Droid equipment and armor

By Blackbird888, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

The core rulebooks bring out that with droid PCs, both players and GMs are at liberty to treat equipment differently, or even restrict it. My group doesn't have a droid PC, but I was kicking ideas around in my head about how to roleplay that out if it did come up.

So: what have you done in regards to droids and equipment in a roleplaying sense?

In our game, my LE-series repair droid was allowed to buy armor and call it integrated armor plating. He was also allowed to take electronic devices like electrobinoculars and integrate those into his systems.

However, you generally still have to pay the Encumbrance penalty for the equipment you’ve bought and integrated. In some cases (especially Astromechs) you might be able to get away with having an integrated arc welder or an integrated Scomp arm that doesn’t cost any additional Encumbrance, or maybe reduced Encumbrance value, but that would be a discussion to be had between the player and the GM.

My LE-series repair droid was pretty good at the self-modification thing, and he accumulated a lot of stuff that he integrated into his systems.

For bigger upgrades, you can integrate the equivalent of Cybernetic limbs or other equipment, but only up to the Brawn of the droid in question — just like all other PCs.

So, if you want arms that are stronger or more dextrous than the ones you started off with, you handle them just like the droid was a regular biological entity with cybernetic replacements, although you might flavor them differently.

As for anything else, like adding extra arms without removing the existing ones, that would be entirely up to the imagination of the player and the GM.

As for anything else, like adding extra arms without removing the existing ones, that would be entirely up to the imagination of the player and the GM.

That's mostly what I'm asking about, not so much to answer uncertainties I had but to discuss what those ideas are. For example, earlier I asked myself: 'what would the droid equivalent of Banal Clothing from Desperate Allies be? Maybe armor plating that's worn out and faded.' And so on.

So if that was my idea on how I'd roleplay it, I was curious as to what your ideas and methods would be.

For bigger upgrades, you can integrate the equivalent of Cybernetic limbs or other equipment, but only up to the Brawn of the droid in question — just like all other PCs.

Droids can have 6 cybernetics, regardless of Brawn.

Armor is simple (it just is your skin/model build), but integrated weapons I rule visible at a glance (think those heavy droids with guns for hands), unless you bought the hidden weapon cyber mod (or have the Hidden Compartments talent). Integrated tools are fine to hold within the chassis (as R2 does), but then they are Encumbrance you cannot drop...

There's a lot of good reasons to keep tools and weapons as separate objects from yourself - can easily switch guns if yours gets damaged, can leave the medical kit for someone else when you head out the airlock for a bit, can drop it all when you need to carry an ally out of an exploding base... Mostly, being integrated is just cool flavor.

Edited by Juriel

That's mostly what I'm asking about, not so much to answer uncertainties I had but to discuss what those ideas are. For example, earlier I asked myself: 'what would the droid equivalent of Banal Clothing from Desperate Allies be? Maybe armor plating that's worn out and faded.' And so on.

So if that was my idea on how I'd roleplay it, I was curious as to what your ideas and methods would be.

We never really got into the issue of droid “clothing” as it were. Droids are invisible enough in the Star Wars universe, and it simply never occurred to us that they might want the equivalent of Banal Clothing.

When it came to things like armor, we did have to find a way to justify it. So, I was able to get the droid equivalent of a Catch Vest, justifying it as additional insulation against potential electrical damage received while performing repairs on ships, etc…. I also explained this as looking something like a technician uniform at the place of his previous employment.

The only other place I’ve seen any discussion of clothing or anything like it for droids, is on a series of butler droids that were supposedly painted in a particular “livery”. I think this was somewhere on Wookieepedia, but I’m not sure.

The primary thing we tended to work on was gear and how that would work with droids. Does a droid have a backpack or a utility belt? If so, how does that work? What about hand scanners? Or scanner goggles? How does a droid interact with a Tranlang V Holo-Translator? What about interacting with cam droids, or controlling Recon Remotes?

I.e., pretty much anything in the categories at http://swrpg.viluppo.net/equipment/gear/

For bigger upgrades, you can integrate the equivalent of Cybernetic limbs or other equipment, but only up to the Brawn of the droid in question — just like all other PCs.

Droids can have 6 cybernetics, regardless of Brawn.

Hmm. Now that you mention it, I do seem to recall having read that somewhere.

So how did I manage to forget that? :o :wacko: :blink: