Hey folks, I was trying to get a rough idea of how much experience a Former Republic Soldier or a Clone Trooper who managed to stop in the aging process would have. I want to actually build them as player characters rather than just copy a nemesis. I was thinking somewhere in the 400 - 500 range?

To be honest a starting player character is supposed to be better than your standard opponent. I would say that a republic soldier or bog standard clone trooper would be similar to, but slightly better than a stormtrooper. If you are thinking something like Rex in the Clone Wars id say a PC with about 150 xp ie knight level. 400-500 xp would be something like Luke in ROTJ. There wont be many people of this calibre in each sector.

I would probably say 400 would be fine, their lack of training as a commando would be made up by hard experience thus they will have likely mastered some of their their specialisation. Bulk brought a few ranks and that would be dandy. Take a few clones and run them through the same process, use recruit to round them off, job done. If these guys work as a unit pick different up initial crews and round them up.

Standard clones would largely be Minons or rivals with a respectable 3 ranks and agility/brawn of three. Broadly speaking these fellas are stormtroopers really, designed to be churned out in mass, much quicker then getting a formal army assembled, but broadly specialised to do things on a unit by unit basis.

If a clone trooper overcame aging? I would probably give them 500. Specialised as mentioned before, mainly focused in ranks. Aged clone troopers would take a more supportive role, investing in officer traits.

I'd say that you can conceivably justify any amount of XP. Has the trooper in question been lying low and avoiding attention since the Clone Wars ended, or have they been out and about keeping busy? In the latter case you could easily give them 1,000 XP or more - the character has 20+ years of experience behind him, after all.

You should probably not focus on how much XP the character can/cannot have and think more about how much it's suitable that they have with regards to your campaign setting, PC skill levels, and so on.

This raises some interesting questions about "earning" experience. Do minions earn experience? If so, then every trooper will get better and better just by virtue of surviving a battle. By the end of the Clone Wars, you could have some very skilled minion groups in the various legions.

If we limit earning XP to certain opponent classes, then it becomes relevant to classify your target. Are you talking standard clone troopers? ARC troopers? Clone commandos? Some of Vau & Skirata's bad boys? The Null ARCs?

Personally, I'd classify clone troopers & stormtroopers as minions. They're as good as they will ever get, whether that's due to genetics, training, equipment, or whatever. "Veteran" minions can certainly have an enhanced stat block, but they're still minions and meant to be cannon fodder for the PCs to mow down. Clone commanders (like Rex) and ARC troopers would, in my opinion, fall into the rival category unless you need them to be Nemeses. Commandos from the SpecForce would almost certainly be Nemeses, and extremely well-trained, experienced, and genetically gifted.

The long-and-short of it, though, is as Kreiger22 said. What role is this NPC going to play in your campaign? If he's a plot device, then you don't really need stats at all. Everything you need this person to do can be accomplished with a hand-wave. Is he mentoring the PCs? Done. Is he the expert they need to pull off a caper/heist? Done. Is he the conscience of the party? Done. Do the PCs need to convince him or persuade him? They'll either pass or fail according to good RP and needs of the plot, not the whims of the dice.

To be honest a starting player character is supposed to be better than your standard opponent.

I disagree. The typical starting PC is a total rookie at whatever it is he's supposed to be. IMO, even 'Knight Level' characters (+150 XP) are just mildly experienced and are unlikely to actually be all that impressive overall (although such a character might be able to min-max enough to be exceptional in one focused area). I've found that +300 XP is where I can make a "heroic" character that has actually developed some basic competence in one or two specializations.

A big part of this is the cost of skills. Everybody looks at talent trees and fewer look at skills. Since rating 3 is the base for professional capability, and considering that many professions are going to be based on more than one skill (often with a few beyond that to support the role), it can get pretty expensive. To get two skills up from a starting rating 2 to rating 3 and another three skills up from a staring rating 1 to rating 2 costs 60 XP all by itself (assuming that these are all career skills). If you want to actually be better than the professional baseline, it can really get expensive.