My crew has just hit 250XPish earned. I'm seriously needing Adversary ranks for boss types. I used it for the first time about 2 weeks ago and I was shocked at how bad the Red dice were for the players.

So... Wing it... You shouldn't need too much. There are a lot of other balance issues that you will have to figure out in the fly. Like what is a fair fight? How come the players get 6 turns before your boss gets one? That stuff causes way more issues.

Read my thread on my players invading the Jedi Temple. It explains what it was like for the players, and at the end you can see my thinking on balancing up an escape space battle.

Regarding the slots/round issue, the last bit in the GM kit says about giving true nemeses an extra turn each round in combat. Last night I had my players fight a nemesis 4 on 1, but to even it out he got 2 shots per round. Made for a pretty even matchup, and more importantly a fun encounter.

Your Nemesis lasts a whole round? Interesting.

The last fight I ran, had 4 Nemesi with Cortosis Armor (No pierce)... That was a fair fight for my guys. (I measure success by how much I make them cry.)

Soo... (re-open)

Based on that (probably) max talent rank is 5... Adversary is also 5, so 5 Setbacks?

PS: Congratulations Madridistas for the Champions League!

Since this thread has been necro'd and I was going to ask a question about Adversary anyways, I'll ask it here:

Does Adversary apply to combat checks targeting the ship that a rival or nemesis with ranks in adversary is piloting?

Soo... (re-open)

Based on that (probably) max talent rank is 5... Adversary is also 5, so 5 Setbacks?

PS: Congratulations Madridistas for the Champions League!

Adversary doesn't add setback dice. It upgrades the difficulty of combat checks against that NPC a number of times equal to the rank in Adversary. And I don't know if 5 is the maximum rank; personally I've never seen anyone with more than rank 3 in it.

Since this thread has been necro'd and I was going to ask a question about Adversary anyways, I'll ask it here:

Does Adversary apply to combat checks targeting the ship that a rival or nemesis with ranks in adversary is piloting?

This is just my personal opinion, but if it came up in my game I'd run it as follows: If the NPC with Adversary is piloting a starfighter or other single-person ship/vehicle or he was alone in a larger ship, I'd let the Adversary talent apply. If he was in a larger ship, such as a light freighter, with several other crewmembers, I probably wouldn't. OK, maybe if he was piloting it, but otherwise not.

Yeah, I agree...skill checks targeting a ship piloted by an NPC with ranks in the Adversary talent should have their difficulty upgraded accordingly.

Remember, this is a narrative game where the "bad guy's ship" is an extension of the bad guy. As long as he's a decently skilled pilot, he should be "slippery," even when flying a ship, like bad guys in films and serials tend to be.

If he is the central bad guy and arc evil doer in my plot his adversary talent would apply across the board imo. What's the point of having them otherwise.