Droid Programming

Time Taken: 15 minutes to several hours or days.

Specializations: Type or model droid — astromech droid, protocol droid, probe droid.

Characters use this skill to program a droid to learn a new skill or task. While droids can "learn" through trial and error, or by drawing conclusions, it is often easier and faster to program the activity into the droid's memory.

The programmer must have access to a computer or datapad, which must be jacked directly into the droid's memory for programming.

The difficulty depends on the task's sophistication, but can be modified by other factors. The time taken also depends upon the complexity of the task — a Very Easy task might take only half an hour to program, but a Very Difficult task might take days or weeks to program.

Droid owners often wipe their more intelligent droids' memories — their intelligence and creative capabilities often allow droid personalities to develop over time. A memory wipe eliminates all of the droid's memory, including all learned skills and tasks which aren't directly hard-wired into the droid's permanent memory (normally, this is only done by the manufacturer; if a skill is to be directly hardwired into a droid's permanent memory, increase the programming difficulty by +30).

When a new skill is programmed into the droid, it begins at one pip over the attribute. Once the droid has learned the basic skill, it may pay Character Points or buy skill cartridges to increase its skill.

Note that many extremely difficult tasks are broken down into a series of steps of lesser difficulty, but this requires more time-consuming droid programming rolls to reflect that the programmer is tackling the job one problem at a time.


 * Very Easy: Move any boxes from one area to another area, one at a time, making neat stacks.
 * Easy: Patrol an area in a particular pattern at regular intervals, and report or stop any unauthorized intruders. Performing a memory wipe.
 * Moderate: To handle the front desk of a hotel, and be courteous to all customers, as well as to solve customer service problems.
 * Difficult: To teach droid a rudimentary skill use (see "Droids").
 * Very Difficult: To modify vehicles or other equipment for better performance by making assumptions rather than relying on pure, established fact.
 * Heroic: To design a factory-made droid in a manner that overrides its core programming — to change a protocol droid into a droid that can fight in combat effectively; to reprogram a droid's preset "personality."

Modifiers:


 * +5-30 to the difficulty: Droid type is completely unfamiliar to programmer (modifier depends upon how unfamiliar).
 * +15 or more to the difficulty: Task is not related to kinds of tasks that droid is designed to undertake.
 * +10 or more to the difficulty: Droid is of very low intelligence, and is incapable of creative thought (messenger droid, power generator droid).
 * +10 to the difficulty: Task is distantly related to droid's designated functions.
 * +5 to the difficulty: Task is close to, but not exactly, the type of task or skill that the droid is designed for.
 * +5 to the difficulty: Droid is of low intelligence, such as a labor droid, and isn't intended to be capable of creative thought.
 * +5-10 to the character's roll: Droid model is familiar to programmer.
 * +5 or more to the character's roll: Droid is fully sapient and is intended to make independent conclusions and decisions (astromech or protocol droid).
 * +5 or more to the character's roll: Droid has been operating "independently" for a long time.