Hello all

I've been playing around with a new way of creating Nemeses and wanted to see if anyone had tried it or had any thoughts on it.

Has anyone ever tried creating a Nemesis through the standard character creation rules? Taking the current xp of the group and using it to create a Nemesis who is theoretically balanced against them makes sense to me. Would this create a fair Nemesis or one who is under-powered when put up against an entire party?

Thanks

No reason you couldn't do it that way...one reason you maybe shouldn't do it that way is that all those Talents etc just become more difficult for the GM to keep track of. The "make what you want" method distills a lot of the various Talents into catch-alls like Adversary. That way rather than, say, having to count Strain to trigger Dodge, it's just a given that the nemesis is more dangerous to attack, and the difficulty dice are simply upgraded.

I could see that being done for say a personal nemesis of an individual character, or maybe for an ultimate nemesis at the end of a campaign. But for just average nemeses it would become more hassle than it's worth IMO.

If they have the same XP as the PC's then they would need to be very focused and placed into encounters where they can maximise their focus, even then they will need some hefty support NPC's to back them up. Basically your talking about 1 vs 5 encounters, and those odds are not favourable to the house

Your better to stick with the "have what you want" system, it's much quicker and easier to run in session.

Hmm it's an option. I'm never sure about how to balance "have what you want" NPCs but I guess practice is just going to be the best option. The Inquisitor rules in F&D certainly make it easier.

Actually, the advice in the EotE GM kit discusses this.

one reason you maybe shouldn't do it that way is that all those Talents etc just become more difficult for the GM to keep track of.

Having attempted this myself, I agree with your assessment.

Yeah that seems sensible. Back to the drawing board!

I really like the rules for building inquisitors. You purchase a set of talents and abilities depending on what you want the NPC to do.

Ideally, you would want to make a list of all talents and abilities that aren't covered by just giving the NPC ranks in adversary or increasing their characteristics, abilities, or skill ranks. In another words, ignore talents like Dodge, Dedication, Enduring, ect...

The next step would be to package them according to theme. Each package would be a list of talents and abilities essential to specific archetype (Slicer, Force User, Brawler, Smooth talker, ect..)

If you were really ambitious, you could give each talent and package a point cost. The total point cost would tell you how challenging the NPC is for their intended purpose. The next logical step would be to define some sort of challenge rating system and point-buy system to create NPCs of specific challenges and a given budget. That's no small task, but would be very useful in the long run.

Yeah that seems sensible. Back to the drawing board!

If you're looking for a way to balance Nemeses, don't look at XP, just look at dice pools. If you want them to be a real challenge, then they should exceed the PC's best dice pools in their areas of competency, and/or the difficulty dice they generate (through Adversary or other means) should exceed the PC's positive dice. This is fairly simple for social and technical conflict NPCs. I think it's a lot harder for combat NPCs because the difficulty is not based on the NPC's abilities, so unless you beef them up with Soak, Adversary, and a high WT, they tend to be short-lived unless they have allies.

Look at the Inquisitor rules. They get at most two fancy abilities besides Adversary 3. Granted, it could be multiple ranks in something, like Parry 4, but they only get a couple talents and a Force Power or two to boot. D20 gave us bosses with way too many special abilities, weighing down the GM with a lot of options. Restricting a nemesis to 4 or less cool things will keep the game running smoothly.

I tend to modify the existing nemesis profiles to make a unique one. Tack on a talent or two, beef up this skill and that characteristic to make them feel especially nasty, and call him a memorable Adversary. On rare occasions, I give the nemesis something totally unique. For instance, I had players try to assassinate a crime lord and they didn't have an escape plan. After the deed was done, the crime lord's right hand man called in a Dashade with a mini-gun who was well reputed for being the toughest enforcer on the planet. I gave him two free Advantage on all Ranged (Heavy) checks, with the caveat that he could only spend them on giving the players setbacks. He came up the elevator and started hosing the room down. Besides Adversary 2, the setbacks helped keep the three players from killing him too quickly.

As a matter of fact my campaigns current two big bads have been created with adapted character creation rules.

They both have a career and specialization and will earn XP alongside the players.

They are a pirate captain (Hired Gun - Soldier) and his first mate (Hired Gun - Marauder).

But I took some liberties: I gave them some slightly higher characteristics for a start (one additional 3 instead of a 2) so they would "feel right". Then I started them with two respectively one additional ranks in adversary, so they wouldn't die that easily.

Every session they earn XP as well, even if they haven't even appeared in the current session. On top of that, they will each earn 5-10 more XP per session than my players to keep them a challenge. I haven't figured out yet how much XP additional ranks in adversary would cost, but I'm thinking 10XP x new rank for each new rank should work fine.

The one I use, pick what you need. Don't care about specs and carrieers, only have a minor consideration, but don't care so much.

Just consider the XP that you are giving to each field, not the general XP, for example, if you spend 300 XP on Computers skills/Talents on building a hacker, take that XP in consideration, no the rest that is needed to build a char. This way you will know that "this is a hacker with 300 XP challenge".

Off course, don't forget Adversary talent, even for non combat characters

EDIT: And remember to introduce special abilities. Existing ones, or created by yourself, don't be afraid about that

http://swrpg.viluppo.net/character/ability/