My son posed an interesting question, and I stumble to answer:

What would a character need to be a serious threat against a regular droid adversaries? He's looking for species, specializations, talents, equipment, Force Powers, etc. - Everything is on the table.

Aside from a Droid Disruptor from Strongholds of Resistance, and general ion-quality blasters, I'm scratching my head. Droids typically have energy weapons in combat, so parry and reflect might seem good options. Essentially, he wants to build a ranger-like character because he fondly remembers that class' 'Favored Enemy' ability, and wanted to see it replicated in any of the three product line.

Advice, please? I needn't have a fully-completed character; just point me to more directions. This is a random question, and I feel badly about not knowing more about droids for his sake and enjoyment of the game. School's in session, and I am ready to learn. Thanks in advance.

Force and Destiny has some elements you might consider. Some species are distrustful or sceptical of technology -- thinking specifically of the Cereans. And the Soresu Defender specialization focuses on reflect and parry, meaning they are very effective against hails of blaster fire.

Neither of these are "anti-droid" per se. But they might fit the bill for a Clone Wars veteran used to charging a line of battle droids throwing blaster fire at them.

Addendum: Ki Adi Mundi might be a starting point for such a character. While he was distrustful of droids and technology, he didn't "hate" them. Like Obi-Wan, and unlike Anakin, Ki seemed to regard droids as disposable, background figures. He was also a practitioner of the Soresu form.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ki-Adi-Mundi/Legends

Ion weaponry is specifically created to combat droids. My grenadier always carries a couple of Ion grenades as my GM likes to throw the odd cluster of droids at us to surprise our resident force sensitive (since they can't be sensed).

Droid Disabler is from Fly Casual, Gungun weapons also have Ion qualities. Can have an Ion blaster attachment on blasters.

Get up close and use a combat action to attach a restraining bolt to them.

Away from book at the moment, but isn't there something about a weapon quality doing extra damage to droids? Can't remember if it was stun, Ion, or something else. Might be getting it confused with minions too

As others have said, Ion weapons are a big deal, mainly because they tend to have higher damage values than you would find on similar weapons that can hurt organics, and because they inflict Strain, which droids tend not to have a high threshold for.

The Ionization Blaster from the AoR or EotE core rulebooks is a good, cheap option. The Secondary Ion Blaster attachment from Special Modifications is also worth a look, as it's the only ion weapon I'm aware of that uses Ranged (Heavy) as its combat skill, and it can be modified to be as damaging as the Felebreck Droid Disabler.

With the emphasis on using strain to take down droids, it might also be worth looking at the Guardian's Warleader spec or the Soldier's Vanguard spec (from the new sourcebook), as those have the Suppressing Fire talent that enables some strain damage on missed attacks from the character or their allies.

I suppose that Speaks Binary talent can sometimes be used against droid, and, when you can gain sufficient access to droids' systems, slicing talents may come into play.

I suppose that Speaks Binary talent can sometimes be used against droid, and, when you can gain sufficient access to droids' systems, slicing talents may come into play.

Slicing's one of those concepts that really needs clarification from your GM about whether it applies to Droids: I've had GMs who believed Droids were unique and separate from computers, especially as regards their relationship to slicing; and others who simply considered them AIs and walking computers. I think a case can be made either way here, but before your son chooses to go Slicer as a way to take out Droids, he may want some clarification on that note.

The system really isn't designed to have a "favored enemy" type. It creates a favored type of combat, and you narratively describe that it was training against droids. With the exception of Ion weapon, I can't think of anything that specifically affects droids more than something else. And Ion weapons only cause strain ... which you can do with a stun bolt also.

The GM could come up with an starting option if he wants though. Something like "Anti Droid specialist. Character receives +20 on criticals inflicted on droids. Limited training against organics provides a -10 penalty on criticals inflicted on organics (minimum 1)."

Bad Motivator... That's the most obvious talent that would be useful (Edit: although as a once per session talent its limited in use)

The Move force power with the fine manipulation upgrade... Nothing like deactivating a droid to get it to do what you want.

Mental Tools would be thematic too, being able to disassemble a droid with your mind.

Then we get to Droid directives and programming. We know from SM that a droid needs to be programmed with the Computers skill, so it stands to reason that the same skill is used to "un-program" them, so any of the offensive Computers Talents such as Bypass Security.

Put this all together and a few combinations arise. Mechanic, Slicer, Armourer, Artisan all have something to offer.

You know, a lot of things now have what could be seen as precursor droid brains. Cars, phones, ATMs, etc. And it's wholly possible to hack and control those, rewrite code and programs.

That said, computers as we know them don't exist in Star Wars, and as such hacking as we know it doesn't exist, and a few things have to be noted about what we see.

We know slicers exist. We know hacking is possible. We have seen character overwrite orders, controls, and programs. No one does anything remotely.

From that, I don't think it is unreasonable to hack a droid if one is able to physically connect to it, or the system it is wired into or controlled by.

The game has slicer tools, yeah? I don't think it is either A: reasonable that one slicing datapad should work on speeders, droids, doors, records, etc or B: unreasonable for someone to get a boost die when hacking a droid with a specific slicer tool for the job.