I have been introducing my friends to Edge of the Empire with a decent amount of success. My wife, who was originally reluctant, is enjoying making Oskara her own character. I've given everyone the option of making their own character once they had a chance to test drive things out of the beginner set.

One of my friends, who has been legendary in his creativity with various roleplaying characters hasn't had a chance to play yet, but I told him to come up with a character concept and we'll make it work. So one idea he threw at me was so absurd and yet so cool, that I thought there has to be a way to do this within the existing framework of Edge of the Empire (or even Age of Rebellion).

The idea is he wants to make a droid character that would be programmed with a skill set that would be totally useless, or so it seems, to a typical adventuring party. Instead of a protocol droid, who is fluent in six million forms of communication, he would be effectively be a protocol droid that is particularly good at the preparation and serving of fine food. No, he's not heard Fiddleback's episode on this, but that's a decent starting point in truth.

A scene he imagined,

"Wait! That's Grand Moff Tarkin in there!"

"I'll go ask him what wine he would like." --droid walks in with no effort being stealthy.

"No! D'oh! Crap our cover's blown."

Droid walks back in, "He wants Merlot..."

Anyway, I've made the promise that any character concept he would like is possible in the system. I want to make good on the offer, and I would appeal to everyone to put your creative character development heads together and see what we come up with.

Right now, I'm thinking that the skill/talent set of an Explorer/Trader might actually make for a good chef droid. I'd simply skip skills like Astrogation and Piloting, but the rest of the skills and talents seem like they would work rather well.

Any other ideas?

This is actually a very interesting concept. One that I would as a GM would even go out of my way to make a few specialty skills for this character.

Give him a knife and he is handy in combat, he can slice, dice, and stab with the best of them!

I would make him a manumitted droid that's a Hired Gun/Marauder.

Chef droids in Star Wars are typically well, just machines rather than true droids with intelligence. Sort of like the Replicators in Star Trek. "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"

Politico would work ok- using maybe a bit of Education and Lore to make the inedible, edible.

Plus, you get two modes-

Happy customer service for when you're trying to sell something

Gordon Ramsey mode... for ruining someones day, making people cry

I'd actually steer him towards Colonist: Politico. Knowledge (Core Worlds, Education, Lore) would seem to cover the "I am familiar with over six million forms of food preparation," niche and the possibility of secondary knowledge would be very easy to work in considering how many of our own customs and practices are based around food and food as a social focus. Charm, Coercion, Deception, and Negotiation run the gamut of interpersonal skills, and with the talents available, the droid's programming could run the gamut from being a Betty-Crocker like grandmotherly cook to a Hell Chef ready for reality vids. Even Leadership and Streetwise could be justified by experience running a kitchen and willingness/experience in obtaining rare, perhaps not quite *legal* ingredients for the most exquisite dishes, respectively.

Honestly the only thing he's missing at that point is actual cooking ability. I'd make this a Cunning-based Custom Skill (I was actually thinking about this last night from an unrelated angle) and either give it to him for free at generation, let him swap out the second instance of Knowledge (Core Worlds) for the Politico, or encourage him to drill down to Well Rounded at character generation and select it as one of his bonus career skills.

Either way, this is a really interesting take on a character. I've actually had a couple of RP scenes in SW:ToR and at our table touch on how important food is for morale when your ship's stocked with a year's supply of survival rations. I hope he runs with it. :-)

I get a second Maneuver without spending strain EVERY TURN MEATBAG....

You like your Eggs runny right?



I'm OK with Trader though, depending on how you wanna play it. The Chef certainly needs to be able to cook the food, but he also needs to be able to handle the acquisition and purchase of materials and raw product, as well as run the restaurant when the owner/manager is away.

Gotta grab Knowledge (Xenology) to know how to prepare an exotic dish for a particular race. Might not hurt to grab Medicine as well to have some biology skill in carving up that Nexu or something. =)

Z

In addition to the Trader option, I had seriously considered the Politico option --especially with the Gordon Ramsay Scathing Tirade. It's certainly one option to point to, and I could even see him calling the droid R4M-54Y

In terms of not having a Cooking Skill, Fiddleback covered it nicely in Skill Monkey a few episodes back. A specific cooking skill is not expressly required, as it really is the intersection of a number of other existing skills can be used in the act of food preparation. One of my reasons for suggesting the trader is Survival Skill, particularly in identifying safe food, handling domesticated animals, etc.

I was also looking through possible alternatives in Age of Rebellion as well, and the Scientist specialization could also work too...

Thanks for the feedback so far. I think this comes into the broader category of constructing unusual character concepts without having to invent a whole new career and/or specialization for it.

I would even allow a character whose concept was "chef" to use the various Knowledge skills to cover knowledge of cuisines and how to prepare them.

Knowledge (Core Worlds), Knowledge (Education), and Coordination would probably be the three biggest skills for this, possibly Charm and/or Cool as well for a cultured presentation.

Career-wise, Colonist - Politico or Diplomat - Quartermaster (from Age of Rebellion) would probably be the best choices, if you're going for an actual chef and not just a murder-droid that happens to wear a pouffy hat and apron and wield butcher's knives (which is what Hired Gun - Marauder would end up like).

If you're comfortable mixing rule systems, Colonist career and Quartermaster specialization would probably combine the best of anything yet released, but there's a lot of talk of a Colonist Sourcebook, so if he can be patient there may be a majordomo-style specialization option.

There's actually a chef droid in the GM screen adventure but, unfortunately, no stats are given for him. You see one of these droids in action in Ep. II on the transport ship that Anakin and Padme travel on to Naboo. He sort of rudely says to R2 that "we don't serve your kind here" while shooing him away.

Every chef droid needs a built-in flamethrower. Can't make a decent crème brûlée without one.

It all sounds good but he has to start every conversation with "hello there, children"....

Why am I reminded of the Futurama episode where Bender goes on "Iron Cook" and has to cook with soylent green?

I agree Politico is the way to go here.

Maybe cliche...but what about assassin? Kind of like Geena Davis' character in the classic film The Long Kiss Goodnight or Steven Seagal in Under Seige. He was once some sort of assassin droid that was re-programmed to be a chef droid, but as with all droids, he has minor glitches in his programming that cause his original skill set to briefly reveal itself.

Couple of steps down on the politico tree you can pick up 2 free career skills, so for the purposes of killing stuff with fists, running with sharp objects, making things dead with guns and being sneaky, you could pick them up from there.

I would make him a manumitted droid that's a Hired Gun/Marauder.

Chef droids in Star Wars are typically well, just machines rather than true droids with intelligence. Sort of like the Replicators in Star Trek. "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"

Iron Chef?

I'd consider the kind of game you and the other players want to be involved in and what this character is going to legitimately bring to the table for the group. If all he wants to do is cook stuff and prepare meals, I'd be willing to wager that's not the type of Star Wars game a lot of people sign up for. But if it's just a single facet of a character then it's no problem.

I might be biased on this one though. I get kind of annoyed when group members make intentionally useless characters. Like, "Why would my Smuggler be traveling with a cookbot or have any interest in keeping said cookbot alive?" Think of how much Han and Chewie love having 3PO around.

In this guy's case, it's the fish out of water approach. The idea of having someone ill-suited for life on the Edge, who finds themselves in the thick of it anyway. Droids who transcend their programming, and who long to be something more than what they were made for. Certainly the threat of a memory wipe might give even a personal chef droid a reason to be free of their restraining bolt.

In this case, it's the character concept. Yes, the droid is a programmed personal chef, but clearly it finds itself outside of that role. What happens then?

The picture included above is a basic cook droid, whereas I think my friends plans for this are more of a Class 3 droid, where social interactions are more part of what they do.

I do see the droid "armed" with a vibro knife, but it functions more as a tool than a weapon. Later training, of course, can change things, but I don't see this droid having any combat capability right out of the gate. So far both Politico and Trader work... While I started more with a trader, the Politico is my current favourite.

I'd see what kind of activities the player wants the droid to be capable of besides cooking before picking out a specialization.

1. Manipulative (Politico or Smuggler)
2. Knowledge (Mechanic\Slicer hilarious when he gets stuff mixed up)
3. Sneaky (Smuggler\Thief),
4. Killer (Marauder without the gawd awful brawn)
5. A Gadgeteer has its options as well, hidden compartments, and modified knives to get those cuts, 'just right'. (Gadgeteers can be melee oriented.)

You could actually make him a semi useless jack of all trades, Perhaps the other players could build secret compartments into him when he's charging his circuits. It would be kind of funny to see stumbling about while the more aggressive players are pulling heavy guns out of his guts.

Oh! Someone had the idea of a malware infested slicer droid. This guy could be like a walking billboard for Kroft Galaxy Foods. "Hungry? Try Grognards Human Rinds! Its a muncha Buncha Crunch!"

Has anyone seen the Gordon Ramsey Recipe for an omelet? Its really easy;

"Take 3 f'ing eggs, and grease you f'ing skillet with f'ing bacon fat.

Bring the f'skillet to temperature, and break you f'ing eggs in...."

You get the idea.

When a bad guy gasps his last question to the droid, "Who... Who are you?" He can say, "I'm the f'ing chef, and don't you forget it."

Explorer: Trader

Then after his life has fallen apart and he finds himself on the fringe, he can spec into Big Game Hunter to hunt down the more exotic meats / veggies and make a name for himself with all those that savor the taste of decedent meals.

These have all been very helpful.

I had a chance to go back and listen to Fiddleback's Skill Monkey on the Iron Chef episode. In it, he identifies, Knowledge (Education) as essentially the basic cooking skill, but with all five Knowledge-based skills coming into play. He mentions Deception, Discipline, Medicine, Perception, Vigilance, Cool, Charm, Coordination as all possible skills that would make for an interesting culinary experience.

To this, I'd also add Survival, as the basic skills of knowing what is edible and what isn't, plus the ability to conjure up food from the most unlikely of sources. It's not essential. but I certainly could be convinced.

So from this, we could go Explorer: Trader; Colonist: Politico; and even Colonist: Scholar. Using Age of Rebellion, I could see Diplomat: Ambassador even being a possibility, but because Politico and Scholar both have "Well Rounded" as a talent, this may be the best way to go.