Hi,

Could anyone direct me on how NPC characters are created and ran, to be used in minor roles within the group of players.

For example, my fellow players and I are a group of 6 but are currently running two freighters. Due to my characters concept, he's trying to expand the "business" and i wanted to pose the concept of having minor NPC characters fulfilling a role as part of the crew on each ship.

Ideally i'd want a droid helping out on board at least one of the ships and i wanted help on the rules to how i create such a character so i can come prepared with the information to my GM (who i've made aware of for the idea). Depending on the role that needs fulfilled, it may have to be a living being NPC who is employed for one of the ships, depending on the skill set of the PC of the group taking up certain roles.

How do i generate a NPC character? Are there rules for them or would i use the standard character creation for creating one?

Additionally, i'd be interested to hear of your examples of where you have a permanent NPC character as part of the main cast.

Cheers

There are stock NPCs in the book, that's as good a place to start as any. I definitely wouldn't use full-PC creation rules for them or give them any flashy talents - the spotlight should always be on the PCs.

There are stock NPCs in the book, that's as good a place to start as any. I definitely wouldn't use full-PC creation rules for them or give them any flashy talents - the spotlight should always be on the PCs.

OK thanks. Ideally, i'd like to create a NPC (if i'm allowed). Does anyone know if there are rules for doing so if the pre-gen NPC's don't live up to expectations?

The Colonist book, Far Horizons, also has some decent wage scales for various jobs on p93 that I've used for hired NPCs. They're pretty variable, but they should be considering variable skill levels and job markets in various regions of the galaxy. Also, obviously not every possible job is listed there as it's mainly geared toward Colonists, but it gives a pretty decent idea of what people get paid for relatively mundane stuff outside of adventuring life.

There are stock NPCs in the book, that's as good a place to start as any. I definitely wouldn't use full-PC creation rules for them or give them any flashy talents - the spotlight should always be on the PCs.

OK thanks. Ideally, i'd like to create a NPC (if i'm allowed). Does anyone know if there are rules for doing so if the pre-gen NPC's don't live up to expectations?

That may not be too bad. I still don't recommend it (for the work involved, if nothing else) but if you stick with max. skill rank of 2 and don't buy any talents worth more than 10 xp I don't think you'd create anything unbalancing. (Personally, I'd be wary of anything with characteristics that are above 3, too.)

Feel free to post yer creation.

Yeah, I'd stick with a "stock" NPC that's been pre-generated, as something like a personal droid isn't the equivalent of a Nemesis. Or at least I don't think it should be. Unless this is some highly suped up black market droid you're buying.

There are stock NPCs in the book, that's as good a place to start as any. I definitely wouldn't use full-PC creation rules for them or give them any flashy talents - the spotlight should always be on the PCs.

OK thanks. Ideally, i'd like to create a NPC (if i'm allowed). Does anyone know if there are rules for doing so if the pre-gen NPC's don't live up to expectations?

No rules, really. Make 'em how you like 'em. You can check out the EotE GM Kit for Nemesis-building guidelines, which can be useful, especially on the concept of advancement.

Otherwise, all the books with droids should have a sidebar that lists the price of those base models of droids. So that is a thing.

There are stock NPCs in the book, that's as good a place to start as any. I definitely wouldn't use full-PC creation rules for them or give them any flashy talents - the spotlight should always be on the PCs.

OK thanks. Ideally, i'd like to create a NPC (if i'm allowed). Does anyone know if there are rules for doing so if the pre-gen NPC's don't live up to expectations?

No rules, really. Make 'em how you like 'em. You can check out the EotE GM Kit for Nemesis-building guidelines, which can be useful, especially on the concept of advancement.

Otherwise, all the books with droids should have a sidebar that lists the price of those base models of droids. So that is a thing.

And the droid price table is located in the back of the book with the adversaries.

Maybe keep the majority as Minions, but make a few leaders amongst the crew Rivals (probably no Nemeses)

I guess it depends on the size of the freighters, and how many NPCs you wanna deal with. Minions are essentially the "extras" in a film or TV show. They are the nameless, "faceless" mooks. Rivals are named characters with maybe a bit of dialogue, but they usually stay pretty one-dimensional and don't have much in the way of character development. Nemeses are major characters, and I don't think you should have more than one or two of these as regulars, at most. You want the PCs to be the center of attention, but it's okay for the occasional Nemesis-level NPC to have the PCs' backs. Maybe she fills a role that the PCs don't, or can get something that the PCs need. For example, Q from James Bond...I'd call him a nemesis. But he has a definite role, and only has the spotlight long enough for him to kit Bond out with stuff, and maybe accidentally cause some complications to happen.

Hey there,

I thought i'd give some feedback on how i ended up approaching my original question about creating NPC characters/droids. After speaking with my GM about it more, we identified stipulations on how to create a droid for my group.

We identified that a NPC isn't built in the same way a PC is built so therefore couldn't be character generated with things like a career, etc. This would mean that it doesn't have access to buying talents and doesn't get discounts on buying career skills. This mean a NPC should always pay for skills at non-career costs.

To work out how much XP the NPC should have to spend starting with base stats for its race, using my below droid as an example, we took the example Astromech droid on page 409 and worked backwards to gain XP. Below is the example of two droids i personally came up with and that i am currently discussing with my group. I decided to leave in the detail about how we are looking to use the droid in our game to fulfill a lesser role and not take the limelight away from the PC.

Would you guys say this is fair to how we came to this conclusion and/or do you have any feedback to give?

Would you guys say this is fair to how we came to this conclusion and/or do you have any feedback to give?

Myself, if you want to build your own, then I would compare against the list of all known Adversaries at http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/adversaries/?order_by=level and then look at what typical Nemesis-scale stats are like, in comparison to typical Rival-scale stats.

There are some Nemesis-scale droids that do not have any stats that are as high as 4. There aren’t many Nemesis-scale droids on the list, but there are some.

There are a lot of Rival-scale droids on the list, and very few have any stats as high as 4. So, if you’ve got a droid with a stat of 4, that immediately puts you on the border of Rival/Nemsis, and might be higher than a background NPC should be.

To be honest, unless you’ve got good reason to do so, I wouldn’t bother with building your own NPC droid. Just take one of the standard ones from the back, and give it a new name, and then you’re done.