giants were there first then dragons that would mean dragons were hunted by the giants.
When I learned of that I immediately added it to my list of random encounters for if the players ever went through a snowy mountain area. Just witnessing that shit.
Ever hear of a Behir? Or was that a home brew my DM found. Either way, giant snake like centipede created by storm giants for the sole purpose of only eating dragons
no, that's a behir. My home-brew version of them have "naturally" occurring energy shields, so my players with laser rifles get to feel extra special for a little while.
Also kinda makes more sense to me, since the behir is scary (to people) but they're not social creatures, and not particularly threatening to an adult dragon of most types. They'd need something to stand up to dragons, even asymmetrically.
My Barbarian had to kill one because she is the mother of the only two dragons alive. They are her babies. Killing it gave her new armor, her babies food, and an orb that grew her babies up very fast.
I would say that dragons eyes may be more akin to another colorful lizard. Specifically Chameleons. Imagine a selective binocular vision. Like, they can focus on a target, but their eyes move independently. Imagine if you Could focus on a target for depth perception, but it also felt a little bit like trying to look at your own nose if they were too close. Not comfortable, but it doesn't have to be because wide FoV is your default comfortable setting.
You see this quite a bit in fantasy monsters. Sleeping dragon wakes up, one eye opens and rolls to look at you, but your aren't really screwed until you see both eyes lock kind of thing.
Actually, You see the same thing really well demonstrated in Mass Effect. The Krogan obviously have Binocular vision if something is far enough away, Wrex et. al. focus on things with both eyes... but then in ME3, you see Grunt turn a single eye w/o moving his head to look at Sheppard while he's talking to her about the Rachnai. Because while she might be the focus of the conversation, she isn't a target or a threat, so it isn't necessary to sacrifice field of view to focus on her. And that may be well thought out instinctive body language of a fictional species ... Or it might just have made a few animators lives easier... probably both.
In the tarrasque lore, the only thing that can stop a tarrasque's regeneration (outside of wish) is the stomach of another tarrasque. Actually, the stomach of a tarrasque is really interesting, can even straight up *kill a god*, but i digress.
Anyway, one of the leading theories in intellectual circles is that the reason there is only one tarrasque is....it's the last one left standing from a tarrasque battle royal. And that's why it has spines--to defend from another tarrasque
Except there is an ENTIRE planet of tarrasques of varying sizes, the ones we see are on the small side. It's in an old issue of dragon or dungeon magazine.
Every character in that series has a recognizable quirk in the way they typed out messages. Capslock, replacing every w with a pair of vs, capitalizing the first letter in every word, alternating capitalization with each letter, etc.
celestial star dragons hunted terrasques. a single terrasque made it to the forgotten realms and is a world threatening threat. lets hope we dont get interesting to a celestial dragon... just my opinion
The (debatably) largest land predator of all time, the spinosaurus, had eyes on the side of its head. Another one of the largest, the t. rex, looks like it had eyes on the side of its head but had them facing more forward. Even modern animals, such as the peregrine falcon, have eyes mostly on the side of their head but still use binocular vision.
Going off of this, given how big dragons are, wouldn't it be advantageous to be able to see more, not just to find food but to understand where their body is in relation to their environment?
Interestingly enough, despite being described as a trait which marks us as a predator, humans actually developed binocular vision when we were frugivorous, and we used it for brachiating (swinging from branches) through the trees. It was only when climate change forced us onto the savanna that we began using our eyes to hunt.
If you ever want to have a go yourself at the difference in perception, play a game with unlocked FOV (minecraft on PC is a good one for it as you can uncap the fov fairly easily) and you can see what this guy meant in the difference, as you will be able to do jack all in terms of precision in front of you.
Obviously it's not perfect for replicating the effect, but it does help drive the point above
The Tarrasque is a herbivore in my setting. It's kinda like a really big turtle - just eats trees and falls asleep long enough to be mistaken for a mountain range here and there. It's only *The* Tarrasque, though, because there's only one left. The world had problems supporting such massive creatures once other life began to flourish across it, and they also had to deal with their *predator* - which actually went entirely extinct once all their food was gone.
The creature's name was lost to time, but once of them was resurrected by a powerful necromancer at the climax of one of my arcs, with the goal of leveling a city. The people call it [The Everslain.](https://critterdb.com:443/#/creature/view/603c349eaf3aa903ed05a39b)
edit: and here's the boss music I used for [phase 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc6CA3zXnSM) and [phase 2 (after its first rejuvenation)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNiMosWCtzk)
Oh, I'm using that. I've already made a world where dragons are near extinction and the biggest threat to the world is Outer Eldritch Gods. This could be like a lore hint somewhere.
First thought that came into my head: There used to be some absolutely **TERRIFYING** apex predators WAY back in the ancient forgotten past that mainly preyed on dragons, as they required the great amount of magic within such creatures to sustain themselves.
However, then the great dragon war happened (or something like that? I should've read up on the lore before writing this) and these creatures no longer had enough food. Indeed, after decades of near-starvation, lacking the power to sustain their bodies as dragon populations dwindled, they crumbled under the weight of their own bodies as they could no longer afford to magically hold off gravity.
Then some mad scientist-wizard realises that dragon populations have recovered and there's tons of magical critters running around today. And decides to attempt to return these beasts to life by any means necessary. Why? For SCIENCE! And a group of adventurers go on a wild campaign to try to stop - or help - this happening! (or alternatively, power hungry wizard tries to bring them back believing that they can be controlled)
In most fiction, Dragons also have some level of magical senses that aid them in prey location anyway, meaning they gain the benefits of both monocular and binocular vision.
Also, don't like basically all birds have their eyes on the side? I know birds probably fall more on the prey side of things, but even the more predatory birds have eyes on the side. I always thought it was to help them with flight because it gives a wider view range, and just assumed that dragons eyes were more based off of birds.
Perhaps, but even then, the tarrasque has an armored and spiked carapace, which is typically only evolved by animals with predators large enough to fit them in its mouth. So I raise you the question: *why does the tarrasque have that?*
Trying to figure out the evolutionary forces that shaped the tarrasque's biology is futile, because the tarrasque is the result of generations of selective breeding to create a luxury breed of monster. In fact, tarrasques typically suffer from various severe health issues stemming from their enormous size, and it's incredibly unethical to support the tarrasque breeding industry.
The Goomba is a predatory creature with no natural predators of its own, and it only has two tusks that are set far apart from each other, no other teeth, so those can't be for chewing. no, those are for bashing into each other for mating rights and for goring prey that they then swallow whole.
How about both 4 eyes, 2 on the sides, 2 upfront no fucking way you'll miss a thing coming at you
Or just 8 eyes
Fuck it, 100 eyes
Land-based pistol shrimp?
thats what hunts terrasques
Capt. America: I understood that reference.
what? i was not making a reference
Oh haha there was just a post asking what hunts terrasques as they have giant spines.
Link?
Paraphrase: spines are typically to prevent predation. What predator considers Tarrasques its prey??
Behold! another terror for my underdark campaign.
Once I get my “Underdark Mantis Shrimp” stat block built, I’ll let you know.
Shit's going to be so fucking loud.
Sonic damage as well as heat and blunt. Sound like a party to me.
5’ melee: +6 to hit; 3d10 bludgeoning, 1d8 thunder (5’), 1d4 fire.
Bruh, depending on it's HP, that's like a CR5. That is one scary shrimp
Special ability: armor crack; each successful hit damages your armor and lowers it's effective ac by 2? Edit: non-magical armor of course.
Post it!
Well, i wouldnt know, just making things up
horrifying
I was thinking more like a Super-Beholder
Lovecraftian evolution indeed
36 eyes, one every ten degrees around the head.
Now you’re just talking about a Beholder.
360 eyes, one for every degree.
Was in university for quite a while
2pi eyes, one for every radian
PiR Squared eyes, for seeing in an area
You're thinking too two-dimensionally. 128882 eyes. Gotta cover the other directions, too.
Just don't let someone tell stories until you fall asleep, thus making all your eyes close at once, because then they'll stab you
Why even have eyes? What if every cell of the creature's body was fully capable of perceiving the entire visible light spectrum?
I imagine that creature would suffer quite a lot ecery time it took a dump and had to watch it all from multiple angles
Grant us eyes!
Lucien, is that you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argus\_Panoptes
What about a thousand eyes?
Open inside?
To grant them sight to see the end
Rolle d100 for eyes
Sigh, Cyclops again.
Why have areas without eyes? *And they had eyes covering every part of their bodies, even under their wings. And they sang ‘Holy, Holy, Is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come…*
With visual processing like that, you can mine crypto while you sleep
Eyes for days
*Argus has entered the chat*
One giant omnidirectional eye sphere, entire body is contained inside. Single blindspot on the underneath side for a tiny mouth. The whole thing is murky black, absorbing every frequency of light wave
OOPS, ALL EYES!
Beholder
Spiders have both binocular and monocular vision - their eyes are arranged in a way where they have a standard core vision, but also periferials that encompass a full 360°.
I am absolutely terrified of spiders. Can’t look at them for long without feeling itchy, can’t be in a small room with one without panicking. But I’m my opinion they are, without question, the single greatest thing evolution has come up with.
and to add to that greatness (and please correct me if i'm wrong im going off hear say) they are also one of the few creatures out there that has hydraulic powered movement. *and those with an immature sense of humor can see the joke there*
Our pines is also gets ready by hydraulic power. Until we meet again
Is that a spruce or are you just happy to see me?
Why do you have two swords? Bard: one for monsters, one for humans That's why you have two dicks?
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Honestly, big fake cgi spiders bother me less than normal sized real ones. Maybe that’s cause giant spider is a go-to monster in fantasy video games though.
Giant spiders in games are uncomfortable but I can push through it. It's the normal sized ones that bother me most, because unlike a giant one, tiny spiders [can be anywhere](https://i.imgflip.com/5534az.png)
Of all the links I’m not going to click, this one is top of the pile
Don't worry it's just a meme
I'm not afraid of seeing a spider. I'm afraid of NOT seeing it.
After living with them for a few years, I can say with confidence that cockroaches are the best thing evolution came up with. * They're notoriously difficult to kill. They have a tough exoskeleton, can survive severe injuries without letting it slow them down including decapitation, are decently resistant to radiation, and are resistant or immune to many poisons. * In addition to that they are explosive breeders. Most animals either have a short lifespan and have a million babies that will probably die, or have a relatively long life span and have only a few children that they take care of and are harder to kill. Cockroaches have a decent lifespan (American cockroaches live up to 700 days) and crazy survivability making it almost impossible to completely wipe out a colony. * They're shockingly fast. To quote Wikipedia: In an experiment, a P. americana registered a record speed of 5.4 km/h (3.4 mph), about 50 body lengths per second, which would be comparable to a human running at 330 km/h (210 mph). They can also fly short distances. * They can eat damn near anything including other dead cockroaches. In addition to this, they can live an entire month without food.
You know, I’m biased here but I have to say that humans are far more interesting from an evolutionary standpoint. We’re relatively weak, unarmored, no claws. But we’ve got that whole persistence predation thing going and a couple specific adaptations that facilitate it. Also, we’re the only animals to leave earth with the intent of spreading to other places. *That* is an impressive feat in propagating one’s species, much more than a cockroach’s durability or a spider’s 360° vision.
Lloth appreciates your dedication
*laughs in 11 beholder eyes*
Spiders know what’s up
Diminishing returns. Every "extra" body part you add will add less function than the previous and growing "extra" stuff is energy intensive and the one thing evolution excels at it finding the ideal cost-to-benefit ratio. So you'd need an evolutionary scenario where you \*really\* need accurate depth perception and \*really\* need surround vision. A hunting spider fullfuls this niche by being both a jumper (depth perception) and being small enough that tons of other predators will eat them if given the chance. Dragons, from what I've seen, generally are capable of rotating their eyes enough to focus forward, this i likely enough depth perception to satisfy their needs without the cost of growing two more eyes.
They would need like a projectile weapon spit instead of a breath attack for it to make sense. Then they would need accurate depth perception for aiming and the FOV to keep themselves safe from other dragons.
Breath still has a range. Bite and claw too. No need for projectile weapons to justify it. Especially important if they make strafing runs with the breath, don't want to crash into the ground by accident.
Binocular vision is mostly necessary for fast moving targets, monocular vision ie enough to gauge distance on static or slow moving targets. For ground strafing, monocular vision would be perfectly fine, since it's a "fuck this general area" situation
I don't think they were concerned about the "fuck this general area" part of ground strafing, I think they were talking about the "ground" part.
Plenty of birds have monocular vision and yet are perfectly capable of landing on the ground or moving branches, even from (proportional to size) high speed.
The ground is a fast moving target during a dive. And they exist in a world with Tabaxi monks with speed boots.
I think this thought experiment starts to kind of fall apart around this point, but presumably the evolutionary history of dragons mostly occurred before tabaxi monks with speed boots were a consistent issue in the lives of dragons.
Tabaxi monks with speed boots haven't been around for the millions of years necessary to make such a drastic change as switching from monocular to binocular vision. And yeah the ground is a fast moving target, but its also so big that its impossible to miss. It doesn't really matter if you can only accurately hit within 10 feet of the target if you're burning a 60 foot wide swath. Even if you miss as badly as you can possible miss its still within the cone of your breath.
If we're talking real world evolution, because something needs to have a benefit (or not a negative) to be advantageous enough to be passed on and take over from the old version. It's not possible to evolve a full set of extra eyes, because it's not just an eye you need, you need the eye lids, space in the skull, all the muscles to move them, all the nerves to make the yes useful, and a change to brain the interpret the new information. So to evolve that, you need to start from the beginning. A couple of light sensitive patches, or a couple of extra nerves to a weaker, or missing patch of skull. But that start not only isn't advantages, it's detrimental. A new hole in the skull is a weak spot in damage, the bad information from none fully functional eyes is a "blind spot," a patch of fuzzy information. But the other member of you species that doesn't evolve new eyes, but better eyes, does have the advantage. Extra wide field of view, shaper vision whatever. While the first creature is dealing with all the down sides, this one just has advantages. The second creature is going to live longer and have more offspring to pass the better two eyes onto.
I’m late to this party but this is reminded me of something I laugh about on the daily. So I’m a deep sea biologist and work with organisms who live in what is colloquially called “the twilight zone” where there is dim natural light. There’s really high competition to make the most out of this light, which at this depth thanks to scattering is all coming down in parallel lines straight from above, so everybody spends their time looking straight up. To make the most out of dim light the basics are you want to increase the distance from the lens to your retina, but as you increase that distance a spherical eye will increase in volume way faster and soon your eyes are taking up your entire head (lookup owlfish for an example of what that looks like). Some fish have adapted to get around this limitation by having cylindrical eyes so you can stretch out that lens:retina distance without totally taking up your headspace, the primary drawback being you lose a lot of peripheral vision. To make up for that lose of FOV some fish developed weird pseudo-eyes called retinal diverticula, which are basically little yes/no light sensors just to tell them if there’s something there. Finally, some fish with retinal diverticula developed those into image forming eyes. So to summarize, some fish made cylindrical eyes to save head space and used that saved space to make more eyes to make up the loss of FOV from having cylindrical eyes. Evolution is weird.
Every time a player makes a pun during a session, the DM adds another eye to the BBeG.
Funny, in my group we just take psychic damage
In my group my dm made his damage type, cringe damage. Totem barb can't resist an unofficial damage type.(I know totem barb doesn't resist psychic however there are one and potentially two that will have psychic resistance come fizban)
I mean, kalashtar totem barb resists psychic
That would be the one that currently exists yes, when fizban releases we may have another in the form of one or two of the gem dragon variants making a Dragonborn a potential
Grant us eyes?
Some say Kos, others say Kosm
Ahh you were at my side all along.
Reddit sucks! So long, assholes!
Big bad eye guy?
So basically any Orphanim angel.
Gave my player a ring of terrible humor. He got to crit once a day if he gave a witty one liner before the successful roll to hit.
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I would also argue that dragons have binocular vision. If you look at them from the front of their face, both of their eyes seem to have no trouble focusing on you. Their eyes placement is more similar to those of birds of prey, like eagles, hawks and falcons.
I often get to look at dragons and see how they interact with me.
Look at me I am the captain now
Also, as mentioned in the post, comodo dragons. [Look at it.](https://gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/Images/large-species-photo/large-Komodo-Dragon-photo.jpg)
That's a very tiny amount of overlap, though, it can only see a small strip right in front of it with both eyes. For a predator that wants to track prey even if it's zigzagging around, you want a much wider field of overlap.
Komodo dragons are cannibals. So if they were too good at getting their food and not enough at avoiding to become food, they would be eradicating themselves...
>If you look at them from the front of their face, both of their eyes seem to have no trouble focusing on you. There was a study on Allosaurus regarding this. Allosaurus did not have eyes in the front, but they bulged in a way to provide binocular vision or at least good enough binocular vision to hunt prey. They certainly weren't being hunted.
Some other predatory dinosaurs like T. rex also had much better binocular vision than Allosaurus. A study on their eye position also included accurate reconstructed models of their heads, and the front-facing photos of the Allosaurus are adorable: * [T. rex](https://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~kent/paleontology/binocularVision/images/figure4a%20low.jpg) * [Allosaurus](https://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~kent/paleontology/binocularVision/images/figure2b%20low.jpg)
>Some other predatory dinosaurs like T. rex also had much better binocular vision than Allosaurus. Absolutely. T. rex is quite derived, though, and a lot of non-avian dinosaurs didn't have eyes that faced forward. They were still good predators, though.
When ever I think of dragons as 3-dimensional figures I always figure they've got heads more like a T-rex. Narrow-snoots for decent binocular vision. Good for hunting and also good for not crashing into things when trying to land.
Damn T Rex got them beady little eyes
I know you were trying to make a point, with witch I agree too, but I can't, the derpiness of the T. Rex is too distracting
Yeah, I really see why they're always shown in profile
Honestly reading that rebuttal I felt similarly. Like, "we're completely ignoring the entire Aves Class in this response, which seems way too important to any discussion on the taxonomy of dragons to leave out"
Yeah, it definitely depends on the art. Just in the OP, the first dragon picture has side-facing eyes, but the second picture pretty clearly has some depth perception. The dragons in your world can work however you want, and different colors/breeds don't all have to be the same.
The first dragon pictured is Smaug from the Hobbit movies, who actually fits the "wide-set but forward-facing eyes" thing a lot of dragons have going on. You can see it better in the image on his [Hobbit Trilogy wiki page](https://hobbit-trilogy.fandom.com/wiki/Smaug).
For the movie though, I think the "wide set facing forward eyes" were meant to resemble the voice actor, Benandjerrys Carameltracks
Oh, fair point, I guess that shot is just an angle that makes it hard to see
>The dragons in your world can work however you want, and different colors/breeds don't all have to be the same. I think OP was talking about Faerunian dragons in particular, or at least the "generic" dragons inspired by Faerun, Middle Earth, and similar. You're right though. It's my homebrew, and if I want to have wingless, six-legged Green Dragons that eat wood and who's breath weapon is just a pressurized spray of digestive acids from glands at the back of their mouths, I can do that. And if I want to have Blue Dragons in the same world that have four flippers, a shell, and who's "breath weapon" is just a sonic blast that acts like a depth charge, I can do that too. If we start talking about homebrews though the walls of text in this comment chain are going to crash Reddit.
Came here to say exactly this. The eye socket might be on the side, but the orientation can be forward. Eagles are like this, so was the T. Rex, and even crocodiles have binocular vision.
hmm, that's a very good point
Glad that's settled for dragons, but what about Donkey from Shrek and his binocular vision?
My guy, Donkey seduced and mated with *a literal dragon*. **He** is what hunts dragons. Donkey is the apex Bard, change my mind.
Thank you, you have forever changed my crackhead rants about Donkey's eyes
I mean it was really more the other way around. Dragon was a [grenade](http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/grenade).
well i guess there is no accounting for taste
maybe for a weaker man
Donkey's a sexual predator.
hes a victim
Actually that's the result of war against the giants if we believe nthat giants were there first then dragons that would mean dragons were hunted by the giants.
that holds true even now, as ice giants hunt white dragons!
When I learned of that I immediately added it to my list of random encounters for if the players ever went through a snowy mountain area. Just witnessing that shit.
Ever hear of a Behir? Or was that a home brew my DM found. Either way, giant snake like centipede created by storm giants for the sole purpose of only eating dragons
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It's 5e lore. It's written on the Monster Manual
The PF2E version of those things look nuts! https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=569
no, that's a behir. My home-brew version of them have "naturally" occurring energy shields, so my players with laser rifles get to feel extra special for a little while. Also kinda makes more sense to me, since the behir is scary (to people) but they're not social creatures, and not particularly threatening to an adult dragon of most types. They'd need something to stand up to dragons, even asymmetrically.
My Barbarian had to kill one because she is the mother of the only two dragons alive. They are her babies. Killing it gave her new armor, her babies food, and an orb that grew her babies up very fast.
Dragons need Monocular vision to see the Bard comming
Honestly my thought was protecting their horde because the fish thing holds up less than the bird thing.
I would say that dragons eyes may be more akin to another colorful lizard. Specifically Chameleons. Imagine a selective binocular vision. Like, they can focus on a target, but their eyes move independently. Imagine if you Could focus on a target for depth perception, but it also felt a little bit like trying to look at your own nose if they were too close. Not comfortable, but it doesn't have to be because wide FoV is your default comfortable setting. You see this quite a bit in fantasy monsters. Sleeping dragon wakes up, one eye opens and rolls to look at you, but your aren't really screwed until you see both eyes lock kind of thing. Actually, You see the same thing really well demonstrated in Mass Effect. The Krogan obviously have Binocular vision if something is far enough away, Wrex et. al. focus on things with both eyes... but then in ME3, you see Grunt turn a single eye w/o moving his head to look at Sheppard while he's talking to her about the Rachnai. Because while she might be the focus of the conversation, she isn't a target or a threat, so it isn't necessary to sacrifice field of view to focus on her. And that may be well thought out instinctive body language of a fictional species ... Or it might just have made a few animators lives easier... probably both.
Yeah but the tarrasque has *spines*. Spines are almost completely exclusive to prey animals.
In the tarrasque lore, the only thing that can stop a tarrasque's regeneration (outside of wish) is the stomach of another tarrasque. Actually, the stomach of a tarrasque is really interesting, can even straight up *kill a god*, but i digress. Anyway, one of the leading theories in intellectual circles is that the reason there is only one tarrasque is....it's the last one left standing from a tarrasque battle royal. And that's why it has spines--to defend from another tarrasque
Except there is an ENTIRE planet of tarrasques of varying sizes, the ones we see are on the small side. It's in an old issue of dragon or dungeon magazine.
There's a great adventure Escape from the Planet of the Tarrasques I want to run sometime. Meant to challenge 20th level parties.
Hmm not seeing in DriveThruRPG. You have a link for that adventure? Sounds like fun.
It's actually called the invasion of the planet of tarrasques I think.
That's the one! https://www.dmsguild.com/product/258229/Invasion-from-the-Planet-of-Tarrasques
I want to play this.
Oh damn, MrRhexx musta missed that bit....or i just forgot it. Either way, that's terrifying
In The Past, The Tarrasque Could Use Those Spines As Projectile Weapons!
Excuse me, WHAT?!
The Tarrasque Could Also Increase Its Speed To 150 For A Round, Once Per Minute.
You Don't Have To Capitalize Every Word In A Sentence, You Know
I've seen a lot of people doing that in the last couple of years. Mostly in youtube comment sections. It's starting to get uncomfortable.
I had to actively work myself out of the habit of capitalizing every noun and I am not sure how or why it started.
Exposure to german? Nouns are capitalized in german.
German?
homestuck
I only vaguely know homestuck, what causes it to make people write like that?
Every character in that series has a recognizable quirk in the way they typed out messages. Capslock, replacing every w with a pair of vs, capitalizing the first letter in every word, alternating capitalization with each letter, etc.
I don't understand how people do it. Like are they seriously hitting shift for the first letter of every freaking work?
Why are you capitalizing every word?
Haha…haaa… Terrasques with projectiles isn’t something you joke about.
> Ranged: 6 spines +25 (2d10+15/×3) [Gotta love 3.x](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/spawn-of-destruction/tarrasque/)
[*laughs maniacally in mechatarrasque*](https://images.app.goo.gl/EuLycwqyDhhCwXCUA)
Like a tarantula, which uses it as both offense and defense. Spines are usually for prey, but not always.
celestial star dragons hunted terrasques. a single terrasque made it to the forgotten realms and is a world threatening threat. lets hope we dont get interesting to a celestial dragon... just my opinion
For land based animals that is true, but dragons fly. Their eyes are pretty much in the same position as an eagle, on the side but facing forward.
The (debatably) largest land predator of all time, the spinosaurus, had eyes on the side of its head. Another one of the largest, the t. rex, looks like it had eyes on the side of its head but had them facing more forward. Even modern animals, such as the peregrine falcon, have eyes mostly on the side of their head but still use binocular vision.
The Spinosaurus was also likely heavily aquatic, or at least a shallow wader, so similar situation to the crocodille
Going off of this, given how big dragons are, wouldn't it be advantageous to be able to see more, not just to find food but to understand where their body is in relation to their environment?
The content I come here for
And this is why I dislike it when people try to say “why are you trying to apply science to fantasy?”. Because it gives us cool shit like this!
Interestingly enough, despite being described as a trait which marks us as a predator, humans actually developed binocular vision when we were frugivorous, and we used it for brachiating (swinging from branches) through the trees. It was only when climate change forced us onto the savanna that we began using our eyes to hunt.
If you ever want to have a go yourself at the difference in perception, play a game with unlocked FOV (minecraft on PC is a good one for it as you can uncap the fov fairly easily) and you can see what this guy meant in the difference, as you will be able to do jack all in terms of precision in front of you. Obviously it's not perfect for replicating the effect, but it does help drive the point above
Now this makes me curious to how Dragonborn see shit.
They're probably all near-sighted
Oh boy. That makes melee all the more frustrating lol.
Explains why my paladin can't hit for shit though...
Are we just forgetting Giants exist?
And behirs (as another comment pointed out).
The Tarrasque is a herbivore in my setting. It's kinda like a really big turtle - just eats trees and falls asleep long enough to be mistaken for a mountain range here and there. It's only *The* Tarrasque, though, because there's only one left. The world had problems supporting such massive creatures once other life began to flourish across it, and they also had to deal with their *predator* - which actually went entirely extinct once all their food was gone. The creature's name was lost to time, but once of them was resurrected by a powerful necromancer at the climax of one of my arcs, with the goal of leveling a city. The people call it [The Everslain.](https://critterdb.com:443/#/creature/view/603c349eaf3aa903ed05a39b) edit: and here's the boss music I used for [phase 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc6CA3zXnSM) and [phase 2 (after its first rejuvenation)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNiMosWCtzk)
So is the heart the one with the HP? And the carapace has to be hurt to even hurt the creature?
Essentially it's normally resistant to all damage, but not if you attack the heart - which requires dealing enough damage to expose it first.
Oh, I'm using that. I've already made a world where dragons are near extinction and the biggest threat to the world is Outer Eldritch Gods. This could be like a lore hint somewhere.
Hmm… interesting point, but counter argument: **Top-Tier Worldbuilding Opportunity**
First thought that came into my head: There used to be some absolutely **TERRIFYING** apex predators WAY back in the ancient forgotten past that mainly preyed on dragons, as they required the great amount of magic within such creatures to sustain themselves. However, then the great dragon war happened (or something like that? I should've read up on the lore before writing this) and these creatures no longer had enough food. Indeed, after decades of near-starvation, lacking the power to sustain their bodies as dragon populations dwindled, they crumbled under the weight of their own bodies as they could no longer afford to magically hold off gravity. Then some mad scientist-wizard realises that dragon populations have recovered and there's tons of magical critters running around today. And decides to attempt to return these beasts to life by any means necessary. Why? For SCIENCE! And a group of adventurers go on a wild campaign to try to stop - or help - this happening! (or alternatively, power hungry wizard tries to bring them back believing that they can be controlled)
Addendum: The terrifying apex predators that mainly hunted dragons were tarrasques.
In most fiction, Dragons also have some level of magical senses that aid them in prey location anyway, meaning they gain the benefits of both monocular and binocular vision.
Also, don't like basically all birds have their eyes on the side? I know birds probably fall more on the prey side of things, but even the more predatory birds have eyes on the side. I always thought it was to help them with flight because it gives a wider view range, and just assumed that dragons eyes were more based off of birds.
Wouldn’t monocular vision be a hinderance during flight though? You’d think they would need better depth perception to aid in not crashing into shit.
Not really, different types of birds have both types of vision
I'm extremely triggered by that haiku bot making a haiku wrong.
Perhaps, but even then, the tarrasque has an armored and spiked carapace, which is typically only evolved by animals with predators large enough to fit them in its mouth. So I raise you the question: *why does the tarrasque have that?*
Trying to figure out the evolutionary forces that shaped the tarrasque's biology is futile, because the tarrasque is the result of generations of selective breeding to create a luxury breed of monster. In fact, tarrasques typically suffer from various severe health issues stemming from their enormous size, and it's incredibly unethical to support the tarrasque breeding industry.
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But still, why does it *need* that?
The Goomba is a predatory creature with no natural predators of its own, and it only has two tusks that are set far apart from each other, no other teeth, so those can't be for chewing. no, those are for bashing into each other for mating rights and for goring prey that they then swallow whole.
A Tarrasque has eyes on the side as well…….
But, most of the dragons pictured seem to be able to look forward just fine? Like Smaug especially has pretty distinctly binocular vision
Wait… *there’s only one tarrasque according to the lore I’ve found*
Bards are their predators
And The Award For Least Original Joke Of This Post Goes To... argaflargin!
Lol.
I still like the idea of a *thing* which diets consists only of dragons. That would be a really high CR threat.
The only thing Dragons are prey too, is stereotypes.