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This has been bothering me for a long time. In the corebook, the mechanic hover drone has only 6 STR (makes sense, it's tiny and light, unlike combat and stealth drone) and, for some weird reason, 8 Wisdom, as opposed to 10 of the other two types. Why? Why does the tiny drone have a worse wisdom than the other two drone types? The strength I understand, but the lower wisdom score is just wierd.
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It has a hidden drinking problem and makes bad life choices when it has had too much to drink.
This has been bothering me for a long time. In the corebook, the mechanic hover drone has only 6 STR (makes sense, it's tiny and light, unlike combat and stealth drone) and, for some weird reason, 8 Wisdom, as opposed to 10 of the other two types. Why? Why does the tiny drone have a worse wisdom than the other two drone types? The strength I understand, but the lower wisdom score is just wierd.
Smaller body, less internal space, less complexity for computation?
Hmm...
The other two drone chassis have a total combined ability score value of 48. The hover drone has only 42. So it is missing more than just the 2 points in WIS.
If I follow the patterns, I would get:
All drones have INT 6; WIS 10; CHA 6
All drones have CON -
Depending on chassis
DEX options are 12, 14, or 16. (combat, stealth, hover respectively)
Total ability score should be 48.
So by bumping the WIS to 10 to match the others and putting the remaining deficiency in STR, I get final houseruled ability scores for the hover drone as
STR 10; DEX 16; CON -; INT 6; WIS 10; CHA 6
You could also split the 4 remaining deficiency points across STR and DEX to get
STR 8; DEX 18; CON -; INT 6; WIS 10; CHA 6
Hmm...
The other two drone chassis have a total combined ability score value of 48. The hover drone has only 42. So it is missing more than just the 2 points in WIS.
Honestly, I'd be happy with just an increase in wisdom to 10 to be in line with the other two drones. But if compensation has to be in order, then... Well, increasing attributes further I think are too much, maybe an extra mod slot or feat would be a better compensation for the lack in strength?
Well, until and unless we get some guidance from the devs, you can run it how you see best.
The ability to fly and hover doesn't work so well so I am not sure that it is worth 6 points lower in ability score.
Taking a stealth drone chassis and adding one flight module would probably be better in general power level. And could still do basically anything that a hover drone can do.
Well, until and unless we get some guidance from the devs, you can run it how you see best.
The ability to fly and hover doesn't work so well so I am not sure that it is worth 6 points lower in ability score.
Taking a stealth drone chassis and adding one flight module would probably be better in general power level. And could still do basically anything that a hover drone can do.
Oh wow. That's... not good. But I'm sure most gms would be fine with making hover work the way it should.
But I had a showerthought today: if we have four attribute points to spend, and we assume wisdom is fixed to 10, instead of boosting strength, why not boost the intelligence of the hover drone, making it more suited as a skillmonkey drone? Engineering and Computers would benefit directly from this without the use of Skill Subroutines, but with Skill Routines, the hover drone can become suited for maintanence work in the space ship. Maybe higher int can result in better autonomy for the drone. Of course, this does mean that tool arm becomes a neccessity for the hover drone. Sure, this greatly limits the hover drone's combat capability, but it would also give the hover drone a clearly defined role, and some extra skill points via the increased int from Skill Subroutines just cements it. What do you think?
Well, until and unless we get some guidance from the devs, you can run it how you see best.
The ability to fly and hover doesn't work so well so I am not sure that it is worth 6 points lower in ability score.
Taking a stealth drone chassis and adding one flight module would probably be better in general power level. And could still do basically anything that a hover drone can do.
Oh wow. That's... not good. But I'm sure most gms would be fine with making hover work the way it should.
But I had a showerthought today: if we have four attribute points to spend, and we assume wisdom is fixed to 10, instead of boosting strength, why not boost the intelligence of the hover drone, making it more suited as a skillmonkey drone? Engineering and Computers would benefit directly from this without the use of Skill Subroutines, but with Skill Routines, the hover drone can become suited for maintanence work in the space ship. Maybe higher int can result in better autonomy for the drone. Of course, this does mean that tool arm becomes a neccessity for the hover drone. Sure, this greatly limits the hover drone's combat capability, but it would also give the hover drone a clearly defined role, and some extra skill points via the increased int from Skill Subroutines just cements it. What do you think?
It's not a bad idea, but... running fly rules as written, engineering and computers checks are full round actions and can't be made while airborne without haste.
A hover drone could obviously latch on to whatever it was trying to fix/hack, but still.
Boosting INT might be OK. But making that higher INT duplicate the effects of the higher level drone autonomy abilities (expert AI, true AI) is probably a bit too powerful.
Boosting INT might be OK. But making that higher INT duplicate the effects of the higher level drone autonomy abilities (expert AI, true AI) is probably a bit too powerful.
When I wrote autonomy, I did not mean it as in more action, but more as in flavour. I really hope this gets taken up by the FAQ/ Errata team. Honestly, this isn't even my biggest issue with Starfinder, but that's for some other thread.