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.

Just a sidenote: A failed investment imho. The gunnery droid brain properly modded cost zero hardpoints, less than 10k usually and has a gunnery skill of 4 which works with skilled assistance. The literally only downside is that the droid brain is a little trigger happy (classic quirk, which are represented in the droid crafting rules), so better not activate your weapons if you do not want to use them. It not like additional upgrades are not bad, but you still want imo that droid brain mainly, because skill 4 which can be used with skilled assistance is quite awesome for people without a gunnery skill.

Oh and imho the biggest limitation for crafting (outside of paying for your own workshop) is time. The credits might be trivial, even for your group with the 30,000 credits payout, it would be trivial to build combat droids or even just droid brains, but building all of it takes quite some time investments. And time can be a super, super spare resource for an adventure group which is constantly in the middle of the action thanks to all those duty or obligation roles or the empire and inquisition on their tails.

Oh and another side note because I have ,mentioned droid quirks: One suggestion/recommendations from Sam for crafting is to allow not to cancel out all threats to gain drawbacks on a crafting items while gaining additional advantages. Makes the whole crafting results more interesting, especially for the droids imo as the quirks are so highly entertaining.

Just a sidenote: A failed investment imho. The gunnery droid brain properly modded cost zero hardpoints, less than 10k usually and has a gunnery skill of 4 which works with skilled assistance. The literally only downside is that the droid brain is a little trigger happy (classic quirk, which are represented in the droid crafting rules), so better not activate your weapons if you do not want to use them. It not like additional upgrades are not bad, but you still want imo that droid brain mainly, because skill 4 which can be used with skilled assistance is quite awesome for people without a gunnery skill.

This is a good point (in our defense, Special Modifications hadn't been published yet when we bought the array). On the other hand, a Gunnery Brain and an Advanced Targeting Array will synergize just fine, and since we have two turrets, we'd need two brains to assist both gunners each turn, whereas the targeting array can upgrade both checks automatically for about 30% of the cost. Still, when we get some more credits to burn (and my mechanic gets enough time to actually mod our attachments, which, as you point out, is often in short supply), it's a good upgrade.

As a long time GM, and the GM in question here to original post, I figured I would finally throw in my two credits.

First, to the ever popular poverty question... I don't buy into that idea of keep 'em poor. I running an enhanced game, basically a "knight" level game, were they built characters IAW RAW, then I gave them an additional 200 XP to enhance and diversify their characters. The idea being to build a character that has a primary career and spec, and a secondary spec to be a useful member of the ship. I also gave them an additional 5,000 credits. In their first job, they netted a cool 30 grand, and were able to get off my railroad and avoid the starship combat against 4 TIE aces that would have eaten that money up! Bah-stards!

I know, I'm a stingy GM...

Now, as to using more than one tool kit per crafting of an item. Well, the rules have already set a good precadent about how stacking works. From Defense bonuses, to untrained aid another, to trained aid another. So, I initially ruled that the tech would pick one primary tool kit to use in his crafting check. He said that he would use multiple tools to build a blaster... Hence the debate here. We have now worked it out, and my original ruling stands. He came to me and said he saw it more of my way now, before I said anything further.

I still figured I would post here though. I look it at it like this. If a medic made a medicine check to heal someone, I wouldn't allow them to use a Physcians Kit, Medical Backpack, and a medkit all on the same check. You would get the best of those, and go. They wouldn't stack up. Just like I wouldn't allow the different tool kits to be stacked up to make one item. Each type of tool kit gives clear examples of what types of tools they are, one is a microscope, one is a scanner, one could be a welder. Again, on a Medicine check, I wouldn't allow someone to use a med scanner, a bactatank, and a microscope all together for the check. You would pick the best one for the job at hand. Suppose your trying to repair some Starship Hull damage, you could use your fancy Welder, not your uber simple tools, Uber Welder, and Uber hydrospaner to get a huge bonus, you would pick the best tool for the job, and get one bonus.

I understand this is a game, but some things do have to make sense as compared to real life to. I hate to say it but it does. I know in SW they have sound in space, I'm ok with that... As an Air Force mechanic for over 20 years, yes, good tools do help you, but they only get you so far. If you have all the best of the best tools in the world, but no skill, they still won't do you any good. And the more people you have on a job "helping" you, the less you actually get done. You will spend more time motivating people, hearding people, and have them just stand around talking about GoT from last night that you didn't watch yet!

So, yes, I do bring a small touch or degree of real world-ism to my games. For me it doesn't make sense to allow someone to stack bonuses from using multiple tool sets to craft an item. The rules are not clear about it, in one way or another, but the rules have been clear about how other bonuses stack or don't. A Mastercraftman can use crappy tools and still make something amazing, while someone with no skill can't use mastercrafted tools and do the same. This game is about the characters, not thier cool gear. Yes, cool gear is great, and I don't deny them that, but I will not let the cool gear overpower them or my game. I don't run Saga anymore.

First of all...completely agree.. Gunnery Brain and an Advanced Targeting Array is kinda broken . E very ship should have them since its just a few credits and 1hp to a give a 2 AGI no ranks gunnery character YYYYGBl when they aim once. I rant about how targeting arrays need a higher cost or a nerf in effect elsewhere....I'll stop now.

I have a ~250 exp gained Gank with 5/5/4/2/3/1 attributes, 1 rank in mechanics. The main mechanic in our group in a Jawa outlaw Tech with 3/4/6/2/2/2 and 3? ranks in mechanics. In our game we have built a souped up workshop on our ship ( Emergency Containment: decrease difficulty once // Reclemantion Equipment: may reclaim 100% of failed checks // Research Records: spend 2 adv to add +blue on future similiar checks// Low Gravity Workspace: +1 adv to all medical and mechanics checks), Both me and our other mechanic have Intelligent tools for things that need to be done fast, an OR·SERIES TECH RECYCLING STATIion for turning loot into parts, and several Specialist Tool Kit with a specific purpose for each of us that each add ~+1 success, +2 adv, +2 upgrades. We have built droids that have 5 ranks in mechanics or medicine for assistance.

Lets look at this.... we decrease difficulty by 1...... we add +3 advantage to all checks..... we add +1 success (like its needed)... +2 upgrades to our skills (basically higher T chance)... and with skilled assistance from the droids we replace our 1-3 ranks with 5. Purposely making an experimental crafting attempt for a new droid/armor/tool/etc lets us spend oodles of advantages getting: +1 blue permanently on all similar checks (research records) and all remaining on getting +X blues on the next attempt or on lesson learned to further lower the difficulty of the next check. We can spend a triumph to get a schematic to lower the difficulty by 1 permanently.

You then recover 50-100% of the cost of that attempt, and then try again. This time the difficulty is ~3 lower than base and we add an additional 2+ more blues.

The resulting checks look something like 6Y1G5BL with +1 success and +3 adv vs ~0-2P tops. That is kinda broken. You can make weapons and armor and implants that are orders of magnitude better than top tier equipment for much cheaper. I think even taking away the assistance from the droid and just having the workshop bonus and a single tool bonus can be WAY too good if optimized around.

Special modifications basically made INT/Mechanics capable of making themselves and their whole party much more powerful than intended very quickly with low cost/investment and with only a middling amount of downtime that is easily achieved just while waiting for the ship jumps through hyperspace.

( Emergency Containment: decrease difficulty once

Don't mean to burst your bubble and it sounds like its too far down the road to matter, but it downgrades, not decreases. Downgrading difficulty doesn't remove dice ever (sadly)

( Emergency Containment: decrease difficulty once

Don't mean to burst your bubble and it sounds like its too far down the road to matter, but it downgrades, not decreases. Downgrading difficulty doesn't remove dice ever (sadly)

Good Catch, I'll bring that to the groups attention. I think about 1/2 the time we have crafted things we actually care about the DM has flipped a destiny dice on us so its probably mostly been correctly done. The overall example was just to show how easy it is to get insanely high dice pools and also that mechanics checks can chain into better mechanics checks as you craft more gear, get more schematics, or just do checks over and over till you get what you want. Anything more than 1 tool would be crazy to allow in a game.

( Emergency Containment: decrease difficulty once

Don't mean to burst your bubble and it sounds like its too far down the road to matter, but it downgrades, not decreases. Downgrading difficulty doesn't remove dice ever (sadly)

Good Catch, I'll bring that to the groups attention. I think about 1/2 the time we have crafted things we actually care about the DM has flipped a destiny dice on us so its probably mostly been correctly done. The overall example was just to show how easy it is to get insanely high dice pools and also that mechanics checks can chain into better mechanics checks as you craft more gear, get more schematics, or just do checks over and over till you get what you want. Anything more than 1 tool would be crazy to allow in a game.

You need as well very crazy dice pools to achieve anything special with crafting OR a gm who provides you with new pattern outside of what is included in the books. Anything with less than ~10 advantages usually ends up as cheap equipment which is worse than the stuff that you just buy on the coreworld of your choice. And time is a spare resources, crafting stuff over and over again, making one prototype after another is for sure the way to go and I like the approach, but it certainly is quite a big limitation to crafting. So crazy is not really the word I would use for using multiple tools. It not a big thing considering the size of the pools and requirements.

But as I said, I am in general not a big fan of this hammer +1 crafting and toolset idea behind the crafting system. Speaking of this, I am a fan of allowing to not cancel out threats with advantages. Makes the whole thing more interesting and allows for much more special, unique and useful crafting results.

The key thing is the PC often has other obligations that will restrict the amount of crafting time. most edge characters should have a outstanding debt of some description that will make them be proactive.

I also wouldn't allow a PC to exceed working 8 hours a day on a project, to carry out other tasks, exercises, leasurely activities. If they attempt to exceed that, I would probably add one upgrade for every couple worked beyond that threshold on average (with 8 being the baseline) to represent fatigue. and an additional setback dice for every day that has been overworked to represent minor errors in building that bite them in the behind. One item crafted per journey also; I want people to think carefully about what they want then to craft everything. Signature gear is cool but I don't want to spend all session rolling crafting checks either.

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. ;-)

I believe the general point of EotE is that you have some large outstanding debt to pay off (thus meaning you yourself have less money to spend on things) and/or some reason you can't easily just setup shop and home somewhere (such as a bounty on your head or some enemy looking to make your life difficult), and that Adventuring is the way you either pull favors to the right people to get some of your debt paid off, forgiven or reduce how badly said enemy dislikes you, reduce the bounty so fewer guns are likely to come after you, etc... now, based off your statement here though, if you were able to sit in your workshop creating items and selling them to make your money, why on earth would you go out risking your neck adventuring? That aside, since it may not be what you are arguing in favor of, the point of adventuring for many EotE characters isn't to make themselves rich but to deal with whatever form of obligation they have against them. That's not to say characters need to be kept poor as dirt either but it also isn't necessarily a choice of this makes me more money than being a salaryman.. there are bigger concerns, like the hutt you owe a large amount of money to or the loan taken out for the ship you're flying, etc.. etc.. etc...

I think it's worth noting that, unlike with homesteads or bases, Special Modifications conspicuously refrains from setting a specific price tag on workshops or their upgrades, and implies that the PCs should only buy one outright if the GM needs to drain off excess credits. Even more so than other rewards, workshops are linked to "narrative efforts," and so are very much under the GM's control. This is not to say that GM's should necessarily be parsimonious with these benefits, but it does mean that they can moderate how quickly the techie ramps up to building epic gear (and place more emphasis on them spending XP to increase their skills rather than relying on supremely good tools). Even if the GM slips up and rewards them oodles of credits, that doesn't directly translate to a tricked out workshop.

That aside, just now I was considering the merits of the Spare Parts Bin. If I'm understanding the rules text correctly, once you reduce the rarity of materials for a template down to 0, it essentially becomes free, and you can select the benefit multiple times for a cumulative effect. If one were to get a Homestead workshop and grab SPB say, four times, that would make all tool and melee weapon templates free, and would do the same for most of the ranged and droid templates. It's even beneficial for the templates with higher rarity, because once you reduce the 7/8 rarity of materials for advanced combat droids or augmentative armor down to 3/4, they go from "difficult to acquire," to "pop over to the merchant and pick up the stuff we're missing." Could be useful for Technicians who don't have a helpful Negotiation specialist in the party to acquire materials for them.

I believe the general point of EotE is that you have some large outstanding debt to pay off (thus meaning you yourself have less money to spend on things)...

I believe you should open page 39 in your edge of empire core book and take a look at the table. "Debt" makes up 8% of the options given. The overwhelming number of options is not directly related to credits, often not directly solvable with credits either and not even debt is exclusive to credits, but can consists of non monetary debts as well. And they can easily change from one thing to another, only a few of them actually stop you from settling down as well, heck the homestead can easily become your ONLY obligation. All of them can be used as plot hooks for sure, giving reasons for the characters to act out of the ordinary, but all characters chose already specs and careers which lead them into adventures anyway.

Take for example all the colonist specs, they are perfectly suited for the classic setting of protecting and building up a place instead of traveling around the galaxy. You can literally take a colonist only group, have a doctor, marschal, etc as the local town heros and play a wild west setting with settlers. There are plenty of obligations suited for this as well (even bounty would work, as it would not come up constantly anyway and can be paid off if it becomes an issue).

I really, really don't get how people assume that everyone is on the run like solo, especially as solo actually became on the run only because he switched to a AoR campaign without paying off this obligations first. And Solo even had the money for Jabba and plenty of extra cash on top of it. He just never got to it because duty as calling constantly. ;-)

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.

Actually, there are many items and modifications out there that grant "free" talents, so there's plenty of official precedent. Making a tool or workshop upgrade that grants access to Eye for Detail would be a nice "patch" for Outlaw Techs, Mechanics, Armorers, and others who should have the talent, but don't because they were printed too early.