Does anyone know has to best handle a group wanting to increase the stats and/or skills of their NPC droids?

Do you as a GM just narratively increase the skills of a droid NPC as your plot dictates to keep the droids useful?

Are their rules for bumping up the skills of a droid? Such as, spending credits can improve their programming?

Thanks in advance!

I started out by statting the NPC droid just like I would a starting PC. I then told the players that they could, through hardware and software upgrades, buy it anything that a PC could buy (increased skills, new skills, new talents, and even new specializations) at a rate of 20 credits per XP.

Is there not anything about it in Special Modifications?

Edit: yes there is, kinda. There's rules for building a droid from scratch, and part of that is programming its skill set. These could easily be adapted for adding new skill sets to your dtoid, or improving its existing ones.

If they take their droid with them on a mission, or if he takes part on any ongoing action, I give it XP, and my players can use those normally (they own an R2 Astromech).

i think its cool that they want the npc to learn and increase its skills and talent maybe by no memory wipes and an upgrade here and there

First that comes into mind are mechanic / computer rolls to modify the droids. But you can also bring that up to full adventure scale if you maybe want to let them know, that a company has some blueprints or program codes for some cool modifications, so the players have to infiltrate the facility, copy the plans / codes, get out of there (alive as a bonus objective) and then get the right parts and do the upgrade job

10 hours ago, MasterZelgadis said:

(alive as a bonus objective)

Yeah, I guess, but is it really all that necessary?

My group does too. (Kind of).

They have an R3 Astromech that they replaced one of the tool waldos with a holdout blaster. The droid is more that willing to use the blaster to defend it's primary user, but it can't hit the broad side of a Conex. (G). I'd permit the players to purchase a restricted software package to improve its Ranged (Light) skill, but that would require some Role Playing and adventure. Also there are at least two slicers/engineers in the group, and with all of the time that they spend in Hyperspace, they have more than adequate time to program the required software (Computers check).

The group also purchased a 2-1B Medical Droid who has been described as having the same personality as Melvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhikers novels. (It's an accurate enough description, I suppose. The droid has brought to the PC's attention the high "Casualty to Mass" ratio of their new ship several times.

And if someone does something exciting or loud, he'll likely pop around the corner to see if anyone is injured. And then act disappointed when no one is hurt.

The players have discussed getting this used 2-1B a new personality. The purchase of this droid came with the OEM software, so if the computer techs and slicers took the time, altering the personality would just take time and a successful skill (Computers) check.

But to address the OP; in my Star Wars campaign, I field player requests and decide what would be an appropriate cost or task needed to achieve a requested upgrade or purchase (not just for droids). If I can turn a request like this into an interesting adventure, I will.

I do have the benefit that my players really enjoy the social encounters and I can generally turn the narrative results of the dice results into interesting side benefits or adventures.