Making a shard, advice? Stories?

[Kytross]

I've been chatting with my GM. He wants me to look into playing a shard.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shard

I'm tempted to make it an iron knight, or at least force sensitive.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Iron_Knight

He's never made a shard character before. I've never made a shard character before. I like the idea of being both alive and a droid.

I've read through the wookieepedia articles and Gry's excellent Alien Stats book. I'm curious as to how the strength and dexterity attributes are decided, do they come out of my attribute dice or do I just take the droid model's attributes there?

How do droid modules work? I'm thinking of having the shard be fitted into a 3PO or some such as a corporate spy. Having that 10D in languages would help keep my cover. And the 10D comes from the "TransLang III Communications module with over seven
million languages"

I'd love to hear any advice you guys have for someone who's never done this before. Or any good stories about playing shards, other ones you've played or people in your groups.

[Esoomian]

I've played a shard before and it's best to think of them as piloting the droid and the droid's strength an dexterity to be like the maneuverability and hull of a ship.

Opinions may vary but if the droid had any modules like a translater then I would make translating two actions as the droid decodes what is happening and then has to then transmit the information to the shard. If the skill is possesed by the shard then it takes direct control of the droid and does performs the task but if the skill is possesed by the droid then the droid performs the task (with it's own dice pool) and reports back to the shard.

Lightsaber combat could get a bit messy using this method as the shard is never actually wielding the lightsaber itself.

What is interesting about shards is that they have no strength dice so they cannot heal naturally at all (roll zero dice and see what score you get). Even though it says jedi healing powers do work on them, most still rely on rolling strength so the only way they can ever heal is to be taken back to their home world and left to soak in the mineral springs.

Most of the time the droid will be taking the damage but there are rules for players taking damage if the vehicle they're in takes damage.
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[Hellcat]

If you're going to consider playing an Iron Knight, then check Cheshire's site and get the Jedi Training Manual conversion PDF. There's a Force power there you'll want, Force Repair. It allows the Shard to repair it's droid body using the Shard's Control roll instead of a Strength roll
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[garhkal]

Thats even assuming the gm lets someone start as an iron knight. Most games where i have seen shards be used, the IK's were npc only.
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[ZzaphodD]

I can usually see the fun in most 'weird' species, but shards really makes me go to sleep really fast...I think the expression is 'trying to hard' or something like that..
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[garhkal]

My big gripe is i just cannot see a force using gem, let alone one who gets all the benefits but few if any of the hinderances of using a droid.
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[Esoomian]

If when making the shard/Iron Knight character I'd be interested to see the stats for a Juggernaut war droid
_________________
Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.