Art Copyright Linda Whitson 3/2016
Everyone in Friday Night Skype wanted to play some more AoR–including me! So, my sometime Co-GM offered to create and run a mission in my campaign, with me playing as a new PC–created at a comparable XP level–subbing for his PC. Since the other players had expressed interest in more interactions with a minor pilot NPC, I opted to do full PC stats for Alyxa, and got my GM’s okay for a BB model astromech. Even though I had been told (unlike the others) that this wouldn’t involve space flight, indeed would begin in media res with the aftermath of our ship crashing.
Combining Hotshot and Recruit specs gave Alyxa a lot of options for groundpounding as well as flying. (A Knight level version of Alyxa is presented here.) But what about BB-27, aka “Baby”? After seeing BB-8 in The Force Awakens, I had no doubt that Baby could deal with the terrain. But whether she would be of any use, or just a cool detail, would have to wait until the session. The GM and I agreed to use the base R2 stats from the AoR core book.
And Baby was useful! In addition to helping with watches during our several days’ trek through a jungle, the GM okayed Baby aiding Alyxa’s shots during combat. (The standard Boost die.) After all, pilot and droid were used to doing this in an X-wing! During a combat with a swarm of small blaster-equipped probe droids, I rolled a Triumph! I asked the GM if Baby could disable or jam the droids’ transmitters so they wouldn’t be “phoning home” with our location. He was glad to say “Sure!” and after the game, told me the idea was “Brilliant!” One of those gaming moments I will remember for a long time.
Now I didn’t get through a 3 session arc with Free Boost Every Shot. The GM was too canny for that. I had to specify each time if I was taking that option. Indeed, for the final encounter, he warned me that with the high number of combatants–and abundance of blaster bolts–it was going to be dangerous to expose Baby enough to assist in that way. “I might spend Despair, or multiple Threats, to damage or even destroy the droid.” A Boost just wasn’t worth the risk, especially as many of the opponents were probably going to be space pirate minions, easy enough to hit with Alyxa’s base 3 Ability/1 Proficiency. So I opted for Baby to look out for any pirates who might try to sneak around.
I have heard a few gaming tales of cool things PC astromechs have done to help the rest of the party. And I am glad my NPC astromech was just as helpful. This NPC astromech added a lot of fun to the arc and gave us some valuable assistance. The GM would have made sure our jungle trek was way more interesting than we wanted if the probots could have reported back to the bad guys and gals!
Linda Whitson
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