My problem is I like love making characters. I take my idea for a story's boss villain (or even any important NPC, villainous or otherwise), and I fully create the character with Career and Specializations and the whole works. A fully-full-on fleshed out character like that should probably be referred to as an arch-nemesis.

So how do I scale that back when I'm creating stats for a regular ol' nemesis level bad guy?

How do you create the stat blocks for your nemeses?

Honestly, so far I've mostly used FFG's Adversary cards, and just tweak for flavour.

Honestly, so far I've mostly used FFG's Adversary cards, and just tweak for flavour.

I have done this too. I love those cards, they are extremely helpful! However, I didn`t think the Emperor`s Hand felt strong enough or challanging enough(by far), against the group 3 PCs. So I`m going to make him either as a character with a little more xp than the PC with the most xp or use the Inquisitor rules in the back of the FnD.

The thing with the FFG rules is that you can make combat focused characters and just as valid non-combat focused characters. I love that! The guy in our group with the most xp is actually the weakest in combat in every way.

So scaling a villain is all about the group, the kind of challanges and the game style. Are they going to fight the villain, or will they have to outsmart him or her?

In DnD it is easy to set the challange rating because it`s all about combat. In a game where combat is far from a certainty and the level of combat skills vary from group to group and even character to character, it will be harder.

Feel it out with a few test combats(or social challanges or whatever) to see how the group does, then scale your villain accordingly. Good luck:)

I have the exact same problem lol, the Inquisitor I just introduced is probably way too strong, but he's one of the main villains right now, and I have a tactician/squadron leader auto-fire monkey who could probably wipe the party if rolls went well but I digress.

One of the nice things about running/creating npc's as a GM is that you can cheat. You can take talents from two entirely different careers and put them on the same npc. I don't really think that making Nemeses with PC builds is really a problem, if anything it limits the npc.

I agree with RC though it really depends on your group comp, I can throw really roided up combats at my group because they are built for combat and have a really good group dynamic with fighting and have lots of good gear, but put them in a social situation and basically all but one of their builds really struggle. My group also has a problem with running away or rather a lack there of which is gong to get them in trouble.

So gradually build up towards the nemesis, getting a handle on the groups combat and social prowess as you go and that should give you a decent idea of how strong you should be building your nemeses.

There is absolutely no reason why your NPCs should be built the same way as a PC, with picking a talent tree and following it. When I make NPCs I assign them characteristics, skill ranks and talents, with as many ranks as I think they need to have. While I cap skill ranks and characteristics at 5 and 6 respectively, same as for players (unless cybernetics) I have no compunction piling on talent ranks as I deem necessary. I've had major Nemeses with up to 10 ranks in Durable to keep them from getting one-shotted on the first round by the party's crit monkey Gand Marauder and his super-tricked-out vibrosword.

My point is that you should not try to follow the rules for building player characters when making your NPCs. Give them the talent ranks they need to make them work.

I may be a bit off from most GMs, but I tend to create NPCs' stats on an as-needed basis. If the NPC is supposed to be good at X, they have a pool of YYGG in their respective ability. If they're supposed to be silly hard, I add one or two Y. Soak is abstract. Apply adversary generously to ensure they don't get one-shot. Basically, I think of what I, as a player, would create for a PC specialized in that particular area and approximate the result. I prefer not to think in terms of PCs that are higher than Knight level since you can start getting absurd when you focus several hundred XP in a particular area. In short, since the players don't have a stat block in front of them (and, frankly, if it comes down to solo combat with mid-XP characters it'll be over in 2 rounds at most) it doesn't matter what the NPC has ability-wise -- just that it's a fun and exciting challenge.

There is absolutely no reason why your NPCs should be built the same way as a PC, with picking a talent tree and following it.

There is one reason for doing so: if said NPC might crossover to being a PC it is beneficial to have PC-compatible builds, I've seen this happen when a companion NPC replaces a lost (dead/imprisoned/whatever) PC either permanently or for a more limited time.

I've run a couple of EotE one-shots/mini-campaigns since the F&D beta rules came out, and for Nemeses, I've just recycled the Inquisitor rules (giving them purely mundane talents and skills, natch) from that, and it works fine. Not going to spend too much time on a foe that's unlikely to survive the encounter.