So while on Nar Shadda the team decided to invest in an astromech. They found someone to sell them one for 9000. In an attempt to negotiate the price down, the final result was 2 DESPAIRS!! So they took the droid at that price, fearful of what the future holds.

I just have to make this the most epic NPC foil ever. So I turn to you, the community. Whats the worst that can happen? Not just once, but all the time.

Around the table, he was designated R2-F13 (Friday the 13th). One player nicknamed him "Ralphie", which led to "You'll shoot your eye out!" and "He didn't say 'fudge'".

It could be a long-dormant tertiary backup of IG-88A (the leader of the Droid Revolution ) or HK-01 (the leader of the Great Droid Revolt of 4015BBY ).

Or maybe it’s another member of an alien sentient technological race (like Vuffi-Raa ), only this time they are bound and determined to destroy the entire galaxy.

Or maybe R2-D2’s Evil Twin Brother.

Or perhaps Skippy ’s Evil Twin Sith Brother.

Who knows?

The droid is hollow, and barely functions at all to tell the truth. Inside it lives three especially clever and conniving Kowakian monkey-lizards who sneak out at night to tear things up and steal shineys from the PCs.

The droid is hollow, and serves as a vehicle for a Jawa thief. He's a master burglar and slicer always on the lookout for the bestest loot, like lightsabers and fully-modded blasters.

Utinni!

The droid is partially hollow, up-armored, and bristling with hidden weapons. It serves as a tank-like vehicle for a Zilkin mastermind. The Zilkin runs a nefarious salvage crew in the Outer Rim. The usual set up for this saturnalian gang is to sell the "astromech" to an unsuspecting group who owns a ship. At the earliest convenience, the mastermind plots a hyperspace course that leads to a system where the group is jumped by the pirates! The corrupt corsairs then dismantle the prize for loot and leave the wreck among the system's asteroid belt.

(Yes, I stole this from Firefly's "Our Mrs. Reynolds" episode...)

The droid was a courier for one of the more powerful Hutts. It was droidnapped, memory wiped, and resold for a quick buck... to the PCs! It is carrying [something of great value and/or importance to the Hutt owner] and doesn't even know it. Trouble ensues.

Bounty hunters galore!

It's an R5 unit.

The R2 unit is constantly tinkering with equipment, in an effort to improve it. Regardless of orders. This leads to several problems. #1 - The party needs something, and finds it in pieces, as he was in mid-modification. #2 - Item functions, but not in the expected way. Blasters default to stun setting, datapads transmit data on open frequencies to the ship's computer, comlinks are set to "speaker mode", etc. #3 - Modification makes item not function as desired - convert blaster cannon to ion cannon, remove a weapon's special quality and replace with another, comm jammer becomes a comm scrambler, life form scanner only scans electrical signatures. #4 - A standard modification on an item is replaced with another modification #5 - droid hacks party bank account and purchases items he believes they need (real usefulness depends on GM evilness. Could range from buying a case of grenades to 50 cases of SPAM)

The thing could have some kind of a virus that infects their ship and all their tech, causing problems. Then even if they get rid of the driod, they still have to fix the infected systems, and the infection could reappear at any time. Works well in conjunction with many of the ideas already given above.

It's looking for its old master...

The droid has a tendency to go on walkabout whenever the ship's boarding ramp is down or when he's left alone for a while. "Where'd the droid go?" Remember in ANH when R2 took off to go look for Old Ben and Luke had to go find him? This is your chance for lots of fun plot hooks and side adventures. Give him the standard assortment of tools and even if the group restrains him, he always seems to escape when nobody is looking.

Alternately, give him a defect where he has had so many memory wipes that anytime he is used or ordered to perform a task he has a chance of forgetting what he was doing. Perhaps roll a Force die each round to see if he acts normally (light side) or forgets (darkside).

F13 is very methodical and indiscriminate about cleaning. Did a party member leave his favorite blaster on the table? Into the trash. Did someone leave some important documents unfiled? Into the trash. Did that one critical macguffin clatter out of its storage crate? Into the trash.

I'd have it sabotage the navcomputers, weapons and engines, then have them drop out hyperspace in front of some pirates.

Despair 1: it makes incessant noise.

Despair 2: somebody replaced its noicebox with comtemporary pop/hip hop clippings.

It fancies itself a droid messiah, on a holy crusade to liberate droids everywhere. Any port the PCs put down in, the R2 heads out and liberates some of its brethren, offering them sanctuary on the PCs' ship and hiding them well enough that the PCs won't find out until it has a sizeable "congregation". At this point their ship is swarming with more-or-less independent (not to mention sane) droids whose irate owners might come looking for them.

You could Have him Start "Sabotaging" Things around the ship unbeknownst to the Pcs.

Player gets up from rest and tries to leave his room but the Door is oddly jammed.

A Day or 2 later, Some one turns on the water at the refresher station and it starts Spraying water everywhere and can'tbe shut off cause the Knob falls off, until some one fixes it with a Mechanics check.

couple days later, as they try to walk down the boarding Ramp is starts Closing on them, quickly, before they can get off. They go bac to lower it again and as long as they aren't standing on it, it lowers.. as soon as some one starts down it it starts Closing again.

Random Crap like that. To figure out it has actually been sabotaged, some one Needs to make an opposed Perception check vs the Droids Mechanics (if they have mechanics they get a boost die) to realize it was Sabotaged, but won't know by whom.

A lot of good suggestions here. Just one thing to add. Do nothing for at least two sessions. Let the droid work perfectly in every way. Let the players slowly forget those despairs. Then spring one of the scenarios above on the PCs... It is a bit too obvious what is happening if immediately after buying the droid things start to go wrong on the ship. If it happens after two sessions, and just after the PCs spoke to that shifty looking chadra-fan at the starport who told them he loved their ship and it looked just like one his uncle had they start thinking about something other than the droid when things go bump in the night while in hyperspace.

Also, remember that many of the flaws described above can be negated by a memory wipe, you don't want to make it too easy for the PCs...

Let me second the sleeping tiger suggestion. There's nothing better than springing something on the party from left field and when they all look at you questioningly you tell them "remember those despairs X sessions ago?"

The two despairs were part of the Negotiation check to buy the droid, so rather than having the droid itself be the source of trouble (evil/incompetent/etc), make it something relating to the negotiations or perhaps to the droid's history. The seller didn't actually own it (and a very angry owner has put a bounty out on the latest 'thieves'), the droid is in possession of - or just thought to be in possession of - critical information relating to some group that another group is after ("That IS the droid we're looking for!"), or the seller is under investigation for other things and now the PCs are considered to be persons of interest in that case due to having dealt with him, leading to complications down the line.

Marvin, the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhikers Guide. Kryten from Red Dwarf. HAL 9000 from 2001. Just a couple of ideas for you. Or, perhaps, parts of the droid keep breaking, and the players have to sink credits into keeping the little bugger up and running. (Also a great way to keep the players 'poor') Have the thing stuffed to the gills with sensitive information on a Hutt or a Grand Moff, who really REALLY wants the droid back, or wants it in a billion pieces. Maybe it knows the hyperroute to Byss...imagine what the Empire would do if they found out that little gem. Or maybe it knows why kids like applejacks when it doesn't taste like apples. For even more fun, have the thing show up just when the players thought they'd finally gotten rid of it. The group got two despairs for the negotiation roll...it is now your sworn duty as the GM to run roughshod over your players.

Ok, here's the direction I'm planning. The crew is on Felucia looking for a certain plant. On their way back to the ship, they see it fly off. The droid has hijacked it for a pirate who is building his fleet. So now they have to get off planet annd track down their ship which has all their stuff.

Any other fluff I can add?

Ok, here's the direction I'm planning. The crew is on Felucia looking for a certain plant. On their way back to the ship, they see it fly off. The droid has hijacked it for a pirate who is building his fleet. So now they have to get off planet annd track down their ship which has all their stuff.

Any other fluff I can add?

Maybe give them a clue as to who is behind this with a taunting message over their comms.

Ok, here's the direction I'm planning. The crew is on Felucia looking for a certain plant. On their way back to the ship, they see it fly off. The droid has hijacked it for a pirate who is building his fleet. So now they have to get off planet annd track down their ship which has all their stuff.

Any other fluff I can add?

Maybe give them a clue as to who is behind this with a taunting message over their comms.

Well, Blackhole is the overall BBEG in our campaign. Maybe the can confront the pirates only yo find out Blackhole intercepted them and got their ship before the pirates could do anything with it.

heheh I thought of Making him For a NPC in my game as well as making one of these guys as a Character for myself