Robot Hireling: Gort, Engineering Bot (35 points)

This robot is useful as an NPC hireling to have on hand if no one wants to buy the engineering skills necessary to the story. Combined with Zak (another NPC robot) and perhaps one player artificer/engineer, robots can provide enough engineering expertise to fully crew the player’s ship in the Deeps of Lyrae campaign .

Boilerplate preface (feel free to skip to character description!): This character sheet is another example in the a set of completed characters I’m posting for the Deeps of Lyrae campaign. I made them for my players, or my players made them.

I’ll refer to them later on if I post recaps, and I thought that other GMs might want them–you should be able to just offer them to new players as a menu of pre-made character options that will work well together.

This one is a little different as it is a robot NPC intended to replace a missing player character. If no one wants to be an engineer, hire Gort (this character) and/or Zak.

Note that there is no reason to make the character points balance on an NPC, so the point value is essentially an arbitrary number. Traits were selected for the purpose of narrative. I did output a character sheet because I used software to build the character, so pressing “Print” was easy enough.

GORT/34 (Gravimetric Outstation Remote Technician, Model 34)

Gort is a cherry red spider-like six-limbed robot with a set of segmented snake-like manipulators that extend out of its “mouth.” While Gort looks like a 3’6″ tall (SM -1) spider, it moves more like a tortoise, with a slow and deliberate gait.

Gort is a pacifist according to his programming, but if that were circumvented it is possible he could strike people in the ankles with his sharp hoof-like toes. He is also equipped with a retractable motorized miniature rotary saw tipped with monowire. Yet he’s so slow it is not likely he could get close to anyone who didn’t want him there.

He’s a sapient AI, but as he typically operates alone, no money has been spent to make him personable. At all. He has no sense of humor and an irritating voice — indeed he has the cheapest voice chip around. He has no understanding of humans and no interest in them. He does his job and doesn’t care about anything else.

One limitation of this model is that he can easily repair only things that are low to the ground if he is operating in gravity. On a thinly-populated space station or starship he will routinely call the central computer to deactivate gravity in the area where he is working so his small frame can more easily reach machinery at different heights.

Even in a gravity well he can sometimes climb up to things he is working on with enough handholds (he goes very slowly, taking extra time*). He also drags step stools into position to help him. He has an interior compartment for transporting small tools and parts.

His vision and hearing exceed human capabilities. He operates on an integrated rechargeable battery which serves him for about a week.

* – default Climbing is DX-5, perhaps +2 for extra time (4x).

Character Sheet

(Image coda: I imagine this robot looks like the beautiful concept art robot [pictured above] that I saw by Hwanggyu Kim on artstation.)

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