I think I can see the reasoning behind making Class Four droids available as player characters in the Beta. It seems logical enough, since Class Four droids, like many players, have few prohibitions against violence. I'm the strange sort who thinks it might be fun to play a protocol droid, though, and non-Class Four droids typically have programming restraints against violent actions. In most respects, the rules for Class Four droids would work fine for other classes, but there may be a couple of tweaks that could be made for playing non-combat droids. The first would be a way of representing behavioral restraints against violent actions. The rules for restraining bolts suggest a way of doing this: require a Daunting Discipline check for a player-character droid to perform any combat check. However, it seems to me that if a droid character is limited in this way, it deserves some extra starting experience, and I'm not sure how much would be justified. Any thoughts…?

My own personal view is that I don't think it deserves extra XP. Unless you plan on giving extra XP to the player who creates a non-combative human or other alien race character. Its an RP choice.

I honestly don't think additional rules are needed to play a droid that isn't a 4th Degree model.

Back in February, I did a GSA Heroes on Demand write-up based upon the astromech that one of my players made, using just the EotE with no changes.

http://gsa.thegamernation.org/2013/02/15/heroes-on-demand-r2-b08-independent-astromech/

And under the existing rules, the character works just fine with no system tweaks (beyond the reduction in size) needed. Even the inability to speak Basic can be handled via role-play.

From what I've seen in a lot of Star Wars RPGs, particularly d20 (and I've seen qutie a few non 4th-degree droids played in those), the behavioral restrictions are a fairly minor hurdle to overcome, and something that's better applied via role-playing than taking the d20 route and applying mechanics to it, particularly as PC droids almost by default are going to have a hueristic processor, which is what enables a droid to even consider going against it's programming.

Artoo, by virtue of his hueristic processor, was able to get pretty creative in how he went about accomplishing various tasks, even going so far as to disobey direct orders from his "master" and operating with little to no oversight. A droid with just a basic processor pretty much isn't able to make those kind of cognitive leaps, and can't really even attempt tasks that are outside it's programming. A B1 battle droid might be fine with shooting at living targets, becuase that's what it's programmed to do, but an off-the-shelf B1 droid won't be flying speeders or hotwiring door panels, because those tasks are outside the parameters encoded in it's basic processor.

Most protocol droids are a in a similar boat, as their processor limits them to their programmed tasks, particularly the older models. It would seem that the 3P0 and LOM series of protocol droids are a bit of an odd case, as their AA-1 Verbobrain seems to function pretty similar to a huerstic processor in that it enables the droid to go beyond it's basic programming to adapt and learn from experience; case in point, 4-LOM becoming a bounty hunter. C-3PO learning to fly a ship would probably be more of a case of someone installing flight/piloting software to expand upon his default programming, but he certainly was a good deal more creative by the end of RotJ than he was at the start of ANH (the prequels don't really count because Goldenrod got his memory wiped at the end of RotS, negating anything he'd learned during that time frame).

So if you want to play a protocol droid in EotE, I'd say just use the Droid rules as they are, figure your droid has a hueristic processor or equivalent, and then roleplay the restriction against causing direct harm to a sentient being.