You can pretty much justify anything with a little work.

I agree, but your comment does make me want to create a Hutt Jedi to test that.

It's been done. Enjoy.

You have warped my fragile little mind

Thus is my job: to warp it by giving you all the information you've never asked for :-D

Hutts are also extremely long lived. Jaaba's father was over 1,000 years old when he was assassinated. A single Hutt is capable of holding a grudge against someone that spans generations for most every other species.

The Hutts as a species also had the advantage of becoming a highly advanced civilization at the same time that the Core Worlds were developing, but because of their isolation, they were able to develop a vast empire in the outer rim, well beyond the Republic's reach and before the Republic could make it's presence known.

The Hutts are also one of the most powerful organizations in the Galaxy at this point. If you broke up the 5 most powerful factions at the moment in terms of resources it would look like this.

1. The Empire

2-3. The Rebellion and The Black Sun (nearly equal in terms of resources)

4. The Hutts

5. The Corporate Sector

I'm curious, what sources are you basing the rankings off of? Also obviously they have different forms of power. Blac Sun and the Hutts have tons of financial and information but they would be lucky to be anything near the top 5 in terms of mility resources and power IMO.

This is a "yes and no" situation, and time periods must be taken into account.

When you think of the number of purely military forces throughout the galaxy during the time of the Rebellion, you have, in no particular order:

The Empire

The Rebellion

Black Sun

The Zann Consortium

The Bounty Hunter's Guild

The Corporate Sector

The Tapani Sector House Guards (a group for each house)

Other independently operated planetary/system forces, usually for defense or police (CorSec is a prime example here)

Private guard organizations (such as the Mystril Shadow Guard)

Unafilliated Crime Loards

Pirate/Smuggler Group and Organizations

And I think that's it.

In scale, the Empire is the biggest, with the Rebellion being a distant second.

The Zann Consortium, Black Sun, and the Hutts have the ABILITY to bring up a large force with their resources on hand (whether due to buying loyalty or already having it), but it's not like they have a large standing army.

The Bounty Hunter's Guild is an armed but "unorganized" group that can go in any direction, usually to the highest bidder (like the Hutts).

The other groups listed have a lot of limitations; the Corporate Sector Authority has their lines, Tapani House Navies can only have so many ships with Hyperdrives, and defense forces have their own budgets and legal issues to work with.

That said, there's still some truth to putting the Hutts high on the list. The Hutts have, in canon, defeated the Empire in battle on a few occasions. These events were brought out by bribing the Imperial that is commanding the forces, buying information from any spies, hiring smugglers and supplying them with better weaponry, hiring pirates (who often have stolen capital ships), hiring bounty hunters/assassins, and getting better equipment for their own people and planets (such as shields and defense guns for Nal Hutta).

Granted, the battle wasn't against a group of Star Destroyers, but that doesn't really mean much when you consider a small number of starfighters and freighters defeated a decent sized group of small capital ships.

Here is how I view it Hutts = Marlon Brando in the God Father. Sure he'd let himself go and wasn't really someone I'd worry about physically, but the man wielded a great deal of power. It's a simplistic view I know, but I think it works.

I like the idea of a "warm and friendly" Hutt.

Not that the Hutt is genuine, but he comes across that way so that others will like him and do whatever he wants. Very manipulative, but his true intentions are hidden beneath a veil of "aww he's a nice guy".

If you're looking for ways to portray hutts in your game as a credible threat, keep with the gangster analogue. Consider movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, The Untouchables, and others. Base your hutts off of the boss characters in those films.

Imagine this scene as a template for your Hutts

(violence and blood in that scene). DeNiro, playing Al Capone, gets away with this because no one tries to stop him. No one is going to stop the Hutts from having a player dragged to him and proceeding to wrench an arm out of his socket. Where are the other players? Black-bags over their heads with blasters pointed at their backs. Maybe the person the Hutt is hurting is one of the players' allies, a trusted confidant. Maybe the players are in the middle of a mission when someone runs up with a disruptor pistol and blasts the party tank, giving him a terrible wound that you can flip a Dark Side point to have act up during the rest of the session, or at least until the players can find a bacta tank. Players have a hard time fearing the same things their characters should be afraid of. Make the players afraid by having some serious consequences.

All that said, DO NOT make the game unplayable for players, do not permanently mess up their character concept, and don't make things arbitrary. Your players should get banged up, bruised, and made to worry that their characters are going to get killed. Have the Hutts flex their muscle by having thugs harass the players from afar, or by only letting the players encounter them face-to-face on their own terms. But also remember the other rule of gangster movies: everyone can die. Those hutts are still mortal, and there will come a time when your players can enact a reckoning. Let them have that when the story is ready for it, and be willing to have that time be in many sessions, or at the end of the session your players first meet the hutt.

Your players should get banged up, bruised, and made to worry that their characters are going to get killed.

Perhaps introduce an NPC, allow your players to get to like said NPC. Perhaps someone even falls in love with said NPC.

Then kill the NPC.

Your players should get banged up, bruised, and made to worry that their characters are going to get killed.

Perhaps introduce an NPC, allow your players to get to like said NPC. Perhaps someone even falls in love with said NPC.

Then kill the NPC.

Keeping in mind that it's impossible to tell if your players are going to like an NPC until they're interacted with them. It can be pretty hard to force your players to like someone. Introduce NPCs, see who the players seize on, and then make them a bigger part of your plot. That said, I think one of the better ways to get the players to like someone is to give them a sense of humor. Not the kind of humor like "Haha, look at how I dance circles around the players and am better than them in every way!" but the kind of humor like a contact who grumbles about his job, someone who jokes with the characters, and so on. Think about the kinds of things your players like to do in the game, (charming NPCs, combat, finding out backstory) have an NPC who enables that (NPCs your players like to talk to, NPC who has a hookup on awesome weapons, NPC who knows something important) and then imperil them.

Hutts are also extremely long lived. Jaaba's father was over 1,000 years old when he was assassinated. A single Hutt is capable of holding a grudge against someone that spans generations for most every other species.

The Hutts as a species also had the advantage of becoming a highly advanced civilization at the same time that the Core Worlds were developing, but because of their isolation, they were able to develop a vast empire in the outer rim, well beyond the Republic's reach and before the Republic could make it's presence known.

The Hutts are also one of the most powerful organizations in the Galaxy at this point. If you broke up the 5 most powerful factions at the moment in terms of resources it would look like this.

1. The Empire

2-3. The Rebellion and The Black Sun (nearly equal in terms of resources)

4. The Hutts

5. The Corporate Sector

I'm curious, what sources are you basing the rankings off of? Also obviously they have different forms of power. Blac Sun and the Hutts have tons of financial and information but they would be lucky to be anything near the top 5 in terms of mility resources and power IMO.

This is a "yes and no" situation, and time periods must be taken into account.

When you think of the number of purely military forces throughout the galaxy during the time of the Rebellion, you have, in no particular order:

The Empire

The Rebellion

Black Sun

The Zann Consortium

The Bounty Hunter's Guild

The Corporate Sector

The Tapani Sector House Guards (a group for each house)

Other independently operated planetary/system forces, usually for defense or police (CorSec is a prime example here)

Private guard organizations (such as the Mystril Shadow Guard)

Unafilliated Crime Loards

Pirate/Smuggler Group and Organizations

And I think that's it.

In scale, the Empire is the biggest, with the Rebellion being a distant second.

The Zann Consortium, Black Sun, and the Hutts have the ABILITY to bring up a large force with their resources on hand (whether due to buying loyalty or already having it), but it's not like they have a large standing army.

The Bounty Hunter's Guild is an armed but "unorganized" group that can go in any direction, usually to the highest bidder (like the Hutts).

The other groups listed have a lot of limitations; the Corporate Sector Authority has their lines, Tapani House Navies can only have so many ships with Hyperdrives, and defense forces have their own budgets and legal issues to work with.

That said, there's still some truth to putting the Hutts high on the list. The Hutts have, in canon, defeated the Empire in battle on a few occasions. These events were brought out by bribing the Imperial that is commanding the forces, buying information from any spies, hiring smugglers and supplying them with better weaponry, hiring pirates (who often have stolen capital ships), hiring bounty hunters/assassins, and getting better equipment for their own people and planets (such as shields and defense guns for Nal Hutta).

Granted, the battle wasn't against a group of Star Destroyers, but that doesn't really mean much when you consider a small number of starfighters and freighters defeated a decent sized group of small capital ships.

True. I wish we knew more bout the organization and strength of Black Sun's forces though. We know a lot about the models of fighters they are equipped with but almost nothing about their larger ships. Empire at War planned to give them Venators but they never appeared under Black Sun control in the final game AFAIK. Other than that the only capital ships confirmed as being Black Sun in the GCW era that I can recall are silhouette 5, or likely to be silhouette 5. Shadows of the Empire mentions that their fleet commander used a frigate as his flagship but the class is never identified. I'm guessing that ship was silhouette 6 but I could be wrong.

How does Rush Limbaugh wield so much power? **** Cheney? Any hedge fund manager? Donald Trump? Answer this and you'll see why the Hutts are to be feared.

Edit to express my delight at Mr. Cheney's first name being dissed by the profanity filter.

To summarize what has been said, Hutts are very, very clever, and tend to have a knack for politics and social skills.

If this weren't enough, they can inspire fear by being strong enough to rip apart an underling who failed them. Even without their battle armor, a thing I'm not familiar with, Hutts are tough. Strong and hard to kill. Basically immune to poison, resistant to blaster fire, and well protected from serious injury by their "fat." Granted, they aren't the most nimble or mobile creatures, hence their preferred status as bosses.

To answer the original question though, "Why do other races follow hutts?" I will use the example of Jabba's gammorean guards. Gamorreans traditionally only work for employers who can best them in battle, and Jabba, though he probably would have been able to have beaten them physically, decided to outsmart his instead. He boasted he could fight them all at once, but only if they fought the Hutt way--blindfolded. So after every one was blindfolded he set his goons on the gamorreans and they were amazed at his physical prowess. That is how a Hutt uses his mind to gain minions.

I look at it like this. Every Hutt we've seen has to some degree or another been a copy of Jabba, who was very sloth like and into wild hedonism. If you spend all you time watching Twi'lek strippers, eating, and getting drunk (and live a rather criminal lifestyle anyways), you having literally nothing else to occupy your time with but plotting crime. Jabba is the physical manifestation of crime. Sure he's fat and out of shape. But when he spends all his time either being a crime lord or being Hedonism-not, he's going to be pretty darned good at both.

Sure, there's probably Hutts who aren't criminals. Maybe even smaller Hutts who do more than eat and hire smugglers. But Hutt gangsters are a great stereotype, and no one is going to hire a perky young Hutt for a waitress.

and no one is going to hire a perky young Hutt for a waitress.

I would.

Sure, there's probably Hutts who aren't criminals. Maybe even smaller Hutts who do more than eat and hire smugglers. But Hutt gangsters are a great stereotype, and no one is going to hire a perky young Hutt for a waitress.

Note to self, if I ever start GMing again have the party encounter a perky Hutt waitress. The sheer WTF factor will be great. Thanks for the idea ScooterinAB

Maybe someone did

I love turning tropes and stereotypes on their heads, almost to where it's become a trope in of itself with me. So I tend to do things like this.

Yea that's one of the things I never liked about the EU honestly. If you saw one or two members of a species or culture in the movies whatever they did was suddenly sterotypical for their species or culture. See one Twi'lek Slave dancing girl, suddenly Twi'lwk females are widely valued as slaves and dancers. See one cruel gangster Hutt. Being cruel gangsters is suddenly normal for Hutts. The commanding Admiral of the Rebel fleet is a Mon Calamari? Suddenly half or more of the members of the Alliance and early New Republic Admiralty are Mon Calamari. See one Corellian Smuggler pilot, and surprise, surprise Corellians are now known as smugglers, and pilots with most of the Corellian pilots you see on screen who aren't smugglers when the movies take place having been smugglers in the past.

And they have enslaved the Klatooinians

All this, plus if they roll over on you in their sleep, you are screwed.

Space frogs everywhere live in near constant fear of them....

All this, plus if they roll over on you in their sleep, you are screwed.

And you thought when the Hutt finally went to sleep, the worst of the night was over...