Hello fellow gamers,

I have a question regarding a Character concept from one of my players, so I’m here seeking the knowledge of the forum

One of my players want’s to create a tiny alien… really small, no bigger than a smartphone. So all his Ability scores are 1, except Intelligence. Btw, in order to create this alien I used the rules of Droids in EotE and simply make him organic.

As career, he want’s to be a Technician Droid Tech: He want’s to be a great droid builder that uses a humanoid size droid as his vessel in a humanoid galaxy… sort of Krang

My original interpretation was that the droid could provide Assistance (as Skilled or unskilled assistance: meaning, share Ability or Skills, or just provide boost dice [1]). This way, the droid is in fact providing muscle and resistance for the PC.

Taking this into consideration, I was wondering what could be the best interpretation to use this droid in a daily basis: should this droid be considered as…?

Cyber tech? Providing Brawn, Agility, Wound Threshold, Soak and even Presence. This implies that the PC won’t take any special action or maneuver to control the droid.

Remotes? [2] Expending maneuvers or even actions to control it. With this approach the PC becomes the “assistant” of the Droid’s actions. If we take this approach: What would happen if the PC programs the droid with a Protocol?

And as an additional question: what happen when the droid receive damage? Only the droid suffers damage?

I personally love the concept, but wish to remain fair and don’t create an unbalance tool. I’m leaning to consider the droid as a Remote, but I want the opinion of my fellow gamers in this forum

Thanks for your help and thoughts on this

[1]: AoR, page 33

[2] Special Modifications, page 53

So, in some ways kinda like Vuffi Raa? See http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vuffi_Raa

Or maybe something like Blue Max? See http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blue_Max

To be honest, I think you could use either approach. If it were me, I would look at how the player wants his PC to interact with the “host”. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages, and I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other.

It is entirely possible that the solution might evolve over time.

You might start off with a “dumb remote”, which then later might get some intelligence added to it.

Or, you might start off with a “dumb remote”, which then later gets integrated into the PC as a set of special cybernetics.

IMO, the “dumb remote” solution would be the least expensive starting point, but that might not fit into the character concept that your player has.

I don´t really get why all Characteristics should be 1 tho...I mean his size doesn´t affect his cunning or his Presence?
He could be somewhere around 113313 in my imagination...even Agility isn´t really tied to size...
Out of curiosity: Did he pick a race that exists in the SW Universe or create a new one?
If you want to flavor it up a bit and have some time, you could pin the droids actions to a skill check (mechanics maybe?
or piloting planetary?), and then give him special maneuvers and special ways to spend advantage and triumph
similar to vehicle combat. But maybe thats overkill, i dunno...
So if you´re not planning to make it some kind of personal scale vehicle, I´d vote remote.
I´d rule damage goes to the droid, so do crits. If it gets knocked out in combat, the tiny alien inside will be knocked out from the hit as well.
If the Droid ever dies, it explodes and takes the tiny alien with it.

There's 2 tiny species I know of... there's one episode of Clone Wars I think. R2 and C3PO only eposide, they find a tiny species and isn't one of Cad Banes flunkies actually a tiny alien in a human sized exo-suit?

These are the two I'm familiar with...

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Zilkin

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shawda_Ubb/Canon

There was an arc in the Clone Wars where a Zilkin was utilizing the chassis of an astromech droid as a vehicle (having had its brain replaced with a little cockpit).

As to the original question, I would probably just stat the character as a droid and just let the fact that it has a tiny alien instead of a brain be fluff. Though it would depend on exactly what the player wanted to accomplish and why.

Blue Max is a great comparison, but what you're describing also sounds a little like a Shard . As small as the alien you're describing is, I might go 0 for Brawn, but the rest of the ability scores could be anything. You really only need stats if the alien is outside of his carrier chassis, right?

I'm with Vorzakk; I think that constructing a mechanism to represent the symbiosis is unnecessarily complicated without really adding much to the game. Stat the character as a droid and be done with it.

I think all of your questions here highlight the difficulty of stating the chassis as a remote. Stat the PC as a Droid, assuming that the alien is riding the chassis.

Then, stat the alien itself; I'd say the vulnerability of its small form and the ability to walk around independently probably cancel each other out, so you can just have a second set of stats for the unprotected alien. But as it's going to be in the chassis most of the time, I say just treat it as though it's a droid for most game purposes.

Could i suggest a different approach?

how many time he will be outside his droid? if that'll be very little time, the easiest approach would be to generate char as a normal droid char. The tiny alien driving him will be just a feature.

You can rule out the little alien will get something like 1 on all skills and one mandatory upgrade to difficulties, and also difficulties using talents and/or equipment (and of course the "droid" exoskeleton will be deactivated while the tiny alien is outside them).

This is really penalising for the tiny alien, but luckily he will be using droid form mostly of time so could not really different than rolling a standard droid char with a different taste...

So kind of like Seripas from the Clone Wars?