TL:DR

First Character I'm building. So far figured I'm a Droid Engineer; Mechanic who is the groups skill monkey. Not sure what stats I should buy and what gear, also looking for other suggestions on build. Want to be useful as a certain player is probably going to make the game hard from the start, details below

So I'm yet to get into the meat of a campaign. We have a game starting up and we've all discussed what to expect and stuff.

I'm not new to RPGs and although the dice here are unique I think I can get my head around playing the game.

What I really need help with is building my character. I've got a fairly solid idea what I wan't to play, but see the problem is,

We have one player who IS new to RPGs, One player who never is quite sure on the rules but is quite happy to just run around and hit things, Me who likes to build solid characters who feel useful and fill gaps in the team, and one player who will devour the rulebooks and bring out the MOST OP S**T he possibly can because for some reason he doesn't have fun unless he's dominating the game. Add on top a DM he is new to the system (but VERY experienced with multiple game systems) who will probably spend most of his time trying to give that one player a challenge while not letting the rest of us feel left out (I do NOT envy his job).

Normally I'm pretty okay with picking up a new game, If any of you have played Shadowrun, I had little trouble starting that system and it is a mess. But I'm honestly not sure how effective my character will be starting this campaign, and giving the loving backstory I've created, it'd be a real shame to die in the first session or two.

So, I'm a Droid Mechanic (Engineer;Mechanic seems like the right place to start) I'm guessing I should buy as much INT as I can at the start, but what other stats should I invest in? What gear should I buy? Any interesting obligations or obscure rules I should look into? Any Talents I should start with?

So far the team is An Overpowered Force Sensitive Face

A Wookie who only knows how to tear arms off

A Bountyhunter Sniper who could do really well, or could be fairly lacklustre (not sure how his characters coming along)

And my Droid who needs to be a bit of a skill-monkey?

Appreciate all suggestions, I love what I've read so far of this system

Do you already have a dedicated pilot? Going technician mechanic gives a lot of useful mechanic skills which let you repair droids, weapons, vehicles, starships, etc. That career and specialization combo also gives you access to space and planetary piloting as career skills. I'm fairly new to the game myself, but the thing I love about it is that you don't need a character who can do everything. You need to be able to rely on your companions. Your companions already seem to be good in fights, so you can go do something else. Does one of you have any social skills yet? That's another good category for 1 or 2 people to pick up. Just being able to kill stuff isn't great if you don't have someone to find your bounties or increase the payment so that they're actually worthwhile. But if you're going to be the pilot, then you want some points in agility because piloting is agility based and astrogation is intelligence based which you're already covering.

Droid characters are interesting and unique to Star Wars. They have some hard limitations, but otherwise start with a lot of extra development Exp.

If it were me . . .

Start with what chassis you want your character to be. (My choice would be an R style astromech and that's going to help me imagine my capabilities).

As for gear make sure you "buy"

Slicer Gear.

Tool Kit.

(And maybe medical kit if you plan to be the party medic).

Keep in mind that these are "attached" and can't be borrowed by nosy neighbors.

Skills that you should keep in mind

Astrogation!!!!

Computers

Cool (?)

Mechanics

Medic (?)

Piloting Space

Vigilance (?)

As for Obligation you might want to consider "Dutybound: Property." You're going to have an "owner." Make sure it's not the group munchkin. Or the Wookie. (And why isn't Wookie an recognized word for the auto spell checker on a Star Wars forum)?

Another obligation to think about would be: Oath; Asimov's first three laws . . . or something similar. Maybe even just something as simple as "Can't use weapons."

Another question, is your character going to be able to shoot at things? The Empire really frowns on droids that can use weapon systems so having that built in restriction would be something to consider.

Your career is a great choice for your group too.

Just to make sure we're all on the same page - you mean a engineer who is a droid and not an fleshbag who works on droids, right? I only ask because there is an actual Droid Technician tree and I don't want to give advice on the wrong assumption.

There really isn't over powered characters in the game, you can pick a one trick pony built to do one thing amazingly well, however the game is structured so that there are social encounters, combat encounters, exploration encounters, chase encounters etc, being really good at one of these means you neglect the others. A good GM will give you a mix of them all. Choosing a force sensitive player character , out of the block is usually the worst move to make if you want to be over powered as most force powers only get reliable once you hit FR3 and above (usually 200-300 earned DP, even then you would have FR 3 but no powers to back it up)

Moving on to answer your question , the droids major limitation is that it you are quite limited to starting stats, you have 175 starting DP, getting a stat to 2 costs 20 DP of that, 3 costs 50, and 4 costs 90, 5 costs 140.

You won't have to increase brawn unless you want to perhaps use melee or brawl as a combat skill or be all little more robuw , other than that you can happily leave that at 1. Note that this affects your soak and wounds - soak is your armor, so you can increase your wound threshold and soak so an extra 1 here means you take one less DMG from hits and have more wounds so if you normally take 3 hits to fall this can give you an effective 4 more wounds (as you would take 3 less DMG and have 1 more wound)

Agility can be left at 1 , but you may want to pilot and /or use a ranged weapon , there is no pilot in the group so this is an option to increase to 2 or 3.

Intellect you want to boost with whatever you don't spend elsewhere but I'd say at least 3 but preferably 4. This helps your staple mechanics, astrogation, computer and knowledge skills.

Cunning can be handy , as it allows for things like perception , skullduggery but again not essential.

Willpower has the added bonus of boosting strain which is used to fuel talents and maneuvers, so is another one you may want to increase.

Lastly presence is another one like cunning, as it can be useful when interacting with others but is not essential.

As a droid you get too start with 6 free ranks from your career skills, and 3 of from your specialisation career skills. While min-maxing is not the name of this game it is a good idea to be efficient with your starting choices and double up skill ranks where you can (buying 2 ranks with XP costs 15 XP total, buying 2 rank 1 skills costs 10 XP , which means you saved 5 XP each time you can)

Unfortunately you only have one choice that you can double here - mechanics.

This leaves from career (choose 5 of these)

Astrogation (I'd say this is a must)

Computers (again because this is intellect based I'd take it automatically)

Coordination ( take if you boost agility)

Discipline ( take as it allows you to help recover strain at the end of encounters)

Knowledge (outer rim) again since intellect , id take this, but you may want one of the other skills

Perception (take if you boosted cunning)

Piloting (planetary) take if you went agility

So astrogation / computers then 3 other skills based on what characteristic you boost.

You now need to choose 2 more from the following

Brawl ( useful for combat if you boost brawn)

Piloting (Space) take if you boosted agility

Skullduggery take if you boosted cunning

So if you want to be pilot or co-pilot mechanic

4 intellect (90 XP) 3 Agility (50 XP) 2 willpower (20 XP) (160 XP)

Astrogation 1

Coordination 1 (*)

Computers 1

Discipline 1 (optional *)

Knowledge - Outer Rim 1 (*)

Piloting Planetary 1

Piloting Space 1

Mechanics 2

If you wanted to make yourself more robust , you could boost your brawn to 2 with the left over XP, this gives you 3 base armor before you buy your armor (droids get a free rank in enduring, which boosts your soak). If you do this brawl is an option door combat.

However if you prefer you may want to go the R2D2 route and boost cunning to 2 instead , this means you could look more seriously at skulduggery or just buy ranks in it, which allows you a chance at deceiving people or breaking through doors.

These are just some basic tips but mix and match till your happy, you could open up more options by leaving intellect at 3 , but since 3 of your main skills use it (astrogation, computers and mechanics, also the knowledge skill is also useful but not so much in a generic sense).

It is now just a case of spending the remaining XP on skill ranks or talents. Another option would be to drop intellect to 3(saving 40 DP) and take the 5 talents directly to dedication (75 XP) again boosting your Intellect back to 4 but giving you 4 very useful talents (including the awesome bad motivator) and opening your talent tree wide open from the very beginning.

This last option is the quick fix for starting with some cool stuff , however to get your next characteristic increase you have to buy into another spec, whereas the other way once you've earned 75 XP you could have 5 intellect.

If you want to make a very versitile and powerful droid I'd suggest picking a medical droid chasis 2-1B type for background, it will also make you less threatening and will generally be allowed in more places.

I would go for the Cyber tech spec and become a robot arms dealer (well legs too) hehe.

This will give you all of the non knowledge intelligence skills astrogate, medicine, computers and mechanics along with preception and vigilance which are both very nice. You can be a veritable inspector gadget eventually with up to 10 implants many of which can be the equivilant of skill chips giving +1 to any skill level.

I would use all your starting points and 15xp from obligation to have a stat spread of (2 2 4 2 2 2) with 4 int. Having 1's is really rough.

Even with no points in skills you will still start with astrogation, computers, knowledge outer rim, mechanics x2 perception, piloting planetary, medicine and vigilance

First item you should make is an int boosting implant and it will cost very little for a cyber tech. Then Cyber arms and legs for agi.

Having a no xp cost 2 4 5 2 2 2 will let you pilot and gun well in addition to having all of the int skills covered.

With the reduced cost from Cyberneticist you will get these cheaply.

The modder tree will also be a really good early pick up giving you access to piloting space and gunnery as well as making the groups ship much better.

Gunnery can be used with some large weapons and 4 agi and a few ranks in gunnery will make you a decent combatant in or out of space combat.

As far as equipment goes I'd suggest a heavy blaster pistol heavy clothing and mechanics tools a medpack a data pad and slicers tools (intigrated)