Schattenbach
2017-01-29, 10:12 AM
Thorn Attack Drones (as described in D20 Future Tech) when it comes to considering their importance and evaluating their overall threat level (from the point of view of an typical society that has the tools at hand presented by DnD 3.5/D20 Modern & Urban Arcana & Future & Future Tech and such)?
As far as I can tell, while slightly on the expensive side (not so much in regard to purchase costs - those, while high compared to many other things, are still reasonably acceptable - but their maintance costs - i.e. power cells and such that need to be replaced on an regular basis), they're extremely dangerous what with only being large size (and thus perfectly capable of operating within structures and pretty much everywhere), their considerably high hardness (much higher than most metals), their extremely high speed (3000 feet tactical speed is quite high after all) and their (for regular creatures) deadly fire-linked lasers (that also have max range of 30000 feet, as usual for this type of Starship weapons ... and theycould - as normal for Laser Starship weapons - also be, with some work time, set on Autofire to, as standard attack action, possibly rain death down on everything within one 1000x1000 feet with they regular attack power at the cost ships being entiteled to DC 15 pilot checks to avoid their damage completely and thus being able to shot them down without them being able to do anything in return) and (when compared to all that) still not all that bad HP. Their sensors do seem to be not as good as high-grade mecha sensors (as far as I could tell) and they're limited to dealing fire-type damage (or ramming and/or self-destructing) but that's pretty much it. As they're unmanned, they don't even need to train sufficiently skilled personal (fighters and such need highly trained pilots to operate) and aren't treatened by the things that would commonly be directly or indirectly dangerous to living beings and as they don't have stat scores as such (spaceships operate under special rules, after all) or at least don't need them for anything, so they're even harder to take down.
Is there any reason why militaries at progress levels where these drones are available wouldn't (besides the fact that creatures and such can do things Drones are unable to do and that they're limited to dealing fire damage) replace most of their standard soldiers and tanks with that kind of Attack Drones as they are pretty much everything modern military could've hoped for thus far as far as Drone Warfare is concerned?
And how would some sufficiently high level (level 10 at minimum) creature (be it one DnD3.5 character that also has access to D20 Future stuff and such ... or some creatures and/or monsters that don't have direct access to D20 Future and such stuff but still regular access to DnD 3.5 things) be able to handle a threat like that (or at least attempt to handle that once they've learned in what ways technology - like those Attack Drones - can bully them) besides being immune to fire damage? Is there anything non-casters (or WBL-wizardry users) could do here (as I even see plenty of dragons and such having issues here)?
As such, how would (planet-based) military conflicts (be they between societies/militaries that have access to those drones ... or between those that have acces to them and thos that don't) look like once attack drones hit the stage at Progress Level 6 (on that note ... they could even be used on other planes of existence ... and as they're only large and not "that" heavy, transporting them shouldn'tbe much of an issue ... which is quite scary for those living there as well)?
Some advice in regard how to handle this topic would be quite helpful.
Thanks in advance.
As far as I can tell, while slightly on the expensive side (not so much in regard to purchase costs - those, while high compared to many other things, are still reasonably acceptable - but their maintance costs - i.e. power cells and such that need to be replaced on an regular basis), they're extremely dangerous what with only being large size (and thus perfectly capable of operating within structures and pretty much everywhere), their considerably high hardness (much higher than most metals), their extremely high speed (3000 feet tactical speed is quite high after all) and their (for regular creatures) deadly fire-linked lasers (that also have max range of 30000 feet, as usual for this type of Starship weapons ... and theycould - as normal for Laser Starship weapons - also be, with some work time, set on Autofire to, as standard attack action, possibly rain death down on everything within one 1000x1000 feet with they regular attack power at the cost ships being entiteled to DC 15 pilot checks to avoid their damage completely and thus being able to shot them down without them being able to do anything in return) and (when compared to all that) still not all that bad HP. Their sensors do seem to be not as good as high-grade mecha sensors (as far as I could tell) and they're limited to dealing fire-type damage (or ramming and/or self-destructing) but that's pretty much it. As they're unmanned, they don't even need to train sufficiently skilled personal (fighters and such need highly trained pilots to operate) and aren't treatened by the things that would commonly be directly or indirectly dangerous to living beings and as they don't have stat scores as such (spaceships operate under special rules, after all) or at least don't need them for anything, so they're even harder to take down.
Is there any reason why militaries at progress levels where these drones are available wouldn't (besides the fact that creatures and such can do things Drones are unable to do and that they're limited to dealing fire damage) replace most of their standard soldiers and tanks with that kind of Attack Drones as they are pretty much everything modern military could've hoped for thus far as far as Drone Warfare is concerned?
And how would some sufficiently high level (level 10 at minimum) creature (be it one DnD3.5 character that also has access to D20 Future stuff and such ... or some creatures and/or monsters that don't have direct access to D20 Future and such stuff but still regular access to DnD 3.5 things) be able to handle a threat like that (or at least attempt to handle that once they've learned in what ways technology - like those Attack Drones - can bully them) besides being immune to fire damage? Is there anything non-casters (or WBL-wizardry users) could do here (as I even see plenty of dragons and such having issues here)?
As such, how would (planet-based) military conflicts (be they between societies/militaries that have access to those drones ... or between those that have acces to them and thos that don't) look like once attack drones hit the stage at Progress Level 6 (on that note ... they could even be used on other planes of existence ... and as they're only large and not "that" heavy, transporting them shouldn'tbe much of an issue ... which is quite scary for those living there as well)?
Some advice in regard how to handle this topic would be quite helpful.
Thanks in advance.