Hello

I've recently purchases Age of Rebellion and I'm liking the system very much One thing I don't quite get are the NPC classes: Minions, Rivals and Nemeses.

I mean, I can't entirely wrap my head around the concept that, say, human soldiers might have such diverse stats depending on their NPC class. I mean, a Rebellion soldier classed as a Minion seems to be almost a separate species from a Rebellion soldier classed as a Nemesis. It's... not very realistic. Hmm...

If I understand correctly, the write-ups for various species in the Character Creation chapter represent the "heroic" version of these species, right? Stats a larger-than-live examples of these species might have. Ordinary members of these species are significantly weaker, is that correct?

If so, then... how do I know what stats to assign to NPCs? Let's say I want to have my players fight a gang of Wookies. I get that Wookies are most probably stronger than humans, but... if they are a gang, so they are Minions, right? So an individual Wookie in such a gang needs to be weaker than a single PC. Or is it a wrong approach? Maybe Wookies are so tough that they shouldn't be classed as Minions at all? And each individual Wookie in this gang should be a Rival or a Nemesis?

Any advice on how to approach this?

BTW. One specific question: can Minions have talents?

Yes, minions can have an appropriate talent or ability, usually just one, and it's rather basic. This isn't very common though.

Now as for your mainline question.

Think of NPCs less as actual people and more like movie character types.

Minions are nameless Mooks. They are the thugs, the security details, the soldiers.

Rivals are those middle ground guys, the villain sidekick types that will show up with some special weapon and kick the hero around a bit.

And nemesis are the big bads that can really get things done.

So the reason why a rebel minion trooper, and a rebel nemesis trooper look so different is because the minion is some nameless schmuck and the nemesis is a guy with a name and a backstory the players will interact and converse with.

So when statting them, you need to think of what the characters are, what role they are expected to play, and how the encounter is supposed to work.

So say I want to have my players go against a dozen of wooks. Making them all rivals would be painful to run, but grouped minions would be like tracking just a few characters. For base abilities just 2s for everything except brawn which would be 3, grouped skills probably ranged heavy, and either brawl or melee. WT like 6 or 7, and kitted out with broadcasters and maybe some armor. No wookie rage or other special ability because it's about simplicity.

End result: 3 groups of 4 wookie soldiers.

As GhostOfMan described above, the Minion are the characters that die in droves to the protagonist. Much like Agent Smith copies in The Matrix Reloaded. Alone, Smith is a scary being, but against Neo, they fold like a bad hand.

Another poster on these forums had a really good example of Minion vs Nemesis,

Cosider the Xenomorph. The scary creature from the Aliens movies.

In the movie "Alien", the Xenomorph was a nemesis. It was the big bad and mowed down all but the main character. In "Aliens", the Xenomorphs were minions. They went down en masse.

Cosider the Xenomorph. The scary creature from the Aliens movies.

In the movie "Alien", the Xenomorph was a nemesis. It was the big bad and mowed down all but the main character. In "Aliens", the Xenomorphs were minions. They went down en masse.

Wish I could triple like this line alone. Fantastic example of how the "same" NPC can be statted two totally different ways based upon their role in an adventure. And +20 Duty for giving an example that "downgrades" the character instead of upgrades. Most impressive.

I wish I could take credit. KnasserII suggested the example.

You can, you just need a good grasp of the rules. For example, I did two versions of them to reflect Alien and Aliens. The first is a slinking horror. If anyone has ever played Alien: Isolation (terrifying, brilliant game), that's what it's meant to be like. The second is actually a minion. A minion? For the xenomorphs???!!? Well actually, yes. As I say, it's about having a good feel for the rules. Minion doesn't mean weak, it means generic. Now that correlates, because the weakest opposition in Star Wars are usually faceless goons. But it's not what it's about - Minion status is a GM tool to streamline multiple opponents who are all the same. The Minion version of the Xenomorph has plenty high Soak, but normallish WT for a Minion. What that means is that they're hard to hurt (like Vasquez shooting at one with her pistol in the air vents), but they're either alive or they're dead (more or less). Which is what you want when you're running an ambush scenario with them. Nemesis status is as much about letting things escape, have moments of dramatic glory (fighting on with a broken arm), than it is about power per se.

So with the above you could do both Alien and Aliens, just with minor adjustment of how you implement them. I'm not saying do Alien(s) for your game, btw. I'm just illustrating the nuances in the rules you take advantage of when you're doing a horror game depending on what you want.

I mean, I can't entirely wrap my head around the concept that, say, human soldiers might have such diverse stats depending on their NPC class. I mean, a Rebellion soldier classed as a Minion seems to be almost a separate species from a Rebellion soldier classed as a Nemesis. It's... not very realistic. Hmm...

Eeeeh I find it very realistic. Think of it like this, a private (minion) is going to have a different set of skills than a sergeant (rival) who in turn will have a completely different skill set from an lieutenant (nemesis). By extension in a military operation you're going to send in units that are typically classed around ranks which denotes expected skill level.

If I understand correctly, the write-ups for various species in the Character Creation chapter represent the "heroic" version of these species, right? Stats a larger-than-live examples of these species might have. Ordinary members of these species are significantly weaker, is that correct?

Kinda sorta. Really the PC's are the heroic versions of a species. NPC's with larger than life stats are going to be based more along the lines of their narrative purpose than how they compare to what an ordinary member of their species would be like. You can take minions to be roughly the average for any given species though.

If so, then... how do I know what stats to assign to NPCs? Let's say I want to have my players fight a gang of Wookies. I get that Wookies are most probably stronger than humans, but... if they are a gang, so they are Minions, right? So an individual Wookie in such a gang needs to be weaker than a single PC. Or is it a wrong approach? Maybe Wookies are so tough that they shouldn't be classed as Minions at all? And each individual Wookie in this gang should be a Rival or a Nemesis?

Any advice on how to approach this?

The easiest answer is that you judge these things based on the narrative needs of the encounter. IE are the wookies meant to be a challenging threat? Is there a Wookie member that is meant to be more powerful? Is one of them meant to be a long running villain? Are the Wookies in question meant to be canon fodder? Elite troops? What is the overall goal here?

Once you answer that then you can decide things like minion/rival/nemesis status which will in turn help you determine the number of Wookies you need and the stats you should consider giving them.

Thinking, thinking...

So, are there any guidelines for what a Minion version of a species should be when compared to the "heroic" version? I mean, I think that even a Minion wookie should be stronger / tougher / more dangerous than a Minion human...

The only guidelines offered is that Minions cannot willingly suffer strain. Meaning they cannot perform 2 maneuver without downgrading their action to do so. Also, Minions (and rivals) have no strain threshold, but instead suffer wounds when they would normally suffer strain. The rest is just "best-guess" effort.

It's a bit of a jump from systems where NPCs are built in the same way that PCs are (such as SAGA and 3.5 D&D), but I prefer it this way. The idea is that an NPC has exactly what it needs to fulfill its role. In the case of minions, it's to attack as a group and drop like paper-men.

Episode 45 of the Order 66 podcast "The NPC Deli" does a good job explaining the roles of each category of NPC and how to build and tweak them to serve the GM's needs.

No guidelines have ever been formally posted, but its easy to see all minions are modifications of a single base template:

Brawn 2 Agi 2 Int 2 Cun 2 Will 2, Pre 2 WT 5, 2-3 grouped skills.

Look at every minion in the book and you'll see that template behind it. Just bump up this, drop that, add some gear, and you're there.

So, for a Wookiee minion, you take that template, bump up brawn by one or two, bump up the WT by one or two, skills of athletics, ranged heavy, and melee or brawl, add a bowcaster and a ryyk blade (blaster carbine and vibro blades are close enough if you don't have the right books) +2 to soak if they are wearing armor, and that should do it.

Additional gear can be added as required by the encounter.

Always be thinking about the encounter. So like Stormtroopers carry extra reloads all the time because the typical stormtrooper encounter will be a combat one, and you can't have stormtroopers run out of ammo. It just wouldn't feel right.

Hmm. You know, Stormtroopers or Wookies as Minions still don't make sense to me - even if I think of their narrative role.

Stormtroopers are supposed to be the elite troopers of the Empire. Wookies are, I think, a race of powerful warriors. NPCs like that should *not* fall like paper men - not when confronted with ordinary Rebellion soldiers... and that's who the AOR PCs are. They aren't superhumans or sci-fi Navy Seals, they are ordinary people who joined up. It just doesn't make sense for them to be able to defeat Stormtroopers or Wookies so easily. I know that it happens in the movies, but let's face it: the movies are simply silly that way. I really don't think that a game needs to reinforce silly and dated tropes...

Also, another problem: this approach kind of makes some characters a bit nonsensical. Let's say I want to play a PC who is a Stormtrooper that defected to the Rebellion. So... what stats should such a character have? Giving him (or her) the stats of a heroic-level Rebellion soldiers put this character way beyond the skills of a typical Stormtrooper. But that makes no sense, as this very character is, background-wise, just that: a typical Stormtrooper. So, are we to assume that this PC suddenly became a few times more effective soldier, just because the plot slapped the "protagonist" label on him (her)?

I don't know. The more I think it, the more I don't like this approach. Would it very wrong from me to drop the Minion rules and create the NPCs the same way the PC are created?

Hmm. You know, Stormtroopers or Wookies as Minions still don't make sense to me - even if I think of their narrative role.

Stormtroopers are supposed to be the elite troopers of the Empire. Wookies are, I think, a race of powerful warriors. NPCs like that should *not* fall like paper men - not when confronted with ordinary Rebellion soldiers... and that's who the AOR PCs are. They aren't superhumans or sci-fi Navy Seals, they are ordinary people who joined up. It just doesn't make sense for them to be able to defeat Stormtroopers or Wookies so easily. I know that it happens in the movies, but let's face it: the movies are simply silly that way. I really don't think that a game needs to reinforce silly and dated tropes...

This game doesn't even remotely pretend that NPC stats are meant to replicate PC stats. So this becomes background. Yeah he does better than the average Stormtrooper, but he is already above average by defecting in the first place. And he likely wasn't an average minion level Stormtrooper when he was one.

I know it's not satisfying but in a nutshell ..... yeah we are supposed to assume he becomes more effective because he's the protagonist. But this entire system is built on the idea that story function supersedes other more mundane and practical stuff. So a NPC Stormtrooper is going to look differently than a PC former Stormtrooper because they serve different narrative functions.

I don't know. The more I think it, the more I don't like this approach. Would it very wrong from me to drop the Minion rules and create the NPCs the same way the PC are created?

Your game do whatever you want. So it's not wrong per se, but you may encounter balancing issues. And it will increase your workload, to be upfront about it. And you will not be able to make ready use of published adventures.

So yeah, you can do it but the grunt of the work in all aspects of making an encounter become a bit harder. The way it is currently set it is meant to be fast and easy. If you don't like their fast and easy approach then do it your way. Just know that it will require more work on your end and the books may not be much help in guidance in that regards.

Cosider the Xenomorph. The scary creature from the Aliens movies.

In the movie "Alien", the Xenomorph was a nemesis. It was the big bad and mowed down all but the main character. In "Aliens", the Xenomorphs were minions. They went down en masse.

Wish I could triple like this line alone. Fantastic example of how the "same" NPC can be statted two totally different ways based upon their role in an adventure. And +20 Duty for giving an example that "downgrades" the character instead of upgrades. Most impressive.

See I have a hard time with this example as I know, based on reading the novels, that the Xenomorph in Alien is more of a drone, but the Xenomorphs in Aliens are more the warrior types despite them getting killed more often.

I also see that the crew of the Nostromo are not warriors so they don't really know how to fight, anything really, where as the Marines in Aliens not only know how to fight, but are supposed to be elite human warriors.

So if we were to swap xenomorphs (warriors to Alien, and drone to Aliens), Ripley and company are dog-meat (quickly) and the marines walk away selling like roses without any losses.

Also, another problem: this approach kind of makes some characters a bit nonsensical. Let's say I want to play a PC who is a Stormtrooper that defected to the Rebellion. So... what stats should such a character have? Giving him (or her) the stats of a heroic-level Rebellion soldiers put this character way beyond the skills of a typical Stormtrooper. But that makes no sense, as this very character is, background-wise, just that: a typical Stormtrooper. So, are we to assume that this PC suddenly became a few times more effective soldier, just because the plot slapped the "protagonist" label on him (her)?

If you think the stormtrooper turned good is hard to balance out to a PC, try rebuilding the Emperor's hand (like Mara Jade) into a PC and let me know what you come with (without breaking character creation rules).

I think in regards to the stormtrooper example the developers would say that he would be one of those troopers who excelled at stormtrooper training (perhaps that was why he rebelled) and would not be a minion level stormtrooper but a rival level stormtrooper who then defected.

Also, another problem: this approach kind of makes some characters a bit nonsensical. Let's say I want to play a PC who is a Stormtrooper that defected to the Rebellion. So... what stats should such a character have? Giving him (or her) the stats of a heroic-level Rebellion soldiers put this character way beyond the skills of a typical Stormtrooper. But that makes no sense, as this very character is, background-wise, just that: a typical Stormtrooper. So, are we to assume that this PC suddenly became a few times more effective soldier, just because the plot slapped the "protagonist" label on him (her)?

If you think the stormtrooper turned good is hard to balance out to a PC, try rebuilding the Emperor's hand (like Mara Jade) into a PC and let me know what you come with (without breaking character creation rules).

I think in regards to the stormtrooper example the developers would say that he would be one of those troopers who excelled at stormtrooper training (perhaps that was why he rebelled) and would not be a minion level stormtrooper but a rival level stormtrooper who then defected.

Yeah the Devs would likely call such a Stormtrooper as a Rival or Nemesis level trooper not the minion one.

Lets start here:

I don't know. The more I think it, the more I don't like this approach. Would it very wrong from me to drop the Minion rules and create the NPCs the same way the PC are created?

You can. One "cheat" to making a Rival level character on the fly is to take a PC, drop the strain, and... that's about it.

Some reasons you may want to give that some thought are:

1) A lot of talents and such don't really work as well with NPCs, just because they were more designed with a PC in mind.

2) You'll likely end up with a pile of talents and abilities you can't keep track of very well, resulting in forgetting (ask anyone here how often they forget the Adversary Talent).

3) PCs don't have access to all the talents... there's several that are NPC only and not on any talent tree.

4) Likewise there's lots of talents that only work on minions. If you have a Merc Soldier player, removing minions from the game is a swift kick in the nuts to him...

5) Minons "can be removed with crit" rule can come into play in specific encounters. A lone TIE strafing the players is pretty much deadly if piloted by a Rival or better. If piloted by a Minion, the players can knock it down with a missile tube.

6) Minions play into advanced rules that aren't available in the core rule book. Squads and Squadrons are all but required for certain encounter types, and they require Minions to work. Of course if you're never going to fly a starfighter, or take part in a large battle, or try and take on an AT-ST on foot, you'll probably not need those advanced rules...

7) The game will have a much smaller feel. Not really a "problem" but you may want to chat up your players before implementation. Minion rules allow you to deploy a lot of people on the field without a lot of management. 3 Grouped stormtroopers take the time and effort to run that a single rival does. By ditching Minions and going with nothing but Rivals and Nemesis, you're going to have to have smaller fights with fewer bodies on the field... or you can keep big numbers and just go in understanding that they will probably beat your players hard and combats will take a lot longer.

So think it over before you execute, Minions serve a purpose both thematically and mechanically. Removing them is an option, but you'll find it will generate some problem areas, restrict your encounter options, and vastly increase the difficulty of some encounter types.

Stormtroopers are supposed to be the elite troopers of the Empire. Wookies are, I think, a race of powerful warriors.

I won't get into this too much, as the topic tends to get flamey, but the definition of "elite" and "powerful" is flexible to say the least.

But his next part is the real meat here:

NPCs like that should *not* fall like paper men - not when confronted with ordinary Rebellion soldiers... and that's who the AOR PCs are. They aren't superhumans or sci-fi Navy Seals, they are ordinary people who joined up. It just doesn't make sense for them to be able to defeat Stormtroopers or Wookies so easily. I know that it happens in the movies, but let's face it: the movies are simply silly that way. I really don't think that a game needs to reinforce silly and dated tropes...

Talk to your players!

Look I get it, I do. That's the whole reason why there's no hard D20-like rules for NPC creation, because you'll always need something different. If I'm running a Clone War campaign I may need wookiee minions to squad up with the players... unless I'm taking inspiration from the Republic Commando video game.. in that case all Wookiees are Sil 2 Nemesis with Soak 8 and a WT of 20, every time. So if you want to run a campaign where all stormtroopers are skilled Rivals and the PCs are lucky to survive event he smallest firefight.... that's a stylistic choice... You can do it, it'll work as long as everyone knows what's up, and you plan the encounters with the increased difficulty that a galaxy without minions will have.

But you have to talk to your players. Those tropes you think aren't something the game needs, might be setting defining characteristics to your players. So make sure your players not only understand that, but also agree. After all GMing isn't about what you want at end of the day...

Okay, thanks for the input. You gave me some food for thought...

A question: in your experience, are Minions a challenge to the PCs at all? Or, if a group of, say, four PCs encounters four or five Stormtrooper Minions, are the PCs going to waltz through such an encounter?

The best thing about Minions is they burn bright and fast.

Because of how their skill checks work. they cam become a credible threat in a large group, but as the PCs pick them off, they become less of a threat. They can really drive up the tension in the first few rounds of combat.

Okay, thanks for the input. You gave me some food for thought...

A question: in your experience, are Minions a challenge to the PCs at all? Or, if a group of, say, four PCs encounters four or five Stormtrooper Minions, are the PCs going to waltz through such an encounter?

The best thing about Minions is they burn bright and fast.

Because of how their skill checks work. they cam become a credible threat in a large group, but as the PCs pick them off, they become less of a threat. They can really drive up the tension in the first few rounds of combat.

Yes, they can challenge PCs. As kaosoe says, in that first round, it's not "Okay, let's wipe the floor with these guys and move on," When they have a fairly early initiative slot, there's a lot of "take some down before they fire!" Throw in a Rival, such as Stormtrooper Sergeant, who can add maneuvers, or use them as a meat-shield, and you have some pretty good challenges.

Okay, thanks for the input. You gave me some food for thought...

A question: in your experience, are Minions a challenge to the PCs at all? Or, if a group of, say, four PCs encounters four or five Stormtrooper Minions, are the PCs going to waltz through such an encounter?

...OK I think I'm seeing a trend here that may explain your problem...

Minions have a special ability to work as a group. How this is implemented makes a huge difference to the threat level they pose (and how hard they are to manage).

How minion groups work:

So, 4 players vs 4 ungrouped stormtroopers is probably going to go pretty fast depending on the details. (Blaster shootout will go pretty quick, but a fist fight will probably take a while because of the troopers soak) But that's kinda the idea behind an encounter design with 4 ungrouped minions, a quick shootout that's one and done. (I'd compare this to like the first gunfight in a western, where the heroes mop the floor with the low level gang members.) This extends out to more odball scenarios, like that back door protected by one or two troopers, the troopers aren't the real threat, just the alarm they could raise.

But, with a few exceptions, you're probably never going to deploy stormtroopers ungrouped. It's not appropriate for the empires front line trained assault troops to act like a bunch of N00B paintballers. So instead lets deploy 3 Four trooper groups against 4 players. Using the grouping rules each group would be similar to three 20 WT rivals with 3 ranks in critical skills, that's gonna hurt...

Once you get the hang of it, you'll see how this allows for complex scenarios with minimal effort. Try an 8-member stormtrooper encounter, composed of two 3-man groups, a Sgt, and a rival level trooper with a special weapon. That's a full "squad" of stormtroopers, complete with toys and buffs, in an encounter that will run like there's only 4 adversaries.

I would even go so far and say that the same NPC could be a Minion, Rival or Nemesis based on the particular encounter.

Let's take a hypothetical scenario (I haven't played such a scenario yet): Your PCs are members of Rebel X-Wing Squadron. The NPC members of the squad could act as Rivals as everyone of them has probably a name, some unique character quirks and a short background history. After all, they are the NPCs your players would interact with the most.

Once everyone has jumped in their star fighters to attack some Imperials, the non-PC members of the squad would probably act as one or several Minion groups, after all you probably don't want to handle 12 single star fighter initiative slots in one encounter only on the rebel side. With for example three PCs piloting their ships, that would leave 9 NPC X-Wings, or 3 Minion groups of 3 X-Wings each --> hey, that's cool, you could give every PC control of one X-Wing Minion group, then you would only have to control the Imperial side in the battle.

Maybe one of the NPC squad member's family gets captured by the Empire one day and that NPC, let's call him Bob, is coerced in betraying the Rebellion. He silently snucks into the hangar and starts the engines of his X-Wing to fly to the next Imperial base to deliver secret Rebel plans. Fortunately, the PCs noticed that and jump in their own X-Wings to pursue Bob and to bring him back to their Rebel base. In such an encounter, Bob would probably be a Nemesis, as he should probably have access to strain for that encounter.

Once the PCs manage to bring him back, he would act as a Rival once more...

I think this game is about cinematic play and your PCs are the heroes of the film. Choose Minions, Rivals and Nemesis rules accordingly.

Let's take another example right out of the Prequel triology:

Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar and Saedee Tiin were renowned Jedi masters and almost everyone would stat them as Nemesis adversaries.

Still, when Samuel's character Mace Windu tried to arrest Ian's character Palpatine in George's campaign "Revenge of the Sith", he was probably only accompanied by a minion group of three Jedi masters. At least that would explain in the FFG system, how Palpatine managed to kill all three of them in a single round...

Of course, it's also possible to build adversaries in conformity with the PC creation rules - It is just a lot of work, but your table, your rules. As long as everyone has fun, do whatever you'd like to do!

A question: in your experience, are Minions a challenge to the PCs at all? Or, if a group of, say, four PCs encounters four or five Stormtrooper Minions, are the PCs going to waltz through such an encounter?

It seems maybe you're not clear on how minions work together. To directly answer your question: yes, probably. If you run all the stormtrooper minions solo they get no proficiency (yellow) dice, and their dice pool for shooting is 3 greens. At medium range and/or against cover, they'll likely miss a lot, or hit but get Threat (that the players can leverage against them, even causing them to take Strain which takes them down more quickly). Meanwhile the PCs, even fresh out of chargen, will probably have 1 or more proficiency dice, and probably a better dice pool and Wound threshold. Having the proficiency dice also pushes the odds of their results to "success + advantage". So not only will the PCs hit more often, they will be passing boost dice and other benefits around to each other. Meanwhile, the solo stormtroopers are getting in each other's way and shooting each other in the back.

If you group the 5 stormtroopers into two minion groups (one with 2, one with 3), they work better, but there's not enough of them to last long, and it reduces their total shots per round...each group only shoots once. So you've gone from 5 shots per round to 2. However, each shot will be better, the group with 2 will have a dice pool YGG, and the group with 3 will have a dice pool YYG. As a group they will be passing each other boosts and other benefits, and will be more likely to cause criticals...that is until the PCs whittle down their numbers. Each minion lost reduces that group's dice pool.

As for whether this is "realistic"...of course not. The minions are in the game because it's a staple of the genre. We all know how badly stormtroopers are at shooting, and how quickly "a legion of the finest" goes down to teddy bears. The players are set up to be galaxy-changing heroes from the get-go: the average human has 2s across the board and no skills, and believe it or not, stormtroopers are better than that, plus they have the training to work together. It's really quite an elegant mechanic that preserves the flavour well.

However, if that's too corny, or if you want a darker and grittier campaign (e.g.: something more like World of Darkness), you wouldn't use minions at all, unless it's for animal groups like a rat swarm. The lowest you'd go is Rivals. But that means a few things. First, the stakes are much higher each time you add an NPC. Second, all your encounters are going to be with very small numbers. Third, the encounters will be low-scale affairs where if important people show up, it's without backup or few reinforcements. You'd never want to involve large number of troops, because an Imperial SWAT team made up of Rivals and Nemeses is going to absolutely crush the PCs.

Okay, thanks, that clarified a lot to me.

One question: you guys said that Minions can have talents. Do you have talents as indviduals, or only as a group?

Let me also ask about Rivals and Nemeses: so, they aren't created with PC creation rules, either? I'm still reading the book, so I may not be getting all of the rules yet. But I thought that Nemeses are, basically, NPCs that are created just like PCs and have the same rules pertaining to them?

You'll have to double check, but I'm pretty sure minions cannot voluntarily suffer strain for anything. Any passive talent or talents that only require maneuvers should work fine. I can't remember on rivals for certain.

Okay, thanks, that clarified a lot to me.

One question: you guys said that Minions can have talents. Do you have talents as indviduals, or only as a group?

Let me also ask about Rivals and Nemeses: so, they aren't created with PC creation rules, either? I'm still reading the book, so I may not be getting all of the rules yet. But I thought that Nemeses are, basically, NPCs that are created just like PCs and have the same rules pertaining to them?

At the end of book there is a section on how to create Nemesis and Rivals. Also the EotE GM's kit has a deeper set of rules. But in a nutshell, no they are not NPC's built like PC's. You can build a Nemesis like a PC but to be honest since one Nemesis is meant to be a challenge for an entire party I wouldn't do that.

Also I will second Blackbirds comment about strain. As far as I recall they can't voluntary take strain so any talent that needs this won't work with Minions.

But I thought that Nemeses are, basically, NPCs that are created just like PCs and have the same rules pertaining to them?

Sort of. The categories are more broad than that. A Rival can be anything from a canny shopkeeper who is hard to negotiate against (think Watto, he's not good for much else) to something that will give even experienced PCs a run for their money if the right skills are used. The main thing about Rivals is they share one pool for both Wounds and Strain. The Nemesis capability usually starts a little higher and goes as high as you want, and the main differentiation is they have a separate Wound and Strain threshold.

But you don't have to create them like PCs, that's an exercise in tedium. Just give them whatever you need for the story. It's a good idea to peruse the adversary list at the back of the core book, you'll get some good ideas from that.