...would you hand wave it, or turn it into a side quest/adventure?

Thoughts or ideas?

Obligation?

1. Buy one

2. Steal one (Restaining Bolt anyone?!)

3. Build it from Scratch

4. Get one as payment for a job

5. Introduce one as the property of the antagonist and give them a chance to claim him after disposing of the former owner

6. Free one from an abusive "droid hating but still using one" NPC (although this could qualify as 1, 2 or 5 depending on how it is handled)

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Lots of options you can provide and wait what they do with them.

2 hours ago, bsmith23 said:

...would you hand wave it, or turn it into a side quest/adventure?

Thoughts or ideas?

Any time players have added a droid to the group, it amounted to nothing. The players all have comparable (or better) skills so it only came into play sometimes that the droid could contribute to a roll. So, I think a lot of answering your question is: Why do the PC's want one? To boost their social skills? In an RPG, the players usually interact with the NPC's in conversation so it seems weird to have a PC do the talking and then roll the protocol droid's social skill.

OTOH, droids can cost a lot, so I don't know what position they are in to purchase one. It might require a separate adventure to acquire one, yes. Depends on what course you have plotted for your group as to whether it would sidetrack the campaign. You can always make an adventure of something like that.

1 hour ago, DurosSpacer said:

[...] Why do the PC's want one? To boost their social skills? In an RPG, the players usually interact with the NPC's in conversation so it seems weird to have a PC do the talking and then roll the protocol droid's social skill.

More on this, if that's what the group wants, I would caution against it. When an NPC is the primary face of the group, you end up with all your social scenes with the GM just talking to himself. It's not fun for anyone.

I think its mostly for translation, some formalities.

27 minutes ago, bsmith23 said:

for translation

Because the system has no language skills, the corebook specifically advises to handwave language barriers.

For every party wishing for a protocol droid, there is probably another party wishing theirs would disappear...

1 hour ago, bsmith23 said:

I think its mostly for translation, some formalities.

36 minutes ago, Vorzakk said:

Because the system has no language skills, the corebook specifically advises to handwave language barriers.

Yes and no. It advises handwaving them unless the story calls for it .

4 hours ago, bsmith23 said:

I think its mostly for translation, some formalities.

Well, I wouldn't miss the opportunity to give it some quirks. Like being TOO honest. Thinks out-loud. Is cowardly.

Even though the game does not make it such, I would say that a droid moves at a significantly slower pace (based on the movies) and is terrible at climbing or navigating obstacles. Not trying to be difficult with the PC's, but if it adds no flavor to the campaign, then there's not much point. At least make it entertaining.

8 hours ago, Vorzakk said:

Because the system has no language skills, the corebook specifically advises to handwave language barriers.

I don't think you should hand-wave 6 million forms of communication

Aren't droids a manufactured product? Seems like a good way to have the players spend some of the massive mounts of credits they normally have. Or steal the droid.

I like the idea of doing an adventure where they find a non-functioning droid and when they get it working the droid has/is the hook. The droid belongs to someone, the droid was escaping somebody whom the players are looking for, the droid has an item secreted in its innards that leads to some exciting treasure hunt etc.

I find droids a great source of fun and my players have more droids than PCs living on their ship. Mainly because every time they defeat one they drag it back to the ship and reprogram it. This results in all potential mischief.

The protocol droid my players has was programmed in psychiatry and so we have RP moments of it trying to get the drug addict to stop with addiction.

Maybe I'm missing something but why would you even need to hand wave it or side quest it? I mean, they're for sale and legal. They're not even that much. What's to adjudicate?

On 5/9/2019 at 1:00 AM, ddbrown30 said:

Maybe I'm missing something but why would you even need to hand wave it or side quest it? I mean, they're for sale and legal. They're not even that much. What's to adjudicate?

You can take different approaches to the same thing.

If you wanted, you could just break out the rulebook, calculate the appropriate difficulty, have the player roll their Negotiate check, and BAM! Protocol Droid.

Or, on the other hand, you could take the players on a little journey, narrate their visit to a Droid Merchant who reveals that their shipment of Protocol Droids was destroyed in mysterious circumstances. He's not going to receive any stock for a while, so the players are out of luck. Now, you could tie this into ongoing events, or have it be a stand-alone mini-adventure. The players could pick up the thread and go after it, or shrug their shoulders and walk away.

All depends on what you as a GM want to do, really.

One good use for an NPC droid is to have someone be the bus driver and take care of the ship when it's apparent that no-one wants to play that role. That way you don't have someone unhappy with the role. No fights over who should pay for what repairs. Essentially the droid does the flying, and fixing, and all the boring stuff. You as the GM would play the NPC and say we will need 10,000 credits to restore the ship to full functionality. In other words a great way to make credits disappear.

The rest of the players can focus on kicking *** and bringing in credits.

3 hours ago, AceDogbert said:

You can take different approaches to the same thing.

If you wanted, you could just break out the rulebook, calculate the appropriate difficulty, have the player roll their Negotiate check, and BAM! Protocol Droid.

Or, on the other hand, you could take the players on a little journey, narrate their visit to a Droid Merchant who reveals that their shipment of Protocol Droids was destroyed in mysterious circumstances. He's not going to receive any stock for a while, so the players are out of luck. Now, you could tie this into ongoing events, or have it be a stand-alone mini-adventure. The players could pick up the thread and go after it, or shrug their shoulders and walk away.

All depends on what you as a GM want to do, really.

I mean, yeah, sure, you can do anything you want in your game. My point was why would someone look for clarification on this topic the the GM forum? The rules obviously cover the purchasing of a droid. If you want to turn that into an adventure, more power to you, but it's not really a question that requires external input.

Now, if the original question had been, "My players want to buy a protocol droid but I want it to be more interesting than just a dice roll and expenditure of credits. Does anyone have ideas on how I could do that?" than that would make a bit more sense to me.

On 5/10/2019 at 10:27 AM, ddbrown30 said:

I mean, yeah, sure, you can do anything you want in your game. My point was why would someone look for clarification on this topic the the GM forum? The rules obviously cover the purchasing of a droid. If you want to turn that into an adventure, more power to you, but it's not really a question that requires external input.

Now, if the original question had been, "My players want to buy a protocol droid but I want it to be more interesting than just a dice roll and expenditure of credits. Does anyone have ideas on how I could do that?" than that would make a bit more sense to me.

I guess that should have been my question. They group encountered a race and couldn't communicate Basic. I think know they thought a decent translator would be good for the future.

Way I see it, a protocal droid is kinda similar to a pet. You take them around for the useful aspects of them, but otherwise they are dependant on their master's to get anything meaningful done. If I recall correctly there are some perks to having a protocal droid, which boils down to "it has a certain number of ranks, and probably can offer two boost dice on checks they can assist; after all they are well versed to help with that."

Basically, a character who can assist the checks, not necessarily do it for them.

On 4/29/2019 at 6:39 AM, bsmith23 said:

...would you hand wave it, or turn it into a side quest/adventure?

Thoughts or ideas?

Totally turn it into a quest/adventure.

Just like in real life, anything you get for free, you don't really value but if you work for it...

What about the stuff that the PCs doesn't want to do? Cleaning? Laundry? Having someone to serve coffee on board is it's own reward.

Not to mention that a protocol droid is a nice accessory when trying to look respectable. It's like showing up with a valet (it's not a butler if he accompanies you outside the house!) and wearing an expensive watch rolled into one.

Also, there's the poor knowledge skills that in my experience tends to get very little use outside specialist builds. Having a protocol droid around with a few ranks in a few of them is always good for assisting the resident high-intellect PC.

Speaking assisting, even that unskilled assistance boost die is nice to have when... well, doing anything, really.

But if you want to get a droid of any kind, unless someone invested in being the medic, you can't possibly go wrong with having medical droid around.

On 5/10/2019 at 2:33 PM, sithlord78 said:

One  good use for an NPC droid is to have someone be the bus driver and take care of the ship when it's apparent  that no-one wants to play that role.     

Oh right, unless it's our medical droid. Sure, he had a good reason to take the ship for a spin but he still crashed it. And when we went to prison he parked the ship on Nar Shadda, sold off the engines and converted into a free clinic.

If you want a bus driver get slave circuits or an auto-pilot droid brain.

My Droid Tech, droid PC managed to get his manipulators on a fully functional HK-47 (that got sliced into disabled status, and the salvaged parts of a C2-N2 Protocol Droid.

A batch of Frankenstein rolls later, and we have this Excessively Polite "protocol droid" than can really handle anyone who wants to try and do things to our "unattended" ship while we're out.

Outwardly, it looks like the C2-N2, but it's frame is the HK-47. Lots of quirks there for the GM to play with, but our HC-R7 or "Harcort", is a wonderful bit of Colour in the event we need the services of a protocol droid, and works well as a well-mannered Guard Dog when needed.

Wholly a plot device, and little more, but a Lot of fun to interact with!

A protocol droid is essentially another character so it's worth an adventure to acquire one.

I have a player wanting to play a protocol droid! 😆

beneath his usual C-3PO demeanor he’s also apparently going to have a “used car salesman” mode . (Sounds like triple Zero but less murder and more sarcasm/dealing)

so now I’m trying to come up with potential encounters where he’ll be able to utilize his skills.

1 hour ago, FlyingAnchors said:

I have a player wanting to play a protocol droid! 😆

beneath his usual C-3PO demeanor he’s also apparently going to have a “used car salesman” mode . (Sounds like triple Zero but less murder and more sarcasm/dealing)

so now I’m trying to come up with potential encounters where he’ll be able to utilize his skills.

Well, there's an episode of Rebels where Lando "sells" Hera to a criminal without discussing his plan with her in order to get something he wants with the assumption she'll be able to quickly make her escape. Maybe this droid is a bit of a "sociopath" in car-salesman mode and will sell anything, whether it belongs to him or not, to cut a deal?

1 hour ago, Vondy said:

Well, there's an episode of Rebels where Lando "sells" Hera to a criminal without discussing his plan with her in order to get something he wants with the assumption she'll be able to quickly make her escape. Maybe this droid is a bit of a "sociopath" in car-salesman mode and will sell anything, whether it belongs to him or not, to cut a deal?

Droid programming is always fun when you can take it to the n-th degree.