Drones and Cruise Missiles

[Chilingsworth]

Hey Playground!

Well, my DM just gave me the ok to found a DARPA-analog for the budding evil empire my party and I are building.

So, it's time to consider some more long-term research projects!

Ok, so I'm trying to think of ways to build two things (as the thread title suggests): Drones and Cruise Missiles

First, Drones:

They need to be capable of flight
Stealthy
Able to carry (and drop) significant loads
and
Commandable form great (effectively unlimited) distances.
Also a plus: durability.

The best thing I can think of are large flying undead. Equiping them with the equivilant of a ring of invisibility will fullfill the stealthy part. Mounting an aspect mirror on them will both allow them to be used as recon aircraft and allow them to be issued orders from any distance.

Any better options?

As for the Cruise Missiles:

They need to be capable of flight
to be able to carry a powerful payload (weather magical, alchemical, or even kinetic)
Able to reach their targets reliably (weather through stealth or durability)
as part of above, either able to pathfind for themselves, or guidable in flight.
and possibly most important: cheap.

The best thing I can think of offhand would be hollowed-out eagle zombies filled with small brown mold bombs (1 flask of alchemist's fire + some brown mold spores.) But those would be at best line of sight weapons, and would be fairly easy to shoot down. I'm sure the Playground can do better than that!

Also, I'm open to suggestions for drone strike payloads.

[JaronK]

Cast Explosive Runes on some paper many times, then dispel it with a low caster level, and that'll make a small but VERY powerful explosion. Now you just need to deliver it. A Binder binding Malphas can get unlimited birds that can guide this paper to the target without risk... now all you need to do is figure out a way to dispel it.

JaronK

[Ashtagon]

Anything faster than propeller-driven aircraft is better reflected in D&D by something that has teleport (strategic movement) or dimension door (tactical movement) capabilities. D&D flight is more akin to hovercraft and slow helicopters, once you consider the speed of D&D flight.

So, you want something able to teleport a big load of nasty stuff, set a fuse on it, then hop back home. Or set a fuse on some nasty stuff, teleport it, and then sit back. "Locate city" shenanigans may be your friend in this.

[andromax]

If you have the caster levels, you could refluff a casting of Phantom Steed, saddlebags loaded with a ton of Alchemist Fires to be something along the lines of Tomahawk cruise missle, though you'd have to find a way to pilot it, because I believe it only functions with a rider. Might be a way to proxy pilot it. This is running fly speed of 960ft per round. Or ~110mph, at CL 14.

[TuggyNE]

I feel like the Tippy thing to do is make golems. Lots and lots of golems. Golem bombs, golem missiles, golem drones, golem bullets. :smalltongue:

But seriously, constructs really are the gold standard for these things, since they don't have the lamesauce weaknesses undead do. Of course, they're also vastly more expensive, so there is that.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Hydrodynamic Rocket:

This ancient device of the (long destroyed) Vishanti Empire is nothing more than a hollowed-out cylinder with a 40-lb capacity and a Decanter of Endless Water with a flexible nozzle attached at one end. Upon activation of the Decanter in its maximum capacity, it provides significantly more thrust than the weight of the device and its payload, thus turning it into a crude, reaction-drive missile. The most basic use of the rocket is to load it with 40 lbs of alchemist's fire and launch it out of a hollow tube (ranged touch attack, 40d6 fire damage). However, the ancient Vishanti mages found another use; they cast "animate objects" on them, making the rockets capable of self-direction and thus giving them homing and search-and-destroy capability. With a single spell being capable of animating dozens of such rockets, long-range firepower was only limited by resources. And since the cost of one rocket amounted to half a dozen nonmagical plate armors, a large Vishanti army could be expected to have several hundred of them. Of course, the Vishanti later discovered far more dangerous payloads as well as far more dangerous strategic uses for the rockets - which is the reason their empire is extinct. (having rockets perform orbital kinetic bombardment of one's cities is a bad idea)
Cost: 10.000 gp


Tunnel Warhead

One of the most ingenious - and most unstable - of Vishanti weapons was a short vacuum tube containing a teleportation trap, a telekinesis trap and a big rock. Upon priming, the rock was hurled by the telekinesis trap towards the teleportation trap, which automatically teleported it at the telekinesis trap so it could be hurled anew. Thus the rock accumulated thrust from the Telekinesis hundreds of times in the space of a few seconds. The accumulated energy could be set off simply by knocking the tube out of alignment, breaking it, dispelling it or otherwise ending the magic - at which point a 200-pound stone moving at several hundred kilometers per second or more would impact the first solid object in its path.
Needless to say, many Vishanti cities were leveled when stockpiles of those unstable weapons who had been accumulating energy for months or even years were accidentally set off.
Cost: 100.000 gp plus one insane crafter.


Sunfire Bomb
The most dangerous and devastating of Vishanti WMDs, this is simply a Worldwalk portal that opens up to the nearest star. In the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the torrent of nuclear fire coming through at the portal's activation destroys the item itself, enough material passes through to level a small kingdom or melt down a large mountain.
Creating a Sunfire Bomb requires, like all worldwalk portals, a small amount of material from the location the portal will open to during the bomb's construction - which means a spellcaster sufficiently protected to survive the trip will need to interplanetary teleport to the nearest star and back.
Cost: 20.000 gp plus surviving a trip to the nearest star.

[Fable Wright]

For a longterm project, I recommend developing a magitek division based around developing Incantations (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm). Teleportation spells to deliver payloads where you really want them, or Teleportation Circles to deliver soldiers to their destination.

As for payloads? Fire Seeds. When you prime the missiles, you have a dozens and dozens of acorns are dropped onto chutes containing Fire Seeds traps to prime them as they're rolled into the bombs, which could be loaded into bombers or distributed by missiles. After the bombs strike ground, they deal 1 point of damage per caster level per casting of Fire Seeds in each square adjacent to where they hit. While this doesn't seem like much, when you have even a dozen acorns that each have a CL 11 Fire Seeds spell cast on them per bomb, and you're dropping them en mass over a wide distance...

If you can afford an 18th level Necromancer (or a lower level one who's given a lot of magic items to boost their caster level), you can make Blackwings from MMV. It's actually interesting, since they do take time to develop, like actual drones; 6 months fermenting in Unhallowed locations around the country, and then brought in to be animated by your Necromancer. If the Necromancer is a Dread Necromancer with the Corpsecrafter feat working by a Desecrated Altar, then you have fliers with 150 HP (base, if you spend only the minimum amount of necessary black Onyx), DR 5/Bludgeoning, good enough Spot and intelligence to avoid defenses, and the ability to Cower any other fliers in the airspace at the cost of all semblance of stealth. As undead with an 80ft Fly speed, they can cover 320ft each round, giving them a speed of 36 mph. More with Nimble Bones, up to 41 mph. While this is slow compared to modern fighters, in a fantasy setting like this, it's pretty fast. Nowhere near as good as teleportation, though.

Also, Summon Monster traps, if you can move them near the target via teleportation, can be devastating. If you have a trap of, say, Summon Monster 3 and you give it an Intelligence score to pick what monsters are summoned and direct them, and have it set off whenever a monster steps on the pressure plate, then as soon as something sets it off, it summons a 1d4+1 Celestial Badgers onto the plate, which summon that number of 1d4+1 badgers, which escalates until you have an arbitrarily large number of badgers to attack people with. Unfortunately, they can only get so far away from the trap before the spell ends, but they can do quite a lot of damage where they can reach. Have the last rounds of Badgers summon creatures with good fly speeds, and you substantially increase the range and amount of damage you can do.

[Fouredged Sword]

There is a feat that causes undead you create to explode on death. Just turn bags of mice and drop them from a flying unit or teleport them over a city. Don't even control them in a control pool, just breed them in massive piles and fell animate them to avoid creation costs. Fell animate burning hands can kill a lot of bags of mice with no cost.

Or you could just fell animate a bunch of ravens and rats and port them uncontroled over a city to attack and explode on any living thing they see. Kinda like self guiding anti personnel missiles. A few hundred zombie rats would cause chaos is a city.