DnD sizes explained

Every character and creature in Dungeons and Dragons is assigned one of six different DnD sizes – important categories which define how much space they take up on a map, which weapons they can carry, how they move through the game world, and more. This guide explains all the sizes 5e rules from across the core rulebooks, and it includes a handy DnD size chart you can reference.

We’ll go into exactly how the DnD size rules impact your character’s combat encounters, carrying capacity, and spells, as well as detailing the ways to change your character’s size. Much of the rules around size depend on what sort of character you are – so you should also check out our complete guides to DnD classes and DnD races for the full context.

Dungeons and Dragons sizes explained:

DnD size chart

There are six DnD sizes in fifth edition: tiny, small, medium, large, huge, and gargantuan.

We know what all these words mean in concept, but how do they translate to D&D mechanics? The size of a creature has multiple effects in-game:

DnD size rules

The complete DnD size rules are actually spread across multiple DnD books, with various chapters touching upon the subject. We’ve gathered the most important rules here:

Taking up space

The Player’s Handbook defines a creature’s space as “the area in feet it effectively controls in combat”.

Both Small and Medium creatures control a five-by-five-foot area on a battle map, but this doesn’t mean DnD Humans, Elves, and Goblins are all five-foot cubes. That’s just the space they can comfortably act in without needing to move.

Movement

If you are at least two sizes larger or smaller than an enemy, you can move through their space. You can always move through a friendly creature, but you can’t ever end your turn in another creature’s space, whether they like you or not.

One exception to this rule is the DnD Halfling, who can move through enemy spaces if they’re just one size smaller than that foe. However, an enemy’s space is always difficult terrain, and you can still trigger opportunity attacks by moving through a hostile creature.

Additionally, the Dungeon Master’s Guide features some optional rules that modify your movement based on your size:

• Overrun – A creature can attempt a contested Athletics check to try and move through a hostile creature’s space. The character attempting the Overrun has advantage if it’s larger than the hostile creature, and they have disadvantage if they’re smaller.
• Tumble – A creature can make a contested Acrobatics check to move through a hostile creature’s space. Unlike Overrun, this check isn’t influenced by size.

Surrounding creatures

A creature’s size sets a limit on how many foes can surround it in combat, and vice versa. The bigger the creature, the more squares surround it, and thus more enemies can get into melee range. At the same time, fewer large creatures can surround a smaller target.

For example, a Medium DnD Fighter will take up a single five-by-five square on your battlemap. Assuming all attackers are the same (Medium) size, eight of them can surround the Fighter, each taking up their own five-by-five square.

Squeezing

In Dungeons and Dragons, all creatures can squeeze through gaps one size smaller than themselves. This means a Large creature can fit through a space big enough for a Medium creature, a Medium creature through a Small space, and so on.

While squeezing, a creature must spend an extra foot of movement for every foot they travel. They also have disadvantage on attack rolls and Dexterity saving throws, while attack rolls against them have advantage.

Strangely, Medium creatures should be able to squeeze through a Small space, but because both Small and Medium creatures occupy a five-by-five space, they would never need to. There’s also no suggestion for the size gap a Tiny creature might be able to squeeze through.

One creature that can ignore the size rules for squeezing is the Plasmoid, whose Amorphous feature lets them squeeze through spaces as small as one inch wide. However, they can’t wear or carry anything while using this ability.

Carrying capacity

For every size above Medium, a creature’s carrying capacity and the amount it can push, drag, or lift is doubled. Small creatures appear to have the same carrying capacity as Medium ones, but Tiny creatures have their carrying capabilities halved.

The standard carrying capacity (in lbs) equals a creature’s Strength score multiplied by 15. Similarly, a creature can easily push, drag, or lift something that weighs up to 30 times their Strength score.

For example, this means that a Large creature’s carrying capacity is its Strength score multiplied by 30. Meanwhile, a Tiny creature’s multiplier is just 7.5.

Grappling

In D&D, characters can’t be grappled by a monster that is two or more sizes smaller than them.

Similarly, a character can’t use the DnD grapple action on a creature that’s more than one size bigger. For example, a Small Halfling character can only grapple Medium foes, not Large ones.

Weapons and armor

Small or Tiny creatures will have disadvantage on attack rolls when trying to use a weapon with the ‘heavy’ property.

A character’s choice of armor isn’t typically affected by their size; as long as they have the right DnD stats, they can don armor as heavy as they please. However, a DM can choose to apply “common sense rules” suggested by the Player’s Handbook. These rule that a Gnome would be too small to fit in the armor of a tall DnD Tiefling, for example.

Attacks

Generally, the DnD size rules don’t influence when and how you can attack.

There is one exception, though. The Hunter Ranger 5e subclass has a feature called Hunter’ Prey. This allows them to attack a creature within five feet as a reaction – but only if that creature is Large size or bigger.

Mounts

The Player’s Handbook says you can only mount “a willing creature that is at least one size larger than you”.

What if you want to ride an enormous (and unwilling) Purple Worm? Standard rulings would recommend a grapple check, but the size difference would likely make success impossible.

Alternatively, an optional rule in the Dungeon Master’s Guide suggests making an Athletics or Acrobatics check. If you can beat the larger creature’s Acrobatics roll, you can move into your target’s space.

After that, you move with your target and have advantage on attack rolls against it. The larger creature’s body is considered difficult terrain, and you might have to make further Athletics or Acrobatics checks as your mount tries to throw you off.

Initiative

Size doesn’t usually impact Initiative rolls, but an optional ‘Speed Factor’ Initiative rule in the Dungeon Master’s Guide changes this. ‘Speed Factor’ means rolling Initiative every round, then adding modifiers to your roll based on your size and the actions you take.

Here’s how size affects Initiative in these alternative rules:

Cover

The Player’s Handbook says you can use other creatures as cover. However, it’s up to DMs to decide the exact amount of cover one creature gives another.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide suggests that, to calculate cover, you should choose one corner of a monster’s battlemap square and draw a line from that point, reaching every corner of the target’s square. If two lines are blocked by the object or creature providing cover, the target has half cover. Three blocked lines equals three-quarter cover, and all lines being blocked means total cover.

Based on some experimenting, we’d say that, at most, a creature can gain half cover from another creature that is the same size. If the blocking creature is at least one size larger, they can provide anywhere from half cover to t0tal cover, depending on where the creatures are positioned on your map.

Spellcasting

Your DnD size doesn’t affect your ability to use magic.

However, there are some spells that refer to the D&D size rules. For example:

• You can’t appear as a creature of a different size if you’re affected by Disguise Self or Alter Self.
• Dimension Door and Thunder Step only let you teleport a friend along with you as long as they’re the same size or smaller.
• Tree Stride specifies that you must be the same size or smaller than the trees you move through.
• Bigby’s Hand gives you advantage on certain checks against Medium or smaller targets.

Speed

The DnD size categories don’t have any rules directly relating to speed, but smaller creatures can generally move shorter distances.

For example, Halflings and Gnomes are both Small creatures, and they have a walking speed of 25 feet. Medium-sized creatures like a Human or a DnD Dragonborn tend to have a speed of 30 feet.

As we said, this isn’t a direct and consistent correlation between the rules for size and speed. Some particularly agile species can have a speed of 35 feet, even if they’re classed as Medium-sized. And, in one unusual case, there’s a Medium creature with a speed of 25 feet – the DnD Dwarf.

Height and weight

While D&D lists average heights and weights for most species, its rules for height and weight have no direct link to size. However, if you want to figure out the averages for a DnD size category, you can use information from previous editions to work this out.

One popular chart for defining height and weight can be found in the 3.5e Dungeon Master’s Guide. Here’s the information most useful to fifth edition players:

While fifth edition did away with specific heights and weights for DnD sizes, these categories mostly still apply. For example, check out the Random Height and Weight table from the 2014 Player’s Handbook:

Similarly, the 2024 Player’s Handbook (while it no longer lists average weights) says that the Goliath is between 7 and 8 feet tall, the usual maximum for a Medium creature. The table still seems to work for larger creatures too – a Tarrasque, for example, is around 50-foot tall.

How to change DnD sizes

There are a few ways to shift size in Dungeons and Dragons:

• Enlarge/Reduce – A spell that increases or decreases your size by one category. If you play a Duergar, you can cast this spell without material components.
• Path of the Giant Barbarian 5e – Their subclass features can make them Large or even Huge.
• Rune Knight 5e – The ‘Giant’s Might’ feature can upgrade your size to Large.
• DnD Changeling – Their ‘Shapechanger’ feature allows them to choose between Medium and Small sizes.

Some races also naturally appear larger or smaller without the need to actually change size. For example, the DnD Goliath’s ‘Little Giant’ feature counts them as one size larger when calculating carrying capacity and the weight they can push, drag, or lift.

This is identical to the ‘Powerful Build’ feature given to Bugbears, Firbolgs, Orcs, and Loxodons. Centaurs also have a similar feature in the form of ‘Equine Build’, and the Giff version is ‘Hippo Build’.

2024 size rules

Generally, the DnD 2024 size rules look the same as they did in the 2014 Player’s Handbook. However, the devil is in the details: there are little changes that will seriously affect how different-sized creatures behave in play.

Races

DnD races no longer affect your stat, but they still determine your size. However, many of the core species can now be Medium or Small. The DnD Aasimar could already be either size, but now Humans and Tieflings can be too.

Speaking of races, the Goliath has a new way to increase their size. Starting at level five, a Goliath can spend a bonus action to change their size to Large for up to 10 minutes. This increases their speed by 10 feet and gives them advantage on Strength checks.

Weapons

DnD weapons with the Heavy property are no longer restricted based on size. Instead, you can wield a Heavy weapon as long as you have a Strength of at least 13 (for melee weapons) or a Dexterity of at least 13 (for ranged weapons).

Spells

Certain 5e spells with specific size rules have been tweaked. Dimension Door can now let you transport creatures regardless of their size, and creatures no longer get advantage on rolls against Bigby’s Hand based on their size.

Speed

Finally, any link between size and speed has been removed from the 2024 rules. Small character species have a universal speed of 30 feet, just like their Medium counterparts. Some character options still give higher speeds, however – though that was never linked to size, either.

Squeezing

The rules for squeezing seem to be the same in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, but they’re quite difficult to find. For rules on squeezing, the book points you to the rules for Difficult Terrain – specifically, the one found in the rules glossary rather than the main text of the book itself.

The rules glossary for the 2024 Player’s Handbook says “a space is difficult terrain if the space contains any of the following, or something similar”. The list that follows includes “a creature that isn’t Tiny or your ally” and “a narrow opening sized for a creature one size smaller than you.”

This means that, to our surprise, the new rules still have that odd loophole where Medium creatures aren’t technically able to squeeze.

Best DnD sizes

Let’s assume you are a Medium creature with the capability to grow larger or smaller. Which size is most optimal in D&D? Well, it depends on what you’re trying to do.

Upping your size to Large offers many benefits:

• You can now grapple and pin Huge creatures – which could come in handy in certain boss battles.
• You occupy a two by two space on a gridded battlemap, meaning you have 12 squares within five feet of reach. That’s a vast increase in the reach of your regular (and opportunity) attacks.
• Your carrying, push, and lift capacity increase, which has some situational utility.
• You can wield weapons designed for Large creatures, which tend to do more damage than standard weapons. If you used the Enlarge/Reduce spell to change sizes, for example, your weapon attacks deal an extra 1d4 damage to simulate using a Large weapon.
• You provide better cover for allies, and you can move through the spaces of Small creatures with relative ease.

The downside is that you’re a much bigger target for enemies to hit, and trying to move through regular-sized doors and corridors at speed is going to be a major issue.

The only real benefits to being Small are stealth-based. You’ll find it easier to take cover, hide, and traverse tiny spaces, which is useful for scouting or escapes. That’s about where the benefits end, however. Unless you start out Small, there won’t be too much reason to shrink yourself – stick to getting bigger, if you want to change at all.

For more rules explainers, here’s all you need to know about DnD 2024 backgrounds. We can also explain everything from DnD languages to DnD level ups.