Hey all!

I'm about to start up a new group for Edge of the Empire. However one of the players really wants to play as a Droideka with a multiple personality disorder.

I am all for the idea, I have already decided that the shield generator would have been damaged over the years and so she will not yet have a shield for ranged or melee defence.

However, how would I convert the 'fluffy' nature of the Droideka being able to curl and uncurl into a ball for faster movement?

I was thinking of having the prone manoeuvres be substituted for the deploy/pack ability, which would allow her to move faster between the range bands, but not attack. However that would mean to get into range and attack, she would have to have 3 manoeuvres. Pack, Move, Deploy, Attack. Would that break the game? or would only having two manoeuvres be a good balancing act?

When the player expends strain to double move she also fold up as an incidental. When she performs another action she unfolds as an incidental.

Remember, rounds in this game are measured in minutes, not seconds, and folding and unfolding doesn't take that long.

FYI though, you may want to check the gm forum, there's a thread in there where a player made a similar droid to a destroyer and found it unbalanced and disruptive.

Ha ha ha

That's awesome.

Regarding the "rapid movement" configuration: I would allow the player character to do something akin to speed 5-6 ships (but for personal scale): 1 maneuver to move between Short (or Engaged?) and Medium Range (or within Short range), and 2 maneuvers to move between Short (or Engaged?) and Long range.

Not sure about Engaging, since Engaged is more a subset of the Short range band (unlike planetary scale "close range," which is its own range band altogether). But since a droideka is not going to really benefit too much from actually being engaged with someone on most occasions, it's probably okay just to allow them move to Engaged from Long range.

The balance is in the extra maneuver to pack up and then unpack. It takes a normal character 4 maneuvers to move between Short and Long range anyway...so this shouldn't really be a problem.

EDIT: Or ghostofman's description is cool too. Just handle it narratively...it doesn't even have to happen when the player expends strain. It could just be when she trades her action for a maneuver that she narrates going into "wheel mode."

I do like the idea of incidentals, but you should consider that drawing a gun is a maneuver, and that doesn't take very long either but it's still a fairly significant thing that you do during your turn. If standing up, falling prone, and drawing a gun are maneuvers, I would say that switching to wheeled/deployed mode with a Droideka could also be a maneuver.

Either way, it should be fine.

There is a thread somewhere where I detailed how to make "Princess" the pink droideka. Narratively is the jist, and way to go.