I am going to be running a game with my friends and decided to make a sample character to let people look at and decided to make a droid……..

After making the character I noticed that the stats that they will be able to have are going to be really low compared to other classes unless you basically neglect skills and talents. First the droid starts with all it's starting stats at 1 and gets 175 xp. You are supposed to use the xp to increase your stats. 20 xp to make one stat 2 and 30 to go from 2 to 3. If you look at all the other classes and figure out the xp to get them to their starting stats and add their starting xp they end up with 220-230 xp.

For example. If you decide to play a bothan he starts with a brawn of 1, presence of 2, intellect of 2, cunning of 3, agility of 2, and willpower of 2. So if your stats all started at one like the droid it would cost you 130 xp to get to the starting stats of the bothan. The bothan also gets a starting xp of 100. So with the 130 from the stats and the starting of 100 they have 230 xp spent. When compared to the overall 175 you get for a droid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It just doesn't seem right. Can anyone else confirm this with me?

Cavernous said:

Well, I don't have the book, but isn't there some other advantages a Droid has over those filthy meatba… I mean the other PC species?

You're right. And I find it a bit fitting.

Having every characteristic start at 1 means that there are numerous droid models out there with various strengths and weaknesses. The clear intent was to use the extra 75 starting XP the droid gets, compared to other species, on boosting up those characteristics your model is naturally better at. But the economy (as you point out) is not QUITE to scale, it seems.

Perhaps this is due to the droid's innate ability to never eat, drink, sleep, or breathe; and their immunity to poison, toxin, radiation, vacuum, or alien atmosphere.

And near-immortality. Are there rules in the book specifically covering droid "death" conditions?

Droids also make great DM characters if you are low on players, so having them a little weaker so they don't steal the show may have been a factor?

I realize the ability to not be poisoned and not eating or sleeping, near immortallity, immune to mind force control. You also though cannot be a foce user what so ever. Need to carry around repair kits not med kits to heal yourself. Also need a mechanic to heal you.

The main problem I saw was it will cost you 160 xp to get two skills to 3, leave one a 1 and the rest two. The fact that you can only get characteristics through character creation or talents or some cybernetic upgrades. Which means that not being able to get a characteristic to 4 like most classes seems like it is a bit of a downfall to making a droid

It seems like a good amount of balance between the ups and downs. If I use a droid to use because I don't have enough characters I will probably use the class like it is. If I have a PC who wants to make I droid I am going to increase his starting xp 45 points to 220 so he is better balanced with the other characters.

I sent an email directly to the beta team so hopefully I will get a reply back from them

There's also…you know…cash as a means of swapping out entire swaths of a droid character's outlay.

If I'm a Wookie, I can't necessarily go to a medical droid and have my body heavily modified to reduce my strength but give me rocket thrusters and a wicked agility.

If I'm a droid, well…I want some skill training…beep boop beeep. done That'll be X credits

Oh wait I'd like to have a language processor installed…beep boop beep. done. that'll be X credits

Meanwhile Grawgrawr the wookie is going…okay well can I roll back my previous advances and pick up a new skill training? no…awwwww

I haven't read the entire book, just yet, but I don't recall seeing anything that says the droids advance skills in any other manner than other characters. I only see rules for advancement via XP. Can they be upgraded via cash per the rules?

As for the OP, I agree completely with the designer's approach to droids (characteristics of 1 with increased number of XP), but I agree that their starting XP seems awfully low. If they have a reason for this (and that reason makes sense) I'll stand behind their choice, but otherwise that seems like it might be a typo or something.

Let us know if you get a response.

Perhaps I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I wanted throw out one other point that I don't think has been discussed much in this thread. This point relies on understanding two facets of Edge of the Empire.

• First, training ranks in skills is much cheaper than training abilities.
• Second, it does not matter if a character's characteristic is higher or lower than his skill, all that matters is that one of the two is high.

An example of the second point is found on p. 17 of Edge of the Empire . It does not matter if a droid's Brawn is 3 and its Melee is 1 or if the droid's Brawn is 1 and its Melee is 3. Either way the droid is rolling 2 green Ability dice and 1 yellow Proficiency dice. As long as either the characteristic or the skill is fairly high, then the player will be rolling a good amount of dice.

Since droids start with a lot more XP than any other species, they have the ability to train a lot of skills. I have not rolled enough droid characters to test this yet, but just looking at the costs for skills and characteristics, the dice pools of droids will probably be comparable to the dice pools of other characters, even though the ratio of characteristics to skills is different. But I would want to make a bunch of sample characters to test and make sure this is correct.

One final mechanical note, droids are capped at 6 cybernetic implants (p. 35) instead of their Brawn rating. These implants can be used to increase the droid's characteristics (p. 115 for examples). A player creating a droid can spend more XP on skills in character creation and then upgrade their characteristics through play. Non-droid characters on the other hand may spend more XP on characteristics and then upgrade their skills during play. This makes some narrative sense. A non-droid's characteristics are largely defined by their DNA (which is hard to change), whereas a droid's characteristics are largely defined by how they are built (which is easier to change).

As an aside, I really like the idea of droids being specialized. The idea is that they are machines built to do one or two things (characteristics), and then have been programmed to carry out these tasks or perhaps other tasks they picked up along the way (skills). I also like the idea of a class four droid assassin who has a 1 in presence, who can shoot its way out of anything, but cannot talk its way out of a parking ticket.

All of the above being said, I would not turn my nose up at an extra 30 XP for droids.

cparadis said:

I think its intentional. Droids are the ultimate min-maxers. You can easily get a stat to 4 or even 5. Doing so will just mean that some of your stats are abysmal. Such characters can be a lot of fun.

Let's look at the Droids from the perspective of the setting. C3PO is a fount of useless cultural information and speaks millions of languages, but is worthless in a fight. R2-D2 is great at hacking and mechanical stuff, and is fast..but is useless in non-technical areas at the beginning(though he does get good with that electrical prod as time goes on). IG-88 and the HK series….great assassins and killers at range, but not so much in melee, and not very good on the people skills. Droids are focused.

You have 175 XP on your droid. Say you want to make one that is specialized into close combat. Well, all you need is Brawn, so take that up to (20+30+40+50) Brawn 5. You now have 25 XP to spend. Put your Droid in something with Melee and Brawl, Soldier for Hire, and put 1 of your freebies into each, then invest both to level 2. You know roll 5 dice, with 2 of them Proficiency, and 3 ability, while you are in melee situations. You have 5 XP left over, of course. You would obviously want to use this to give yourself one of the abilities you did not invest your 4 freebie career and 2 freebie specialization skill points into. You droid might not be good in any of the skills outside is specialization, but….in its specialization, it is going to do great. That is how you have to think about Droids.

What they start with seems right to me. Droids are a kind of "glass cannon" deal. They are exceptionally good at what they are made for, and tend to completely neglect all else.

I don't have the book, so the skill names are not going to be correct.

They don't tire, so they need no endurance type skills/stats. Other then a few (very few) black sheep, droids are prevented from harming any sentient lifeforms, so they have no use for any combat skills for shooting/melee (other then maybe dodge).

For example, a droid made to cook, cooks like a MF, but couldn't tie a square knot for the life of it's owner.

Playing a droid is an exercise in "role playing", I have only had 1 or 2 players keep with a droid toon over the last 20 years or so. They are hard to play, especially if you stick to canon, which all GMs should do.

My .02,

$hamrock

It's worth noting that the type of droid presented for PC use is the 'class four' droid. Designated for combat, security, and military use.

I actually just created a droid PC for a one-shot intro game. I decided to make him a medical droid designed for use in prision or psych wards where he would be occasionally required to restrain patients. Unfortunately the empathy circuts created a personality instability when they meshed with the combat programming and the droid is now on the lamb after orchestrationg a prison breakout. The model has been discontinued from production.

I found the xp sufficient to create the concept. I was a bit short on cash for gear since I wanted both a medpack and shock gloves, but was able to increases the obligation and buy what I needed.

I would like to see a note in the equipment chapter about getting gear built into a droid's chassis and if that is possible. I eventually decided to give the droid heavy clothing armor and call it heavy plating at no additional cost.

Edit: typo correction

cetiken said:

Yeah, I've noticed that, but it seems to run counter to the actual stats. You could make anything from a Class I-IV droid easily with the system. They should just remove that from the Species Name and generalize the description. Especially if they're considered highly regulated and/or illegal in the system setting.

cparadis said:

Excellent points. There are a few other matters to consider.

A droid-of-all-trades is clearly a fool's errand. One built to match a basic human would already be 55 XP behind.

Droids are certainly made to be specialized to a degree. Even then, a lot of their dice pools will be limited by their weaker Characteristics and the starting limitation of Skill Rank 2. The OP is quite correct that they down a good chunk purely on a crunchy numbers side, enough so that a droid cannot really have any decent Characteristics and a pool of Skills. Certainly they can't get much more than another race.

The Droids advantages are indeed the extra cybernetic implant access, though they are currently limited to increasing Intelligence ( sic… we'll need to get that one fixed) Agility and Brawn Characteristic by 1 (or 2 for Agility/Brawn if you neglect the other). I'd expect any GM to make those simple credit transactions into Obligations (they cost 10k Cred each). That said, the current rules have 9 total cybernetic enhancements, and five of those are limbs. Not too much variety there, even if you wanted to make a Spider-bot.

Their Special Abilities (Inorganic, Force Immune, etc.) can be a huge benefit in game. But I'm not sure they really come up to the level of the lower XP to spend.

I really like the fact that they need to specialize, and specialize hard. But in making Droids PCs, I think they missed on a few points. I'd definitely keep the Droids XP as it is, but would look at a few other adjustments:

• Start them with a free minor Talent or two (Speaks Binary or Technical Aptitude come immediately to mind) as Permanent Talents unassociated with any tree
• Allow Equipment beyond Cybernetic Implants to be modded into Cybernetic Implants for Droids at the expense of those implant slots-- what was R2-D2 if not a rolling toolbox?

The rules for droid character creation place droids at a massive disadvantage.

Humans and near-humans start at characteristics 2, droids characteristics start at 1.

Human
2 [0 Freebee XP]
3 [20 Freebee XP]
4 [50 Freebee XP]
5 [90 Freebee XP]

Droid
1 [0 Freebee XP]
2 [20 Freebee XP]
3 [50 Freebee XP]
4 [90 Freebee XP]
5 [140 Freebee XP]

The way I see it droids are behind due to humans and near humans having 230 XP in characteristics before freebee XP is spent. Droids are way behind the learning curve in all areas. Droids are essentially behind a standard deviation in every area.

On top of paying a higher amount for characteristics droids racial package seems to cost 50-55 XP. I would love to play a droid, but this is gimped beyond reason. Perhaps some NPC droids should have this gimplitude, but not PC droids.

I would use something like the below package (I would have more than one package of base characteristics equaling 120 XP). Gimp them in some areas, but not all areas.

Droid Package Example [230 XP]
Base Characteristics [assign as desired]
*3 [50 XP]
*3 [50 XP]
*2 [20 XP]
*1 [0 XP]
*1 [0 XP]
*1 [0 XP]
Droid Advantages [50 XP]
Freebee XP [60 XP]

I think with Droids, having them start with 1 in all Characteristics is part of the point, in that your droid is going be gimped in some areas but excel in others. And given the other perks that Droids have as part of their 'species,' namely survivability and immunity to mental Force abilities, I'd hardly call them "weak" either. To say nothing of their ability to get a lot more cybernetic upgrades, thus making it easier to further boost their abilities.

I pointed out the droid species abilities as having a cost of 50-55 XP (50 XP would get a human a 4 in a characteristic . . . 3 more dice to roll over a droid). I think this steep, but I did not change that number in my summation.

This is a low-powered book. Force powers are rather limited. How often an ability is useful should factor into its price. In a higher level game it should be worth more than in a lower powered game. But my point is that it is a small(er) advantage in this book than it will be later.

Characteristics are most certainly gimped along the bell-curve. A base 1 characteristic compared to a base 2 characteristic can equate to as much as 50 XP difference during character creation. That is huge.

Droid = 11 characteristics
5 [140 XP]
2 [20 XP]
1 [0 XP]
1 [0 XP]
1 [0 XP]
1 [0 XP]
Other items [15 XP]

Human = 16 characteristics
5 [90 XP]
3 [20 XP]
2 [0 XP]
2 [0 XP]
2 [0 XP]
2 [0 XP]

Non-droids are essentially a standard deviation better characteristic wise than droids and have 50-60 more points to spend on characteristics and skills.

As it stands droids are not at an advantage skill wise. Removing the rank 2 skill limit for droids would be one way to balance things.

The option to pay 10,000 credits to ungimp some characteristics is rather cool. I hope there is an option for each characteristic. Starting with three cybernetics would be one way to balance things.

I certainly hope that the "tool-box" used by R2-D2 and other various equipment add-ons is not included towards this cybernetic limit.

Having characters suck for story reasons is not a feature in my book.

Perhaps the droid cybernetic limit should be brawn +5?

Perhaps droids also have an equal in slot, but lesser in power, “tool box” cybernetic limit for things like an arc welder, saw, holographic projector and such.

1) A gimping of droid attributes . . . combined with . . .
2) . . . not being able to buy attributes up later . . . equates to . . .
3) . . . droids sucking more and more as a campaign progresses, because as it stands it pays to frontload all of your points into attributes, and use earned experience on other things.

I am not a fan of systems where the mathematically competent can always have better characters. If a mathematically competent person took 100 earned XP and a mathematically less-competent person took 100 earned XP, then the mathematically competent person would have a more powerful character. Having such a system is standard fair and is seen in White Wolf’s games time and again to a much higher degree. Often the excuse for this “feature” is to pretend to be mathematically less-competent and make choices that are a suboptimal use of resources. This is hogwash. It is not fun to do so. This is a choice I should not be made to make. I don’t think RPGs should reward or punish mathematical competence during character creation. Have everyone start at 1 in a all characteristics, give everyone X character points, have a point cost for each race, a race could have a set of +1/-1 bonuses to characteristics and whatnot (put a point cost on everything so that we can use the examples to build our own races).

darkrose50 said:

+1

Oops I just realized I made an error.

*****

Improving Droid Characteristics (max 5 at creation)
+1 = 20 XP
+2 = 50 XP [30 XP + 20 XP]
+3 = 90 XP [40 XP + 30 XP + 20 XP]
+4 = 140 XP [50 XP + 40 XP + 30 XP + 20 XP]

Droid = 11 characteristics
5 [140 XP]
2 [20 XP]
1 [0 XP]
1 [0 XP]
1 [0 XP]
1 [0 XP]
Other items [15 XP]

*****

Improving Human Characteristics (max 5 at creation)
+1 = 30 XP
+2 = 70 XP [40 XP + 30 XP]
+3 = 120 XP [50 XP + 40 XP + 30 XP]

Human = 15 characteristics
4 [80 XP]
3 [30 XP]
2 [0 XP]
2 [0 XP]
2 [0 XP]
2 [0 XP]

darkrose50 said:

That is every number-based system, ever.

The solution is to use Narrator advice to balance things out and keep everyone on a level playing field. Arbitration is the realm of the GM.

darkrose50 said:

Dude… Have you played it yet? I'm telling you, from first hand player and GM experience… the "battle doesn't go to the strongest" in that sense. This system doesn't reward mathematical competance. In play… it rewards roleplaying chops and out of of the box thinking. The "better built" characters in my playtests didn't hold a candle to the person who could suggest the more creative things to do with the advantages on their rolls.

TheRedBaron said:

Not exactly.

In a number-based system if the same character can be obtained (through "creation points" and "experience points") by paying 2 different experience costs, then a "mathematically adept" one will probably chose the cheaper.