Just curious, has any one made an NPC as a minion that get promoted to Rival/Nemesis? I'm talking about the merchant the group just like and deal with for gear, or the Mechanic that the groups go to for help with upgrades and such. Has any one done that?

Well, your example NPCs should never have been minions in the first place unless they were part of a larger group. Minions don't have skills unless they are part of a group. Most of my shop owners and mechanics don't get stats unless I need them for the game. There was one important named NPC that could fit the bill, but I made him a rival or a nemesis from the get go. There really isn't a need to "promote" per se, just treat them in the way that best makes sense for how they will interact.

I have, it started with a small time arms dealer. Didn't have a name till the 2nd time they looked "for the same guy as last time." So naturally I had to make a name, and came up with Benny Bonzii. After bout 4-5 run ins with this guy, the group finds out that he is following the PCs and making money off of them from the many faceless victims of their jobs.

With that knowledge, Benny became their anti-hero adversary 2 trader/womanizer npc. He doesn't overtly combat the PCs (mostly cause they aren't combat orientated), he kinda sets them up in a way where he'll profit the most off of them regardless of their performance and outcome. When he shows up in our campaigns I get a mix of "oh, cr*p" and "sweet, shopping." He's sorta like Lex Luther.

I have, it started with a small time arms dealer. Didn't have a name till the 2nd time they looked "for the same guy as last time." So naturally I had to make a name, and came up with Benny Bonzii. After bout 4-5 run ins with this guy, the group finds out that he is following the PCs and making money off of them from the many faceless victims of their jobs.

With that knowledge, Benny became their anti-hero adversary 2 trader/womanizer npc. He doesn't overtly combat the PCs (mostly cause they aren't combat orientated), he kinda sets them up in a way where he'll profit the most off of them. When he shows up in our campaigns I get a mix of "oh, cr*p" and "sweet, shopping." He's sorta like Lex Luther.

I get the feeling he is like Badger from Firefly. The Lex Luther feel only works if he is pointing the PC at his targets or doing a lot of profiting from them. In that case I'm thinking he is more like Red than Lex.

Yeah I have been known to use dice results (Triumph for friends, Despair or unusually high amounts of Threat for enemies) to take a no-name mook and give him a "promotion." Most of the time, if I give a character a name, he gets bumped to "rival" status, unless he's designed to be part of a squad. But then I usually let the PCs themselves give names to their squad mate minions.

The advanced Nemesis rules in the EotE GM kit have some great suggestions that I would take to heart when creating a Nemesis from a Minion or Rival, such as giving them a specialization or "advancing" them using session-based XP.

I let the dice do the promoting, which has given my party a Human jeweler and an Ortolan weapon merchant. One of my players is exceedingly good at making friends.

In a Saga edition game I ran, I had a random mook guard assisting the party during a shootout in a casino. I rolled so many crits with him that he enedeared himself to the party. When they returned to the world, he had been made deputy to the local sheriff.

So no one else had that minion that rolled good and the PCs had trouble taking down?

So no one else had that minion that rolled good and the PCs had trouble taking down?

Sure, but that isn't often a reason to make them a rival or a nemesis. That should be more about the story behind it.

In my beyond the Rim game, I had to make a couple of the notable Survivors that were named in the Adventure and turned them into "Rivals" after Cratala and Harsol lost it, and the players wanted to talk to the next in command. So i had to give them real skills otherwise the adventure would have came to a screeching halt. If they survive beyond "Raxis" they might become full fledged Nemesis type NPCs.

Allways good to have re-occuring NPCs. Especially if you can get the players to like them and rely upon them. Then you can really have fun as a GM and turn them against the players, or kill the NPC and make them avenge his death

So no one else had that minion that rolled good and the PCs had trouble taking down?

Could be. Did you decide to name them Rosencrantz or Guildenstern?