So... i had a PC idea in mind of a bounty hunter droid, gadgeteer sticking out to me. The idea is using Pistols/Rifles for long range, and as i approach my target switching over to my Brawling weapon of choice. Maybe with a few other gadgets and armors to provide various tricks and so forth.

What would you all think Shock or VibroKnuckles? What build advice would you suggest? From little searching around people say Brawling->Doctor for Pressure points. I mean how worth is it to spend all that XP for a specialization for 3-4 talents?

So i grabbed Defensive Stance and Jury Rigor for starting talents

Stats
3Brawn
3 Agi
1 Presence
2 everything else

What would you change? I dont want to gimp my self with my ranged abilities just to become some brawling death machine.

So, a few things to consider here.

First off, after the Clone Wars, according to Canon there was a huge backlash against droids doing any kind of combat. IG-88 was a serious outlier.

Security droids aren’t a problem, but then they’re not really capable of killing. I could definitely see an advanced security droid go into this line of work using stun-only weapons, however. That way, you could always take the targets alive, and you would be fulfilling the mission of the security droid in a broader context.

With regards to combat in a party, what I’ve seen is that most people are either good up-close with Melee or Brawl and not so good with ranged combat, or vice-versa. Doing both well is difficult, especially as you get more advanced and you need more and more Talents to help out in various areas.

Being a jack-of-all trades is fine, if you’re going solo or in very small groups. However, as the groups get larger you tend to need more and more specialization, otherwise everyone ends up stepping on everyone else’s toes and then you tend to get certain types of player personalities who crowd everyone else out. If everyone has narrower but deeper specialties, then it is easier for the GM to let each person in a group shine in their own way.

More specifically to your question, the Pressure Point talent is written in such a way that it cannot be used with any kind of weapon — not even shock gloves. Think Vulcan Death Grip or the “Five Fingered Death Punch” from _Kill Bill_.

Combining Doctor with Marauder can be a great pairing, or it can be seriously imbalancing for a game. Or it might do nothing at all. It all depends on you, your GM, the kind of game you’re in, etc….

For a built-in Brawl weapon, Force and Destiny has the Refined Cortosis Gauntlets. While it's nice against lightsaber-using foes, the Cortosis bit isn't the real prize here. The joy to this is that these have 2 hard points--enough for the Weighted Head attachment which can add to damage and be modded to grant Concussive 1. With Tinkerer you could add either Superior or the Stun Pulse Generator (also from F&D). The latter allows you to have a hard hitting Brawl weapon that still gives all the benefits of shock gloves.

The above is a bit of power-gaming to be sure, but it's all thematically appropriate unlike taking Doctor for Pressure Point.

Even with the power-gaming gloves, it’s still going to be hard to beat a Force Pike — especially since it also has hard points, and you can add the same sorts of things to it.

Even with the power-gaming gloves, it’s still going to be hard to beat a Force Pike — especially since it also has hard points, and you can add the same sorts of things to it.

That depends entirely on whether the GM rules a Force Pike to be blunt or edged.

EDIT: Not everyone uses Wookieepedia as a source, but here's what it has to say on force pikes:

The tip of the pole was a vibro-edged head with a stun module that could knock a full-grown Wookiee unconscious using a concentrated nerve impulse similar to that featured in the stun setting of a blaster rifle . At lowest setting, the spear would deliver excruciating electrical shocks, higher settings could result in paralysis and death, and at maximum setting, it could slice through everything from flesh and bone to thin durasteel plating. The weapon could be used for self defense, but also as a torture device. The Emperor's Royal Guards used the force pike mainly as a ceremonial weapon, but sometimes for other reasons; torture was one of them.

When I see words like edged , spear , and slice , I tend to think of it as an edged weapon rather than a blunt weapon.

First if you're dead-set on playing a droid, I would beg your gm for 20-25 extra xp. If he does the math, he'll see that it's fair. Second, you generally want to spend all your starting xp on attributes.

If you aren't set on a droid, I would go with something else. It will make life for both you and your GM much simpler. Combat Droids, apart from security droids, are outlawed in the empire. Droids also get screwed over xp-wise, as I touched on earlier.

To give you something to compare to, a Human can start with four 3s and two 2s in Attributes if he takes 10 extra obligation. For something with more flavor, a lunged Gand can do the same thing. There are a lot of other races that can get four 3s as well, though you're more limited if you want presence to be your 1.

Personally, I'm a fan of starting with the assassin tree and then hitting the gadgeteer tree. You can pick up two free ranks in ranged heavy that way, and the assassin tree has the dodge talents, and you can blitz straight to dedication. There's more good things on the gadgeteer tree so starting there isn't a bad choice at all, I just thought I'd point out that there are advantages to starting out as an assassin. If you don't like the idea of being an assassin per se, this can easily be reflavored as a bounty hunter who tends to take on the most dangerous sorts of bounties where there is no requirement to attempt to bring them in alive.

In general, things like Dodge, Defensive Stance, and Side Step are only good if you have at least two ranks in them. They upgrade the pool, which means they turn a purple into a red (or a green to a yellow, in different circumstances). However, if you have multiple ranks, the pool gets upgraded multiple times, and if it gets upgraded when all dice are already red, you add another purple, which is awesome. The difference between types of dice is not to be underestimated, but adding whole dice is what makes an even bigger difference.

If you want just one hand-to-hand combat skill, brawl is probably better than melee for your purposes. Brawl weapons tend to do less damage, but you'll have a lot more options in terms of lethal/non-lethal. They also weigh less, which will be a consideration if you're planning on packing heavy armor and a big gun with autofire down the road. You can always do a little of both skills though. When I was playing a bounty hunter he carried a Heavy blaster rifle, a stun-only carbine (though I would personally pick a stokhli spray stick if you can get it, now that that's published), a blaster pistol, a vibroknife, and shock gloves. I couldn't carry much else though.

Lastly, to clarify, when purchasing talents you have to start at the top of the tree (5 xp talents) and follow the lines down from the ones you've purchased. You can't just purchase any off the tree you like.

First if you're dead-set on playing a droid, I would beg your gm for 20-25 extra xp. If he does the math, he'll see that it's fair. Second, you generally want to spend all your starting xp on attributes.

If you aren't set on a droid, I would go with something else. It will make life for both you and your GM much simpler. Combat Droids, apart from security droids, are outlawed in the empire. Droids also get screwed over xp-wise, as I touched on earlier.

To give you something to compare to, a Human can start with four 3s and two 2s in Attributes if he takes 10 extra obligation. For something with more flavor, a lunged Gand can do the same thing. There are a lot of other races that can get four 3s as well, though you're more limited if you want presence to be your 1.

Personally, I'm a fan of starting with the assassin tree and then hitting the gadgeteer tree. You can pick up two free ranks in ranged heavy that way, and the assassin tree has the dodge talents, and you can blitz straight to dedication. There's more good things on the gadgeteer tree so starting there isn't a bad choice at all, I just thought I'd point out that there are advantages to starting out as an assassin. If you don't like the idea of being an assassin per se, this can easily be reflavored as a bounty hunter who tends to take on the most dangerous sorts of bounties where there is no requirement to attempt to bring them in alive.

In general, things like Dodge, Defensive Stance, and Side Step are only good if you have at least two ranks in them. They upgrade the pool, which means they turn a purple into a red (or a green to a yellow, in different circumstances). However, if you have multiple ranks, the pool gets upgraded multiple times, and if it gets upgraded when all dice are already red, you add another purple, which is awesome. The difference between types of dice is not to be underestimated, but adding whole dice is what makes an even bigger difference.

If you want just one hand-to-hand combat skill, brawl is probably better than melee for your purposes. Brawl weapons tend to do less damage, but you'll have a lot more options in terms of lethal/non-lethal. They also weigh less, which will be a consideration if you're planning on packing heavy armor and a big gun with autofire down the road. You can always do a little of both skills though. When I was playing a bounty hunter he carried a Heavy blaster rifle, a stun-only carbine (though I would personally pick a stokhli spray stick if you can get it, now that that's published), a blaster pistol, a vibroknife, and shock gloves. I couldn't carry much else though.

Lastly, to clarify, when purchasing talents you have to start at the top of the tree (5 xp talents) and follow the lines down from the ones you've purchased. You can't just purchase any off the tree you like.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91r0WIlf8pL._SL1500_.jpg

Pointing out, that a particular concept is considerably hindered the rules and setting is hardly munchkinism, its fair warning, to a new player.

I'll also point out one of the best melee weapons in the game is in fact a pistol unless you are a marauder.

I don't think my idea is munchkined in any particular way. He is a droid which is perfectly legal and he is a gadeteer because I can make one.

Cannon wise I see that they are outlawed but this is edge of the empire. So I would expect some outlawed stuff. I am not incorporating any leathal weapons into my droid, and going to work with another PC as his protection droid.

My stats aren't anything to write home about, I may want to increase my cunning. I would then be the streetsmart one of the duo.

Unless your set on face punching I'd take cunning over brawn.

First if you're dead-set on playing a droid, I would beg your gm for 20-25 extra xp. If he does the math, he'll see that it's fair.

My suggestion, listen to the order 66 podcast epsiode 53, "do androids dream of electric meatbags"

It's really worth your time!

Here's the math behind why I think droids get screwed over xp-wise, and are around 25 short.

Lets compare them to a human in our 1st example case, as I think the 2s in all stats is the best baseline for comparison. For a droid to get there he has to spend 120 of his xp. They then have 75 xp left to raise their attributes compared to the 110 a human has. The droids special abilities are probably better than a human, and probably worth around 10-20 xp, which is the basis for where I get the 20-25 figure.

"But Kirdan! Not every player wants or needs a two in every stat." All right we'll do a second example case. The toydarian. The toydarian starts with two 3s, two 2s, and two 1s, and 90 xp to improve. For the droid the get there, he would have spend 140 and have 50 left. I would rate their special abilities roughly equal, depending on the how the gm handles sil 0 and flying.

"But Kirdan! Droids are specialists. They're meant to specialize in one or two stats and ignore the others." Well, from the toydarian example, he'd have 90 xp, the same as the toydarian, to advance his two focused characteristics to, but he has four 1s instead of four twos. If they focus in one stat, well...

Example three, the Twik'gar the Rodian. Twik'gar starts with 2 3 2 2 1 2 and uses 90 of his 100 xp to raise his Agility to the maximum of 5 and takes 10 extra obligation to to get 10 xp to raise his willpower to 2. A droid can spend 140 xp to raise one stat of his choice to 5, then take 5 obligation to have 40 xp to raise two states to two, leaving three ones, compared to all twos in the case of the rodian.

Don't get me wrong. I like droids. They're very interesting to have in the party, which is why when I GM'd I let them have extra xp to start with.

An alternative and interesting experiment a gm could do is lower the amount of xp droids get slightly (varying a bit by model), but let the droid start with the base characteristics of the unit he is an example of (i.e. R2 units would start with 1 1 2 2 1 1 and maybe 160 xp.)

Wow, that Munchkin remark the other poster made wasn't too far of base. "Screwed over"? Come on....

There is more to droids than just the basic stats. They don't eat, they don't sleep, they don't drown, they don't get poisoned, they can survive in the vacuum, they are immune to mind tricks or influences from pheromones, they are not hurt by gas, etc. If those aren't worth a few talent points, than what is?

Not to mention their extra point of soak. Which is certainly worth an XP hit.

I won't say that a droids special abilities aren't good, but remember, droids have special vulnerabilities too.

Also dont forget the extra career skills, which is one more than a human gets, and 2 more than most other races. At least they can pump career skills, which imo is where humans fall down, and yes I know XP wise it can sometimes work out better but you can utilise career skills both from a future skill increase point of view and corresponding talents that work with the same skills, id rather hit rank 2 in 2 or 3 career skills than rank 1 in 2 career and 2 non career skills.

So if you sum up droids compared with nonhumans

Xp from stats 235 (60 + 175)

Non human 280

Now onto skills ,counting 1 point for each first in a skill you have and adding 2 for each second rank

Best human can get 4 rank 1 skills with 2 rank 2 skills Skill levels = 8

Best nonhuman can get 2 rank 1 skills with 3 rank 2 skills (last of these is a fixed or limited choice skill,example one of the worst mixes is Chiss, who have 1 in Presence get Cool, not the best mix in the world, but mileage varies here) skill total=10 unless free race skill is non career then 9

Droid can get 3 rank 1 skills and 3 rank 2 skills all of which are on career. Total skills 12 - the big advantage is that all skills taken are on career.

Using the same process you can see how, IMO, the Corellian human is broken with above as they can get rank 3 in one skill(limited to piloting, which is really not a limiting factot since IMO unless you want rank 2-3 pilot, you might have the option to go normal human), rank 2 on 1 skill with 2 rank 1 skills =6+2+4=12

Enduring Talent

Cybernetic implants at 6

Dont need oxygen/food/atmosphere.

Equipment can be built in and therefor cannot be taken off you (armor,tools etc but within reasons some weapons as well).

You get less disadvantage when trying to fix yourself.

Resistant to Forve skills example influence and sense

Do not underestimate the value of that cybernetic rating either. Its much more accepted narratively for a droid to add a brawn/agility cybernetic arm or leg. A fleshy character limited to brawn rating could take both, but most average characters could maybe add only one further cybernetic. Imagine a droid with +2 agilty from limbs, cybernetic eyes (giving an extra rank in perception and vigilance), retinal tracker(excellent for those autofire weapons), neural interface (allowing coordination to be used on both pilot skills) and (gm permitting) still having a slot left for an excellent back up engaged weapon(repulsor fist), or another cybernetic tool of your choice, note that none of this cost any xp.

Disadvantage - ion weaponry ( and lets be honest since a normal weapon on stun has the same effect its not exactly a big disadvantage, since a blaster carbine on stun will also hit you for strain, so most npcs have this option anyway, without carrying a 2nd weapon)

With all of this I would say they are not short changed for being a droid. Its not all about raw ability (otherwise no-one would go Fallen or any of the other alien races that lose xp for having, usually, one cool ability, given the above droids go way beyond having just one cool ability), you just have to plan to build differently.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot to mention that you take one rank in 6 career skills instead of one and 4 in your spec instead of 2.

That's huge! So add that to the things I listed and the fact you can (and should) really make a droid highly specialized and I really don't see how a player is getting "screwed over" at all.

Also remember that small weapons and equipment can be integrated into the droid, at GM discretion, for NO cost! Hard to take off that laminated armour, or leave that data breaker behind.

By the rules it's no harder to pull integrated items off of a Droid than it is to remove similar items from any other character.

For a disadvantage, it is much harder to heal droids than it is other characters. This isn't as obvious until you've seen what someone with some ranks in Surgeon, Stimpack Specialization, and/or Physician can do. You might even want to consider the Heal/Harm Force ability too. There is simply no equivalent for droids.

I for one am not having an issue with starting stats or skills. I know its not an optimal build and I am OK with that. I have decent combat abilities and can repair stuff with abit of streetsmart and coersion.

But I don't think the excuse should be you can have 6 cybernetics instead of 4 because honestly Legs Arms Brain are the only ones that affect and everyone can have them. It's not really a perk ... Now if they would be found cheaper for a droid that would have been a plus.

Nor is the hey you can have anything interested into ur PC a big boon. When stuff like a restraining bolt could just as easily disable you as a number of other items.

Restraining bolts disable droids. Poisons, a myriad of gasses, a lack of breathable air, and several Force powers disable people.

And did you just say that arms, legs, and brain are the only implants that do anything? Did that really just happen?

For 10k a pop you can't expect that to be the equalizer for a droid PC stat line.

And to clarify those are the only ones worthwild that affect a character stats. Sure the hidden compartment is cool, I don't plan on piloting or using heavy weapons much so not really drawn to those cybernetics. You supposedly can't have a battle type droid due to canon outlawing. So mounting a weapon is probably a bad idea and u can just do it as a droid ect.

It seems obvious to me that you haven’t looked at the new cybernetics introduced in LoNH. Yes, they are primarily meant for use by Ganks, but most of them can be used by anyone.