Star Wars Saga Edition - Droid Building Resources?

[unseenmage]

I'm trying to chew my way through the Star Wars Saga Edition droid creation rules and I am finding it tough to shift between multiple documents across multiple lists etc.

Does anyone know of some player made resources out there to make comparing and contrasting the different droids, modifications, etc a bit less painful? Even just a list of droids by price would be, well, priceless right now.

The game starts at 3rd level and I am playing a Noble with a focus on mechanics. I've got 24,000 credits at first level thanks to the Wealthy talent. The goal is to wind up playing Jeff Bezos parody who loans out his fleet of private flying droids for deliveries. Sozeb Ffej owner of Sca'mazon deliveries.

Honestly, as this is my first time plying with Saga Edition I have no clue how much money I need to spend on starting gear either so combined with my ignorance about the droid creation system I don't know if I have half of that starting money to spend on droids or a quarter of it or what.

Any help is appreciated. My apologies if this isn't the right spot for this. I've discussed Saga Edition droids here before but more through the lens of using them in a 3.x game. This time it is a straight Saga Edition game though.

[AvatarVecna]

I've been considering working on something like this but haven't really found the time; I started on a section for medical droids, and the complexity of the task just kinda got away from me. The main problem with such a resource is that due to the reprogramming options, and the wide array of things droids can be good at, your "build-a-droid" handbook has to basically be a "everything-but-the-force" handbook which is...not great.

To achieve an equality of capability, I went back through and purchased equipment so that all droids had a medical kit, a surgery kit, and 6 medpacs. Those purchases are not reflected in the above summaries. Here are my findings:

If you are buying a single medical droid out of the box and not seeking out upgrades, your best bet is either the FX-7, or the FX-6 (The Force Unleashed version). They are tied for most efficient “HP per credit” for first aid and surgery. FX-7 possesses a heuristic processor, while -6 does not; this makes -7 better for making critical health decisions. FX-7 is immobile, while -6 has an 8-square movement rate; this makes -6 far better for bringing into the field and keeping people patched up.

The A-Series is much better at first aid than any other droid, but is worse at surgery than most (and failed surgery comes with potentially-deadly consequences). If you’re buying a single droid, an A-series is a bad choice. Now, if you’re buying a team of medical droids out of the box who will work together on a surgical patient, a team of A-Series droids is going to be sufficient for surgery while easily outperforming all other droid models at supplying first aid. They are mobile and capable of making critical decisions quickly.

If you are looking to get a droid reprogrammed, you must keep in mind the expenses: if you don’t have anyone with Use Computer training on-hand to do the reprogramming, hiring a professional is expensive (especially for feats and talents). Additionally, if the person doing the reprogramming doesn’t possess the feat, there is an additional cost. It is possible for reprogramming to be a free and riskless process, but it’s also possible for it to cost tens of thousands of credits. Don’t overpay if you don’t have to. With that in mind, here are some broad reprogramming suggestions:

If they don’t already have Skill Focus (Treat Injury), they should gain either that or Medical Team (depending on if you’re buying one droid or a team). If they already have Skill Focus, but you’re buying a team, reprogramming it to Medical Team is an easy change with big returns.
Surgical Expertise rapidly speeds up out-of-combat healing capabilities. Experienced Medic has a similar effect, and has good synergy with Surgical Expertise (as well as Tech Specialist/Superior Tech giving a bonus to the droid’s Int score).
I personally don’t think much of Cybernetic Surgery but if you’ve got room for it and don’t already have it, you may as well.
Most of these droids have Use Computer trained, and access to the medical feats you want above. If you want to install a feat into your medical team that none of them possess, buy a single cylinder and get them to reprogram each other; once one of them has the feat installed properly, it can copy-paste it into the others without the need for additional purchases or the work of a professional reprogrammer.

If money is no object, and you want the best medical team money can buy, the droid with the highest ceiling of capability is the T0-D Interrogation Droid. Here’s the upgrades/reprogramming:
Buy them a Heuristic Processor.
Superior Tech: Droid (Superior Intelligence - Knowledge/Life Sciences, Use Computer).
Reprogram “Skill Training (Deception)” to “Surgical Expertise”
Reprogram “Point-Blank Shot” to “Medical Team”.
Reprogram “Weapon Focus (Pistols)” to “Experienced Medic”.
Reprogram “Weapon Focus (Simple)” to “Cybernetic Surgery”.
Reprogram “Skill Focus (Persuasion)” to “Rapport”.
Buy a Surgery Kit, a Medical Interface Visor, and…let’s say 50 medpacs.
Superior Tech: Device (Superior Mastercraft on Medical Kit).
Superior Tech: Device (Superior Mastercraft on Medical Interface Visor).

Buy feat cylinders but have the droid do most of the reprogramming itself. When all is said and done, you should have 5 droids that look like the above, for a total cost of 145500 credits. Have them working within 12 squares of each other, and they each have +29 for First Aid and +25 for Surgery. Individual efforts at First Aid will range from [CL+10] HP healed (if at Condition -4 and rolling a nat 1) to [CL+68] HP healed (if at Condition 0 and rolling a nat 20). If working together to provide First Aid to a single patient, these results change to become minimum [CL+38] and maximum [CL+96] HP. They are guaranteed success on Surgery unless at Condition -4 (in which case, there is a 20% chance of failure). If they are at Condition -4 but helped by another, Surgery is once again guaranteed success. Collectively, they can perform surgery on 20 people per 10 minutes if working separately.



Cost breakdown on that last thing:

T0-D: 5500 each (+1100 each for Military License?)
Processor: 2000 each
ST/Droid: 4000 each (or 2000 each if you have ST/Droid feat)
Feat Cylinders: 5000 (or 0 per feat programmer possesses) (so just buy for first droid and have it reprogram the rest)
Surgery Kit: 1000 each
Medical Interface Visor: 1500 each
250 Medpacs total: 25000
ST/Device (Kit): 4000 each (or 2000 if you have ST/Device feat)
ST/Device (Visor): 4000 each (or 2000 if you have ST/Device feat)

5500 x5
1100 x5
2000 x5
4000 x5
5000 x1
1000 x5
1500 x5
25000 x1
4000 x5
4000 x5

145500 credits.
(-5500 if you can dodge the license via Connections)
(-1000 per medical feat you personally possess)
(-10000 if you have ST/Droid feat)
(-20000 if you have ST/Device feat)

If you're looking for general advice, the best I can offer is in regards to reprogramming. Reprogramming has two cost points: acquiring access to whatever it is you're programming into them, and the cost to get the reprogramming done.

The second part is a scam: reprogramming a droid requires training, and the ability to hit the droid's Will defense, but there is no penalty for failure and no reason you can't reattempt, so it's just a waste of time if you fail. Suppose you are a lvl 1 Gamorrean with Int 6, a Computer Interface Visor, and nothing else; since you can essentially take 20, you can hit Will Defense 20 for skills or 15 for feats/talents, it's just a matter of time. "Will Defense 15" is going to cover basically every droid in existence, and that's as pitiful a programmer as I could possibly design without making them literally incapable of reprogramming. Hiring a professional means paying at least 1000 credits for them to reprogram a skill, or 10000 credits for them to reprogram a feat/talent. It's not worth it. Just get proficiency and do it yourself. Hell, if the droid is proficient in Use Computer, the droid can probably reprogram itself just fine, even for feats/talents.

You can also dodge costs for the first part of reprogramming, but it's generally harder. You just need someone on the team who has the skill/feat/talent already and a single Computer Interface Visor (+2 to UC checks, count as trained). 1200 credits to turn anybody into a decent-enough programmer, what a steal! But yeah if someone on the team doesn't have the thing, you gotta pay the 100 or 1000 credits for the cylinder. Still, that's pretty cheap compared to the droids themselves, generally speaking. One thing that can maybe help you here is the feat "Adaptable Talent", a feat that essentially turns one of your talent slots into two talents you can swap between from day to day. This doesn't give an extra talent slot, though, which also means it can't be used to give talents to droids that don't have them, unfortunately.


The game starts at 3rd level and I am playing a Noble with a focus on mechanics. I've got 24,000 credits at first level thanks to the Wealthy talent. The goal is to wind up playing Jeff Bezos parody who loans out his fleet of private flying droids for deliveries. Sozeb Ffej owner of Sca'mazon deliveries.

Alright, so if you're looking to get delivery droids, realistically we're looking at 5th degree. We want strong, fast, and long-lasting. I see you want them to be flying as well. Depending on what in particular you want, I've got a few models to suggest.

(Also very generally: if it doesn't already have a secondary battery, buy it one. It's cheap, relatively low-weight for these carrying-capacity monsters, and it doubles the time between recharges for your droid.)

Let's put flying to the side for a moment and just look at the existing droids to see what serves us well.

If what you want is a cheap droid, so you can have a ton of them, you're going to want the ASP Labor Droid in core. 1000 credits that just requires you to be Licensed (or have Connections talent). Medium so can get most places, Str 17 for decent lifting, Walking Speed 6. There's a lot of minor cheap upgrades that can be made, but they make things more complicated.

If what you want is the model with the highest stats regardless of price, you're looking at the EVS Construction Droid (Threats of the Galaxy). It's Colossal with Str 50 and Walking Speed 8. While it costs a pretty penny (132000 credits, because you will absolutely have to pay the license), it has a heavy load of 12500 kg. Additionally, for this droid and basically no other droid, the designers seemed to think Str mod applies to a droid's Endurance skill, so it has an extra +20 Endurance, which can be used for doing it's job 20 hours longer than it otherwise would.

If you're looking for the most cost-efficient model (which is to say, the model that can carry the most weight the furthest distance for the lowest cost)...that's still the EVS Construction Droid. But it's sooooo expensive. If you're fine having the second-most cost-efficient droid model, you want the CLL-6 Binary Load Lifter (Clone Wars). This is a Large droid with Str 28 and Walking Speed 8. It costs 4200, +210 for the license unless you have enough Connections. It's way worse in terms of total stats then the construction droid, but it's also way cheaper, and so it comes in at second-most efficient.

...

...flying is expensive. None of these droid models can already fly. Let's say C is Cost Factor and S is Fly Speed. You're going to be paying C*(500+[200*S*S]). If you want a droid to have Fly Speed 1 square, that's 700*C. If you want a droid to have Fly Speed 12 squares, that's 29300*C. This gets stupid expensive really quickly, even for high-level nobles. But let's check things out.

If you're going for just Fly Speed 6 or lower, all three models mentioned in the previous spoiler are about the same as they were there: cheap, best, and efficient, respectively. If you want to go full Fly Speed 12, though, it changes a bit, as the Binary Loader slips down to 3rd-most efficient. 2nd-most efficient is now the GRZ-6B Demolitions Droid (Threats of the Galaxy). It's gargantuan and while the default is essentially a walking garbage truck that eats roadmines, it can be made a very efficient flying delivery truck for the low low price of ~340000 credits.

(The most efficient is still the Construction Droid. Including the new snazzy fly speed, it costs over 700000 credits!)

If a hover speed is acceptable, then I have great news! The most efficient droid (moving the most weight over the greatest distance for the lowest cost) is also the cheapest option. That's because some of the droid models I looked at already have hover speeds (meaning you don't have to buy it, or it's at least cheap to upgrade). In fact one of them has Hover 8 - usually, you can't buy faster than Hover 6, so it's always going to be faster than all the other options. Obviously, the best droid is still the Construction Droid for the sheer amount it can lift, but now it's only second place in efficiency.

Our new droid option is the HV-7 Loading Droid (Legacy Era Campaign Guide). It's Small, but gets triple normal carrying capacity for its size as a special rule. It has Str 15, costs 1950 credits, and requires you to be Licensed (or have Connections). While normally installing hover technology into a droid would cost thousands of credits, you already have one built in, and it's faster than anything that could be built into another droid. Heavy Load 126.56 kg/Max Load 253.13 kg/Max Lift 506.25 kg.

If hovering is an acceptable alternative to flying, and you're allowed to buy a Legacy Era droid, you could easily have an efficient fleet of drones delivering stuff to people.

[unseenmage]

...
Very good stuff
...

Wow. Thank you for such insightful breakdowns.

In exchange I offer silliness and foolerey.
Behold! A bad idea!
The Red Rocket Arm-ey!

The Rocket Arm modification is just awful.
So what about a Droid made almost entirely of rocket arms that scavenges arms off of other druids and installs additional/replacement Rocket arms onto itself.

The deluxe version need to be an Independant Droid and have free will and the Scavenging feat.
The budget version just needs Level 2 iirc for Mechanics and Skill Focus.

After we worked out the how we started comparing it to just installing grenade/rocket/missile launchers as weapons and the Price comparisons AND damage comparisons are ridiculous.
It so so much cheaper to.make a rocket arm bot that scavenges other bots to build ammunition.

Still though, we'll work up the Rocket Arm Army and set them loose in the game world because it's hilarious.

A note from my group's resident rules guru,
"Mechanics crafting rules (FU p31)

Soldier 3
Trained Skill: Mechanics
1st-level general feat: Weapon Proficiency (heavy weapons)
2nd-level Soldier bonus feat: Skill Focus (Mechanics)
3rd-level general feat: Scavenger (FU p36)"
"Talents are completely open, so there's that."
me - "does that improve its survivability vs it's flubbed rocket installations?"
"Not really, but it will never flub the roll to install the arm unless it's in a situation where it can't take 10."
"Assuming it does the installation on a buddy. Doing it on itself gives it a 25% chance of failure."

[AvatarVecna]

Wow. Thank you for such insightful breakdowns.

In exchange I offer silliness and foolerey.
Behold! A bad idea!
The Red Rocket Arm-ey!

The Rocket Arm modification is just awful.
So what about a Droid made almost entirely of rocket arms that scavenges arms off of other druids and installs additional/replacement Rocket arms onto itself.

The deluxe version need to be an Independant Droid and have free will and the Scavenging feat.
The budget version just needs Level 2 iirc for Mechanics and Skill Focus.

After we worked out the how we started comparing it to just installing grenade/rocket/missile launchers as weapons and the Price comparisons AND damage comparisons are ridiculous.
It so so much cheaper to.make a rocket arm bot that scavenges other bots to build ammunition.

Still though, we'll work up the Rocket Arm Army and set them loose in the game world because it's hilarious.

A note from my group's resident rules guru,
"Mechanics crafting rules (FU p31)

Soldier 3
Trained Skill: Mechanics
1st-level general feat: Weapon Proficiency (heavy weapons)
2nd-level Soldier bonus feat: Skill Focus (Mechanics)
3rd-level general feat: Scavenger (FU p36)"
"Talents are completely open, so there's that."
me - "does that improve its survivability vs it's flubbed rocket installations?"
"Not really, but it will never flub the roll to install the arm unless it's in a situation where it can't take 10."
"Assuming it does the installation on a buddy. Doing it on itself gives it a 25% chance of failure."

This is feasible. However, Scavenger is for people who are concerned about a lack of money. And since you're doing silly droid stuff and silly money stuff, perhaps I should teach you The Forbidden Technique...

1) Purchase an EV-Series Supervisor Droid (Scavenger's Guide) for 11380 credits (+569 if you have to pay the licensing fee). Total cost: 11949 credits.

2) Purchase a Talent Cylinder (Lineage/Wealth) for 1000 credits.

3) Purchase a Talent Cylinder (Lineage/Connections) for 1000 credits.

4) Have the droid reprogram itself (this may take a few attempts for each reprogramming). The changes to be made are "Influence/Demand Surrender" to "Lineage/Connections", and then "Influence/Presence" to "Lineage/Wealth".

5) Marvel at the 30000 credits that have appeared in your bank account.

[unseenmage]

This is feasible. However, Scavenger is for people who are concerned about a lack of money. And since you're doing silly droid stuff and silly money stuff, perhaps I should teach you The Forbidden Technique...

1) Purchase an EV-Series Supervisor Droid (Scavenger's Guide) for 11380 credits (+569 if you have to pay the licensing fee). Total cost: 11949 credits.

2) Purchase a Talent Cylinder (Lineage/Wealth) for 1000 credits.

3) Purchase a Talent Cylinder (Lineage/Connections) for 1000 credits.

4) Have the droid reprogram itself (this may take a few attempts for each reprogramming). The changes to be made are "Influence/Demand Surrender" to "Lineage/Connections", and then "Influence/Presence" to "Lineage/Wealth".

5) Marvel at the 30000 credits that have appeared in your bank account.

Oh nice. Doubt we'll use it unless there are some ad hoc in game consequences. Still cool though.

A note about the evolution of the character idea. ..
He might wind up being a Sith with zero or near zero force powers.
The GM plans to hand him ancient nanotechnology sith alchemy heavy on the transhumanism (transdroidism?) for some very Borg- like shenanigans.

The character is also currently Str 8, Dex 12, Con 8, Int 14, Wis16, Cha 16 through being elderly. Simplest solution to not getting caught being an evil Sith force user? Just don't have force powers. :)
That's just an idea though. Unless I can make a few silent, invisible mini drone droids that can replace Use the Force checks
If I could go all bots all the time that'd be amazing.

But the Force is pretty integral to a Star Wars game so I doubt that meme idea will fly.

EDIT: Apologies for the meandering train of thought here, I'm posting from work through occasional distractions.

I mentioned his stats because his first droid might need to be a replacement for his severely lacking combat abilities.
We were thinking a hovering droid that acts like a mobile throne of sorts.

[unseenmage]

So we got to editing the HV-7 Loading Droid (LECG 77).. the initial cost of which is 1,950 credits. Comes with 2x unassigned feats.

It needs +1 heroic level for so it can pick up the Cargo Hauler talent (FU 103). This also gives it +1 Str, +1 feat, +1 CL, +1 BAB, and +5 bonus on Str based skill checks. If the level is Soldier it also gets +6 hp and +1 class bonus to Ref and +2 class bonus to Fort. And we can train it in Athletics. Additionally all of its skills increase by one because now it has an equal number of levels.
Costs us +2,500 credits.

It needs a walking speed so we can give it the Extra Legs modification (Core Rulebook 189). This gives it a +5 stability check to being knocked prone as well as a drag weight.
The costs us +1,160 credits after adding the legs as a secondary movement mode and buying the modification.

The final price for the fully modified HV-7 is 5,610 credits.
How many of these am I willing to shell out for I wonder.

Originally, as a flying droid it is grounded if its weight is over Heavy Load. Giving it a land speed to get the Extra Legs modification only gives it a x1.5 multiplier BUT it gains a drag weight, something it can't really utilize as a purely flying bot.

The final carrying capacities are: Heavy Load is 432 kilograms or more (this is what it can carry and still fly). Carrying Capacity is 864 kilograms or less. Strain to Lift is 1,728 kilograms.
It's previous Heavy Load was 126.5 kilograms. These changes modify its carrying capacity by three point four.

Now the question is; Is it worth it? How much carrying capacity is actually useful? Should I just be buying a bunch of these as stock bots and adding security measures instead?
We're getting a little less than 3.5 times the carry capacity for less than 3x the price.
On the other hand its total hp is 13.

Alternatively, should I be building a bootleg version of this droid with a single heroic level instead of three NPC levels, no diagnostics package, a starting walk speed with legs and a secondary limited hover speed for that sweet sweet discount and THEN slap the Extra Legs mod on it?
In order to get access to the innate superpower of the HV-7 of Repulsor-Assisted Lifting System for the x3 normal carry capacity we'd have to calculate the whole bot up using the alternate pricing rules and subtract everything else...
I do not know if that would be worth the effort.

Okay, so here's the effort.
5th degree droid
basic chassis droid 2500 credits
base attribute modifiers 1500 credits
no talents 0 credits
trained skills, three 750 credits
feats, five 2500 credits
CL1 500 credits
locomotion, Hover8 6,400 credits
2 claws 40 credits
diagnostic package 125 credits
total broken down price 14,315 credits

Repulsor assisted lifting system ??? credits, it is effectively 1.5 the benefit of the Cargo Hauler talent aka 1,500 credits. (except its CL also would need to be one higher so that costs us the price of that heroic level too.)
Potentially it's worth 2250 to 2500 credits.

basically the final price of the droid through the system is like 8 and a half times the listed price.

EDIT: Question: Is it cheaper to buy all the licensees or just build the best forgery bot you can build?

[unseenmage]

New shenanigan; Droidification mod (SaV40) turns nonvehicle, nonweapon, nonarmor equipment into a modified ASP Labor Droid (Core Book203)

So can you droidify a Restraining Bolt? Make it fly?

Here are my notes on that conversation...

Droidified Restraining Bolt (Core Book 191) 4005cr, base 5cr, fine size, Str 4, Dex 16, 1 sq move speed, Tech Specialist adding an upgrade slot 1000cr, Droidification uses
two upgrade slots for 2000cr to craft, skill focus endurance becomes skill focus mechanics for 1000cr so it can even install itself, encumbered when it has more than
1/16th of a kilogram
flying version 1 square for 18005cr can run 6 meters per round
Droidified Droid Caller (Core Book 191) 10cr base cost otherwise as above

[Vizzerdrix]

For what it is worth, many years ago I went through all the books I could get my hands on and listed out every Droid that was around 1500 credits and under. The post with that list should be findable on gitp.