Zardnaar
Legend
One f the memories of being young and stupid was in 1994 or 05 when we were playing a munchkin game of BECMI was that one of the players had the Book of Wondrous Inventions.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/16...Book+of+Wondrous+inventions&test_epoch=0&it=1
It had the Dragonfly of Doom in it which was basically a magical attack helicopter with a "machine gun" which was a wand of magic missiles and the main armament was a rod of meteor swarm. Being star wars fans of course we created flying triangle shaped ships and decked them out with artillery (built in wands of fireball, lightning bolt, magic missiles etc). It was fairly stupid.
The idea overall may not have been to terrible though. In one adventure in 2E I let the PCs deck themselves out in an ancient armoury with stuff that was on loan. They went into battle with +5 everything for a one off session and they quite liked it. In other games such as Star Wars Saga a vehicle was more or less treated as a creature in terms of CR, a TIE fighter was CR 5.
So assuming you had magitech vehicles or things like Spelljammer I was thinking they could be started out as monsters or you could even refluff things. For example a flying magitech drone that fires radiant bolts is actually a wyvern with a ranged attacked instead of poison damage and is CR 6. A self propelled flame thrower unit is a hell hound while a magitech helicopter may not be to different damage wise form a adult Dragon. Some things could be stated out and even if not refluffed the existing creatures at least give tou a rough guideline for a XYZ whatever power level. A armored vehicle may not be to different from an a dinosaur stat wise, turning a T-Rexs bite into a ranged attack is not that different. ACs might be a bit higher and tweaking things such as melee onto a ranged attack or a save for half effect (grenades, flamethrowers etc) might be worth a +1 CR. Level 18 casters seem to start at CR 12 so a flying helicopter type with level 9 spells (meteor swarm perhaps) could be CR 13 or 14 which is not to drastically different to some of the Dragons with breath weapons.
Something like man A-10 tank buster (AC 20+, something like a fireball at will) could creep up to CR 16+ depending on how brutal its stats are. With auto hit attacks via magic missiles and lots of AoE attacks it seems a decent way o wear high level PCs down, I remember things like 4 casters with lightning bolts in a ranged encounter in old AD&D adventures for level 9-12. Those casters in 5E are only CR 2 or 3 now but taking 32d6 damage for level 12 PCs makes sense with hit point inflation and various ways to avoid or mitigate it. Non magical greande launchers (4d6 piercing damage save for half) achieves the same thing if used in quantities.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/16...Book+of+Wondrous+inventions&test_epoch=0&it=1
It had the Dragonfly of Doom in it which was basically a magical attack helicopter with a "machine gun" which was a wand of magic missiles and the main armament was a rod of meteor swarm. Being star wars fans of course we created flying triangle shaped ships and decked them out with artillery (built in wands of fireball, lightning bolt, magic missiles etc). It was fairly stupid.
The idea overall may not have been to terrible though. In one adventure in 2E I let the PCs deck themselves out in an ancient armoury with stuff that was on loan. They went into battle with +5 everything for a one off session and they quite liked it. In other games such as Star Wars Saga a vehicle was more or less treated as a creature in terms of CR, a TIE fighter was CR 5.
So assuming you had magitech vehicles or things like Spelljammer I was thinking they could be started out as monsters or you could even refluff things. For example a flying magitech drone that fires radiant bolts is actually a wyvern with a ranged attacked instead of poison damage and is CR 6. A self propelled flame thrower unit is a hell hound while a magitech helicopter may not be to different damage wise form a adult Dragon. Some things could be stated out and even if not refluffed the existing creatures at least give tou a rough guideline for a XYZ whatever power level. A armored vehicle may not be to different from an a dinosaur stat wise, turning a T-Rexs bite into a ranged attack is not that different. ACs might be a bit higher and tweaking things such as melee onto a ranged attack or a save for half effect (grenades, flamethrowers etc) might be worth a +1 CR. Level 18 casters seem to start at CR 12 so a flying helicopter type with level 9 spells (meteor swarm perhaps) could be CR 13 or 14 which is not to drastically different to some of the Dragons with breath weapons.
Something like man A-10 tank buster (AC 20+, something like a fireball at will) could creep up to CR 16+ depending on how brutal its stats are. With auto hit attacks via magic missiles and lots of AoE attacks it seems a decent way o wear high level PCs down, I remember things like 4 casters with lightning bolts in a ranged encounter in old AD&D adventures for level 9-12. Those casters in 5E are only CR 2 or 3 now but taking 32d6 damage for level 12 PCs makes sense with hit point inflation and various ways to avoid or mitigate it. Non magical greande launchers (4d6 piercing damage save for half) achieves the same thing if used in quantities.
