I think the question is what does the player gain from doing this that is exploitive? Yeah, my feeling on this is that having integrated equipment is just another perk of being a droid. Hands-free comlink? Armor that you don't need to worry about donning? Photoreceptors that function as macrobinoculars? All fair game. Really, EotE is a game about narrative, not about minutiae. I don't see how it breaks the game to have a character who has eyes that can scan the far distance, or who can make use of a 100 credit hand scanner by virtue of just using its innate droid scanners. It's flavor. It makes sense. An installed heavy repeating blaster? Well, at that point, logic dictates that it's going to be a fairly obvious upgrade if your droid is packing internal killbot upgrades. Let common sense rule the day.

Wow, good catch! I had not noticed that all! That makes things much more fun, IMHO!

With the exception of fists, most Melee weapons do have lower crit ratings than ranged weapons; the vast majority of the ones in the core rulebook have a crit rating of 2, as opposed to the ranged weapon standard of 3. In addition, Melee weapons have a much higher incidence of qualities like Pierce and Vicious, meaning you're going to do more damage, and hit harder when you do land a crit.

Think of a minion group as a single battlefield 'entity' that acts as a single character. They get more dice as there are more minions in the group, but still, they're acting as if they were a single 'unit' (so, in your example above, that GYY dice pool is the roll made to attack a single character). They can split up and attack different targets, but at that point, they've split up, so they're not getting the benefits of the combined dice pool. Also note that minion soak is applied only once per attack. So lets say your group of three minions has five wounds apiece and a soak of 2. An attack that deals 10 damage is reduced to 8, which kills one minion and deals 3 to the next minion in the pool. This is meant to just make the math fast and easy (they're just minions, after all). And yes, this does mean that, in the example above, an attack that dealt 12 damage would kill two minions in the group. After all, a single attack roll doesn't necessarily mean a single pull of the trigger.

I try to keep the Despair related directly to the result. I would argue that getting a bum hyperdrive part thanks to a Despair on the roll is directly related to the result--you just didn't see the effect of it right away.

It's also worth pointing out, for the record, that Triumph and Despair do not cancel each other out (the Success and Failure portions of those symbols cancel as per normal, but not the special effects).

Technically, every group starts with a starship, free of 'charge,' as it were. It's up to the GM and players to determine how and why they have that starship; if it makes sense for it to be tied to one or more players' Obligations, then hey, it's that much better (such as Criminal for having stolen it, Debt for having purchased it, etc.).

This is probably a big reason behind the character sheet allowing you to keep track of total XP earned, not just what's available to spend.

For just about $20, you can get the Beginner Game off of Amazon. That includes a full die set, eight more Destiny tokens, a bunch of other neat tokens, and several maps. A pretty decent deal, if you ask me.

"You may not wind up failing the check, but you fail at life for asking me to let you make it."

Definitely start with Colonist. Your career is supposed to represent the core of your character, where they've come from and all that. Based on background, I'd say Colonist fits the bill. I wouldn't necessarily even buy the Pilot specialization right away. I'd just throw on a rank or two of the Piloting (Space) skill to represent that, okay, she can maybe fly a ship, but certainly isn't going to picking up things like Skilled Jockey or Full Throttle anytime soon.

Seconding the fact that the Beginner Game has both simplified crit rules and also no rules for character death (basically, after four critical injuries, you're incapacitated until you've got that injury healed).

Have you looked at the Inspiring Rhetoric talent in the Politico talent tree?

There is a very large sidebar on page 44 of the core rulebook that discusses how languages are handled in-game.

I'd say that there's RAI precedent for 'taking damage' being different from 'voluntarily suffering strain.' For one, you've got the Resolve talent, which reduces strain damage that isn't taken voluntarily. Also, the fact that aiming twice for two Boost Dice is called out in the Aim description suggests that it can be done without penalty for undertaking two maneuvers in one turn.

Now I'm imagining the scene in Return of the Jedi, where Lando is being dragged into the sarlacc, and he's yelling up at Han. "Spend a Destiny Point! Spend a Destiny Point!"

That is exactly how I am going to explain this talent to my players, now. +1, my friend.

It's mostly an advantage to give free justification. The Deus Ex Machina ability relies a fair bit on being justifiable; for example, you can't just spend a Destiny Point and say, "Oh, there's a random blaster rifle behind the couch," but you can do something like, "There's a set of workable tools in the corner of the speeder garage." The Utility Belt talent is helpful because a) it's its own justification, and b) the thing in question is on your person, right then and there. Depending on how lenient your GM is with normal Destiny Point use, this might be less of an advantage, but Rarity 4 covers some pretty cool stuff, and it can be handy to be able to spend a Destiny Point to have it without having to convince the GM that your idea doesn't strain credulity.

For what it's worth, the stats for the Ghtroc 720 in the beta book still look pretty valid, to me, and the cost falls within the 'allowable budget' for a starting ship as suggested in the Core Rulebook. If I had a crew who really wanted one, I'd let them have it.

Somewhat agreed, but I still feel iffy about having what would be an action be a reaction. Seems to go against a lot of the mechanic. I don't know how else you'd do it, though. I wouldn't say it goes against the mechanics that much. But I had another idea that might work better, and reducing rolling: Build a pool using your ranks in Coordination and your ranks in Stealth (instead of skill and characteristic; so if you had 3 in Stealth and 2 in Coordination you'd be rolling 2 Yellow, 1 Green). That way you're sort of splitting the difference between how sneaky you can be while also not tripping or falling. The GM, of course, can adjust difficulty and add setback dice as necessary to fit the situation.

In this case, you're not really in "combat speed," so I'd have you roll Coordination to not fall off, first, then Stealth against the enemy's Perception. Even if it were during combat, though, I'd rule that your main action is the Coordination roll to not fall. The Stealth check is more of a reaction against the opponent's ability to spot you; if I were the GM, I'd still have the player roll against the enemy's Perception (rather than have the enemy roll Perception against Stealth) because it's more fun that way.

It's not, no. Though it would be a neat thing to release on PDF for high-res printing or even poster printing, like you said. Doubtful it would happen, just because of how copyrights work, but it'd be cool.

They didn't, no. Which I'm okay with, since while the claws are technically there, they aren't really a feasible 'option' for most player character Wookiees.

In the core book, it says that taking cover allows a character to "gain ranged defense 1," which is a bit problematic, wording-wise, insofar as armor stacking is concerned.