I'm sure there are some decent threads for droid characters. Nothing too recent that I can find however. A few of the things I did read seemed to focus more on creating very focused killing machines. I guess I wanted to cover the benefits and cons of playing a droid, and if they function as a viable character.

Sadly I haven't had the opportunity to play the character more than once (GM decided he didn't like GMing) but I designed a droid who was an older 501-Z model (Zed) who had long since lost his position in law enforcement (due to a tendency of shooting guilty parties if he calculated that they would not pay for their crimes) and was roaming the galaxy as a hired gun.

Through several versions of the character I realized that it seemed more viable to spend the majority of the starting 175 xp on attribute bumps (since they can never be raised later outside of cybernetic enhancements). I forget the ending stats, but I wanted something a little well rounded so that he was essentially still a functioning police droid with a few mental quirks. I think it was 2 in everything except 3's in agility, cunning and presence because I wanted him to be good with a blaster, able to outthink a criminal, and a strong leader type. If I'm not mistake that left me with 5 points left which I think I held onto without spending (this was after taking the extra 10 xp with additional obligation).

Didn't leave me with a lot of skills or money in the end, and no skills in my tree. But those were things that could at least be changed over time.

While I had an idea of what my character could accomplish, I wasn't sure exactly if he had anything else that just sort of came along with being a droid or with his model in particular.

Would my character, for example, have extensive knowledge of laws on different worlds? I would assume this would be a education check, which might not yield a good result for me as it's not one of my class skills (I haven't seen the Marshall tree in the new book, so maybe that would be a better option). For role playing purposes would it make sense to add a boost dice or two to the role considering the droid's previous experience?

Also regarding equipment what would a droid start with? Based on some of the droids that can be purchased it doesn't seem like a player character can ever be the equivilant of fresh from the factory. If I played an Astromech droid for example, I wouldn't have nearly the same level of attributes, skills, or gadgets that an Astromech has. A tool kit seems very standard for an astromech, but you'll have to spend 400 starting credits for it.

Any thoughts on the subject of droids as viable characters?

Not having to breath, not being affected by toxic atmos, not having to worry if it is hot or cold, not having to eat/sleep, not being affected by poisons, is not all that interesting to read about, but is handy as hell once you start playing.

I don't bother with starting credit guidelines, I typically give everyone a decent gun and whatever tool they need to ply their trade, toolkit, medpac, etc. I don't bother with the transient adventurer model.

I wouldn't hand out boost dice for anything automatically.

I tend to use Knowledge - Core Worlds to represent bureaucracy, rather than Education (although that may be more suitable for obscure legal cases).

No, droids don't get any additional gear. Your GM may allow any equipment purchased at character creation to be considered integral to your chassis (at least, every game I've seen did this, and it may be in a sidebar somewhere). And if your group agrees, everyone can start out with a little extra (although personally I feel that this is what Obligation is for).

If it bothers you, you can explain new purchases as upgrades or repairs to systems that you've always had, but which were obsolete or damaged.

Even astromech droids are often portrayed with retractable manipulator arms, (think lunar rovers) so any droid character could try to pick up the same tools and weapons as everyone else. Their low Brawn and Agility would represent their clumsiness with such implements.

Yeah, mechanically I'd go with the RAW and find a way in color to justify it. As far as the benefits/drawbacks, droids tend to be very powerful at one or two things if you spend the starting XP on those stats, but there's not quite enough XP for them to be as well-rounded as most organics.

That said, you won't be so far behind that the character's unplayable; my experience has been that being a little behind won't affect your enjoyment very much. I'd actually consider leaving one stat at one simply for roleplaying purposes; low stats can carry as much roleplaying weight as high stats. Does he have a Presence 1 because nobody takes his droid series seriously? Maybe that line of law enforcement droids was a dismal failure, and your character struggles to command the respect he should. How does that affect his law enforcement duties? Is that why he ended up where he is? Does he have a low Cunning because, like C-3P0, he just doesn't "get Human behavior" (probably a significant problem for a law enforcement droid)? Both could be a lot of fun to roleplay.

Having an interesting backstory is, in my opinion, very important for a droid--that's what separates a walking gun platform from an interesting character.

Not having to shave is also nice.

Not having to shave is also nice.

You should be a pirate..........I don't shave.........Arrr.

In my experience with my droid player.. Droid characters can be AMAZING at 1 thing. IF you want a talker, put a 5 in Cunning or Presence and call it a day. If you want a killer throw it into Agility or Brawn. You can make a well rounded character and be just as good as any human. However your benefit as a droid is this. You get 6 Cybernetic implants. You can then get a +2 to either Agility or Brawn, as well as the Cybernetic Intelligence implant to boost your Int by 1. So in reality if you just work say Agility to 4 at the beginning, and put 2s in everything else.. With a bit of luck and credits you can have a 6 Agility Character or a 4 Brawn, 4 Agility character, which makes you insanely powerful for fighting. However, this is not to even bring into account the fact of Dedication.

You are allowed to take Dedication at the end of a tree, boosting ANY stat you choose by 1. So with this in mind, just going straight for dedication in a tree. You potentially can have 4 Brawn, 4 Agility, and 4 Intelligence, without caring about ANYTHING else. At that point almost ANY check you do, as those stats cover majority of all skills in the list, will be passable. Now in my experience with my player's droid, he is called Kill-bot, and a turret with eyeballs for a reason. However, with just a few tweaking we also made him a great swoop racer.

The problem with droids is this though. Say you make a murder-bot. Now you are the bane of the GM, he has to adjust the difficulty of every encounter to balance you out from the rest. Same thing with having a 5 or 6 in ANY stat really. At that point though, is it really a challenge or fun for everyone? Recently I had created my own rendition of The Foundry. I was speaking about it here: ( http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/113117-the-covenant-of-twelve/ ) The enemies in that encounter were suped up versions of the Assassin Droid in the back of the EoTE / AoR books. The final guy in that encounter had a stat-line of 5 Brawn, 5 Agility, 4 Intellect, and 3's in the rest, with Ranged Heavy 5, Melee 5, Adversary 3. And even with all that, Him and his 19 droids destroyed 6 B1 / B2 Battle droids, heavily injured 4 companions, and 1 PC was critically hurt. If I ever can get my website up to host all of the character sheets, you should see my players.

Not having to breath, not being affected by toxic atmos, not having to worry if it is hot or cold , not having to eat/sleep, not being affected by poisons, is not all that interesting to read about, but is handy as hell once you start playing.

Do droids have a special resistance to extreme environments?

Not having to breath, not being affected by toxic atmos, not having to worry if it is hot or cold , not having to eat/sleep, not being affected by poisons, is not all that interesting to read about, but is handy as hell once you start playing.

Do droids have a special resistance to extreme environments?

Their description doesn't indicate that they do, apart from not having to eat/breathe and are not affected by toxins or poisons. It does not specifically mention they are unnaffected by extreme hot or cold, but it is assumed they probably wouldn't have too much trouble in the cold of space or die from heat stroke in a desert. They would be affected by certain environments though such as sandy or highly humid areas. Maybe not immediate or intense ramifications to environmental factors, but possibly if exposed for a long period of time. It's probably just a common sense play at that point. If the environment is something that could corrode or rust machinery then it should be assumed it could have similar effects on a droid.

3P0 seemed to be concerned about the environment on Tattooine. Although that could easily be in his programming.

Not having to breath, not being affected by toxic atmos, not having to worry if it is hot or cold , not having to eat/sleep, not being affected by poisons, is not all that interesting to read about, but is handy as hell once you start playing.

Do droids have a special resistance to extreme environments?

If a droid can walk around in space with no problem like R2 obviously does it's painfully self evident that they indeed do in fact have resistance to extreme environments.

See, I always went with the ideas that droids don't get anything for free beyond what's spelled out in the droid rules. If your droid is protected from the rigors of space, then buy a spacesuit as integrated equipment.

HD has a fair point. The snow speeders had to be retrofitted to withstand cold climate. There may be droids that need similar modifications.

Also regarding equipment what would a droid start with? Based on some of the droids that can be purchased it doesn't seem like a player character can ever be the equivilant of fresh from the factory. If I played an Astromech droid for example, I wouldn't have nearly the same level of attributes, skills, or gadgets that an Astromech has. A tool kit seems very standard for an astromech, but you'll have to spend 400 starting credits for it.

Any thoughts on the subject of droids as viable characters?

I played a droid in a recent campaign, and I quite enjoyed it. I wrote it up as an LE-series repair droid, much like Dash Rendar’s Leebo. I couldn’t find any stats for Leebo, so I did my own best guess based on the system and the points I had available — most XP went into Intellect, with Agility as secondary. I specifically avoided putting much into Brawn, because I wanted this character to be more cerebral and less melee, and the only blaster he ever had were ones that were given to him by other people, or picked up during combat skirmishes.

In terms of base equipment, the write up in Wookiepedia said that they are very expensive and come with their own toolkit, which my GM was willing to let me have. I also checked out the writeup of the R2 Astromech in the EotE CRB, and noted the plasma torch, which my GM also let me have.

That game has had to shut down due to employment changes for the GM, and with regards to my own personal logistics it didn’t work so well for me to be in two different games each week.

But somewhere out there, LE-R0Y-GB-1V is running around in the Mu class shuttle known as the "Cobra", which we took from Lando Calrissian after … a card game that ended very … badly … for him. We never did stat up the ship, but we were promised that it would be as decked out as could possibly be arranged.

But he was lots of fun to play. In my mind, he was kind of a cross between Kryten from Red Dwarf with a bit of the "meat bag" personality from HK-47.

Well if you go by the RAW a Droid PC gets only what is covered in the Droid section of Character Creation just like any other PC race, if you want your Droid to have additional abilities you must pay for them either with Credits or EXP. So if you want your Droid to be unaffected by extreme heat or cold, for example, you'd need to get a Thermal Cloak "attachment" that would represent insulation of key components. Same would go for communication equipment (other than talking), scanners, binoculars, a tool kit, or whatever.

It may not make sense logically or by what it may say in Wookiepedia as to what a Droid normally has but it's not about that it's about how you build a Player Character within this system. An R2 unit may come off the assembly line with this, that, and the other but that R2 unit isn't a PC. You build a Droid PC from the ground up just like any other PC.

I don't have a rulebook with me, but do the stats for an R2 unit (which we know come off the factory floor with the ability to function in space) include equipment to meet that requirement?

The R2 shin is an NPC and does not follow the rules that PCs must follow.

So I'm looking at the description for all droid NPCs that I can find, and everyone of them indicates that they can survive in a vacuume and underwater. It almost seems like a complete oversight that the only place it's not mentioned is on the droid character special abilities.

Not having to breath, not being affected by toxic atmos, not having to worry if it is hot or cold , not having to eat/sleep, not being affected by poisons, is not all that interesting to read about, but is handy as hell once you start playing.

Do droids have a special resistance to extreme environments?

Their description doesn't indicate that they do, apart from not having to eat/breathe and are not affected by toxins or poisons. It does not specifically mention they are unnaffected by extreme hot or cold, but it is assumed they probably wouldn't have too much trouble in the cold of space or die from heat stroke in a desert. They would be affected by certain environments though such as sandy or highly humid areas. Maybe not immediate or intense ramifications to environmental factors, but possibly if exposed for a long period of time. It's probably just a common sense play at that point. If the environment is something that could corrode or rust machinery then it should be assumed it could have similar effects on a droid.

in the Wizards of the Coast rulebook they mentioned things like this.

Where dust and sand caused erosion after awhile and so the droids had to take oil baths to treat this

I actually just read it up yesterday. It includes Rust, Dust and Droid Rot (which effects their internal systems).

It also compares differences of different appendages and difference between moving around on tracks rather than wheels or on foot.

the main thing im trying to figure out in EotE is just how do i give the characters their stats. Like i would feel weird if an assassin droid and an astromech had equal stats

Why would they have the same stats? One idea is to make the things they do well reflected in their statistics, so if they're good at something, that stat is higher.

An Assassin droid and an Astromech droid would probably have very different Agility and Intellect stats.

There is an Assassin Droid on page 410 of the EOTE CRB, and an Astromech on the same page.