A handful of people here are reacting in ways that explicitly state or strongly suggest this is a discussing of Force sensitive droids. It isn't.

Plainly, now: Droids do not get to use the Force.

I'm asking if you'd allow a droid character to use the mechanics of the force powers if narratively they fall under the category of technology. Move using antigravity, protect being a ray shield emitter, etc.

Some of you have responded appropriately, but if your whole arguement has been, or is about to be solely, "But droids can't use the Force!" then you need to read this again.

The issue is that the mechanics of Force powers in-game are meant to mimic the narrative qualities of the Force in Star Wars stories. So, if a player that can't become Force-Sensitive or whose character is explicitly not Force-Sensitive wants to be able to do some of the things Force users can do, other game mechanics should be leveraged to narratively reflect those things.

So, the argument that "Droids can't use the Force" (however ineloquent it might be) is both a narrative and mechanic one if you keep the above thought in mind.

The next logical step would be to make a Mando that simulates the Force. Pull people towards you with an ascention pistol, substitute grip for a pair of bolas (or an utility belt full of bolas), fry them with a "persuader" cattle prod (loving the name) and choke them just to be sure. Influence checks would be done by simply staring at the offending party uncomfortably with all of your weapons clearly visible. Misdirect is simply customs officers and corporate cops making a rational decision not to be in the same room, building or street as a Mando with seventeen weapons.

My only comment is "Doesn't anyone just run a damned human smuggler or soldier anymore?"

I always find it interesting how players migrate to the weird and unusual instead of just playing the genre.

"This is a cool game about robot cops fighting crime. There are 4 major types and then one weird one that is in experimental stage and requires all kinds of special handling and rules. What kind would you like to play?"

"Tell me more about that weird one!"

never fails

My least favorite aspect of the entire Star Wars universe is the whole Jedi concept. I accept it but it just seems out of place in an otherwise technology driven and extremely interesting genre in it own right. I prefer concentrating on the ongoing war, the military conflicts and the thriving underworld influences at work. Guess what my characters want to be?

I'm asking if you'd allow a droid character to use the mechanics of the force powers if narratively they fall under the category of technology. Move using antigravity, protect being a ray shield emitter, etc.

Mechanically, I don't know why not. Go for it. Maybe each "Force" upgrade requires the equivalent of a weapons mod or something, with maybe a difficulty by the row in the tree the upgrade is on. I would think that kind of technology is hard to come by, expensive and/or unique, and probably the centrepiece of the campaign. Otherwise all the other characters are going to want a Protect-equivalent attachment for their blaster. The droid better be a mechanics whiz, and not so wealthy they can just whip up free handouts for the rest of the crew.

Aesthetically though, no thanks.

Why don't you just give him 2 repulsor fists (I think it's in lords of nal hutta) and call it a day (he'd be able to force push but nothing else)

Why don't you just give him 2 repulsor fists (I think it's in lords of nal hutta) and call it a day (he'd be able to force push but nothing else)

Well, its just a hypothetical. No one has asked me to do this, and I wanted to see what other players and GMs thought.

Yeah, bad idea in general to let droids be able to directly ape the full effect of Force powers, no matter what techno-babble laden justification is given.

If you look in Legends, you'll find PROXY, a one-of-a-kind droid from The Force Unleashed, who had micro-repulsors installed to allow him to mimic some of the most basic elements of Move as well as a holo-cloak that enabled him to take on the appearance of different individuals. But he wasn't able to affect multiple objects or anything really big either, and while he could leap much further than a typical droid of a humanoid design, he wasn't doing Jedi-style super leaps.

Frankly, I'd say make these sorts of things be cybernetic enhancements that cost a small mint to acquire, on par with the cost of a Silhouette 5 combat-ready vessel; they most certainly should not be something the Droid PC is able to start out with. As for game mechanics, at the very best they should mimic the basic effect of a Force power, such as Move or Enhance (to use PROXY as an example), but that's it.

The problem that comes into play when you decide to allow Droids to have Force Powers is it breaks Droids.

Droids are already a min-max paradise. Their little bit of balancing factor is their weaknesses. They cannot have the Force and yet at the same time they are immune to any Force powers that work "on the mind". At the point you give them Force Powers, you have to remove their immunity to them as well.

Realistically you destroy the point of picking a species and you might as well let anyone pick whatever Abilities + Free Skill + starting XP that they want.

The species XP available is based on Characteristics/Free Skills/Free Talents/Special Abilities/Weaknesses... If you get rid of the weakness, you need to remove some of the XP. Then you have to start adjusting the min-max ability because it is based on the XP available. Suddenly the balance of the species goes out the window. This is even before you get into the "story breaking" part of it.

If you do not care about balance, or sticking to any of the source material, then do whatever you wish. It would be a hefty task that is more complicated than "just trying to justify why they have the talents".

I really have to disagree with the notion that not being able to use the Force is a balancing factor for Droids. If that were the case, any Droid character for a non-Force using concept would be broken (much in the same way D&D Clerics were never balanced by having to follow The Ethos Of What I Was Going To Do Anyway). Droids didn't finally become balanced when Force & Destiny was released, they were balanced from the start by starting with all 1 characteristics, meaning that you spend all of that starting XP and are still behind where an organic species would be, forcing you to be hyper-specialized and incompetent outside of a narrow skill set.

Now, I can see the argument that if you open up mind-altering Force powers to the droid, then they should be vulnerable in turn, but already there's nothing stopping the droid from being Bound, Moved, or Unleashed at.

All that being said, I agree with those who would be reluctant to use the Force mechanics to model similar technologies for narrative reasons. Force powers rely on the unreliable Force Die in exchange for being unlimited use, neither of which makes sense for a proven technological device. Even with experimental technology, I'd rather handle the unreliable aspect through threats/despairs then by using the Force Die. That said, I would absolutely, say, reference the damage values for the Force power when considering how much damage the character could do by hurling objects at someone with a mini-tractor beam.

I'm asking if you'd allow a droid character to use the mechanics of the force powers if narratively they fall under the category of technology. Move using antigravity, protect being a ray shield emitter, etc.

No.

You're basically talking about the Gravity Gun here and that's Ranged combat and it should be treated as such. Then there is the trouble of what skill is this droid going to use for Move. Discipline/Willpower? That doesn't make sense seeing how he isn't using Willpower, but some sort of point and shoot cannon. Okay, so you use Ranged/Agility. Now you've got a droid who can max Agility to be really good at shooting and the Force. It's the same problem you run into with all those folks who want to run Brawl and Melee off Agility (because it's kung fu so it's Agile), a single characteristic being made significantly more advantageous than other.

You already have the rules you need for a droid with a gravity gun, use those. There's no real need to muck up the rules so much just to let a droid use a mechanic that the RAW explicitly says "No" to.

I would go "maybe". The concept sounds interesting enough, and there's certainly all kinds of potential for awesome backstory hooks: bounty hunters, meeting the creator, why he did what he did and so on. I would probably work with the player, try and find a balance between too many sweet perks and staying true to the concept. And I would go in with the caveat that if it doesn't look like it was working out, that we could pull the plug (perhaps in a satisfying story arc ending way).

I've done something similar before - admittedly as an NPC. He was a con-man in the Old Republic era who had a lightsaber (and just enough skill to look like he could use it). He had a small repulsorfield generator up one sleeve for moving things, a agony inducing ultrasonic blaster-ish thing up the other sleeve for his 'force choke' and a small fannypack generator for one or two shots of 'force lightning'.

He and his shill would roll into a backwater town quietly in the night, prepare a couple of flashy looking events ahead of time. The next morning The Dark Jedi would roll in, start causing trouble and being all sith-y while his Shill would be a badass 'Mandolorian' who came riding in to save the day and drive the Jedi away - think an old west stunt show, but nobody knew it was a show. The Mandolorian would then collect a huge reward for saving the town, and the team would move onto the next planet.

Everything was fine until they ran into a team of real Jedi sent to investigate and stop this rampaging Sith. Whoops.

So, the question is, if someone can come up with a really good explanation for how they can simulate all the Force powers using technical means for a Droid, would you allow them to use the normal Force powers methods?

For me, the answer is no. Clearly no.

They could use the technical means, sure. And they could fake using Force powers. They could even believe that they’re using Force powers. But the underlying mechanics aren’t the same.

IMO, the best part of this story would be how long could the charade go on, and how many people could be convinced? If the Droid didn’t drink his own kool-aid at the beginning, how long until he started to believe that he actually was using the Force?

If you want to use the actual Force rules, then you need to use the actual Force. If you want to simulate the Force using technical means, then you simulate the Force using technical means.

But simulating the Force using technical means is not a good enough excuse to use the actual Force rules.

For me. IMO. YMMV.

My only comment is "Doesn't anyone just run a damned human smuggler or soldier anymore?"

Oddly enough in our campaign we have a human commando/gunner who wants the Republic restored so he can become a bounty hunter and enjoy the freedom they had in that time. We also have a Wookie and a Mon Calamari along with the psychotic demolition droid. Not too much weirdness. The strange thing we noticed is every character has a nickname except the human. He doesn't have any odd characteristics to form a nickname from.

Sure; but most importantly what class of droid is this and thus what is it's function? That is the first discussion that should be had with a player before they build any droid character.

Why don't you just give him 2 repulsor fists (I think it's in lords of nal hutta) and call it a day (he'd be able to force push but nothing else)

Well, its just a hypothetical. No one has asked me to do this, and I wanted to see what other players and GMs thought.

Well, I will say in a galaxy as diverse and strange as Star Wars provides almost anything is possible. If someone were to play a droid designed to mimic force powers they would have to come up with a character history at least a page long (Times New Roman size 12 1.5 spaced) to explain why such a droid would have been built and why it is on the Rim hanging out with a bunch of miscreants. Having said that I've got the bare bones forming in my head.... Lets see....

Following the infamous "Order 66" the Emperor knew many Jedi would have been missed leaving some dangerous loose ends. To tie those ends up he funded the design and manufacture of the "Jedroid" a line of droids designed to mimic not only human appearance and behavior but the powers of a young force sensitive. Using state of the art miniaturized technology such as micro tractor beams, long range ultra sensitive sensors combined with dedicated logic circuitry, top of the line servos and miniature pulsed contragrav thrusters the droids would seem capable of performing Force like feats.

The Emperor reasoned that sending such droids out into the Rim worlds of the galaxy, where Jedi would have likely hidden, would attract the attentions of said Jedi who might take the droids under their wings to train them. The droids programming would start them off at a lower power level and lead the Jedi into believing that they were training their new "students" and thus lowering their guards so the droid could then kill the Jedi and report back to the Emperor with the Jedi's lightsaber as proof.

The Emperor demanded the program be so secret that the droids couldn't be manufactured by any of the droid factories so each one needed to be built by hand in a workshop under security so tight that the engineers and technicians doing the work didn't know exactly what they were doing. Only a handful saw the finished product assembled and tested out. An initial run of seventy jedroids were made and ran through a series of trials to see if they would work. The first sixty eight worked flawlessly in a mechanical sense, their force power replication tech was fine, the problem was in their personality replication software. They simply couldn't act like whatever race they were designed to duplicate. However the last two, made to replicate humans, worked perfectly. Their external "skin" was warm to the touch, perspired when active,bled when cut and formed scar tissue when healed. It even reacted with synthflesh and other medical gear correctly. Their personalities were believable, they came across as secretive, but that made sense as they were supposed to be in hiding.

The Emperor approved of them and they were equipped with clothing, credits, a blaster pistol and other personal effects along with a molecular stiletto with a charge of synthetic neurotoxin strong enough to kill a bantha. They were told to book passage on a freighter headed for the rim and blend in. The Emperor then ordered a new batch using the same programming as the last two. He ordered the failures dissembled for parts to be used on the next generation of jedroids.

However in his arrogance he never thought the jedroids could turn against him. Instead of following orders the pair returned to the workshop, activated the other jedroids and together they destroyed the workshop and all of the computer files on the project. Most of the jedroids were destroyed by the Stormtroopers assigned to the facility but a few survived and they scavenged what they could from the wreckage and scattered across the Rim Worlds to find their place in the Galaxy.

The jedroid Sixty-Nine booked passage on a freighter bound for Ryloth where he found work as a gun for hire. The local miners guild needed guards to protect their shipments from bandits and the jedroid did very good work. His ability to detect danger and react to it quickly and effectively saved many shipments and many lives. He used his "force" powers sparingly as he knew the Emperor would like to recover him just as much as any real force sensitive. In time he had to move on as his reputation was growing and the tales included enough miraculous feats that he knew the Inquisitors would soon visit Ryloth to find their source.

Well, that's all that was rattling around in the old noggin. Enjoy.

In a universe as vast, and dare I say expanded, as the Star Wars universe, there's a lot to experience. For now I'd like to focus on technology. In many sources we've seen antigravity, flash freezing, lightning cannon, emp, really, you name it, and I bet it's in there somewhere.

If a player came to you with a character concept of a droid that has been outfit with special equipment that allows said droid to emit an antigravity beam to lift and move objects, and a super computer brain capable of reasonably predicting the probable outcome of events, would you let them have access to Force powers?

If they jump through the same hurdles to acquire the Force rating, spend the XP to buy the powers and upgrades, and understand that such a rare and powerful droid will draw a lot of negative attention if discovered, you know I just might.

Would you?

If it prgresses the story yes... if the player wants the added interest '...follow them AND GET ME THAT DROID!'

The force powers make meatbags an attractive collective at chargen. I'd let a droid purchase equipment and give it a Battery Level, similar to Force Rating else it seems that it could be open to abuse. In fact.... the quest for the Battery in the first place.. or it plugs in a Kyber Crystal.. just my 2 cents

Why don't you just give him 2 repulsor fists (I think it's in lords of nal hutta) and call it a day (he'd be able to force push but nothing else)

Well, its just a hypothetical. No one has asked me to do this, and I wanted to see what other players and GMs thought.

Well, I will say in a galaxy as diverse and strange as Star Wars provides almost anything is possible. If someone were to play a droid designed to mimic force powers they would have to come up with a character history at least a page long (Times New Roman size 12 1.5 spaced) to explain why such a droid would have been built and why it is on the Rim hanging out with a bunch of miscreants. Having said that I've got the bare bones forming in my head.... Lets see....

Following the infamous "Order 66" the Emperor knew many Jedi would have been missed leaving some dangerous loose ends. To tie those ends up he funded the design and manufacture of the "Jedroid" a line of droids designed to mimic not only human appearance and behavior but the powers of a young force sensitive. Using state of the art miniaturized technology such as micro tractor beams, long range ultra sensitive sensors combined with dedicated logic circuitry, top of the line servos and miniature pulsed contragrav thrusters the droids would seem capable of performing Force like feats.

The Emperor reasoned that sending such droids out into the Rim worlds of the galaxy, where Jedi would have likely hidden, would attract the attentions of said Jedi who might take the droids under their wings to train them. The droids programming would start them off at a lower power level and lead the Jedi into believing that they were training their new "students" and thus lowering their guards so the droid could then kill the Jedi and report back to the Emperor with the Jedi's lightsaber as proof.

The Emperor demanded the program be so secret that the droids couldn't be manufactured by any of the droid factories so each one needed to be built by hand in a workshop under security so tight that the engineers and technicians doing the work didn't know exactly what they were doing. Only a handful saw the finished product assembled and tested out. An initial run of seventy jedroids were made and ran through a series of trials to see if they would work. The first sixty eight worked flawlessly in a mechanical sense, their force power replication tech was fine, the problem was in their personality replication software. They simply couldn't act like whatever race they were designed to duplicate. However the last two, made to replicate humans, worked perfectly. Their external "skin" was warm to the touch, perspired when active,bled when cut and formed scar tissue when healed. It even reacted with synthflesh and other medical gear correctly. Their personalities were believable, they came across as secretive, but that made sense as they were supposed to be in hiding.

The Emperor approved of them and they were equipped with clothing, credits, a blaster pistol and other personal effects along with a molecular stiletto with a charge of synthetic neurotoxin strong enough to kill a bantha. They were told to book passage on a freighter headed for the rim and blend in. The Emperor then ordered a new batch using the same programming as the last two. He ordered the failures dissembled for parts to be used on the next generation of jedroids.

However in his arrogance he never thought the jedroids could turn against him. Instead of following orders the pair returned to the workshop, activated the other jedroids and together they destroyed the workshop and all of the computer files on the project. Most of the jedroids were destroyed by the Stormtroopers assigned to the facility but a few survived and they scavenged what they could from the wreckage and scattered across the Rim Worlds to find their place in the Galaxy.

The jedroid Sixty-Nine booked passage on a freighter bound for Ryloth where he found work as a gun for hire. The local miners guild needed guards to protect their shipments from bandits and the jedroid did very good work. His ability to detect danger and react to it quickly and effectively saved many shipments and many lives. He used his "force" powers sparingly as he knew the Emperor would like to recover him just as much as any real force sensitive. In time he had to move on as his reputation was growing and the tales included enough miraculous feats that he knew the Inquisitors would soon visit Ryloth to find their source.

Well, that's all that was rattling around in the old noggin. Enjoy.

WRITE THIS AS A NOVEL/CROSSOVER ADVENTURE BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE DOES!!!!!

DOUBLE POST

In a universe as vast, and dare I say expanded, as the Star Wars universe, there's a lot to experience. For now I'd like to focus on technology. In many sources we've seen antigravity, flash freezing, lightning cannon, emp, really, you name it, and I bet it's in there somewhere.

If a player came to you with a character concept of a droid that has been outfit with special equipment that allows said droid to emit an antigravity beam to lift and move objects, and a super computer brain capable of reasonably predicting the probable outcome of events, would you let them have access to Force powers?

If they jump through the same hurdles to acquire the Force rating, spend the XP to buy the powers and upgrades, and understand that such a rare and powerful droid will draw a lot of negative attention if discovered, you know I just might.

Would you?

If a droid wants a tractor beam, I'd extrapolate from the ship tractor beams... down to Tractor 0 or 1.

Well, that's all that was rattling around in the old noggin. Enjoy.

Aaaaand there's my next character!

<CTRL>+A

<CTRL>+C

<CTRL>+S

Well, that's all that was rattling around in the old noggin. Enjoy.

Aaaaand there's my next character!

<CTRL>+A

<CTRL>+C

<CTRL>+S

Or the next villain >.>

A handful of people here are reacting in ways that explicitly state or strongly suggest this is a discussing of Force sensitive droids. It isn't.

Plainly, now: Droids do not get to use the Force.

I'm asking if you'd allow a droid character to use the mechanics of the force powers if narratively they fall under the category of technology. Move using antigravity, protect being a ray shield emitter, etc.

Some of you have responded appropriately, but if your whole arguement has been, or is about to be solely, "But droids can't use the Force!" then you need to read this again.

This is Proxy from the Force Unleashed. Give him a lightsaber and a holoprojector skin and ta da! Proxy. This is already kinda an in-universe thing. Not that I'm recommending it or that I'd accept it at my table (droids have never gone over well with my group ever for entirely unrelated reasons), but it's your table and such a thing has appeared in Star Wars.

A handful of people here are reacting in ways that explicitly state or strongly suggest this is a discussing of Force sensitive droids. It isn't.

Plainly, now: Droids do not get to use the Force.

I'm asking if you'd allow a droid character to use the mechanics of the force powers if narratively they fall under the category of technology. Move using antigravity, protect being a ray shield emitter, etc.

Some of you have responded appropriately, but if your whole arguement has been, or is about to be solely, "But droids can't use the Force!" then you need to read this again.

This is Proxy from the Force Unleashed. Give him a lightsaber and a holoprojector skin and ta da! Proxy. This is already kinda an in-universe thing. Not that I'm recommending it or that I'd accept it at my table (droids have never gone over well with my group ever for entirely unrelated reasons), but it's your table and such a thing has appeared in Star Wars.

Know what? I've changed my mind. Yes, I'd allow it. Know why? Have you seen the cost of cybernetics? Let that player struggle spending thousands of credits to build that tech-Force mimic while everyone else spends one-tenth in XP. Hope you hand out credits like candy on Halloween. Also, you have to either craft or okay all the gizmo tech. Have at it. Go to town.

If a droid in my campaign wanted to mimic using the Force without actually being Force Sensitive, the player would have to do so without taking any Force specializations or talents. Allowing them to "approximate" being FS by just becoming FS for all intents and purposes defeats the purpose, in my opinion. The whole point is to approximate what the Force can do via cybernetics, holograms, jump boots, etc.

Well, that's all that was rattling around in the old noggin. Enjoy.

Aaaaand there's my next character!

<CTRL>+A

<CTRL>+C

<CTRL>+S

Or the next villain >.>

Actually, you;re right. The concept works MUCH better as bad guy(s).

This is Proxy from the Force Unleashed. Give him a lightsaber and a holoprojector skin and ta da! Proxy. This is already kinda an in-universe thing. Not that I'm recommending it or that I'd accept it at my table (droids have never gone over well with my group ever for entirely unrelated reasons), but it's your table and such a thing has appeared in Star Wars.

Proxy doesn’t actually use the standard Force rules. He’s using technology that simulates the Force, and he knows it. Others, like Darth Vader, can control him remotely and mostly do things as if they were present themselves, or they can be simulated in software.

But at no time does Proxy actually use the standard Force rules.