Generally speaking the NPCs in the FFG Star Wars system are pretty easy to create, having only a few stats. After you get familiar with some of the ranges out there it doesn't seem too hard to just pull one up in your head when you need one. That's true for the key attributes and skills at least as they are straight forward and limited in scope but when you include Talents, whew! Books full of the things.

I spend a lot of time thumbing through the lists looking for appropriate talents - not by NPC type or anything, I understand NPCs don't have to follow specialty trees or whatever, Im talking about abilities that make an NPC, even a minion, kind of unique.

Then I got to thinking, since they don't have to follow the talent trees, I suppose there is nothing stopping the GM from just making up talents or abilities when you need one for an NPC and not worrying about them being part of the RAW. You could even give a minion a skill level in something if you wanted. Don't you think? Or should the GM stick to the talents and NPC creating rules as provided in the publications?

For example - Lets say Im making up a driver for an underworld figure. The guy opening the speeder door for him and ushering him from one seedy meeting to another.

I make him a minion, give him some stats but then give him Planetary Pilot and Cool

Then I want him to have a knowledge of the city, the 'go to guy' if you want to know anything about anything there so I come up with

"From the Neighborhood" - a talent that grants him a upgrade when recalling details about the city.

That's a crappy example but explains what I mean. What do you feel about 'made up' talents and such for NPCs?

You always could do that, it works fine. However, it also works to just look for a useable talent on a tree for comparable specializations. For example, your driver person could probably use a talent from the Driver talent tree in Enter the Unknown. I don't have the book, so I don't know if that tree has anything useful.

So far I have been adapting existing NPC's and making some up for my own campaign, Star Wars; Dark Age of the Republic. From a design point of view, I tend to stick to what I see, what I know. I create or adapt minions so they tend to appear, and if needed, die like minions. For them to keep that status, I tend to not deviate from the rules in the book about minions, so they only gain skills in minion groups and enough damage against a group might drop 2 in 1 attack (narratively having a few drop due to volume of fire, etc.). Then again, there are two more tiers of adversaries, and NPC's with a few skills and a talent or two of their own fall into the Rival category. I find this division between minions and rivals to be a good one. To me, they are "cannon fodder" and the "named extra's", only topped by the "main antagonists" or Nemesis level characters.

That said, I also tend to stick to skills and talents as published (including possible errata). I could make a Nemesis NPC with only a few talents, or a whole bunch of them as if the opponent is a whole lot more experienced, but I do tend to stick to published material. As a Game Master I feel confident using what is there, and not needing to memorize, or write down, every little new talent, special ability, new skill use, rule adaptation, and what not. Boost dice and Setback dice are my best friend here, and in this example of the underworld driver, I would probably add a Boost die. Page 20 of the Edge of the Empire book even lists "ample time" as a reason for a Boost die, and having lived in the city for all his life could mean he spent "ample time" there. Also, in this way the Boost die could be used in more instances besides recalling information through Intellect (or Knowledge skills). Driving in a chase? Piloting (Planetary) with a Boost die because the driver knows every nook, cranny, short cut, and tunnel like the back of his hand, for example. I know this isn't equal to a skill check update, but it does provide a noticeable boost in the capabilities of an NPC with regards to his background, and not just when recalling details about his city.

You always could do that, it works fine. However, it also works to just look for a useable talent on a tree for comparable specializations. For example, your driver person could probably use a talent from the Driver talent tree in Enter the Unknown. I don't have the book, so I don't know if that tree has anything useful.

That's true but, as you say, you have to "Look for" the talent, which so far takes a lot of time flipping, trying to remember where you say a given talent. That's kind of what I was trying to avoid.

So far I have been adapting existing NPC's and making some up for my own campaign, Star Wars; Dark Age of the Republic. From a design point of view, I tend to stick to what I see, what I know. I create or adapt minions so they tend to appear, and if needed, die like minions. For them to keep that status, I tend to not deviate from the rules in the book about minions, so they only gain skills in minion groups and enough damage against a group might drop 2 in 1 attack (narratively having a few drop due to volume of fire, etc.). Then again, there are two more tiers of adversaries, and NPC's with a few skills and a talent or two of their own fall into the Rival category. I find this division between minions and rivals to be a good one. To me, they are "cannon fodder" and the "named extra's", only topped by the "main antagonists" or Nemesis level characters.

That said, I also tend to stick to skills and talents as published (including possible errata). I could make a Nemesis NPC with only a few talents, or a whole bunch of them as if the opponent is a whole lot more experienced, but I do tend to stick to published material. As a Game Master I feel confident using what is there, and not needing to memorize, or write down, every little new talent, special ability, new skill use, rule adaptation, and what not. Boost dice and Setback dice are my best friend here, and in this example of the underworld driver, I would probably add a Boost die. Page 20 of the Edge of the Empire book even lists "ample time" as a reason for a Boost die, and having lived in the city for all his life could mean he spent "ample time" there. Also, in this way the Boost die could be used in more instances besides recalling information through Intellect (or Knowledge skills). Driving in a chase? Piloting (Planetary) with a Boost die because the driver knows every nook, cranny, short cut, and tunnel like the back of his hand, for example. I know this isn't equal to a skill check update, but it does provide a noticeable boost in the capabilities of an NPC with regards to his background, and not just when recalling details about his city.

I hear you and will admit I would rather stick to published material but with a three Core books and now 11 add-ons on my shelf, its getting harder to gain a mastery of the material.

A lot of folks like those adversary cards; personally I avoid such things but they really do help speed up finding an NPC on the fly.

Of course one can save a bunch of time looking at http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/adversaries/ to narrow the scope.

A lot of folks like those adversary cards; personally I avoid such things but they really do help speed up finding an NPC on the fly.

Of course one can save a bunch of time looking at http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/adversaries/ to narrow the scope.

They are helpful but hardly cover the gambit of needed NPCs... I enjoy making up specific and unique ones, its just very time consuming as is. Even if you make a talent up to fit an NPC, odds are its already in the rules, or something similar is, already. Hardly seems that unbalanced a practice. Since there are no real restrictions on assigning talents to NPCs in general, Im surprised more GMs don't do it already.

Since the NPC stats never need to be seen or known to the players, it doesn’t really matter how you build your NPCs, so long as you do it in a way that works for you.

I generally don’t like using skills or talents that don’t actually exist in the game, but there are now a whole metric crapton of them out there, and I can’t remember all the ones that already exist.

So, yeah — create new ones if that works for you, but I would encourage you to try to keep them balanced. There’s no sense doing something that is just going to cause you more grief and pain in the future.

My Minions are always according to the minions rules. I never give them talents.

Well Rivals are a completly other story.

I´ve got a sheet with the most important fighting talents, so I can made them in no time.

But I also like to create some new talents here and there, mainly for nemesis characters.

Like giving a Rancor the ability to tear appart the armor of vehicles with every round.

or let an sith call upon the DS to reanimated dozends of forcespirits of longforgotten warriors (minions)

or let an dathomir witch have the ability to take over control of a minion group or a rival that was supporting the heroes just a moment ago.

But those are only meant for the BBEG to make the encounters more than just a "Here we go and try to get a lucky roll on that boss"

For your case of the underworld driver

I would make him rival level

2-3-2-3-1-2

WT: 12

(strain: 8 only if you want him to be an harder foe or a bigger help)

piloting planetary 2 (+1-2 Boost dice while in his turf)

knowledge underworld (+1-2 Boost dice while in his turf)

lightfirearms 1 (with a light or heavy blaster)

bawl 1 (with a baton)

disciplin 1

streetwise 2

for talents:

Rapid Reaction rank 1/2/3

Improved (and maybe Supreme) Full throttle

Full Stop

Tricky Target

Skilled Jockey rank 1/2

That would make him an excellent help or nuisance to the players when getting into a vehicle chase and or battle

Two words: Adversary decks

I usually just come up with a concept and make an NPC that fills that concept, usually borrowing some talents from PC trees or coming up with some of my own

Making up talents to individualize otherwise generic NPCs.I wouldn't have considered that in a new game but I'm glad to hear some are doing it. Sounds like a good way to diversify your grunts.

Of course, there is another danger. If you create a new talent, chances are, that players start to ask whether their characters can buy that talent too. Perhaps as part of an existing talent tree, replacing another talent there, or maybe as some stand-alone talent considering it is totally new, and therefore not available in any existing talent tree. The question itself is, of course, all too fair.

I realise there are one or two abilities, such as the Adversary talent or the minion rules themselves allowing literal improvements by grouping, which are NPC exclusive already. But that doesn't make the question itself any less valid.

Honestly I don't think the players would have a problem with the adversaries having unique abilities. Almost every game I can remember included 'monsters' with cool abilities the players couldn't emulate. But.. if they did, I might just pick a spot on the appropriate talent tree and plug it in if necessary. What the heck? Right?

Well in this systems a lot of Enemys have uniqe Abilitys the PC has no access to.

like the Impereal Valor, or the Rancor Swing, the Advasary talent and so on, one more or less doesn´t bother.

and Most players enjoy to see that the enemy has some nasty unique ability so they feel even Stronger after they defeat it.

But of course everybody has to look what would works best on the own table.