Hey everyone, I've played with this character concept for a while now and finally have an up coming game I can implement it in. So the basic idea is a droid who is convinced he is an ancient sith.

I'll summarize the backstory behind this: Basically he was an average everyday BX droid commando in service of the CIS, until one day where he and his squad were defeated by a young jedi. The young jedi just so happened to be an especially good mechanic, and had an idea. He would repair the droid and re-purpose it as a jedi training droid. At first things were going well, but after some time the droid just couldn't fight as well as he use to, he became predictable. The jedi decided to make the droid more "Sith-like" in order to up the difficulty, in order to do this he would 'download' a sith holocron into the droid. The droid would then act like and truly believe he was a 4,000 year old sith lord. Eventually due to the jedi purge the droid's creator would die, and the Sith droid would spent several years locked in a closet, until some unlucky fellow would open the door...

Now, the question is how would I pull this Off mechanically? I'm looking for ways to A: be good at lightsaber combat as a Non-force user, B: make it appear as though I have force powers but actually do not, and C : Have lore knowledge about the jedi and sith.

Here's what I have come up with so far:

STATS:

BRAWN: 3 AGILITY: 2 Intellect: 3 Cunning: 1 Willpower: 2 Presence: 1

Career: Hired Gun (Enforcer / Soresu Defender)

Skills: Athletics 1, Coercion 1, Discipline 1, Resilience 1, Vigilance 1, Brawl 1, Melee 1, Ranged (Light) 1, Lightsaber (Br) 1,

Talents: Enduring 1

Armor: Concealing Robes (I want everyone to think he is a human at first)

Weapons: Vibrorapier (Loads of melee damage), SSB-1 Static Pistol (Would be built into one of his hands to simulate force lightning)

I have nothing to add, I just want you to know that I admire your creativity! Great idea!

Why you don't give him some lightsabers form spec from F&D ? Except for Niman Disciple those specs don't give any force rating. And they all give Lightsaber as a career skill. That way you can have your dorid be good at lightsaber combat as a non-Force User. A clone of General Grievious. 😉

Thanks to both of you, feel free to suggest Additions to the backstory

A droid that started as makashi duelist or shi-cho knight wouldn't get a force rating because it's a droid. You'll want a magnetic weapon tether and a repulsor fist (lords of nal hutta), jump boots. You might want to go enforcer dangerous covenants for a fear effect.

8 hours ago, WolfRider said:

Why you don't give him some lightsabers form spec from F&D ? Except for Niman Disciple those specs don't give any force rating. And they all give Lightsaber as a career skill. That way you can have your dorid be good at lightsaber combat as a non-Force User. A clone of General Grievious. 😉

So after looking into It, I'm pretty sure I need a force rating to change my lightsaber attribute from brawn to another, and I'm not sure I'm allowed to take specs which have talents requiring a force rating. Can I get more info on this from someone who knows?

5 hours ago, jamester989 said:

So after looking into It, I'm pretty sure I need a force rating to change my lightsaber attribute from brawn to another, and I'm not sure I'm allowed to take specs which have talents requiring a force rating. Can I get more info on this from someone who knows?

The official word is that non-Force-using PCs can take FnD specs all they want. You get the extra career skills and get to buy the talents just like anyone else. You do not get an automatic Force Rating +1 bump. The only caveat is that you can't use any Force talents you purchase, and some trees require you to go through a Force talent to get further into the tree.

For example, if you take take Consular: Healer, you can buy talents like Surgeon and Physician with no problem. But if you take Healing Trance or Force Rating (both Force talents), they are worthless to you.* However, to get to Dedication, you have to go through Healing Trance or Force Rating on that tree. In other words, these trees can work well for non-Force-users, but there's sometimes a "tax" to be paid for using them.

*Some folks play it so that taking the Force Rating talent bumps your Force Rating up even if it started at 0. The devs have stated this is not the case, since Force Rating is itself a Force talent. That means it only works if you already have a Force Rating when you buy the talent.

1 hour ago, SavageBob said:

The official word is that non-Force-using PCs can take FnD specs all they want. You get the extra career skills and get to buy the talents just like anyone else. You do not get an automatic Force Rating +1 bump. The only caveat is that you can't use any Force talents you purchase, and some trees require you to go through a Force talent to get further into the tree.

For example, if you take take Consular: Healer, you can buy talents like Surgeon and Physician with no problem. But if you take Healing Trance or Force Rating (both Force talents), they are worthless to you.* However, to get to Dedication, you have to go through Healing Trance or Force Rating on that tree. In other words, these trees can work well for non-Force-users, but there's sometimes a "tax" to be paid for using them.

*Some folks play it so that taking the Force Rating talent bumps your Force Rating up even if it started at 0. The devs have stated this is not the case, since Force Rating is itself a Force talent. That means it only works if you already have a Force Rating when you buy the talent.

If this is the case, I think Soresu Defender may be the spec I'm looking for. It has both lightsaber and Lore as career skills, additionally I can take a bunch of parry and defensive stance talents. Combine that with the force Adherent's "As the force wills it" to recover all the strain it will cost at the end of the encounter I think I can pull this off.

2 hours ago, jamester989 said:

If this is the case, I think Soresu Defender may be the spec I'm looking for. It has both lightsaber and Lore as career skills, additionally I can take a bunch of parry and defensive stance talents. Combine that with the force Adherent's "As the force wills it" to recover all the strain it will cost at the end of the encounter I think I can pull this off.

That would work! In this case, looks like there'd be a 35-XP "tax" to get to Dedication (going through Soresu Technique and Supreme Parry, which you won't be able to use). But access to all those Parries and Defensive Stances may be worth it.

9 hours ago, jamester989 said:

So after looking into It, I'm pretty sure I need a force rating to change my lightsaber attribute from brawn to another, and I'm not sure I'm allowed to take specs which have talents requiring a force rating. Can I get more info on this from someone who knows?

Yes you are right. The talent to change the attribute for lightsaber is a Force talent so a droid can not use. But it can still buy it so it will be able to reach talents down that tree.

7 hours ago, jamester989 said:

If this is the case, I think Soresu Defender may be the spec I'm looking for. It has both lightsaber and Lore as career skills, additionally I can take a bunch of parry and defensive stance talents. Combine that with the force Adherent's "As the force wills it" to recover all the strain it will cost at the end of the encounter I think I can pull this off.

I would recommend taking a look at Makashi Duelist. It has even more Parry talents then Soresu, as well as passive bonuses (Duelist's Training & Defensive Training), Resist Disarm, and Feint. Also, Makashi was specifically designed for lightsaber dueling, and makes more sense for a droid programmed to train Jedi to fight Sith. Lastly, Makashi was favored by many of the Separatists of that era. It was the primary form for Count Dooku and Asajj Ventriss, and even General Grievous used aspects of Makashi because he was trained by Dooku.

Shii-Cho Knight is another really good one. It only has a single XP-tax talent of 10xp. It also includes just as many Parry talents as Soresu, more passive bonuses (Multiple Opponents, Defensive Training), Quick Draw, Second Wind, and Natural Blademaster. Since Shii-Cho was based on traditional swordsmanship techniques, it's the simplest and likely easiest to use without actually having the ability to use the Force.

With enough XPs the droid can take all three specs. With so much rank in Parry it will be nearly impossible to hit it in a melee fight.

1 hour ago, WolfRider said:

With enough XPs the droid can take all three specs. With so much rank in Parry it will be nearly impossible to hit it in a melee fight.

The question is, can I start the game as a F&D class just without a force rating, or would that be impossible? I haven't seen anything specifically saying I can't, I may wanna ask the GM.

1 hour ago, jamester989 said:

The question is, can I start the game as a F&D class just without a force rating, or would that be impossible? I haven't seen anything specifically saying I can't, I may wanna ask the GM.

Doing so would actually harm you, since FnD specs get a lot fewer Career Skills. It's a tradeoff for getting Force Rating 1, so if you convince your GM to do this, you might ask for another couple of Career Skills, as well.

Tools and weapons can be used for things to simulate force powers, like the repulsor gun/rifle/fist for force move

Maybe even make your own custom weapon for force bind revolving around tractor beams

Electrobinoculars for farsighted

A holoprojector/instamist generator for misdirect

Maybe a pulse wave blaster for force lightning

12 hours ago, LMasterList said:

Tools and weapons can be used for things to simulate force powers, like the repulsor gun/rifle/fist for force move

Maybe even make your own custom weapon for force bind revolving around tractor beams

Electrobinoculars for farsighted

A holoprojector/instamist generator for misdirect

Maybe a pulse wave blaster for force lightning

Thanks, good stuff! The one problem with the force push is that repulser guns are heavy, but may be we could craft a miniture one at some point