... being the continued adventures of a new droid character and a plucky GM...

So here's the thing... In working with our new droid character, the desire to improve itself is one of the primary motivations. Naturally, I reached for Special Modifications, but we found a few things... lacking.

Cyber tech seemed too focused on taking care of meat bags...

Droid tech seemed too focused on building NPC droids...

Outlaw tech was close, but...

So naturally, being the GM I am, I bashed this together- But I could really use some input.

Is it *too* optimized? I tried to keep things balanced, and pull what seemed useful for a droid on a mission...

recommendations, feedback, etc... would be appreciated.

Part of the system balance is to force PCs to buy into multiple Specializations and to buy less than optimal Talents along the way to get to the Talents they want. Thats why it's easy but a little more expensive in EXP to do. By combining Talents from multiple trees as you have you will upset that balance and it's unfair to Players who don't get this kind of special treatment.

The Golden Rule of House Rules: Do not create a new rule when the result can already be achieved in the RAW, even if getting that result is inconvenient.

Here's a cleaned up version, with adjusted paths:

Furious -

I'm with you, for the most part... and in most cases, I'd have told a player to do just that.

But...

This isn't a case of a combat monster wanting some Pilot-ish talents just to round things out...

This is a droid, and is going to be the primary focus of the whole character, so I'm willing to house rule a bit.

My question is more "In the realm of house rules, how does this look?"

in terms of balance its too specialized IF your going to house rule it imo you should remove alot of the "juicy" pickings that the specializations have. such as supreme overcharge, supreme speaks binary, probably at least 2 of machine and man. and as for career skills id probably have the specilization only have Mechanics, Streetwise as well.. as it is this is probably the "strongest" base specialization. period

possible replacements would be, Gear head, Machine mender, Redundant Systems, Utinn! Technical Aptitude to offset the non-computers career,

It does seem too OP, too many 'more man than machine' talents. i woud definitely never let them get the Cyber Tech talent tree, 13 implants is crazy. Honestly i dont see the problem with the Cyber Tech tree as it is, most specs have a talent or 2 that dont fit within your particular theme, Engineered Redundancies can be skipped. Its a single 20xp rank of Surgeon that is the only thing uncharacteristic to your character, perhaps replace it with a single rank of Machine Mender and call it a day.

Ok... thanks for the feedback, guys. I should trust my gut more... it felt a bit optimized to me as well.

And so... This is basically Cyber Tech with a few Talents swapped out. It feels much better.

(and for the record - the character will never be allowed to take Cyber Tech, so no more "More Machine than Man" unless something rolls out in the Bounty Hunter splat...)

Any thoughts?

(edit: disregard any errors in xp cost... they are the standard 5, 10, 15, 20, 25)

yea thats alot more balanced, might i suggest though? remove the 20 deft maker with Jury Rigged, and then cut off the branches between improved overcharge and utility belt, and overcharge with machine and man, perhaps even the branches between 15-durable and 10/energy transfer, as well as the 15 deft/10 Cyberneticist to essentially "encourage" him to get all 3 machine of men to get his dedication.

I would probably replace the 20xp Deft Maker with a rank of Machine Mender