Drone CR?

[New Earth Man]

So I was thinking about sending drones after my characters like those used by the Mechanic Class. If I were to do as much, how would I figure out what CR the encounter is? Should I just use the CR as if it were a Mechanic of that level?

[racs333]

tier equals cr? to keep it simple is how id do it.

[Deadmanwalking]

racs333 wrote:

tier equals cr? to keep it simple is how id do it.

This is definitely not true. A PC as a whole, sure, but Drones are less than half as effective. I'd argue their CR as Level-2 or less.

[Milo v3]

You would probably have to use the monster creation rules.

[Shaudius]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

This is definitely not true. A PC as a whole, sure, but Drones are less than half as effective. I'd argue their CR as Level-2 or less.

I think this really depends, drones can be really powerful if they play to the party's weaknesses, so is largely dependent on how the DM makes them, if you know your party all has DR and you make the drone have an acid weapon, it can be pretty powerful, its AC largely keeps pace with most characters and its BAB is 3/4(better than the mechanic itself).

[LittleMissNaga]

Depends on how you've built the drone, so to a degree, you'll need to just look at it and judge what sort of CR you think it looks like.

As a general rule: CR of its mecanic-level minus 1 or 2 should be reasonable. Maybe start with -1 to be safe. See how your PCs do. Adjust for later encounters if it seems too easy for them.

--Experience consists of four levels of throwing various drones at PCs when I GM. Running it as-above has worked okay so far.

[racs333]

So level 1 drone start at cr 0?

[Deadmanwalking]

racs333 wrote:

So level 1 drone start at cr 0?

When dealing with CR 1 minus 1 is usually considered CR 1/2 and 1 minus 2 is CR 1/3. It's more 'move steps down the chart' than traditional math.

[New Earth Man]

Thanks for your input people, I appreciate it!