Drones and Movement

[Metaphysician]

So, as the rules are currently written, effectively a Mechanic and their Drone have three actions between them ( until suitably high level, anyway ). If spent purely on movement, this means either the Mechanic can do a double move action, while the Drone only takes a single move, or the Drone can take a double move action, and the Mechanic only moves once. Either way, one of the two can only cover half as much distance.

The result of this is that, out of combat, a Mechanic has three options:

1. Travel at roughly half the speed of everyone else in the party

2. Abandon their Drone

3. Carry or have someone carry the Drone ( the feasibility of which is entirely dependent on the type of Drone )

Is this crippling of the Mechanic's strategic movement the rules working as intended, and if so, why? If not, how are the rules for Drones supposed to work to avoid crippling non-combat movement?

( Note: all the above also applies to Creature Companions, as they use the same action economy rules. )

[Garretmander]

A thirty foot movement every six seconds is slightly faster than three miles an hour. Otherwise known as average walking speed.

So, just normal travel speed I'd think most characters are only spending a single move action every 'turn'. Drones can keep up just fine.

In a hustle, I'd just let them keep up with the party normally, no need to adapt in combat rules to out of combat mostly glossed over movement.

A chase sequence is a different story.

[HammerJack]

...why are you using action count for out of combat movement at all? It can definitely create a problem for things that you do have a reason to run in rounds (which is not only combat), but there's no reason to apply combat action economy to general travel.

[Xenocrat]

Agreed, I think these action limitations only apply in combat where thought has to be applied and the drone has a limited brain. (Similarly companions can't have full actions in combat, in this view, because they're slowed down by processing and interpreting their trained behaviors/commands to the situation.)

I assume drones and companion animals move at the usual overland rate out of combat.

[Metaphysician]

This is pretty much how I interpret it, it just would be nice if the rules would make this more clear. Also, I kind of suspect it highly likely that whoever wrote up the Drone action rules didn't even consider chase scenes, flight, or other non-location-stationary circumstances when they were designing it.