It shouldn't be impossible to buy Attachments that already have Mods made to them. In many cases, this can represent different models of the Attachment. If this is allowed, how should it be handled?

What I'm looking at right now is that the credit cost for the Mod should be doubled (so 200 credits for the first Mod on a weapon/armor Attachment or 2000 credits for the first Mod on a starship/vehicle Attachment). The Attachments with Mods are more expensive but are also risk-free and don't require any particular expertise in Mechanics. For the DIY lovers with good Mechanics, they can be happy with the money saved if they do it themselves (especially if they have Gearhead).

Additionally, each installed Mod increases the Rarity of the Attachment by +1. This means that highly tweaked Attachments that come with a slew of Mods might be exceptionally hard to locate.

The other advantage here is that Attachments with Mods now have a sale price and Availability that represents the risk that went into customizing the item. This is useful when selling components, and means that a Mechanic with Gearhead can make a profit from applying Mods and then selling Attachments.

I like it! What kind of base difficulty would you be looking at for the Negotiation/Streetwise roll to obtain such an attachment?

I like it! What kind of base difficulty would you be looking at for the Negotiation/Streetwise roll to obtain such an attachment?

As per the base Attachment with +1 Rarity per Mod. I noted that in the third paragraph of the OP.

The Attachments with Mods are more expensive but are also risk-free and don't require any particular expertise in Mechanics. For the DIY lovers with good Mechanics, they can be happy with the money saved if they do it themselves (especially if they have Gearhead).

...

The other advantage here is that Attachments with Mods now have a sale price and Availability that represents the risk that went into customizing the item. This is useful when selling components, and means that a Mechanic with Gearhead can make a profit from applying Mods and then selling Attachments.

By not having expertise in Mechanics, do you mean that you'd have the characters just visit a mechanic themselves who would install the part for them at cost? If so, you would probably need to inflate the cost for labor or build in a Mechanics check made by the GM to see how well your mechanic actually is. You could pay for the upgrades and installation only to find out down the road that the thing will need to get serviced regularly or maybe replaced entirely.

I do like the idea of having a PC mechanic earning a few credits on the side by providing custom work for NPCs. maybe even open a little shop in a secluded corner alley of Nar Shaddaa that even caters to the more "restricted" items.

As is, it requires no particular skill or expense to install an Attachment. I'm simply proposing that it may be possible to purchase some Attachments with certain Mods already applied to them. This will usually be because that particular model differs from the baseline, such as a version of the Advanced Targeting Array that comes with the added software and optics installed to grant the True Aim Mod, or a particularly fine version of the Forearm Grip that comes with the Accurate 1 Mod included.

And the cost is already covered. You're paying twice (or four times if Gearhead is involved) as much as it would cost to do the job your self. The base cost (or half that with Gearhead) is what it likely cost the mechanic (or the manufacturer if it's part of the model), so they have a higher profit margin by selling these high-end pieces.

As is, it requires no particular skill or expense to install an Attachment. I'm simply proposing that it may be possible to purchase some Attachments with certain Mods already applied to them. This will usually be because that particular model differs from the baseline, such as a version of the Advanced Targeting Array that comes with the added software and optics installed to grant the True Aim Mod, or a particularly fine version of the Forearm Grip that comes with the Accurate 1 Mod included.

And the cost is already covered. You're paying twice (or four times if Gearhead is involved) as much as it would cost to do the job your self. The base cost (or half that with Gearhead) is what it likely cost the mechanic (or the manufacturer if it's part of the model), so they have a higher profit margin by selling these high-end pieces.

but the RAW does require an expense and Mechanics check to install an attachment is what I'm saying. Just because the Mechanic you've hired is doing it for you, I'd still think that buying your way around something isn't as interesting as creating the chance for the Mechanic you've selected to install said attachment and screw it up in some way that maybe your PCs aren't even aware of until it fails.

since you're basically creating a house rule for purchasing a modded attachment, i would try to balance that some beyond just having the credits alone.

but the RAW does require an expense and Mechanics check to install an attachment is what I'm saying.

You are incorrect. Installing Attachments requires no check and costs nothing. Applying Mods to an Attachment requires checks and costs additional credits.

My house rule is that some Mods may come inherent in certain models of Attachments. For these, you would pay a premium over what it would normally cost to apply the Mod yourself. The higher cost is the balance against not needing to DIY with Mechanics and having the corresponding risk of failure. It's effectively buying a higher-end piece of gear from the manufacturer at a premium cost rather than buying the baseline Attachment and customizing it yourself. Once you buy the Attachment (with any inherent Mods), it still requires no particular skill or added costs to install it.

As an example, we'll use the Reinforced Shield Generator. It's normally 3,800 credits and Rarity 5. With these rules, you could buy a model with both of the listed Mods for a final cost of 9,800 credits (base +2,000 credits for the first Mod +4,000 credits for the second Mod) and Rarity 7 (base +2 for two Mods). Since all listed Mods have been applied, there is no further modification that can be done to this Attachment.

How are you planning on handling "failed" mod slots?

For example, a player is buying an Augmented Spin Barrel with a preinstalled +1 Damage Mod. Since failure to install a mod renders that "slot" unmoddable in the future, it seems to me a barrel with +1 Damage Mod preinstalled *and* a guarantee that the second +1 Damage Mod slot is untouched/open for further customization should be worth more than a barrel that meets the criteria but has its further moddability circumscribed in some manner.

How are you planning on handling "failed" mod slots?

For example, a player is buying an Augmented Spin Barrel with a preinstalled +1 Damage Mod. Since failure to install a mod renders that "slot" unmoddable in the future, it seems to me a barrel with +1 Damage Mod preinstalled *and* a guarantee that the second +1 Damage Mod slot is untouched/open for further customization should be worth more than a barrel that meets the criteria but has its further moddability circumscribed in some manner.

You are already paying a premium for it. Presumably the manufacturer of said barrel gets sufficient Boost dice from having the perfect equipment and having perfected the process that failures are very rare. They make such a profit (compare how much the DIY cost is vs the price I'm talking) that discarding the few defective pieces barely touches the bottom line.

Double seems very cheap to me. Getting your Mechanics pool to the point that you can reliably mod a weapon is a big investment. "This modification was already successful" is a level of reliability a PC can never equal, so you're taking a significant point of pride away from those who've invested in this skill.

Double seems very cheap to me. Getting your Mechanics pool to the point that you can reliably mod a weapon is a big investment. "This modification was already successful" is a level of reliability a PC can never equal, so you're taking a significant point of pride away from those who've invested in this skill.

I think it is more meant to be a way for non-gearheads to be able to access the more modded stuff. If you dont have someone who has dropped the points to be good at it, it would be almost impossible to be more than one mod on an item.

Double seems very cheap to me. Getting your Mechanics pool to the point that you can reliably mod a weapon is a big investment. "This modification was already successful" is a level of reliability a PC can never equal, so you're taking a significant point of pride away from those who've invested in this skill.

I think it is more meant to be a way for non-gearheads to be able to access the more modded stuff. If you dont have someone who has dropped the points to be good at it, it would be almost impossible to be more than one mod on an item.

Which only sounds like a great way to motivate groups to have characters that are good at modding, and not a good argument to bypass it.

If these ideas seem too low-cost, just up the rarity further or the base difficulty of the Negotiation/Streetwise to obtain it. I like the idea of multiple ways to accomplish a certain task. One way might be more difficult than the other, but at least it can be done by a PC with good enough negotiation skills or black market know-how.

How are you planning on handling "failed" mod slots?

For example, a player is buying an Augmented Spin Barrel with a preinstalled +1 Damage Mod. Since failure to install a mod renders that "slot" unmoddable in the future, it seems to me a barrel with +1 Damage Mod preinstalled *and* a guarantee that the second +1 Damage Mod slot is untouched/open for further customization should be worth more than a barrel that meets the criteria but has its further moddability circumscribed in some manner.

You are already paying a premium for it. Presumably the manufacturer of said barrel gets sufficient Boost dice from having the perfect equipment and having perfected the process that failures are very rare. They make such a profit (compare how much the DIY cost is vs the price I'm talking) that discarding the few defective pieces barely touches the bottom line.

Credits are much easier to come by than guarantees - which in fact do not exist. I wouldn't be wild about a system that lets players bypass even a little bit of the risk in modding out a piece of gear. In addition to marginalizing characters who *do* want to make mechanics and modding gear their schtick, I think it promotes an unhealthy level of min-maxing and interferes with the principle of keeping the party lean.

For example, in my current game, somewhere down the road I know I'm going to want to spring the 5500 credits for another strength-boost system for my Gadgeteer's armor, because I flubbed the mod rolls on one of the +1 Brace and one of the +1 Athletics mods. I still have a great, functional set of armor, but I have a long term goal in *perfecting* it. It feels much cheaper to me if I'd had the option of just having two of the mods prebuilt and waiting for a moment when I could pop Destiny and make a Mechanics roll to get the rest. There's a lot less risk involved, and less of a sense of someone constantly tinkering and improving their armor, which is part of why I like the failure to mod penalty even when it frustrates me as well.

Double seems very cheap to me. Getting your Mechanics pool to the point that you can reliably mod a weapon is a big investment. "This modification was already successful" is a level of reliability a PC can never equal, so you're taking a significant point of pride away from those who've invested in this skill.

PCs shouldn't be able to equal this level of reliability. This level of reliability denotes parts that are customized by the manufacturer under ideal circumstances and with technicians trained to perform this mono-task over and over again. It's the difference between trying to mod out a Galaxy S2 to perform like a Galaxy S5 vs. just paying the increased cost and buying the Galaxy S5 to begin with.

Double seems very cheap to me. Getting your Mechanics pool to the point that you can reliably mod a weapon is a big investment. "This modification was already successful" is a level of reliability a PC can never equal, so you're taking a significant point of pride away from those who've invested in this skill.

PCs shouldn't be able to equal this level of reliability. This level of reliability denotes parts that are customized by the manufacturer under ideal circumstances and with technicians trained to perform this mono-task over and over again. It's the difference between trying to mod out a Galaxy S2 to perform like a Galaxy S5 vs. just paying the increased cost and buying the Galaxy S5 to begin with.

That's not Star Wars , though.

The Millennium Falcon isn't the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy because Han bought a top of the line custom manufactured starship - it's because of a lot of the "special modifications" he made himself. Boba Fett's armor is the envy of the bounty hunting community because of the various tricks and enhancements he made to the armor, not some guy or droid he shoveled a bunch of credits at. Jedi make their own lightsabers as a rite of passage because that is an act with meaning, even if technically the Jedi Temple Outlet on Coruscant could have manufactured lightsabers integrating the best design features of ten thousand years of refinement (back when they were open for business).

If the system suits your gaming table, more power to you and your group, but substituting credits for blood, sweat, and tears (and Mechanics checks) to me undermines the feel of the setting. More, I think it's a lost opportunity to cultivate a relationship with an NPC Outlaw Tech if your own party doesn't have the skillset needed - and that's more hooks for interaction and adventures. The feel of that, likewise, is more characteristic of the setting than cultivating the sales guy for BlasterIkea as a contact.

I think buying a more skilled NPC to do the check would be in the spirit of the rules, as long as the Mechanics check is still part of the process.

I'm not going to be too hyper critical of HD tweaking modding though because I have little love for the system myself. I really hope they expand upon it with the Technician splatbook and introduce the invention process to the game. I think the current system is too divested from the skill it requires for the check. I wish all the sorts of mods that were available on attachments were ranks of options that existed in an Armorer spec tree myself, so it would essentially be a must to have a character, NPC or PC, add the mods to an item. I wish it would involve all the tech skills as well, and not just Mechanics, that somehow Computers and a Knowledge skill played a part as well.

My GM let my group hire a mechanic for what I believe was 500 credits per difficulty die for a guaranteed result (for starship mods). I figure 50 credits per die for personal scale mods. We used it to buy an upgraded shield generator and a targeting computer for our Krayt Fang. It was money well-spent. Shortly thereafter we vaped some headhunters without taking a scratch.

Double seems very cheap to me. Getting your Mechanics pool to the point that you can reliably mod a weapon is a big investment. "This modification was already successful" is a level of reliability a PC can never equal, so you're taking a significant point of pride away from those who've invested in this skill.

PCs shouldn't be able to equal this level of reliability. This level of reliability denotes parts that are customized by the manufacturer under ideal circumstances and with technicians trained to perform this mono-task over and over again. It's the difference between trying to mod out a Galaxy S2 to perform like a Galaxy S5 vs. just paying the increased cost and buying the Galaxy S5 to begin with.

I think I'm fine with pre-modded gear (to represent different designs) in theory. It's an idea that instantly adds more variety to what a PC can do with their hard-earned / ill-gotten credits. That something mass produced has zero risk of failure to the buyer shouldn't be shocking, either (do you roll to see if the basic rifle you've just bought was constructed correctly?).

However, I think some unique restrictions should be considered in order to protect the usefulness of techy PCs. Personally, I'd probably restrict it to certain modifications. I'd probably limit it to one modification per attachment. I'd definitely sell the attachment only as part of a weapon (you'd buy the weapon with the modded attachment installed, not the attachment by itself) ).

"The new X-77 "Hunter" with integral marksman barrel." (Blaster Rifle, w/Marksman barrel+Accuracy 1)

Working hard to become a badass gearhead, defined to a significant degree by their equipment is tough. You're spending valuable XP on Mechanics rather than Ranged: Heavy or whatever else you'd rather be spending it on. If your Merc (or Politico or whatever) can get the same personalised gear you can, but be better in other areas, well, you've kind of wasted your points. FFG seem to have had that in mind when they built the Gadgeteer and Outlaw Tech Specialisations and, as Haggard points out, that's very Star Wars.

I think that if the manufacturer offered modded versions preinstalled they'd be listed in the raw. But that's something conflicting with he idea of a mod. These are meant to be modifications that the PC performs on the equipment as they are unavailable in the manufacturers version. I think that these premium versions that you are inventing would sell for a lot more due to the rarity or impossibility of their existing. They shouldn't be something easily accessed. The difficulty of modding one for oneself should be take. Into account and balanced against the cost and rarity of these prefab mods.

I've got an idea for how to make it not guaranteed , but still rely on other skills: use the exact same mechanics for modding attachments, but PAY an NPC to do it using your Negotiation or Streetwise check. The difficulty is the same as what mod would require for a normal mechanics check, +1. Also the mechanic charges for the service. You figure out the extra charge. Could be double, could be some other percentage, could be a flat rate depending on the difficulty of the check. But the mechanic isn't the one rolling the dice; you (the PC) are rolling your Negotiation/Streetwise and treating it as the Mechanics to mod the attachment.

If the check fails, the mechanic you hired actually fails the job. Depending on the degree of Threat/Despair in the result, he could have run off with your weapon to sell it for some spice, or completely ruined your attachment, or accidentally killed himself and now you're a suspect in a "homicide" with an illegal weapon. :-D

I've got an idea for how to make it not guaranteed , but still rely on other skills: use the exact same mechanics for modding attachments, but PAY an NPC to do it using your Negotiation or Streetwise check. The difficulty is the same as what mod would require for a normal mechanics check, +1. Also the mechanic charges for the service. You figure out the extra charge. Could be double, could be some other percentage, could be a flat rate depending on the difficulty of the check. But the mechanic isn't the one rolling the dice; you (the PC) are rolling your Negotiation/Streetwise and treating it as the Mechanics to mod the attachment.

You're probably going to want/need to use Streetwise to find such an Uber-Mechanic in the first place, and maybe Negotiation to try to get the price down to a reasonable level, and you're going to have to pay some pretty major cash for the mod regardless.

So, unless you're doing the work yourself, it seems to me like you'd already be using skills other than Mechanic to try to get the outcome that you want. The only question is whether or not that particular Mechanic comes with any kind of a guarantee, and how much that guarantee might cost you if you did want it.

I don't see any way out of this scenario that doesn't involve someone making a Mechanics roll, and whatever it takes to find the parts required to make that happen, and the appropriately skilled and talented person to apply them, etc....

I've got an idea for how to make it not guaranteed , but still rely on other skills: use the exact same mechanics for modding attachments, but PAY an NPC to do it using your Negotiation or Streetwise check. The difficulty is the same as what mod would require for a normal mechanics check, +1. Also the mechanic charges for the service. You figure out the extra charge. Could be double, could be some other percentage, could be a flat rate depending on the difficulty of the check. But the mechanic isn't the one rolling the dice; you (the PC) are rolling your Negotiation/Streetwise and treating it as the Mechanics to mod the attachment.

You're probably going to want/need to use Streetwise to find such an Uber-Mechanic in the first place, and maybe Negotiation to try to get the price down to a reasonable level, and you're going to have to pay some pretty major cash for the mod regardless.

So, unless you're doing the work yourself, it seems to me like you'd already be using skills other than Mechanic to try to get the outcome that you want. The only question is whether or not that particular Mechanic comes with any kind of a guarantee, and how much that guarantee might cost you if you did want it.

I don't see any way out of this scenario that doesn't involve someone making a Mechanics roll, and whatever it takes to find the parts required to make that happen, and the appropriately skilled and talented person to apply them, etc....

1) The only time one should use Streetwise and THEN Negotiation is if it's being made into a major social encounter. Otherwise, I would wrap it all up in 1 skill check. There's no reason to drag it out unless it's a big scene and the whole PC party is getting involved.

2) This really depends on the GM for how it would all play out, game-mechanics-wise. I guess it comes down what is fun for the given play group!

3) The "way out of the scenario" is whatever the GM says is reasonable. I gave a reasonable way of substituting one skill for another skill. Pay more money and make the check harder, and you can use Streetwise instead of Mechanics to mod the attachment. Personally, I'd feel like I was screwing over the player if I sent him down to this "wonder-mechanic" after having made a difficult Streetwise check, only to have the guy fail the Mechanics check and ruin the attachment. "Oops...sorry, bro."

Nah. Wrap up the locating, the purchasing, and the modding all in one check, and then narrate appropriately. That is the way I'd play it by default.

1) The only time one should use Streetwise and THEN Negotiation is if it's being made into a major social encounter. Otherwise, I would wrap it all up in 1 skill check. There's no reason to drag it out unless it's a big scene and the whole PC party is getting involved.

IIRC, Streetwise is actually supposed to be this kind of an all-encompassing one-roll-does-it-all sort of skill.

So it seems to me that your first instinct is most likely correct, with regards to an alternative way to get the desired outcome without actually rolling the Mechanic skill. Someone rolling the Mechanic skill would be included as part of the Streetwise roll.

Please forgive me. I don’t remember where the heck I was going with my previous response on this thread.