Bro, do you even munchkin?

You are wanting to use three over the top tool kits to make one thing? I can see how making things takes more than one tool to do a job, but after I read the mech section, I don't really think that is what the developers had in mind; using multiple tool kits to stack your bonuses up. One example was a Bacta Tank...a freaking Bacta Tank... Those are huge and expensive. Are you now going to use a super med scanner and beefed up medbacks and get four boost, 3 successes and three Advatages before you even roll? That doesn't sound right to me.

You said you had a jigsaw and a welder and a printer, and want to stack those bonuses for using all three things to make one item? I don't see how using three separate tools can really keep passing along the bonuses when you only use one at a time and for a short while. Can you give a narrative how your super bandsaw can really pass along a bonus Success and a bonus Advantage?

I cut the wood so super good, it is flawless, I get a 1S and a 1A automatically!! Seems kind of lame to me bro.

I understand that in these games we want to create the best possible characters, but it seems to me you are on the other end of the spectrum and min maxing your character and her tools to make the epic Scotty type of character. A 5 in Intel, really? My GM probably wouldn't let us have a one sided character like that, and I'm ok with that.

You said your other GMs allow you to stack your tool bonuses? Is that all you play is the super mechanic in all your games? I know this sounds dickish, not intending to really, but really, you just play the same character over and over?

My GM is really liberal with the boost and setback dice, but no one in our group pushes the boundaries with crazy gear either. As a player, I would not enjoy seeing a fellow player try this though, and "debate" with our GM. When our GM says/rules X", we move on. We don't question her, or badger her.

Again, not trying to sound mean or belittling here. As my final thought, just because the rules don't say that you "can't" does not inherently mean that you can...or should.

easy killer. I'm not the mechanic in those games, but thats how its being done. I said earlier that I of course want to make cool stuff and explained why I thought it made sense to stack tools. I came here to find out what people thought since it wasn't clear. I understand your position, and wont gripe if he chooses to go that way. As for the GM I didn't debate during game time, and he was open to discussion... otherwise I wouldn't be here.

As some others have said, this game is supposed to be played fast, loose, and focused on the story instead of statistics.

If you want a +1 screwdriver and a +2 hammer and a +3 hacksaw, go play D&D. But otherwise I'm not going to itemize your workshop and give you modifiers for every little thing. Do you have the right tools for the job? That's a bonus. Do you have an assistant? That's another bonus.

so do you allow any items to modify rolls as the descriptions say? Scanner goggles, medpacks, bacta tanks.. etc?

I'm sure he does he probably just doesn't let someone stack 3 kinds of medkits to modify one Medicine check.

As some others have said, this game is supposed to be played fast, loose, and focused on the story instead of statistics.

If you want a +1 screwdriver and a +2 hammer and a +3 hacksaw, go play D&D. But otherwise I'm not going to itemize your workshop and give you modifiers for every little thing. Do you have the right tools for the job? That's a bonus. Do you have an assistant? That's another bonus.

so do you allow any items to modify rolls as the descriptions say? Scanner goggles, medpacks, bacta tanks.. etc?

I'm sure he does he probably just doesn't let someone stack 3 kinds of medkits to modify one Medicine check.

If you wanted to use your medical kit, that's fine. But you don't get a bonus for the stethoscope, another bonus for the tweezers, another for the bandaid, and yet another for the antibiotic ointment. You get A bonus for the kit in general, and that's it. If you want more, get a medical Droid, or an assistant, or some other story element that contributes to the scene.

I might be convinced to allow someone crafting in a workshop to stack the basic benefits of the different tool types (i.e., auto-success, setback removal), but stacking Safety Features on multiple tools is right out. If you're getting three auto-advantage on every roll, generating schematics becomes trivial, which makes it too easy to make incredibly good equipment. Tools are cheap and fast to make, which means even a relatively new character can assemble an array of powerful tools without much effort (I should know, that's what my Mechanic/Cybertech has already done). Put all that together, and you have a character capable of churning out high-powered weapons and armor far sooner than they have any right to.

Cool, sounds good. If I'm picking up what everyone is putting down, at best, bonuses from 1 of each type of tool can be used on a craft and safety features probably shouldnt stack across tools. In the strictest view, 1 tool(s) is used in the crafting. I dont think anyone is confused about how other bonuses are applied. I've found this extremely helpful. Thanks!

I'd like to know your basic Mechanics dice pool and what spec. It seems to me without abusing and loop-holing the rules, a PC that wants to focus on being a great crafter can jump into the Droid Tech tree and with Improved Speaks Binary applied to a minion R2, a couple ranks of Eye for Detail, and a set of Specialist Tools, that player can have 3 Boost dice without trying to loophole and abuse the use of multiple tools on a single check. Should be plenty of Advantages with a good dice pool and no creative rule bending.

Which is btw the silly part, building instead of tools a few cheap monotask droids will give you those boost dice, while people argue already about using more than one tool. ^-^

Remember that a triumph during crafting allows you to choose to decrease the difficulty of a crafting check, PERMANENTLY, for that template, so eventually given a sufficiently (large)amount of time you can drop a template to a simple check. This means that with a good enough mechanic and the eye for detail talent you can roll obscene amounts of advantage on even the most difficult items. The devs have been interviewed on the order 66 podcast and it appears the major limiting factor is time.

If it says that it takew 120 hrs then you need 120 hrs of time in game to do this,Note this isnt 5 days of game time , this is time in game where you wre in your workshop working on the item, this could be an average of only 2-4 hrs of work time per game day you are at base.

So the amount of time is controlled by the GM, but stacking a lot of boost die might not be the best idea, the intention ith crsfting was that the average mechanic can make an equivalrnt item for half the cost, depending on the roll it could be a little better or a little worse than what you could buy for double the cost. If you got lucky and rolled 2 triumphs, you could make somethung significantly better, example if you were making padded armor (250 credits) and rolled 2 success you could give it either the superior quslity or cortosis for free, not bad for 250 credits.

Allowing lots of boost significantly increases the likelihood of advantage so as a gm id have a good look at what coukd stack.

I would suggest listening to the order 66 podcast episode 74 as it had a question and answer session with the lead devloper of Special Modifications and does a deep dove into the book where they talk through a lot of things. Although thisntopic is not covered

cortosis takes two hardpoints, iirc those 2 triumphs only give you a free attachment worth one hardpoint. And with 6 yellow dice you have ~8% chance for two triumphs, while 4 yellow give you ~3%. So you need tons of time anyway.

I'd like to know your basic Mechanics dice pool and what spec. It seems to me without abusing and loop-holing the rules, a PC that wants to focus on being a great crafter can jump into the Droid Tech tree and with Improved Speaks Binary applied to a minion R2, a couple ranks of Eye for Detail, and a set of Specialist Tools, that player can have 3 Boost dice without trying to loophole and abuse the use of multiple tools on a single check. Should be plenty of Advantages with a good dice pool and no creative rule bending.

Which is btw the silly part, building instead of tools a few cheap monotask droids will give you those boost dice, while people argue already about using more than one tool. ^-^

Actually you don't get a benefit of multiple droids either.

My main gripe about doing it with just 1 tool (set) is it makes it much much less likely that you'll construct anything more useful that what you can buy off the street. For example, a heavy blaster pistol using the blaster pistol template requires 5 advantage just to make something as good as what you can buy. I've done a fair bit of test rolling for fun. I almost never fail, but I rarely come out with more than 5 advantage, and the extra successes aren't particularly helpful by reducing the time it takes to make something that is just going to go back in the bin anyway.

I'm curious what you're rolling with, as far as base dice pool goes. I've got three yellows, and assuming a couple of blues from a friend helping, a good workshop and tools, and a bonus green from spending a destiny point, I'm usually acing the roll with plenty of advantage and/or triumphs.

Modder/Cyberneticist, 4y 1g

had 4 int and did dedication int

I have a healthy dice pool. I'm the mechanic and medic for our crew. I was more or less frustrated with an unproductive roll. If I want to make something grand in the future, I'll start with a couple prototypes to reduce the difficulty and build my dice pool. The more I've read here and think about it, I agree with what most of you have been saying. The kind of stacking I was talking about doesn't seem like a huge deal right now at the start, but once you have a handful of opportunities to whip up schematics and a fist full of lightweight tools it would get pretty ridiculous.

Which is btw the silly part, building instead of tools a few cheap monotask droids will give you those boost dice, while people argue already about using more than one tool. ^-^

Per the rules, you can generally only get unskilled assistance from one source, so you can get one boost die from one monotask droid, but that's about it (and you don't even need a droid if you can convince a fellow party member to give you a hand). And a boost die is worth about 2/3 an advantage on average, meaning it is less powerful than safety features.

Now, if you build a whole swarm of monotask droids to give them a high virtual skill rank and get skilled assistance, you can potentially get more out of it, but that's time consuming (32 hours per droid) and has non-trivial costs (600 credits per). This is especially true once you take into account that you get no benefit until you have more droids than skill ranks (you probably have two free ranks from character creation at least), and very little benefit until you have more droids than Intellect, since turning a green into a yellow has almost no effect on advantage generation, just a slight additional chance to roll a triumph. Most techies probably need at least four droids to get any sizable benefit, which takes 128 hours and 2400 credits. It's arguably worth the investment, but that's a lot of time spent not building actual things you can use and not having a chance to get schematics, and removing difficulty dice is the single most effective thing you can do as far as net advantage generation goes.

As far as constructing items more useful than what you can buy, even before your techie gets the high skills and schematics to churn out superior equipment, there's still a benefit from a customization standpoint. If you're making an energy pistol and get five advantage, sure, you could build a knock-off heavy blaster pistol. Or you could build a heavy blaster pistol with an extra hard point and no stun setting. Or you could build a blaster pistol with Knockdown and Ensnare 1, potentially allowing you to knock an enemy prone and keep them from getting back up so that they can't close the distance with you and your party's Marauder can go to town on them while they're vulnerable. Or a blaster pistol with a stun setting and stun 3 for massive strain damage (which is just massive damage as far as minions and rivals are concerned). The list goes on. Stock equipment will probably be the best general-use weaponry until you get really good, but you can build some very interesting specialized equipment with a decent tool and some assistance.

Shikage - its in special modifications page 84.

Thanks. I am considering making a character with a focus on crafting so things like this could be particularly useful or at least interesting.

One note on droids, if you want really focus on them, you can get quite a lot of use out of the basic speak binary talent by having them craft stuff while you are out doing adventures which adds an equal number of blue dice to his less than stellar crafting roll. If you mix in some of the new droid tech tricks you can even have him use your stats and all them blue dice as well while your out.

There is a talent in SM that let's you swap successes for advantages, by suffering Strain. It's called Eye for Detail.

Now, since that exists, making a tool that can do the same would be a no-no, at least in my book. But this was my first idea for how to change how tools work, instead of just adding a boost die, or some auto-successes or -advantages.

As for the OP's question, considering the above, I would probably recommend the 1 of each tool-set route. It makes sense that more tools can provide more of a bonus than less tools. But sure, there has to be a limit. I would also consider this only to apply for when crafting in workshops.

Having a workshop means you're tied to that, you can't take it along, so it's site specific. Also, it counts as a tool kit, or right tools for the job, out of the box. So there's a boost. Since it's a place, with an encumbrance capacity, it makes sense to fill that with tools, to boost the workshop: Add in the 3D printer (specialist tool) and the gyroscopic hyperlight hypotorch (precision tool) and you're good to go: one boost, one auto-success and remove two setback dice. That would be a total of 17 encumbrance, out of 25 for the basic workshop. I guess the encumbrance capacity is meant for other stuff, like parts for instance, but it kind of makes sense that you spend that encumbrance to make the tools integrated into the workshop, so you don't have to carry them around. And just to repeat it: the workshop doesn't move (unless it's on your ship, and even then, you're tied to the place when crafting.

Also, if you want to craft anywhere, you need a speeder or someone really strong to carry all that crap around for you ...

Perhaps the extra available enc space in a workshop is there to accommodate mono-task 'droids, thus limiting the size of the minion group that can assist? Each is enc 6, after all. Just a thought.

I'd like to know your basic Mechanics dice pool and what spec. It seems to me without abusing and loop-holing the rules, a PC that wants to focus on being a great crafter can jump into the Droid Tech tree and with Improved Speaks Binary applied to a minion R2, a couple ranks of Eye for Detail, and a set of Specialist Tools, that player can have 3 Boost dice without trying to loophole and abuse the use of multiple tools on a single check. Should be plenty of Advantages with a good dice pool and no creative rule bending.

Which is btw the silly part, building instead of tools a few cheap monotask droids will give you those boost dice, while people argue already about using more than one tool. ^-^

Incorrect, RAW state in general only one can assist and any additional assisting on a roll are completely the GMs call.

EoE CRB p. 26 "Generally, only one character can provide assistance at a time. However, the GM may decide that certain situations accommodate more people."

Given Improved Shortcut's existence, my opinion is that RAI the devs did not want this loophole exploited.

That in turn falls squarely under Rules Adjudication EoE CRB p. 294

"However, rules lawyering—using the minutiae of the rules to gain an unfair, unexpected, or unintended advantage in game—should be avoided by both players and GMs."

Why would the devs create the Talent Improved Shortcut if they intended to allow PCs to simply pile up monotask droids and as many Boost dice as droids they create? The answer is they wouldn't.

My answer would still be no.

Actually you don't get a benefit of multiple droids either.

If you use the monotask droid template, I would think you could build them as a Minion group, and then with enough of them you can get a healthy benefit. Shouldn’t be too expensive.

Which is btw the silly part, building instead of tools a few cheap monotask droids will give you those boost dice, while people argue already about using more than one tool. ^-^

Per the rules, you can generally only get unskilled assistance from one source, so you can get one boost die from one monotask droid, but that's about it (and you don't even need a droid if you can convince a fellow party member to give you a hand). And a boost die is worth about 2/3 an advantage on average, meaning it is less powerful than safety features.

Now, if you build a whole swarm of monotask droids to give them a high virtual skill rank and get skilled assistance, you can potentially get more out of it, but that's time consuming (32 hours per droid) and has non-trivial costs (600 credits per).

Generally, only one character can provide assistance at a time. However, the GM may decide that certain situations accommodate more people. In this case, only one assisting character can offer his characteristics or skill rating – all other participating characters contribute boost die to the check.

Besides, you call 600 credits per droid non trivial? For a character who can just SELL those droids and other crafted items for plenty of profit. If you check out the wages in Special Modifications you will notices that they are pretty real-life-ish, 600 credits per tool, for a couple of tools should be indeed trivial. And we are here talking about someone with his own workshop, so we are on the tens of thousands credits for tools category anyway which should be pretty common for any independent handyman really.

So what I'm hearing is, if the GM decides to allow you to get assistance from as many droids as you want, and provides you with a steady stream of customers ready to snap up your goods as soon as you finish them, and allows you weeks and weeks of downtime at a stretch, then you can easily make awesome stuff.

Well, duh.

But the rules don't oblige the GM to do any of that. We're not even in Rule Zero territory here. A GM who follows the RAW closely can deny you your multiple assistants, and can decide that there are few people in the area willing or able to buy droids at any price. It's not practical or useful to theorize about crafting assuming you've got a GM permissive enough to allow you to print money and pile up an arbitrary number of boost dice.

Moreover, just because a PC techie has access to a workshop, doesn't make them an independent handyman. They might be working for a corporation that allows them a few hours a week to work on personal projects using company equipment. They might be Obligated to a crime boss who outlaid the capital for the workshop and provides "protection," but eats up most of his profits to cover the "interest" on the loan and frequently demands that he drop everyone to do special orders on spec. The list of scenarios goes on. Especially in an Edge game, you can't assume that a handyman with tools at his disposal can operate free and clear.

So what I'm hearing is, if the GM decides to allow you to get assistance from as many droids as you want, and provides you with a steady stream of customers ready to snap up your goods as soon as you finish them, and allows you weeks and weeks of downtime at a stretch, then you can easily make awesome stuff.

Well, duh.

But the rules don't oblige the GM to do any of that. We're not even in Rule Zero territory here. A GM who follows the RAW closely can deny you your multiple assistants, and can decide that there are few people in the area willing or able to buy droids at any price. It's not practical or useful to theorize about crafting assuming you've got a GM permissive enough to allow you to print money and pile up an arbitrary number of boost dice.

Moreover, just because a PC techie has access to a workshop, doesn't make them an independent handyman. They might be working for a corporation that allows them a few hours a week to work on personal projects using company equipment. They might be Obligated to a crime boss who outlaid the capital for the workshop and provides "protection," but eats up most of his profits to cover the "interest" on the loan and frequently demands that he drop everyone to do special orders on spec. The list of scenarios goes on. Especially in an Edge game, you can't assume that a handyman with tools at his disposal can operate free and clear.

All true and correct points. The spectrum of options is very broad.

Though I will be honest: If adventuring makes me so poor that my disposable income becomes smaller than on welfare … my characters would stop adventuring and get a job. I am serious with you, the moment I run with such an GM I would totally enjoy playing that character, but the main goal for any campaign would become to reduce my obligations enough that becoming a salaryman becomes an option. And as empire and republic both offer well paid jobs in the military to people with questionable reputation we would be very quickly within retirement or a completely different campaign setting. ;-)

The obsession on this board to make edge of empire to a game with hobo characters who have trouble to buy a new dishwasher for their space trailer is a little bizarre to me. Though it does explain why so few players seem to play characters long-term campaigns.

Well, to be sure, there's a balance to strike on the spectrum between "print your own money" and "beg for spare change." I'm not in favor of keeping Edge groups just scraping by, but I also don't think it's a great idea to let them get large amounts of money from downtime activities. To say nothing of how if you're giving the party a month between sessions and letting the mechanic immediately sell any droids they make, you're giving them many times the income a PC gets from say, Sound Investments, for a fraction of the experience cost (a few ranks of Mechanics vs. several talents). I don't want to keep groups poor, but I don't want to give them an incentive to not adventure by making it too profitable to stay home, and I don't want to make working as a droid tech too profitable relative to other downtime activities.

As for why I call 600 credits per monotask droid "non-trivial," that's less about the exact amount of payout the group gets for an adventure and more about competing priorities. My group got about 30,000 credits for our last mission, but we want to invest a significant amount of that in improving our ship (first thing we did with the money is buy an advanced targeting computer, since none of us have Gunnery), and then the remainder is split four ways, and then I have to decide how much money I can set aside for investing in improving my crafting versus buying personal equipment I can't just craft (welding rod, multi-goo gun, stimpacks and emergency repair patches, cybernetics, etc.). Since I would need to spend at least 2,400 credits to get a benefit out of helper droids, that's a significant chunk of the disposable income I've earned so far.

cortosis takes two hardpoints, iirc those 2 triumphs only give you a free attachment worth one hardpoint. And with 6 yellow dice you have ~8% chance for two triumphs, while 4 yellow give you ~3%. So you need tons of time anyway.

Good call , I was working from memory, but you get the point though, and didnt realise it specified it was a one hard point limit, I did remember it added the hard point though so even still having potentially a free hard point added and a 5k attachment. Not likely but still a significant bonus when you do pull it off.

I could easily see a group on minion droids (with labor directives) "assisting" in a workshop. Doing this you can supplant either the skill ranks or characteristic. So I could make 6 minion droids with mechanics (effectively mechanics 5 (# of minions -1)) and have that overwrite my characters 2 skill in mechanics using my 4 int to give me a dice pool of YYYYG. This would cost 21,000 credits (half as much with talent) and 336 hours in game time crafting and programming. IMO if a player wants to spend 10s of thousands of credits and hundreds of in game "downtime" hours setting this up, then I think they should be allowed. I also thing it is really thematic and cool to have the inventor being a foreman of a bunch of droids in the workshop.

I just played the first session of a game last week where I am playing a technician. After special modifications came out I knew that I wanted to be a crafter.

I plan on setting up a decently sized shipboard workshop in the party ship (silhouette 4). I am playing a droid, starting with droid tech and moving to cyber tech, then to something combat related.

In order to "optimize" my crafting I am going to have a "Low-Grav workspace" for an automatic advantage. I will make a set of specialist tools with "safety features" for an additional advantage and success. I can purchase a hand grinder for an additional advantage on MOST mechanics checks. I will also make a droid (probably a pit droid) to "assist me" with mechanics I am currently looking at a bonus of 3 advantage, one success, a boost die, and plan on getting at least 2 ranks of "eye for detail" giving me up tot 2 more advantages. This seems like plenty to me.

lastly I will get an OR-Series Tech Recycling Station, and the Reclamation Equipment advanced perk to get 100% back of failed checks, and with DM permission, 50% back on "successful checks" that I did not get enough advantages on (most inventors will have to try multiple times to get the result they want).

Between all of the above, and crafting just to fish for "Schematic" there should be plenty of advantages to go around when I finally make my masterpiece.

Crafting in this system is definitely playing the long game. Though it helps that I am a droid and have multiple hours a day available when the organics are sleeping.

don't forget the smart tools. the cut your time in half. it is also worth putting outlaw tech on your road map. ranks of inventor are a god send. If you guys are using all the books I would definately consider 'recruit' for your 'combat' specialty. it is a solid choice all around and dosen't cost the additional 10 points. not toe most convient to get to dedication but not the worst either.

Recruit's not a bad option, but it's worth noting that if you're looking to add a combat skill to your list of career skills, you've got Mechanic (Brawl) and Modder (Gunnery) in-career, both of which have a straight shot to Dedication and talents that are probably a bit more interesting to you than most of what the Recruit gets. On the Gunnery angle, even if you don't have an above average Brawn, you can craft a Heavy Energy Rifle, which only has Cumbersome 3, and slap a Weapon Harness on it to make it usable by practically anyone. Even if you're not interested in the Signature Vehicle stuff from Modder, you still have three ranks of Tinkerer, two ranks of Jury-Rigged, and Natural Tinkerer all within pretty easy reach.