Modder

Of the 8 Career Skills, choose 4 to get a free rank. Of the 4 Specialization Skills, choose 2 to get a free rank.

Technician Career Skills: Astrogation, Computers, Coordination, Discipline, Knowledge (Outer Rim), Mechanics, Perception and Piloting (Planetary)

Modder Specialization Skills: Gunnery, Mechanics, Piloting (Space) and Streetwise

If someone keeps disassembling and reassembling the rest of the crew's weapons, armor, and gear without permission, it's a safe bet that the culprit is the team's Technician. If those items actually work better afterward, that Technician might well be a Modder. Modders are chronic tinkerers, and most Modders would rather add features to machines they already have than build new ones. By turning their engineering prowess toward relentlessly repairing, optimizing, testing, calibraLing, and re-repairing mechanisms around them, Modders make any piece of technology their own-even if it isn't, strictly speaking, theirs.

A Modder can be extremely versatile: in some ways, a Modder specializes in generalizing. By spending less time and energy learning how to build devices from the ground up, a Modder can focus on how to optimize and customize all sorts of devices-from weapons to ships, droids to personal gear. Of course, one project might hold a Modder's interest more than others, at least for a while. The Modder's talents allow a character to focus heavily on a single project or flit from one exciting upgrade to another at a moment's notice. Whether it's a starship engine or a shiny new blaster, a Modder can probably find a way to make it better.

Many teams of renegades and rogues benefit from having a Modder around, as this character can offer a number of unique upgrades to starships and vehicles, as well as better access to attachments for weapons. Modders can certainly be competent pilots and combatants in their own right. Modders who seek out battle in person benefit from a high Agility. With or without an investment in this characteristic, though, combat-oriented Modders are most effective when backed up by teams of specialists carrying the souped-up firepower and piloting the uniquely customi1ed ships that only Modders can provide.

Potential Backgrounds

  • Antiquarian: The galaxy is filled with examples of innovation, and a Modder would be remiss not to take at least a passing interest in such ventures from history and the forgotten edges of galactic society. Some Modders dive headlong into this world of rediscovery, seeking out ancient or overlooked cultures and integrating their unique innovations into existing pieces of technology for personal use. Unlike some other Technicians, most Modders hold little to be sacred, least of all the instruction manual. Thus, these mechanical mavericks are often willing to draw upon any useful knowledge, regardless of whether its source is published and accredited within the lofty academies of the Core Worlds.
  • Born Engineer: The path that a Born Engineer takes can vary a great deal based on the resources available in the environment where the character grew up. A Modder might have developed an incredible knack for making due with scraps and half-broken machines because the character grew up aboard a tramp freighter that traveled the fringes of the galaxy. At the edges of civilized space, one has to learn to repurpose machines as needed to survive. Such a character might obsessively hoard anything that could even possibly be useful later, for who can really say that the servos and wires in a droid’s severed arm won’t someday be useful for a cobbled-together machine that sustains failing air filters or realigns the hyperdrive?
  • Tech Designer: While most Modders are not usually designers in the traditional sense of beings who draft devices from scratch, they do have a place on any development team, be it with a major corporation or at a small technology firm. After all, while the original designer comes up with a device’s intended purpose, someone has to figure out what the machine is actually good for. For this task of product testing, few can match a Modder’s willingness to take things apart, slap things together, ignore recommended settings, and make unorthodox use of anything from a blaster to a starship engine to a computer.
  • Underworld Tech Expert: Modders are needed to customize starships and vehicles for smuggling operations. A real master of modification can get the most out of a starship’s engine to help it escape Imperial patrols, find every spare centimeter of hull that could contain hidden compartments, and generally turn even an inauspicious vehicle into one of the fastest, stealthiest, most efficient smuggling machines in the galaxy. Any outfit of smugglers would do well to have a Modder as a contact, or better yet, as a member of the crew.