I had this idea, now it is definitely not for every gaming group, but I thought it would be a good exercise.

So, let's say a slicer wants to create the Star Wars equivalent of virus or trojan horse, that could easily be the results of advantages on a normal slicing check, explaining why it's hard to trace you, why you get a permanent backdoor and so on...

What if you want to take it one step further. Spending time programming an intelligence piece of software to do tasks for you, in addition to be able to assist you?

I was looking at the droid directive programming bit in SM. It needs some adaptation sure, but isn't that a great starting point?

An elimination directive will completely obliterate a system or even take control and turn for example the defence measures against the ones it's supposed to protect.

A healing directive could undelete information, find deleted and heavily encrypted data.

A combat directive would support you in dealing with security measures like security programs or defenders/administrators in the system.

A repair directive could be a good help for searching the system for the stuff you are after while you make sure your team has a safe escape route or you could expel users more powerful than your program...

The idea is that you must spend the same time programming/crafting as per SM, so you can't really do it on the fly, but it's basically a droid on a stick you enter into the system... you could perhaps count it as part of your normal slicing gear, but add 1 encumbrance (or more, depending on how powerful it is).

How long it survives and can be reused depends on how much more you want to keep track of. You could say that one or two Despairs destroys it, or you can give it a strain threshold, counting all threats it suffers as strain, and perhaps every advantage or success from opponents as strain too. This makes it reusable, but more limited in lifespan per encounter.

There's also the case of what type of NPC and the stat line. I'd say keep only Intellect, although you can make a case for both presence and willpower. Whether it's a minion, rival or nemesis could just depend on what directive it is.

Thoughts? Ideas?

And yes, I know, lots of more book keeping, but let's just ignore that drawback and go with the idea. I'm not certain it's a great idea, but it could make the slicer in the group feel both more useful and powerful. Kind of like having an animal companion...

So whether or not it adds to your game is a different matter, but ... yeah...

Sounds like Blue Max.

Well, the Surface-Defence Blaster, the Astrogation Droid, and the Autopilot Droid all don't have any ranks in characteristics, only skills, but they do exist.

Well, considering there's nothing stopping a character from creating a droid to follow them around and assist their computer checks, I could see this being workable. You could also describe bonuses from gadgets as coming from special programs. For instance, when you create a custom set of slicer gear using the crafting rules, the "Safety Features" that grant you an advantage on every check might be an intelligent program that helps monitor the situation when you are slicing.

An interesting wrinkle taken from the droid brain examples is that sometimes they are temperamental or willful. An "elimination program" might have a tendency to perform lockdown actions on the system while the slicer is still rooting about for interesting data to counter some perceived threat, for instance.

You might have to assign some kind of cost to programming so that there's risk involved, though, as normal droid programming only takes time. Or perhaps if a defending slicer gets enough pieces of your program's "signature" they can attempt to delete/corrupt/suborn it.

Sounds like Blue Max.

That was the first thing I thought of too. Clearly you're looking for an armless, legless, blue cube with a photoreceptor and an attitude.

Oh, and some huge Bollocks Bollux.

I think this is workable just as long as you don't allow it to be miniaturized too much. Having such programs/directives on the equivalent of a USB is a bit OP in my opinion. A very small droid that could either follow you around, or a portable brain (at least encumbrance 1, I'd say), would be reasonable. I'd call it something like a Semi-Autonomous Slicing Protocol Unit, make it laptop-sized, and then give it some personality. Like, it can only engage its hacking protocols after you have started playing really, really loud drum and bass music.

Well, seeing as how uneventful real hacking can be, maybe the mini-AI just plays a mean game of Pong. Keeps you occupied.

For one, I like how you want to expand on a niche part of the game. Special Modifications added some rules for splicing, but I think I understand what you want to do.

I may suggest setback dice for different terminal ranges. At engaged range, the splicer affects that computer only. At short range, with a setback die, it affects any networked systems in that range, etc. This reflects the additional servers and firewalls which may pop up, thereby negating initial expenses in smaller droids or helpers with paltry skills. To shut down or infect a small bunker, the splicer might reasonably suffer 3 or more setback dice to reflect the vast network and countermeasures of a larger system. However, for small hacks, I think this works.

I also agree with others how the size and/or encumbrance should be bigger than 0.

As far as keeping track of the rolls, I'd ask the player to help me (as GM?) identify ways to spend dice results on a home-made chart.

Sounds like Blue Max.

That was the first thing I thought of too. Clearly you're looking for an armless, legless, blue cube with a photoreceptor and an attitude.

Oh, and some huge Bollocks Bollux.

Doesn't the ability to do this already covered in making droids in Special Modifications?

Sort of. Not entirely as I envision it, but yeah, close enough to adapt what we have here to something more. Which is why I'm thinking of adapting this. Not simply as a slicer-droid, but more like software you introduce into a system...

It needs some simplification from droids, and it needs to add something to slicing encounters not already covered... so yeah... creative exercise.

It would seem to me that it would need a computer to run on...so basically a mono task droid fits the bill. As you cant just load an ai into a secure system via a thumb drive or something.

Also isnt slicing tools software already?

I'm sorry dave I can't do that. This seems very un starwars to me. I mean since disney owns iron man I suppose they could add Jarvis or Friday to the star wars cannon, I really hope they don't though

Yeah, you could adapt the mono task chassis. Certainly. I'm trying to make it less a droid, yet more than just gear.

Slicing tools are software and hardware sure, to be able to connect to and slice into systems - that's at least how I see it.

The idea here is to plant something in the system, something pre-made, not just the result a good (or bad) roll.

For instance: spend 172-or-so hours crafting an elimination directive "something" to enter into a system to gain control of it, wipe it, turn it against the base personnel or something along those lines. Allowing such crafting/programming, gives the slicer something more to do, something to tinker with, make and invent.

Saga had rules for "droid-ifying" items. You adapted the droid's stats based on the size of the item, so you could have innocuous things that were actually droids (like a gaming table, magnoculars, etc.). It strikes me that a "droid-ified" datapad seems close to what you're looking for. It doesn't need to be mobile, but it has a heuristic processor AI, some measure of personality, and is able to assist the slicer with certain tasks, as well as regular datapad functions.

I'm just not certain that representing you slicer's programming needs to be any more complicated than a small (Silhouette 0), immobile droid.

I'm just not certain that representing you slicer's programming needs to be any more complicated than a small (Silhouette 0), immobile droid.

For some reason I keep thinking of the toaster from Red Dwarf.

Yeah, you could adapt the mono task chassis. Certainly. I'm trying to make it less a droid, yet more than just gear.

Slicing tools are software and hardware sure, to be able to connect to and slice into systems - that's at least how I see it.

The idea here is to plant something in the system, something pre-made, not just the result a good (or bad) roll.

For instance: spend 172-or-so hours crafting an elimination directive "something" to enter into a system to gain control of it, wipe it, turn it against the base personnel or something along those lines. Allowing such crafting/programming, gives the slicer something more to do, something to tinker with, make and invent.

So will the AI actually roll separately or is it just accomplishing a single task automatically?

Saga had rules for "droid-ifying" items. You adapted the droid's stats based on the size of the item, so you could have innocuous things that were actually droids (like a gaming table, magnoculars, etc.). It strikes me that a "droid-ified" datapad seems close to what you're looking for. It doesn't need to be mobile, but it has a heuristic processor AI, some measure of personality, and is able to assist the slicer with certain tasks, as well as regular datapad functions.

I'm just not certain that representing you slicer's programming needs to be any more complicated than a small (Silhouette 0), immobile droid.

That's pretty much what I was envisioning as well.

It sounds like you want to craft programs like the defensive ones you need to defeat. I don't see why you couldn't do that, but unless you had control of the system, they would run off your slicing computer. This adds a huge level of complexity to a slicing which could be cool if the game was set around it.

In general, I think it is too extensive for most games. I had the same problems in Shadowrun, where I finally ruled that either everyone is a decker or nobody is, because deckers ended up running a separate side adventure in the net, while everyone else ran in the real world. So think before you make it too complicated.

Slicers are amazingly powerful in their own right. If you want to mechanically make them more powerful craft a custom tool that would give them 2 boost dice and an upgrade on computers. That's really the absolute limit of what a tool should provide.

The idea of hacking droids is fair maybe crafting one with the small size advantage or basing them off the small spider medical droids that add a wound healed when doing surgery. Really though you should be focusing the story on the players not on the non player droids/tools etc.

Creating new directives is cool maybe creating a slicer directive. that can bypass security or gains advantage when not leaving a trace.

The spark of life is really a droid thing in star wars. You never run into sentient datapads even in legends the only thing I can think of coming close is ig-88 being copied into the death star 2 computer core and then being blown up.

Droids aren't tools, they're NPCs. I'd treat a hacker droid the way I'd treat, say, a Rodian with Computers skill. It makes its own skill checks. If you want it to assist your slicing efforts, use the rules for assisting a player.

Off my head if a Slicer wanted to craft computer spikes that execute a specific task and that anyone could just insert into a computer I'd go for that. The task would be pretty specific and it would allow a base roll using the Slicer's dice pool minus active Talents, I might allow passives.

Now if it's just to make a better hack tool to assist them I'd allow that as well, but either narrowed by task per tool, or not much boost above the double boost dice for the data breaker. I think what's being described is simply a more fleshed out narrative description of a data breaker and what it does.

Off my head if a Slicer wanted to craft computer spikes that execute a specific task and that anyone could just insert into a computer I'd go for that. The task would be pretty specific and it would allow a base roll using the Slicer's dice pool minus active Talents, I might allow passives.

Now if it's just to make a better hack tool to assist them I'd allow that as well, but either narrowed by task per tool, or not much boost above the double boost dice for the data breaker. I think what's being described is simply a more fleshed out narrative description of a data breaker and what it does.

That or a mono task droid that assists...

Off my head if a Slicer wanted to craft computer spikes that execute a specific task and that anyone could just insert into a computer I'd go for that. The task would be pretty specific and it would allow a base roll using the Slicer's dice pool minus active Talents, I might allow passives.

Now if it's just to make a better hack tool to assist them I'd allow that as well, but either narrowed by task per tool, or not much boost above the double boost dice for the data breaker. I think what's being described is simply a more fleshed out narrative description of a data breaker and what it does.

That or a mono task droid that assists...

Which is what Blue Max is, so there's certainly precedent for it.

[snippety]

So will the AI actually roll separately or is it just accomplishing a single task automatically?

Yes ... and ... no... ? Either or both, depending on design and use... I'm not sure. Ideas?

In the case of spending 172 hours crafting (and whatever amount of credits), I'd say that perhaps the directive/program/AI should be allowed to roll and act on its own (perhaps adapting the animal companion thing: the slicer must spend a maneuver to direct it, but in effect gains 1 action and a maneuver, add personality quirks from droid crafting definitely.)

A smaller, less complex directive may only be able to assist the slicer, or have a limited focus like keeping an active security program busy. Either deactivating it automatically (quite powerful) or just rendering it useless for the encounter (less powerful, but still very useful), or just for a couple of rounds (useful, but not very powerful I think ... adds pressure and suspense [if done right.]) All these benefits could have requirements based on the personality quirks, or other creative limitation. For instance: when the program keeps the security program busy (flirting, singing, wooing, whatever the directive does) the slicer can go about the system as long as he's "quiet", that could mean: add a setback die or two, if you roll 3 or more threats the security program becomes aware of you and you must deactivate it to make any further checks in the system, Despair ... well... have fun.

It sounds like you want to craft programs like the defensive ones you need to defeat. I don't see why you couldn't do that, but unless you had control of the system, they would run off your slicing computer. This adds a huge level of complexity to a slicing which could be cool if the game was set around it.

In general, I think it is too extensive for most games. I had the same problems in Shadowrun, where I finally ruled that either everyone is a decker or nobody is, because deckers ended up running a separate side adventure in the net, while everyone else ran in the real world. So think before you make it too complicated.

The idea isn't to make this a necessary or a central part of the game, but the lightsaber toting forices get their mini-game in all the duels, mind trick and so on, the slicer should at times all get to be on centre stage, doing his hero-business. The idea is to let the slicer shine and have his own little (virtual) war to wage at times, a war where lightsabers are useless, talking is pointless, and yada yada yada ... but yeah, this wouldn't be something for every session or every slicing encounter and so on, not necessarily anyway. Your point is fair, and I hear you

Slicers are amazingly powerful in their own right. If you want to mechanically make them more powerful craft a custom tool that would give them 2 boost dice and an upgrade on computers. That's really the absolute limit of what a tool should provide.

The idea of hacking droids is fair maybe crafting one with the small size advantage or basing them off the small spider medical droids that add a wound healed when doing surgery. Really though you should be focusing the story on the players not on the non player droids/tools etc.

Creating new directives is cool maybe creating a slicer directive. that can bypass security or gains advantage when not leaving a trace.

The spark of life is really a droid thing in star wars. You never run into sentient datapads even in legends the only thing I can think of coming close is ig-88 being copied into the death star 2 computer core and then being blown up.

I don't find slicers to be amazingly powerful, perhaps because I don't allow the use of the Computer skill to replace any other skill just because you're sitting with a laptop... so, while the slicer can use the computer skill to get into a system, finding the relevant information and data is more often than not based on a knowledge check ... at least it's easier with a knowledge check. Of course that's based on intellect, so the slicer is perhaps naturally talented, but yeah... Slicers have so far been few in my games and they're not really super powerful characters, their scope is usually quite limited and their usefulness isn't often apparent to themselves or their fellow players - particularly when they understand that they can't just replace every skill with Computers after all...

Your ideas for directives have been assimilated.