One of the characters in my campaign has Zuckuss as a contact/small source of Obligation. I'm keen on having Zuckuss betray the PC in order to collect on his debt (and to also move the story forward), but that means putting Big Z in a situation where he might get ganked by the PCs. I'm okay with this (I'm running an Alt Universe campaign so canon characters biting it aren't a big deal), but it got me to wondering if he's a Rival (I was thinking Adversary 2) or a Nemesis. Zuckuss in general isn't strong enough to be an end-of-campaign bad guy (which is my metric for a Nemesis) but I don't want him to get chewed up and spit out without a challenge by the PCs if things turn sour.

Thoughts?

Your metric for what makes a Nemesis is skewed too high.

44 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Your metric for what makes a Nemesis is skewed too high.

To be fair, this is all in aid of clearing up 15-20 Obligation. Dropping a Nemesis on a party for that seems to be a bit harsh.

41 minutes ago, CargoCulture said:

To be fair, this is all in aid of clearing up 15-20 Obligation. Dropping a Nemesis on a party for that seems to be a bit harsh.

Not really. A Nemesis isn't a world boss or even a level boss. A Nemesis is just (generally) a named character or creature who is somehow pivotal to the story. In other words, if the character is liable to be around for a while to cause your PCs trouble (or try to redeem himself later), he should probably be a Nemesis.

Nemesis all the way, a nemesis isn't a big thing, if I don't have at least one nemesis each session I take it as a sign to myself that i'm thinking too small.

Nemesis is not a measure of power, it's how important the guy is to the story. Is he a central NPC? He's a Nemesis. Is he a side character with a name and a couple of interesting things about him? He's a Rival. Is he one of a dozen schmucks, with a name taken from a list (at best)? He's a Minion.

There is a bunch of good advice here, but Grand Falloon wrote it exactly the way I evaluate NPC types.

Aye I would make Zuckass as a nemesis; he's clearly important to the plot (he is a betraying character) and is a highly experienced bounty hunter in his own right. Though only an idiot would preform a betrayal where a gang can get immediate retribution.

As others have said, Nemeses are basically named recurring or pivotal NPCs.

I think a better metric for what you are considering is how many ranks in Adversary there should be. For that value of obligation on the line, I would definitely not only make him 3 adversary (maybe even 4 as he is literally in the top few bounty hunters in the galaxy as per Ep.5), but also would have him tagging along with his equally deadly pal 4-LOM. The players probably wouldn't be aware of 4-LOM going into the encounter, catching them off-guard.