I have an Technician player who has taken Engineer and Outlaw Tech specializations that is expressing interest in building his own droids. As he's described them, they wouldn't be sentient, and mostly built to serve a specific purpose - like a cam droid that can feed footage back to his visor, or what would amount to small pets that could operate as his weapons. I guess, picture many lethal remotes.

I realize he can already buy much of this, but he seems keen on building his character in this direction. I've let him collect some parts from different droids they've dispatched, and I figured this would be a long-term project, not something that he just rolls and builds in one session, but I thought I'd find more information on this in the books or on the forums. It seems like I'll have to homebrew some rules though.

I can probably stick to existing droids, attachments, and modifications to keep things in perspective. I'm thinking some money should be involved, and the parts and labor he invests will simply reduce the cost that it would normally require to purchase an equivalent droid.

Still, I'm worried about this getting out of hand - an idea that sounds innocent enough but potentially becomes game breaking in the future or used in an unexpected manner. Any suggestions or advice in this regard?

Bill him xp as well for his mechanical upgrades. That's what I do at my table because I don't feel credits represent an adequate meta currency in terms of something that players put a value on. As soon as they have to decide between skills, talents, business/group expansion, and upgrade/attachments for xp, they tend to be a great deal more stingy all on their own.

That's a good idea. But I think my crew is still hungry enough for credits that they think twice about spending them, so I'll probably implement it later down the line. Especially since their ship is accumulating needed repairs almost every session.

Although on second thought, I could argue that the Technician needs to venture into the Slicer specialization as well to round out his abilities. I can't see him building a droid without such knowledge, at least not anything super advanced. That would place the XP burden on him as well.

A frequent number batted around is 25% - 50% of book value to build your own anything. @50% you're looking at new circuitry & custom built frames (built by you), etc. @ 25% it's probably recycled parts found in the dumpster.

Also, all Droids are intelligent - perhaps not very, but they all have at least 1's in all of the characteristics. If not, they are either drones or robots. A robot would have to be programmed with the exact instructions you want it to perform, and a Drone is under the total remote control of another entity (droid or human).

You can keep it to a moderate level by making him spend his manuevers & incidentals giving orders to his droids. This works especially well if he's not making them very smart. It also works if he makes them smart & they have a sense of self preservation.

I too have a character much like that in my group. Him and I had a talk and we came to the understanding that he is not a multibillion credit manufacturing company, so he would have certain limitations. We theorized that time and parts determine the quality of droid. I asked him what level droid he wanted; minion, rival, or nemesis(party member). I used the chapter on making adversaries. The final result was then compared to a droid npc of the same lvl so as to make sure it wasn't rediculous(watch those hard points). The ending cost was bout 1/2 the cost of a factory new(it's always cheaper to make your own stuff), had 1 less hard point(built to work, not for the future). And a word of advice, give it some weird quirk. If you make it take a bit, you won't have the problem of an army(unless you play for a long time). Even then, easy come, easy go..... Despair and someone has forgotten the droid on the planet with jawas on it.

We made a series of side quests during the main campaign. Eventually (bout 4 sessions) the party had Luckybot. Why Luckybot? Of all the droids my player attempted to build, this has been the only one to make it far enough to get a name. No one has the heart to tell the droid.

..he is not a multibillion credit manufacturing company, so he would have certain limitations...The ending cost was bout 1/2 the cost of a factory new(it's always cheaper to make your own stuff...

Love most of what you said, but just curious why it would be cheaper--especially half price--for your PC to make a droid than to buy one. If I were trying to make a cigarette lighter at home, it would cost me a hell of a lot more than the dollar I can buy one for at the corner store, because of all the tools and materials I'd need to create or gather, let alone if I were trying to make a cell phone, let alone a sentient robot. Maybe the salvaged parts from defeated/captured droid enemies makes sense to cut costs somewhat, but then I'd double down on your cool idea about giving that droid a bunch of weird quirks. I don't recall Frankenstein's monster being the most mentally stable. Would it be unreasonable to aim for "75% of cost, and you get to customize it yourself"?

Honestly curious here, wondering if there's a metagame point I'm missing.

Yeah, I was honestly thinking more like 75%. Not having proper tools, materials, or facilities available compared to a manufacturing company would merely increase difficulty. And create a lack of consistency with the end result. That just translates into the existing modification mechanic, and that can be used to introduce those weird quirks with enough threat or despair on a successful roll. And those may not be apparent until the droid is complete.

I suppose I would need to create a character sheet for the droid, but it wouldn't have any class, so I see why you might go with the minion, rival, nemesis route. If it doesn't gain XP, making it stronger would require more time, upgrades, and credits, or the Technician will be repairing/rebuilding it after every battle. The pet eventually becomes a money-sink like the ship.

I'm liking how this is all falling together. The more I try to poke holes in it, the more solutions I find.

The rule I was taught was:

Good, Fast, or Cheap — pick two

If you want it good and cheap, then it’s going to take a very long time, and you’re most likely going to end up building it yourself and sourcing all the parts the hard way, etc…. It’s a money/labor trade-off, but with your time valued at just about zero. You don’t take this version of a critical part you need, because it’s just 10% too expensive, and so you’ll end up waiting another year or three before you can find just the right part at the right price.

If you want it good and fast, then it’s not going to be anywhere remotely close to cheap. And someone else is likely going to be building it, because they’ve spent a lot of time and money amassing all the tools and skills necessary to do that quickly.

If you want it fast and cheap, it’s not going to be anywhere remotely close to good. It’s a kit-bash or a piece of junk, but it might just do the job this one time.

With the benefit of more life experience, to that quote I would now add “… if you’re lucky”.

If you’re not lucky, you may only get to pick one of those three criteria.

For reference, the only (I think) actual crafting rule takes a preexisting object, adds one automatic benefit over the run-of-the-mill item, but has enough variables that the long term use may not be worth it if you roll badly. Take an object in the game - gear, weapon, droid, whatever - make it your basic type, add a benefit over just a regular item so crafting your own isn't useless, then think of what advantage/threat and triumph/despair results could do to the object.

For example, the character can buy his own recon remote, or he can make a probe droid that does the same thing. Success means he does make one, advantage means it doesn't look like a flying pile of scrap, 3 advantage or triumph means he can strap on a holdout blaster or increase a characteristic, and so on and so forth. Failure means reinvesting the time, success and threat means he had to spend more credits, and so on and so forth.

..he is not a multibillion credit manufacturing company, so he would have certain limitations...The ending cost was bout 1/2 the cost of a factory new(it's always cheaper to make your own stuff...

Love most of what you said, but just curious why it would be cheaper--especially half price--for your PC to make a droid than to buy one. If I were trying to make a cigarette lighter at home, it would cost me a hell of a lot more than the dollar I can buy one for at the corner store, because of all the tools and materials I'd need to create or gather, let alone if I were trying to make a cell phone, let alone a sentient robot. Maybe the salvaged parts from defeated/captured droid enemies makes sense to cut costs somewhat, but then I'd double down on your cool idea about giving that droid a bunch of weird quirks. I don't recall Frankenstein's monster being the most mentally stable. Would it be unreasonable to aim for "75% of cost, and you get to customize it yourself"?

Honestly curious here, wondering if there's a metagame point I'm missing.

Sorry I wasn't clear. It was cheaper for that droid/player due to the choices he made with the questions I asked (quality, time). I (as GM) got to say the price. I just like to have final say on cost of goods in my games. Sorta my way of keeping the party hungry.

But in general, it's cheaper to make something yourself if you just want it to function. If you want to make a lighter just like the ones you can buy at a gas station then it's going to cost you a lot more than the 99 cent lighter. Or you can jawa/mcguyver one from a flint and some tinder.

Bill him xp as well for his mechanical upgrades. That's what I do at my table because I don't feel credits represent an adequate meta currency in terms of something that players put a value on. As soon as they have to decide between skills, talents, business/group expansion, and upgrade/attachments for xp, they tend to be a great deal more stingy all on their own.

This idea reeks of a d20 mentality, why should he take a hit in terms of experience?To be perfectly honest even in DnD I don't like this idea, I find that charging the PC a lot of credits and making them make numerous checks to get something as complex as a droid to work right is enough of a risk when building the droid.I personally would require mechanics checks to build and wire the body correctly and a Computers check to correctly build the AI so that the droid functions. Additionally failure on the mechanics check might mean the PC damaged either the external shell or internal pieces enough that he will have to get parts(going to the junkyard has credit costs, scavenging after a battle has its own risks and rewards). In my experience if credits arent valued highly the group is probably getting too many credits.

And here I was thinking Age of Ultron... how would your players react if your new droid is being voiced by Spader and "he" was even better at building droids so much that it becomes a nemesis for your group developing various secret identities maybe working for some of their enemies and Allies trying to prove itself ending up becoming the big bad for your campaign...

Try watching the opening videos of KOTOR the Sith Lords game on you tube specifically when they reach that mining outpost...

Good, fast, cheap might be good options but would you use stolen tech to get that droid you're building work especially if you have no idea what it actually does?

The rule I was taught was:

Good, Fast, or Cheap — pick two

If you want it good and cheap, then it’s going to take a very long time, and you’re most likely going to end up building it yourself and sourcing all the parts the hard way, etc…. It’s a money/labor trade-off, but with your time valued at just about zero. You don’t take this version of a critical part you need, because it’s just 10% too expensive, and so you’ll end up waiting another year or three before you can find just the right part at the right price.

If you want it good and fast, then it’s not going to be anywhere remotely close to cheap. And someone else is likely going to be building it, because they’ve spent a lot of time and money amassing all the tools and skills necessary to do that quickly.

If you want it fast and cheap, it’s not going to be anywhere remotely close to good. It’s a kit-bash or a piece of junk, but it might just do the job this one time.

With the benefit of more life experience, to that quote I would now add “… if you’re lucky”.

If you’re not lucky, you may only get to pick one of those three criteria.

Emm-Trey?

Having a droid tinkerer in my party, it helps that he has the "Obsession" emotional weakness. He's got his one pet project droid that started out life as a Search and Rescue droid that he likes to fiddle with and shoe-horn a little extra functionality into. The version of BradKnowles rule I was taught was "You can have it fast, cheap, and high quality. Pick Two." When he's cash starved, he tends to machine his own parts and write his own code to govern the new behaviors. This means all he needs are raw materials (and technically tools, but curse you "Mental Tools"!) and time. Now, as one of my favorite ways to throw a spanner into this particular set of works, I always make sure to give him a reason why there has to be at least an upgrade to his difficulty. One of my favorite things I have come up with is the "Choose your own difficulty" roll.

Specific example: Jerex Mao is adding some slicing tools to his SAR droid that allows him to basically tell GK-88 to go plug into that imperial computer and go fetch me some data! Now, he doesn't want the droid to do the slicing, but he wants to basically use the droid as a remote access point. Imperial computers with big secrets tend not to be on networks, but an encrypted comlink in GK-88, and one that connects to Mao's datapad and we have an impromptu secure network so he can go make sure his friends don't get into too much trouble while sifting through the computers for dirty Imperial secrets. As a GM, I say, "Ok, but, you are probably going to want to put a firewall in your droid, because if the Empire has their own computer security guy, you don't want him reprogramming and retasking your search and rescue droid to become a search and destroy droid, right?" My player (paraphrasing), "You're right scoundrel, that would suck! What's the difficulty to code that into his slicing program?" This is when I lean back and steeple my fingers and say "What ever difficulty you can succeed at becomes the difficulty the other potential threat has to deal with." You can watch as the wheels turn in the player's head and almost narrate their thoughts. "If I make the difficulty low enough I can do this as a cakewalk, it's a cakewalk to send my droid back to murder me in my sleep... Did I eat my wheaties this morning? How many of those darn red dice will the other guy be able to beat? what if I give my self some setbacks, too?" 5 red dice and destiny getting flipped starts coming up in a hurry because the player wants to protect his droid that he loves like a child, Despairs show up to put smiles on my face as I say "Of course it worked! You have -nothing- to worry about!" And the real trick to this is, since he picked High Quality and Cheap, it takes time. Depending on the feature he's adding, he gets to make one roll every two weeks of in game time to a month (It gives people things to do other than stare at each other in hyperspace), so the desire for a high difficulty to counter his mod self limits this.

Any time you aren't picking Cheap as the deciding factor, I feel pretty free to jack the price up when he wants something fast, and astronomical prices limit demand is the one thing I walked away from an economics class I took in college. (The other thing was economists and people who do real math-for-the-sake-of-math math should never be trapped in an elevator together because I thought I was having a stroke the third time they insisted on calling it a "curvy linear progression.")

Anyway, my two cents. Hope it helps.

The rule I was taught was:

Good, Fast, or Cheap — pick two

Of course! Outstanding rule, and it makes total sense. Interestingly, I was introduced to this concept while reading about the failures within NASA that led to the Challenger disaster. Nothing more grim to illustrate the consequences of cutting corners to management.

Emm-Trey?

Having a droid tinkerer in my party, it helps that he has the "Obsession" emotional weakness. He's got his one pet project droid that started out life as a Search and Rescue droid that he likes to fiddle with and shoe-horn a little extra functionality into. The version of BradKnowles rule I was taught was "You can have it fast, cheap, and high quality. Pick Two." When he's cash starved, he tends to machine his own parts and write his own code to govern the new behaviors. This means all he needs are raw materials (and technically tools, but curse you "Mental Tools"!) and time. Now, as one of my favorite ways to throw a spanner into this particular set of works, I always make sure to give him a reason why there has to be at least an upgrade to his difficulty. One of my favorite things I have come up with is the "Choose your own difficulty" roll.

Specific example: Jerex Mao is adding some slicing tools to his SAR droid that allows him to basically tell GK-88 to go plug into that imperial computer and go fetch me some data! Now, he doesn't want the droid to do the slicing, but he wants to basically use the droid as a remote access point. Imperial computers with big secrets tend not to be on networks, but an encrypted comlink in GK-88, and one that connects to Mao's datapad and we have an impromptu secure network so he can go make sure his friends don't get into too much trouble while sifting through the computers for dirty Imperial secrets. As a GM, I say, "Ok, but, you are probably going to want to put a firewall in your droid, because if the Empire has their own computer security guy, you don't want him reprogramming and retasking your search and rescue droid to become a search and destroy droid, right?" My player (paraphrasing), "You're right scoundrel, that would suck! What's the difficulty to code that into his slicing program?" This is when I lean back and steeple my fingers and say "What ever difficulty you can succeed at becomes the difficulty the other potential threat has to deal with." You can watch as the wheels turn in the player's head and almost narrate their thoughts. "If I make the difficulty low enough I can do this as a cakewalk, it's a cakewalk to send my droid back to murder me in my sleep... Did I eat my wheaties this morning? How many of those darn red dice will the other guy be able to beat? what if I give my self some setbacks, too?" 5 red dice and destiny getting flipped starts coming up in a hurry because the player wants to protect his droid that he loves like a child, Despairs show up to put smiles on my face as I say "Of course it worked! You have -nothing- to worry about!" And the real trick to this is, since he picked High Quality and Cheap, it takes time. Depending on the feature he's adding, he gets to make one roll every two weeks of in game time to a month (It gives people things to do other than stare at each other in hyperspace), so the desire for a high difficulty to counter his mod self limits this.

Any time you aren't picking Cheap as the deciding factor, I feel pretty free to jack the price up when he wants something fast, and astronomical prices limit demand is the one thing I walked away from an economics class I took in college. (The other thing was economists and people who do real math-for-the-sake-of-math math should never be trapped in an elevator together because I thought I was having a stroke the third time they insisted on calling it a "curvy linear progression.")

Anyway, my two cents. Hope it helps.

Great ideas! I'm absolutely going to borrow this.

You could port the rules for building lightsaber hilts over to building droids. Finding scrap droid parts to be refurbished should be fairly easy, especially for someone with Utinni!