In Rise of the Separatists, they introduce Buzz Droids, which in groups of 2 or more do 4 planetary scale damage and have Breach 1. If your fighter has decent armor (3) you can last an okay amount of time, so I don't think that the damage is wrong, but it seems that unless you have an astromech, 2 Buzz Droids is a death sentence for your fighter. How would you get rid of them? Do you basically just have to do what Obi-Wan and Anakin did in RotS er... Revenge of the Sith, not Rise of the Separatists, and hope you don't roll a despair and kill each other? Or is there some other way of going about this? They don't really state in the book.

The main point of this is: How do I use Buzz Droids without a very high chance of outright killing the PCs' ships?

You got it. You have to get rid of them by risky, often narrative heavy methods. Shooting them, intentionally colliding with something else, sending someone EVA to brush them off, or some other creative method. And yeah, on a fighter or other low HT craft, buzz droids are likely a KO.

But if you look at the source material, that's pretty consistent. On a big ship buzz droids are nasty. On a fighter, you're going down. In both Clone Wars and the films when buzz droids landed on a fighter, that fighter went down.

So, like George and Dave, consider that when designing your encounters. Don't deploy them against fighters unless the plan is to shoot them down, or you're trying to discourage the players from going in that direction.

Okay, thanks. I'll probably restrict their use to Sil 4+ unless I really want them going down.

Throw them off with the force? Not that this would help any non-Jedi.

Let the players make up something reasonable (or even fantastic), and have them roll their dice.

GM: "buzz droids."

Player: "uhh... (channeling LaForge) if I reciprocate the dynoflow from the S-foil capacitors back into the magnaheat exchangers, it should electrify the skin of the ship and disable the buggers."

GM: "cool! Give me a hard Mechanics check."

10 minutes ago, RLogue177 said:

GM: "buzz droids."

Player: "uhh... (channeling LaForge) if I reciprocate the dynoflow from the S-foil capacitors back into the magnaheat exchangers, it should electrify the skin of the ship and disable the buggers."

GM: "cool! Give me a hard Mechanics check."

GM: With *flips a destiny point* one die upgraded. *shake, shake, shake... rattle* Ooh! A Despair! Your ship blows up. Bye bye!

Player: I shoulda stuck with the Buzz Droids.

3 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

GM: With *flips a destiny point* one die upgraded. *shake, shake, shake... rattle* Ooh! A Despair! Your ship blows up. Bye bye!

Player: I shoulda stuck with the Buzz Droids.

that is what you get for not reconfiguring the power relays.

If, you're in a fighter.

1) Activate your emergency EVA field. (Very important that this is the first step).

2) Pop open the canopy.

3) Draw your standard issue DL-44 Heavy Blaster and take careful aim . . .

If you have an astromech, you could order the droid to get rid of the buzzdroid with either a arc welder or a plasma torch, or whatever tool the droid has on hand. Mind you, there's a good possibility that you lose the Astromech in the fray . . . .

Just two thoughts.

44 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

3) Draw your standard issue DL-44 Heavy Blaster and take careful aim . . .

"Standard issue?"

Yeah. It seemed like every Rebel officer & pilot in ESB was carrying a DL-44. Luke was prominently using one throughout the movie too.

34 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

Yeah. It seemed like every Rebel officer & pilot in ESB was carrying a DL-44. Luke was prominently using one throughout the movie too.

Huh. I didn't notice.

Thanks, Solo. Everyone wants to be a gunslinger now. The DL-44 is pretty cool, so I don't blame 'em.

2 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

Not sure I'd call it "standard issue" but the DL-44 was popular

And for good reasons! Whether defending yourself from a slimy hutt minion or a well armored Stormtrooper, that little blaster gets the job done.