I guess I am finding myself wondering, how much is too much. I do not have the Age of Rebellion book, only EoE stuff, so I haven't seen the squadron rules or any examples of starfighter aces. To quickly summarize the situation, our party of smugglers is quickly attracting the attention of the Empire, mostly from them smuggling defectors off world and blowing up the grandson of a Moff. This defector they are rescuing has a protege though, one who is obstinate and loyal to the Empire. I plan on this guy becoming a recurring villain who would show up from time to time in space to not necessarily try to kill them but to significantly hamper their efforts. He is also the first and only Force sensitive character in the game so far, none of the PCs have really dealt with something like that yet.

Currently I am thinking something like this:

1 Brawn, 3 Agility, 2 Intellect, 3 Cunning, 2 Will, 2 Presence

Piloting Space 3

Gunnery 1

Perception 2

Cool 2

Vigilance 2

Discipline 2

Deception 2

Core worlds 2

Education 2

Leadership 1

Adversary 2, Skilled Jockey 2, Intuitive Evasion 1, Supreme Full Throttle, Uncanny Senses 2, Overwhelm Emotions 1

Force rating 1 with Foresee and Sense

This is still a working draft of a character, and I am willing to change some stuff out but this is the first recurring kind of bad guy NPC I have made and I wanted him to be a real challenge. To fight him the crew have two freighters and a Kihraxz fighter, but they typically would only have one freighter with them at a time. I plan to send this guy into battle with a small group of TIE fighters who will act as ablative armor, the PC fire killing the minions off before the damage moves over to the ace's fighter. The ace would be the only guy shooting, and I will only have him shoot if he manages to gain the advantage on the PCs.

No ranks in Piloting (Space) and only Gunnery 1? Also, the rest of those stats look really weak against anything much more than beginning (Starting + 0 XP) characters. Lastly, is this a human? If so, Brawn 1 is pitifully weak.

The base TIE fighter pilot in AoR has AGL 4, so I think you'd be justified to increase this guy's Agility a little. And yeah, what HappyDaze said about Piloting (space) and Gunnery definitely applies. Also, if he's a fighter pilot (as in, flying a one-man starfighter) he's going to go down in the first round of every single encounter you'll ever put him in. Fighters are squishy, you need to either give him some more defensive talents or surround him with a formation of minions as per the squadron rules.

Minor typo for the piloting skill there, fixed it already. And I am considering raising his agility, admittedly that is one of the bigger changes I was considering. And like I said, I don't have access to the book with the squadron rules and I do not have AoR, which is why I was entertaining the idea of the minion group, so I am guessing that is what the squadron rules do?

And I need to look at the talents again, what would be some suggested defensive fighter pilot traits?

I am admittedly not entirely sure what to do with the gunnery stats or any of the other really offensive traits, because our party only has one dedicated fighter and then a freighter, either a YT-1760 or a VCX-100, so I was not sure how much is too much or how little is too little. I might have to grab my dice and their character sheets and do some test rolls.

Have a look at the Pilot talent tree and see what catches your eye.

Defensive Driving is the obvious one.

Tricky target would make it harder for the Sil4 freighter to hit him, requiring the fighter to go out and do the job.

As for how hard is too hard, that's going to depend on the player characters and how optimized for space combat they are and how much XP they have spent.

Personally I'd put some work into his personality and try to make him a memorable and interesting antagonist. If he's bland, nobody's going to care if he's reoccurring, they might even get annoyed in a "just die already" sense.

Is he a boisterous hotshot, or a cold arrogant Imperial? Is he conflicted on his defecting mentor, or utterly loyal to the empire and hates the traitor? Etc etc.

So far I am considering this:

upping his agility to 4, giving him another rank in adversary, upping his piloting to 5 and his gunnery to 3, and giving him defensive driving 2, tricky target 1, and shortcut 2

And I am having a bit of fun planning his personality, I am going to end up making the party hate him I imagine. He is actually working for the ISB, and is basically going along with his mentor and the party for a little bit of time, since they cannot escape the planet right away. He is going to seem like a rather quiet and withdrawn student, somewhat interested in joining the Rebels, but at some point they are going to find out about this ruse, likely when he doesn't show up for the escape. After that he goes from the awkward and withdrawn student to an alarmingly cold and calculating man utterly loyal to the Empire, basically playing them all for fools after apparently making friends with them and sharing some personal time... maybe even spending enough time with the guy to give them hope they can turn him later. Which they might be able to do, since I plan on making him not entirely focused on killing the party, and perhaps has an interest in breaking their moral or dismantling their motivations.

Again, I don't know how optimized the PC's are, but don't make him unbeatable. Strong yes, but the PC's shouldn't be limited to only running away. That's no fun.

There's nothing saying you can't alter his stats as time goes on and his skills improve.

59 minutes ago, Spatula Of Doom said:

Again, I don't know how optimized the PC's are, but don't make him unbeatable. Strong yes, but the PC's shouldn't be limited to only running away. That's no fun.

It worked for Vader, but not every adversary needs to be Vader.

8 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

It worked for Vader, but not every adversary needs to be Vader.

Vader was a six and a half foot tall, black armored, skull masked, magic using, monster who's first scene included straight arming a man off the ground one handed before snapping his neck.

He was set up to be “the dragon” from the start.

He also wasn't an RPG character.

Slight difference.

If you're making a Vader, then you need to make it obvious that he's a character who you avoid fighting unless you had no other choice until you've taken a level or two in badass.

5 minutes ago, Spatula Of Doom said:

Vader was a six and a half foot tall, black armored, skull masked, magic using, monster who's first scene included straight arming a man off the ground one handed before snapping his neck.

He was set up to be “the dragon” from the start.

He also wasn't an RPG character.

Slight difference.

If you're making a Vader, then you need to make it obvious that he's a character who you avoid fighting unless you had no other choice until you've taken a level or two in badass.

The practical thing about Star Wars is that there already is a Vader most of the galaxy and most of the playerbase knows about. His name is Vader and "The Emperor has sent an alternative solution" is certainly always an option when the PCs are too high-profile and need to learn the value of running.

4 hours ago, Spatula Of Doom said:

Vader was a six and a half foot tall, black armored, skull masked, magic using, monster who's first scene included straight arming a man off the ground one handed before snapping his neck.

He was set up to be “the dragon” from the start.

He also wasn't an RPG character.

Slight difference.

If you're making a Vader, then you need to make it obvious that he's a character who you avoid fighting unless you had no other choice until you've taken a level or two in badass.

No difference, really. There have been and will continue to be multiple characters in Star WArs that fulfill a similar role. Saying Vader is not a character is a No True Scotsman attempt to evade the point.

You're completely missing my point.

I'm cautioning FlightyBombJack in giving an overpowering statline without being careful about the presentation.

It's not that Vader isn't a character or Ccan't be used as an RPG character because he's from the movie. He's basically an archetype, largely the creator of one in movie terms, so saying you can't use him would be like saying you can't use the archetype. That would be stupid. It's that the movie set him up to be as menacing and dangerous looking and sounding as possible. That justifies a likely RPG statline that can be summed up as "you're probably going to loose" even without knowing anything more about him than you had in the first movie. It also serves as a storytelling cue that your best bet is to run away really fast. Even his defeat in the first movie is really just a combination of surprise and luck.

The character Flighty's making is a stealth badguy. A betrayer. This necessitates you make him less obviously threatening, at least to start. "a rather quiet and withdrawn student." Who also has rank 5 piloting and a slew of talents.

The player impulse with a character like that is going to be to defeat him after he betrays them.

If he's meant to be an end of arc boss (like Vader in the first movie really), then they should probably find that out narratively before they get their asses handed to them mechanically, otherwise it likely to be the players who feel betrayed, instead of just the characters.

That dovetails with the other reason I'm advising caution. The players are going to hate him (which is a good thing in a villain). But unlike in a movie the guy running the show doesn't have total control over the plot and events. It worked for Vader because it's a movie without the variance of the die results affecting him. There was no chance of Vader flubbing a roll and failing to force choke someone, or Obi Wan scoring a lucky crit and killing him half way through the movie. Movies follow a script, RPGs are more of a guideline. GM's who force the players into a rigid plot path are derided as "railroading," and a GM who pulls something out of his exhaust port to save a villain they want to use later is the same thing.

You can try to turn this into an argument if you want, but I'm not interested.

Education 2, but Gunnery 1? For a force sensitive TIE-Fighter Ace? So basically a Maarek Stele for your game? Sounds at least as wrong as the agility 3 value. Even TIE-Fighter Minions have agility 3.

The TIE-Fighter Ace (Rival) has already better values without the force sensitivity. Now it always depends on what your players can do, but normally even an average group without any dedicated pilots should be able to deal with at least an TIE Ace.

http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/adversary/1307/ <<< TIE-Pilot (Minion)
http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/adversary/1309/ <<<< TIE-Ace (Rival)

And here two nemesis examples from adventures, potential (minor) spoilers for SoF and MotPQ:

Both come with Agi 4 and skills mostly in the 3s and the lady even with a dip into a 4 for their relevant skills.

Good talents to pick for pilot nemesis are imho Tricky Target, Natural Pilot, Defensive Driving, Not Today or Hold Together and as you found out already Intuitive Evasion. Allowing to take to turns per round as suggested for nemesis characters is a good idea, but I would not combine this with master pilot for obvious reasons.
I would stay away from talents like brilliant evasion which give the players a pause, even when they can sometimes be actually fun, they end up annoying often, because they feel forced to the players.

Now speaking of using your character, you seem to come up with something similar to the squad rules anyway, which are basically a meat shield with the squadron commander doing the rolls for the squadron with his skill set, and the minions only shooting at a triumph of their commend. (With showboat this is still usually once, sometimes even twice per round. ;-)). Meanwhile each hit will remove one minion from the squadron, you don't need to even bother with counting damage, each hit is one less minion to deal with. Forming pre-combat was iirc a simple leadership check, and you can leave out the special formations just fine.

Still, I highly recommend the AoR GM kit, its really good to have a few extra GM screens and having the really lightweight squadron rules enriches the options for the GM imho.

Furthermore, be careful with GtA. With just Agi 3 and Piloting 2, your Ace might never actually get into an advantageous position, at least if your players know even remotely how to fly and take the advantage themselves. When flying in formation this means that they can get behind the whole TIE-Squadron and take them down one by one while removing the option for the TIE-Fighters to shoot back. So having a decent piloting skill really matters here, while you can ruin the experience with having a too good squadron leader as well. Unless the players have access to multiple independ ships or no blind spot in their fire arcs, a real Piloting 5 Ace can ruin their day with GtA.

2 hours ago, Spatula Of Doom said:

You're completely missing my point.

I'm cautioning FlightyBombJack in giving an overpowering statline without being careful about the presentation.

It's not that Vader isn't a character or Ccan't be used as an RPG character because he's from the movie. He's basically an archetype, largely the creator of one in movie terms, so saying you can't use him would be like saying you can't use the archetype. That would be stupid. It's that the movie set him up to be as menacing and dangerous looking and sounding as possible. That justifies a likely RPG statline that can be summed up as "you're probably going to loose" even without knowing anything more about him than you had in the first movie. It also serves as a storytelling cue that your best bet is to run away really fast. Even his defeat in the first movie is really just a combination of surprise and luck.

The character Flighty's making is a stealth badguy. A betrayer. This necessitates you make him less obviously threatening, at least to start. "a rather quiet and withdrawn student." Who also has rank 5 piloting and a slew of talents.

The player impulse with a character like that is going to be to defeat him after he betrays them.

If he's meant to be an end of arc boss (like Vader in the first movie really), then they should probably find that out narratively before they get their asses handed to them mechanically, otherwise it likely to be the players who feel betrayed, instead of just the characters.

That dovetails with the other reason I'm advising caution. The players are going to hate him (which is a good thing in a villain). But unlike in a movie the guy running the show doesn't have total control over the plot and events. It worked for Vader because it's a movie without the variance of the die results affecting him. There was no chance of Vader flubbing a roll and failing to force choke someone, or Obi Wan scoring a lucky crit and killing him half way through the movie. Movies follow a script, RPGs are more of a guideline. GM's who force the players into a rigid plot path are derided as "railroading," and a GM who pulls something out of his exhaust port to save a villain they want to use later is the same thing.

You can try to turn this into an argument if you want, but I'm not interested.

I too have no desire for an argument, but I will clarify a misunderstanding: I didn't miss your point. I dismissed your point as irrelevant and potentially misleading.

I have done some revisions, taking all that was said here to heart. Admittedly most of my focus has gone into setting up the guy personality wise lately, figuring out stuff he can do with the group and the like before he turns. But numbers wise, I buffed him significantly. If all goes to plan the party should meet him tomorrow, but there won't be any fighting him for at least two sessions, depending on how long the party spends in the city.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes. I'm curious.

The group didn't get a chance to meet him on the last session, they spent a lot longer in the prep phase than I anticipated, and one of our guys had to leave early so we cut stuff short. They were about to meet the mentor guy, so next session everything will fall into place. Expect an update by Wednesday.

So the party arrived at the planet and met with the Colonel who wants to defect, I had some rolls in there to check to see if he was deceiving them in any way and they so far believe him...which they are correct to do so, the teacher guy is legit but I had the rolls there just because, well eh, dealing with a defector, need to make sure he is truthful. Now Rho on the other hand, only two of the party members have met him so far and they are buying his story, both in character and mechanic wise because so far these two have failed about half a dozen rolls to detect his deception without realizing it, how that happened I have no idea, dice are on my side. Now I think things will get a bit more complicated as we move forward, seeing as we have a droid and a Toydarian, which will both be immune to Rho's ability to overwhelm their emotions.... so those two will likely form some suspicions not long after meeting with him.

Also the party has decided to get the defector off world by faking his kidnapping and blowing up the guy's house with a baradium bomb (overkill). This should get exciting.

• Adversary 3 is pretty nasty compared to most things you'll see (a dark-side wielding Nemesis Fallen Master is only Adversary 2!)
• Evasive Manoeuvres manoeuvre + Adversary 3 + Defensive Driving 2 + Intuitive Evasion 1 + Smaller Target (including Tricky Target) and you've got a defensive roll of [Challenge][Challenge][Challenge][Challenge][Setback][Setback] plus a further difficulty if he flips a destiny point. That's pretty bloody scary for any 'normal' character to be shooting at.
• As noted, if he's just going to be in a TIE fighter, having a couple of nameless wingmen for him wouldn't be a bad plan; it's a good way to make an important enemy dangerous without potentially overloading him with abilities.

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To fight him the crew have two freighters and a Kihraxz fighter, but they typically would only have one freighter with them at a time.

Fair enough. One-on-one fights make for keeping things simple (and are key to making gain the advantage worth anything, since by default you can't gain the advantage over multiple foes simultaneously). Always make sure there is 'something' interesting nearby, though - the actual fighter combat sourcebook (Age of Rebellion: Stay On Target) gives you three new threat/advantage tables for dogfighting in nebulae, debris fields or in the middle of massive naval engagements, and these add a huge amount to the interest of the game. Feel free to come up with your own environments (stormclouds with lightning discharges, ice spires and cliffs, massive cargo ports with traffic patterns and cranes), whatever you do, don't have the dogfight be two-ships-sit-in-an-empty-box-of-space-and-roll-dice-at-one-another-until-one-of-them-goes-away. Think Jakku destroyer graveyard chase.

It gives a reason for people to be doing piloting checks every turn or so, and gives Rho another means to leverage that awesome Piloting roll + Skilled Jockey + his TIE/ln's handling, which should put him at a major edge over a bunch of PCs in a handling 0-1 freighter.

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I plan to send this guy into battle with a small group of TIE fighters who will act as ablative armor, the PC fire killing the minions off before the damage moves over to the ace's fighter. The ace would be the only guy shooting, and I will only have him shoot if he manages to gain the advantage on the PCs.

That's pretty much how squad mechanics work; essentially you have a minion group with a 'named character' bolted in.

• You can choose to resolve hits against the minions rather than yourself
• the minions add either a boost to your attacks or a setback as defence, depending on what formation they're in (there are plenty of rules for creating and switching formations but essentially; are they protecting you or helping you attack - set it at the start of the fight and don't change it).
• You make any tests with the squad leader's stats (plus any boost dice from the wingmen)
• You can spend a triumph to have the minions resolve an immediate attack with their own stats.
• You can spend threat/despair to have wingmen be forced to break off from the formation, turning them into individual minions who can't help you.

Also.....He's a Bothan? Doesn't strike me as who you'd expect to see in the cockpit of a navy fighter. Sounds like an interesting backstory.