Well, after a bit of a chat with another player, and one with my GM, I've got some questions about Droids that there hasn't really been a great answer to from what I can tell. These are mostly abstractions rather than questions about the mechanics, but I'm sure those of you on the forums with more experience with both the game and the world can probably answer better than we could.
1. for starters, I was wondering if droids ever really forgot things. If they even could forget things without voluntarily overwriting memory space and the like. Obviously its implied that they can remember things much in the same manner as humans can, with audio, visual, etc. all being viable points for storage, but they're still robots and computers at their core, and last I checked I haven't had my computer forget a damned thing that I didn't tell it to, so long as I stored it in the correct place and not a temp folder and it didn't get corrupted. Could a droid just declare some scene that they saw to now be part of their long-term storage? What I mean by this is the cliche style of something with perfect recall glancing at a scene and being able to perfectly reconstruct it, or leafing through a book at a page a second and reciting it later. Is this potentially viable, and if not, why? What is my misunderstanding?
2. Droids and upgrades. Most of these topics really relate to the idea that droids are just particularly advanced and complicated computers. Following on this, would it be reasonable or otherwise possible for a PC or NPC droid to recieve upgrades to skills or abilities or hell, even characteristics through modifications and programming? I imagine that the otherwise mindless battle-droids of the universe didn't sit through an extended lesson in blaster training to manage their skills and capabilities in it, and it's probable that they didn't go to the gym to get their brawn as well. So following that logic, why couldn't a droid load a program for shooting to be better at it? Or get a series of mechanical upgrades to improve their agility?
3. Very specifically related to my droid. I wanted to do something fun and silly with them, and ended up building a probe droid (looks like G0T0) that wears a cowboy hat, speaks with a southern accent and constant snark, and is currently going down the Smuggler - Gambler career path. But something came up. When or how would a droid ever be allowed to actually gamble, as per the path's intentions? Surely it'd be seen as unfair at the bare minimum. Also it's not like you could stop the droid from cheating in a variety of ways that are particularly easily available to droids, and those with cybernetics, or at least undetectable (Built in Veridicator 200 for reading the other players in a game of cards?). Further any game involving some degree of reliable math or probability would be right out, given the nature of a droid as a computer at least in part, right? Perfect calculator, and numbers and figures are some of the most trivial types data to store.

I understand that maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, and more than likely not understanding things, but these were just a few of the potential concerns, questions, and other oddities we considered and came across, and well, we figured we might as well crowd-source some more experienced opinions. Thanks in advance for any and all responses.

1. Keen observation and "perfect recall" are probably in keeping with a probe droid's organic purpose, and I don't think speed-reading and scanning pages would be game-breaking; bear in mind that even perfect recall is subject to interpretation, and that would be up to you as the PC .
2. PC droid upgrades are handled exactly the same as other PCs, following character generation, for obvious balance reasons. The fact of your PC being a droid might change the narrative of how the upgrades are achieved, but not the mechanics (XP or other requirements).
3. I suspect your character will be mostly gambling with other droids, though certain others might find the gamble stimulating; of course, they would probably also be cheating, or enhanced in some fashion. Care to roll the dice with Qui-Gon?

As Edgehawk says, the narrative can be very different from organics, but the mechanics won't be.

So both enhance stats with cybernetics or dedication, but these might be mechanical upgrades for a droid.

An organic might wear armour where a droid might have armour plating added.

An organic might carry a tool on a belt where a droid might have it integrated.

And so on.

On the recall thing, I'd suggest that the Droid by default could only remember the notes of what they noticed, if they wanted more, they should fit a Neural Recorder.

3 hours ago, Edgehawk said:

1. Keen observation and "perfect recall" are probably in keeping with a probe droid's organic purpose, and I don't think speed-reading and scanning pages would be game-breaking; bear in mind that even perfect recall is subject to interpretation, and that would be up to you as the PC .
2. PC droid upgrades are handled exactly the same as other PCs, following character generation, for obvious balance reasons. The fact of your PC being a droid might change the narrative of how the upgrades are achieved, but not the mechanics (XP or other requirements).
3. I suspect your character will be mostly gambling with other droids, though certain others might find the gamble stimulating; of course, they would probably also be cheating, or enhanced in some fashion. Care to roll the dice with Qui-Gon?

I tend to agree with everything here.

I would add on 3. that droid prejudice is very much a thing in many parts of the Star Wars galaxy. That's not to say that you can't earn respect in certain circles but you're definitely handicapping yourself. With that in mind, I would strongly suggest that you have a discussion with your GM concerning this. I have played in games where the GM said screw canon and droids were treated like any other species. On the otherhand, I've also played in games where droids were treated little better than pets or slaves. For some archetypes, like those focused on combat or technical skills, that really isn't a problem. A class like gambler though, is going to be making a lot of social checks, and it's best you know what you're getting into before you roll it up just so there are no hard feelings.

On a personal note, I find droids to be a little underpowered, at least from a mechanical perspective so I always try to throw my droid players a bone when I can. Most commonly, this comes in the form of being easily overlooked or ignored. Think of all the places Chopper sneaks into in Star Wars: Rebels. Generally speaking, the more prejudice I give the people in a region towards droids, the more they are inclined to underestimate them. I also sometimes allow my droid players to "loot" droid only cybernetics from defeated enemy droids and generally allow their gear to be less conspicuous and more integrated. I say personal note, because I know plenty of people who will derail a threat arguing their balance and I'm not trying to do that here. I just wanted to give you some options you might want to discuss with your GM that may influence your species choice.

I think there was a scene in ANH where C-3PO forgot something. The comlink, was it?

If you're familiar with Halo and other Bungie fiction, they used the term "rampancy." AIs will eventually start to decay and break down,going crazy over time. I imagine it's similar with SW droids without memory wipes, where they start to develop quirks which may involve forgetfulness.

I find it best not to think of droids as more advanced modern computers. They're not microchips and microprocessors like we know of today. They're more like analog computers to our digital ones. So instead of logic gates, yes or no, 1 or 0 digital processing they are yes, no, maybe, and I don't know. The Halo fiction has AI being a neural net that's a copy of a single person. Fallout robots are very similar. They are built with 1950s style technology in a world where microchips were never invented. With star wars I think of droids as being a type of electric mimicry of an organic mind. To me that helps explain how the droid army was so dumb and why C3PO was so shaky when he first started out in Phantom Menace, he was still learning to walk.

So, imagine if a new model had to taught like a child how to do things, and once you reached a point that you wanted, you could lock in the base model and that could be duplicated across multiple copies. The trade federation trained their army just enough to be soldiers and then put them into production. A droid like C3PO was given his basic knowledge modules and then Anakin had to teach him how to walk and such, he may know a lot of languages and protocol but outside of that he's pretty niave and since he keeps getting wiped his skills are always a little shaky. A droid like R2 initially started with his repair knowledge, but since he never had his knowledge wiped back to basics he's developed quite a personality.

Experience points aren't some meta game gift from the tooth fairy that just magically appears under the character's pillow. It's a mechanical element that puts a quantitative rule for the direction a player chooses for their character. When someone poses 'can't a droid just get a gun program and be better at shooting?', yes, and that is accomplished by spending xp. The narrative explanation for the advancement of skills and talents goes on the front end and the xp is on the back end. It's no different for squishy PCs. How does a organic explain the fact after a session they bought their combat skill from zero to 2 with their xp awarded while their group is floating around in outer space? They didn't go to the range or school, they practiced, they 'programmed' themselves to be better.

Perfect memory and the pitfalls of that are best discussed with your GM. A computer has a perfect memory, but only if you hit the 'save' button. A droid probably can remember alot, but only what their electronic, photo and audio receptors recorded, so if they failed their Perception roll it isn't that they can't remember events, it's that they didn't have the resolution to record them or didn't pay attention to that particular detail and record them in the first place. For example, the droid might have recorded who was at a meeting and what they said, but they didn't record the session to a fine enough detail to recall what everyone had to drink.

I still don't like the way droids are handled in this system, they start with less XP value than most other Races.

175xp does NOT go far, given that bringing them up to a human base stats to 2's across the board would eat up 120 of that leaving 45 xp. If you add up the other races they essentially add up to the same Value (120xp) when you coutn in the starting bonus skill(s) and/or any special abilities.

Add 15 xp for the 3 Bonus In-Profession/Spec skills, that gets to roughly 60 total...still 25 less than even any of the 4-armed races start with (85xp).

A Max Cap of 6 on Cybernetics is worth maybe another 5-10 points? so that's 65-70xp of value.

Not having to eat or sleep is countered by can't be healed by Medicine and costs and not to mention the associated monetary cost of the repair.

Am I missing any other value that would add to Droids? Do Droids have a limit on the number of Items they can be considered to have as "Internal"?

I like the IDEA of playing a Droid but to-date the penalty doesn't seem worth it...

I've considered of statting out various "Bases Chassis" (R2, IG, CP etc...) to give a basic set of stats, skills, add-ons etc then adjusting their starting Xp to reflect that Starting Chassis. tack on some Obligation if needed.

Dunno if its worth the work though...8P

Rank of Enduring.

Immune to poisons.

Can't be mentally manipulated by the Force.

Droids are fine. When someone wants to focus on the minutiae of having the 'optimum' starting profile it says to me that's someone who hasn't played a campaign of any serious length. The racials and starting profiles become quickly irrelevant as a game progresses.

Play a droid because you want to play a droid. Not because the other kid's marbles are shinier on the first day of school.

Droids also have the advantage of complete stat customization which is something that no other race has.

If you are giving your Droid 2s across the board, you are doing it wrong - a Droid is made to serve a particular purpose, such as being a diplomat or load-lifter or soldier. They are not going to be 'average' at tightrope walking when their express purpose is to make repairs to a ship.

I gotta agree with the last few posters. Nearly all of the droids that we see in Star Wars are unitaskers (or at the very least leaning in that direction), and I think the system does just fine for them. Sure, it's inadequate if you're trying to make some snowflake droid like Guri; but to me that's a feature and not a bug.

I have two main issues with droids.

1) Being, arguably, one of the most popular species, they are often chosen by new players. Being a new player, they don't know exactly how to build a droid to be effective and end up with an unsatisfying character. People can talking about Roleplaying and Narrative all they want. The fact of the matter is that balance matters because having a character who can't pass checks is frustrating. New droid players often either build a complete unitasker, and get frustrated by their inability to anything outside of their chosen characteristic or they try to build a balanced character and find they are 20-30 points of xp weaker than their fellows. I've seen it happen several times and I find it frustrating. I agree with you @2P51 that beyond a certain xp threshold species matters a whole lot less. The issue is getting them to that point.

2) Droid are balanced poorly. I know people get up in arms about this but it's true. Honestly, it's true with a lot of the EotE core book species. Over the years FFG has adjusted the way they balance species, reducing the virtual cost of non-characteristic abilities, how they balance brawn species and a couple of other things. This had a more deleterious effect on droids because all of those minor quality of life things like not having to eat and immunity to poison cost them serious points. I believe that if Droids came out for the first time in a new book, we would see them with about 15 more xp than they do now. I know what you are going to say, but Slade, "droids are so flexible". Are they though? Ohh for sure, they were back when the only species were EotE core but now that we have 75+ species things are different. Want a high Str/Wil species, there is a species for that, want a high Cun/Int we've got two. Even on the rare stat combination where there isn't a 3/3 species there is usually a 3/2 with enough xp to still make it better. Combine that with all of the anti-droid prejudice that exists on most planets and their inability to access a 3rd of the specialties and they are seriously underpowered IMO.

Again, I am speaking from a pure mechanical balance perspective. I've played my fair share of Kobolds bards because I had a character idea and stats be damned. So please don't take this as me saying you can't make a good droid. I just get worried when I see new players rolling up droids because I don't think it gives them the best chance at a great game experience.

My issue with being a droid is beyond the rules, but their being property. They are things; they're not killed, they're totaled.

But regarding character creation, I do like that their bad generalists, for a narrative reason: There wouldn't be anything left to do for living beings.

Double posting.

I find it more effecting building droids using the adversary droid profiles as a template. For example, I designed a droid Bounty Hunter/Survivalist based on the K-9 hunting droid found in Enter the Unknown. I found I was able to replicate the profile and advance beyond it with starting XP available.

I think, if you've got a player fresh to building a droid, point them to the droid adversaries and tell them to pick one, then replicate and tweak it.

I think most players have an ingrained idea that they have to generalize as much as possible. It's probably a survival mechanism to counter the killer GMs who would attack any weak point as viciously as possible. Its also probably why highly specific specializations get criticized, as it runs counter to the trend.

20 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Rank of Enduring.

Immune to poisons.

Can't be mentally manipulated by the Force.

Droids are fine. When someone wants to focus on the minutiae of having the 'optimum' starting profile it says to me that's someone who hasn't played a campaign of any serious length. The racials and starting profiles become quickly irrelevant as a game progresses.

Play a droid because you want to play a droid. Not because the other kid's marbles are shinier on the first day of school.

And that's what I was missing, thanks...I'm bad at math and didn't have any of my Book with me yesterday.

Hrmm now I'll have to think of some Droid character ideas...

20 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Can't be mentally manipulated by the Force.

Reminds me of a session where my droid and the organics met a powerful Dark Side Nemesis, whose aura of Fear completely passed me by, whilst it significantly affected the organics.

42 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

And that's what I was missing, thanks...I'm bad at math and didn't have any of my Book with me yesterday.

Hrmm now I'll have to think of some Droid character ideas...

You can have one I've been toying around with. A Droid Droid Tech who was the old central command unit of an abandoned space station. After reawakening to an empty station she fashioned a body for herself and is traveling with a bunch of repurposed old maintenance bots. I'm envisioning a cyberbrain in a jar for a head. I was planning to have an old firefighting bot with a CryoBan projector and maybe a law enforcement model. Of course they all need wacky personalities to contrast with my characters dry humor. I'm thinking she has a personality like GLaDOS from portal.

Some day I'll give playing a droid a shot. I don't know if I could come up with a character concept that'll be strong enough to maintain long term play, but on the surface it sounds like a fun change of pace. And I'll have to go total weirdo and play an Astromech. Play a character with no arms? Sure, bring it!

That's actually pretty hilarious...only issue is that the game I'd be playing him in I think already has a Droid-builder...or maybe not, plus I'm working on a Gambler/Charmer/Gunslinger...

now if I can just find that piece of art for the droid with the bolt-on Moustache...8D

So in the movies we have the gas attack in Ep 1 on Qui Gon and Obi Wan. We have the Saberdart from Jango in Ep 2. There's the poisonous creepy crawly on Amidala in Ep 2 as well. We've got Finn and Rey working to not be gassed by the malfunction on the Falcon and then deciding to use it on what they thought were Stromtroopers. There are a number of gas, toxin, disease stories in Clone Wars. I know there was the nerve gas bomb episode on Rebels, not sure about other disease or poison stories there. Point being, a GM should be using Disease/Gas/Poisons/Toxins in their sessions because the genre makes ample use of them. The utility of being a droid should shine for that feature alone.

Astromech is massively powerful in space combat, if built for it, due to the Astromech only extra rules.

My droid was a very simple one for a one off, Surgical Droid based of Medic, 3's in Brawn, Agility, Intellect, 1's in Cunning and Presence, skills in Brawl, Melee, Ranged L+H as well as 2 in Medicine and a few other bits. Basically a reject from the production lines due to faulty morality circuits, but that became a positive in time of war and for some buyers! Essentially effective combatant who was effective medic. Used Medpac, Blaster Rifle and Vibroknife.

Don't forget that droids don't need spacesuits. My group ran into the problem that they didn't have spacesuits, and the Empire depressurized their ship while attacking with zero-G spacetroopers. If they didn't have a combat focused droid, they would have lost badly.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

So in the movies we have the gas attack in Ep 1 on Qui Gon and Obi Wan. We have the Saberdart from Jango in Ep 2. There's the poisonous creepy crawly on Amidala in Ep 2 as well. We've got Finn and Rey working to not be gassed by the malfunction on the Falcon and then deciding to use it on what they thought were Stromtroopers. There are a number of gas, toxin, disease stories in Clone Wars. I know there was the nerve gas bomb episode on Rebels, not sure about other disease or poison stories there. Point being, a GM should be using Disease/Gas/Poisons/Toxins in their sessions because the genre makes ample use of them. The utility of being a droid should shine for that feature alone.

I agree that the GM and the story have a huge impact on the usefulness of droids. This was exactly why I suggested the OP speak with his GM. I mean you're going to get a very different experience playing a droid on a smuggler moon suffering from an unknown disease than you would playing one taking place on a droidaphobic Empire run core world.

Of course poison is bad, but so are Ion weapons. Being able to survive in space is amazing if your game is take place on an old space station, less so if you are playing one that's completely planetside. I think that with droids, more so that most any other species, it's important that the GM help the player get the most out of their abilities.