ASP-19 battle droid/Legends

A Padawan cutting down a training droid in the Jedi Praxeum training grounds.

ASP-19 battle droids were combat-capable labor droids employed in melee training.

Characteristics

Although ASP-series labor droids were simple-minded automata of general-purpose, the ASP-19 variant was capable of wielding melee weapons and was intended to function as a training droid against organic beings.

History

Darth Vader used several droids of this type, equipped with lightsabers to hone his lightsaber dueling skills. Vader's ability to handle this weapon was, in fact, much better than ASP's, so they were less than a match for the Sith as he ordered them to be sent to his training grounds in larger numbers. A few ASP-19 were also kept in Bast Castle's training chambers on Vjun.

Later, the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4 also used such droids for lightsaber combat practices. They wielded training lightsabers, and could be set at different levels of difficulty. Jaden Korr, when he was apprenticed under Kyle Katarn, was forced to fight one when Katarn's other apprentice, Rosh Penin, set it out in hopes of slowing Jaden down in a training course. Luckily, it was not operating at a high level, so Korr managed to defeat it. He later encountered Vader's leftover ASP-19 droids on a mission at Vader's castle on Vjun, and were more difficult to defeat (as Vader had them probably set at Master level for his own practices).^[1]