So I was looking for more options for player species and I hit upon one that actually looks quite balanced and interesting; the Devlikk from Onslaught at Arda 1.

Since this new campaign, a post Endor campaign where the players serve as crew members on a captured (and badly damaged) Imperial cruiser, takes place after our previous campaign, where they played Onslaught and then liberated Ord Radama afterwards so locals are joining the Alliance in droves, the little guys should logically be everywhere. Certainly there will be a few NPC Devlikk and I want to make them a player option as well.

They have 1 Brawn, 3 Agility and 2 in everything else and get a boost dice to Coordination and Piloting. I've already decided to give them a free rank in Perception or Coordination (seems to be the things the species is effective at, Magnetic Sense ability and all) as well as 8 or 9+ Brawn starting wounds (little guys are pretty fragile, most likely) and 10 + Willpower for strain (they seem pretty average on that front).

What I can't decide is what is balanced starting exp for them, how do the devs decide what is a balanced amount after all the other goodies and drawbacks are done? Any suggestions on this (or any other aspect of their statline) would be appreciated. Also, do you think they are small enough to merit being Silhouette 0?

Here is their wookieepedia page for more info: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Devlikk

I've got the Devlikk slated for the GMAC (see my sig), and I can try to get to them sooner rather than later. But your proposed stat block for them sounds about right based on what I remember from the research I've done so far.

As for size, Wan Sandage is 1.37 meters tall, which, assuming he's typical for the species, would qualify them for Silhouette 0. And they only live to be about seven years old. In most games this won't come up, but if you envision your campaign sprawling across decade or more of in-game time, you might want to warn anyone who plays a Devlikk!

As for how many bonus XP to give them, consensus is that there really isn't a "system" per se; you just have to eyeball it to some extent. That said, people have developed their own ways to at least get a sense for how a species stacks up against other stuff we've seen. Check out this thread for some ideas (and the threads linked from there).

Everyone in the group is aware of the lifespan issue, playing a character that could feasibly die from natural causes before the war is over might be interesting in a way.

Thanks for the advice.

Speaking from my own experience in writing up a plethora of species for the Unofficial Species Menagerie, your safest bet is to start with Humans as something of a base line, and go from there.

Most alien species tend to go with a 3 in one characteristic that's balanced by a 1 in another characteristic and a starting XP budge of 100, so that would probably be your baseline. After that, it's adjust until you think it looks good and isn't vastly more powerful than the species in the core rulebook. That last part is the tricky one though; a good guideline might be to ask yourself "If based solely upon mechanical reasons, would I play this species over any of the official ones?" If the answer is an immediate "Hell Yes!" then you need to go back to the drawing board and tone the species down a bit.

Donovan is close to how I approached this for Aces. I started with Human, only I take the two starting abilities and try to cash them in for XP. Humans start with 110 XP, and get two free non-career skills (which would cost 10 XP each) for a total starting value of 130 XP. I try to build most aliens as close to 130 starting XP as possible.

When I create a species ability, I try to find a comparable talent and subtract that much XP from the starting XP. I also do everything in my power to limit a species to only two species abilities at most. Sometimes this can't be avoided, but generally, you don't need to list every single ability, particularly if its cultural. That stuff can just be explored in the write up, and role played or handled by background, motivation, or obligation/duty.

For what it's worth, this is what I ended up going with. Almost identical to your build, RationalInsanity.

It seems rule of thumb (for Edge, don't have AoR in front of me) is give enough exp to so that any species has the ability to balance out their characteristic with one 4, one 3, four 2s, and still have 10 exp leftover. You can see that with how humans have 110 because it takes a 100 exp to raise their characteristic to 4 and 3 but other species only require 90 so that balances out. It seems that species with high Brawn wind up with low starting exp, so you would be safe with 100 exp.