Hi guys,

I have a player who will be rolling a Technician - Outlaw Tech, and he wants to use as his background story the "secret blueprint" suggestion that is printed on pg. 88 of CRB. I was wondering if any of you all had ideas about what this blueprint could be? Should it be some sort of difficult-to-obtain weapon, starship design, droid (as in something already statted)? For background, we're running The Long Arm of the Hutt and the idea is that Teemo enslaved this character because of his prowess with mechanics and computers thought he could help in building battle droids.

What does your player want?

I'd agree you need to ask your player, and remind them it's meant to be mostly background fluff, so they shouldn't expect whatever it is to be a magic ATM that spits out credits for free.

I’d do what the others suggested however I know sometimes you get a player that leaves it to the GM. (I got a game full of them despite even xp bribes to expand on their characters background.) In that case I do have a few suggestions when considering the nature of such blueprints.

My suggestion is the blueprint shouldn’t be anything too extraordinary, or at least not in game terms. As you’re doing “ Long Arm of the Hutt” I’d point to the Geonosian weapons that come up for sale as part of it. They are standard apart from having a critical rating one lower than normal. Minor adjustments to the stats like that would be one way but for game purposes I’d have there be a offset of some sort. Either it’s more costly to build or there is some bug in it yet where it will break on a roll of a certain amount of disadvantage.

Another option is it’s a more efficient design, but not by much. That when they make the item the blueprint is for it costs just a little less than the standard model, but again having an offset where the difficulty of the build is a bit harder too. Just be sure to at least not make the cost reduction so much they find turning out the item more profitable than playing in the adventure.

Mind playing at trying to start a business in Star Wars is in the colonists book. In the corrupt and dangerous Empire it can make for its own campaign if your players want to go in that direction. For most cases though you’ll want to minimize just what the blueprint does.

What about top-secret designs for safety rails?

16 hours ago, raiden104 said:

For background, we're running The Long Arm of the Hutt and the idea is that Teemo enslaved this character because of his prowess with mechanics and computers thought he could help in building battle droids.

Is this wishful thinking on Teemo's part, or does the character actually have some experience in droiding? If the former, then the blueprint could be for lots of different things. If the latter, then the blueprint might/should be droid related.

Thank you all for the suggestions guys! This is ultimately what I've decided on. I've expanded upon the character's backstory by giving him a cybernetic arm (my PCs need the extra firepower it provides with the +1 agility). When he was given this arm, which occurred after an accident, the doctor who installed it hid away some of his own cybernetic implant designs within since he saw the potential this character had. Once the character reaches Rank 4 Mechanics and Rank 4 Computers, he will be able to access this information, which will allow him to construct his own cybernetic components, effectively reducing the cost by half.