Are there any specific scavenging rules anywhere?
What skill do you use for scavenging? Perception?
What’s the difficulty based on? Maybe the size of the area scavenged. Scavenging a crashed super star destroyer for “stuff” is easier than scavenging a wrecked speeder bike.
Your thoughts on scavenging?
At Friday’s game, the PCs happened upon a firebombed landspeeder. They wanted to scavenge it for “whatever [they] could find.”
Not knowing what else to do, I simply had them make a Perception check against an average difficulty.
The player rolled a success with three threats. So, he found a code cylinder but disturbed a mound of devil ants which came swarming over the sides of the speeder. He took 3 Strain.
It worked fine, but I’m wondering if there is something I’m missing about scavenging rules-wise.
I would use Survival for scavanging, maybe Mechanics for scrapping parts in a junk.
Finding specific items, I often refer to the rarity table, determine the difficulty according that and increase/decrease difficulty based on my impression how available that item would be.
If they just want to find “something” give them a check based on the setting (easy for searching meds in an Infarmary, but daunting for looking for weapons on a civilian ship) let them find smaller items that is narratively appropriate. Stimpacks, reload packs, similar stuff.
I have some basic rules on scavenging in the Repairs section of Vehicle Ops: Repairs & Wear.
On second glance of what you wanted, it doesn’t seem to be exactly what you are looking for. It’s more about scavenging for repair parts, then finding left over stuff in storage within an old vehicle.
Perception with Simple success means you find something that would be considered normal for the location you were scavenging. As in, if you are scavenging a medical speeder, you would find Stimpacks. Advantages can give a greater amount. Disadvantages can result in Strain, possibly a Wound from cutting yourself on something, or cool things like your ants. A Triumph (with a Success) would result in something rare and/or surprising for the location.
The way I handle scavenging is that I assign a credit value for the area and a difficulty to search the area, then call for a Perception or Mechanics check. For each net success, they get the base credit value’s worth of parts. Advantage and Threat can reduce/increase the time it takes or provide additional bonuses and maluses.
The PCs can perform basically as many checks as time will allow, but I might add Setback or eventually just tell them that the well has run dry, so to speak.