[Updated 1ST JUNE 2019] Custom NPC Cards - The Clone Wars

By Kualan, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Kualan, I was curious about a few things, you mentioned that there are space concerns on some of the cards. Have you contemplated changing the character art to statblock ratio a little bit more in favor of the statblock or adding a 'card back' (at least for some of the more wordy cards)? The cards design template does look very nice, and I could understand that those changes could present a lot of work. (While I'm making suggestions, it might also be nice to have a small section or symbol towards the outside of the cards specifying that these are Clone Wars era statblocks, just in case you happen to do different eras in the future. Some statblocks, of course, might be era-universal; eg: droids and certain generic NPC types)

Fixes:

  1. Hondo Ohnaka is missing his 1 skill rank in Stealth. He is also missing Smooth Talker 2. I'm also wondering where he got his vibro cutlass, as I don't see it on his official statblock in Dawn of Rebellion or Allies and Adversaries. I'm not opposed to him having it, it just makes me curious if you're open to the idea of editorializing any of the 'official' statblocks. If so, I'd probably give him a rank or 2 of Melee. (Clone Wars Season 2 Episode 17, he fights against Anakin Skywalker using an Electrostaff and seems to do a surprisingly decent job at it. This kind of brings me back to the earlier discussion of possibly putting a symbol or annotation on cards denoting if they are 'official' statblocks or 'homebrewed' statblocks. It would be extra work and might not be appealing, but it might be neat to have both 'official' statblock versions of cards and 'editorialized by committee' versions of some 'official' cards. The devs do admit that the 'official' statblocks of characters are not necessarily exhaustive.
  2. Black Sun Foot Soldier is a minion with a Willpower of 2, yet his Coercion dice pool is listed as GGG, it should be GG.
  3. Dengar now has an official statblock in Allies and Adversaries, so you may want to take a look at his card. Inconsistencies between characteristics, talents, etc. I could see you dialing him back a little bit though, being that this would be a Clone Wars era version, whereas the statblock in Allies and Adversaries is the Empire Strikes Back era version.
Edited by Demigonis
Typos and readability fixes.
1 hour ago, Demigonis said:

Kualan, I was curious about a few things, you mentioned that there are space concerns on some of the cards. Have you contemplated changing the character art to statblock ratio a little bit more in favor of the statblock or adding a 'card back' (at least for some of the more wordy cards)? The cards design template does look very nice, and I could understand that those changes could present a lot of work. (While I'm making suggestions, it might also be nice to have a small section or symbol towards the outside of the cards specifying that these are Clone Wars era statblocks, just in case you happen to do different eras in the future. Some statblocks, of course, might be era-universal; eg: droids and certain generic NPC types)

Fixes:

  1. Hondo Ohnaka is missing his 1 skill rank in Stealth. He is also missing Smooth Talker 2. I'm also wondering where he got his vibro cutlass, as I don't see it on his official statblock in Dawn of Rebellion or Allies and Adversaries. I'm not opposed to him having it, it just makes me curious if you're open to the idea of editorializing any of the 'official' statblocks. If so, I'd probably give him a rank or 2 of Melee. (Clone Wars Season 2 Episode 17, he fights against Anakin Skywalker using an Electrostaff and seems to do a surprisingly decent job at it. This kind of brings me back to the earlier discussion of possibly putting a symbol or annotation on cards denoting if they are 'official' statblocks or 'homebrewed' statblocks. It would be extra work and might not be appealing, but it might be neat to have both 'official' statblock versions of cards and 'editorialized by committee' versions of some 'official' cards. The devs do admit that the 'official' statblocks of characters are not necessarily exhaustive.
  2. Black Sun Foot Soldier is a minion with a Willpower of 2, yet his Coercion dice pool is listed as GGG, it should be GG.
  3. Dengar now has an official statblock in Allies and Adversaries, so you may want to take a look at his card. Inconsistencies between characteristics, talents, etc. I could see you dialing him back a little bit though, being that this would be a Clone Wars era version, whereas the statblock in Allies and Adversaries is the Empire Strikes Back era version.

Some more good feedback, thanks. I've already updated both Dengar and Bossk to the A&A stat blocks (just last night in fact) so they'll be in the next batch of updates as well. I was pretty pleased with how reasonably close my own stats were to their official ones - particularly Bossk where I think the only significant difference was his Willpower.

Will update the Black Sun Foot soldier for the next round of updates.

Hondo was one of the very first stat blocks I did when I started making my own NPCs (back before I had Dawn of Rebellion) and I believe the Vibro Cutlass came from that. He has such a weapon in one of the later episode arcs of the show (I think it was the youngling Jedi arc) and it seems more in line with his pirate image than the electrostaff. He probably had Melee originally and I took it out when editing it to bring it in line with the DoR stat block.

RE - "editorializing" official stat blocks, I'm open to the idea (and I do it a lot for my own games) but where official stats have come out I have stuck to them mainly because I assumed people would find that more useful in a card than my "some guy on the Internet's" version of something that's already in official material. Maybe I'll release two versions of characters like Hondo, Obi-Wan, etc - one with official stats, and the other my "tweaked" version. These tweaks would be minor, like giving Hondo some Melee or Obi-Wan some Leadership (a criminal oversight!).

Would also be happy to accommodate adding an "official/unofficial" symbol of some kind to the cards, but with somewhere between 150-200 cards to apply this to the task doesn't sound too appealing! Photoshop does have some automation functions however so I may be able to whip up a batch process to do this for me.

Edited by Kualan

Oh yes, I was not suggesting giving Hondo an Electrostaff, that was simply the example of him deserving a Melee skill that I had on hand.

I do like the idea of having both 'official' and 'editorialized official' versions of cards and I agree any such tweaks should be pretty conservative. There are just certain oddities and outright errors that could benefit from tweaks/fixes. That way people can have all the cards and 'build their own deck' of the cards they want to use for their game. Example: The Jedi Temple Guard we were looking at yesterday who needs 3 Ag to properly wield his unwieldy 3 Saberpike. Or Maul, it appears they somehow forgot to give him the Move force power. He blatantly uses it at least twice in Episode 1 (to use a droid body or debris to open a door and towards the end of the Obi-wan duel when he pushes him into the pit).

3 hours ago, Demigonis said:

Oh yes, I was not suggesting giving Hondo an Electrostaff, that was simply the example of him deserving a Melee skill that I had on hand.

I do like the idea of having both 'official' and 'editorialized official' versions of cards and I agree any such tweaks should be pretty conservative. There are just certain oddities and outright errors that could benefit from tweaks/fixes. That way people can have all the cards and 'build their own deck' of the cards they want to use for their game. Example: The Jedi Temple Guard we were looking at yesterday who needs 3 Ag to properly wield his unwieldy 3 Saberpike. Or Maul, it appears they somehow forgot to give him the Move force power. He blatantly uses it at least twice in Episode 1 (to use a droid body or debris to open a door and towards the end of the Obi-wan duel when he pushes him into the pit).

Good news is getting Photoshop to automate the process was actually fairly easy. I've gone for a simple 'Official/Unofficial' tag in the top right of the image for now - open to suggestions on final appearance for this before I roll it out though. Thoughts?

ny37LkM.jpg owYZrAM.jpg

10 minutes ago, Kualan said:

Good news is g  etting Photoshop   to automate the process was actually  fairly easy. I've gone for a simple 'Official/Unofficial' tag in the top right of the image for now - open to suggestions on final appearance for this before  I roll it out though. Thoughts  ?               

ny37LkM.jpg owYZrAM.jpg

In my head I had imagined something maybe towards one of the bottom corners or bottom middle of the card. Perhaps "Official" and "Custom" (rather than Unofficial)?

Just now, Demigonis said:

In my head I had imagined something maybe towards one of the bottom corners or bottom middle of the card. Perhaps "Official" and "Custom" (rather than Unofficial)?

I want to keep it away from the edges of the card because if people get the cards printed (like I do) it can be hard to figure out the trim lines. That's why there's a reasonable amount of generous "free space" at the top, bottom and sides of the card.

Just now, Kualan said:

I want to keep it away from the edges of the card because if people get the cards printed (like I do) it can be hard to figure out the trim lines. That's why there's a reasonable amount of generous "free space" at the top, bottom and sides of the card.

That makes sense, I can appreciate that.

On 5/22/2019 at 11:49 AM, Vorzakk said:

It's possible that I missed him, but I didn't see Derrown among the bounty hunters.

Here's what I came up with - first draft, etc, let me know any thoughts:

7wW4Dkt.jpg

Edited by Kualan

Today we're dipping into Legends with one of the original major antagonists of the Clone Wars back in the days of the EU:

brzvNmZ.jpg

Today we have two cards. One is a supremely powerful but disguised Sith Lord secretly manipulating the events of the entire Star Wars saga. The other is Palpatine:

nJQq34F.jpg IXdw4A0.jpg

Edited by Kualan

Have you considered doing ship cards? It would be helpful to separate out era appropriate ships. Doing the same for gear would be cool too. but I think Ships would be really helpful

6 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Have you considered doing ship cards? It would be helpful to separate out era appropriate ships. Doing the same for gear would be cool too. but I think Ships would be really helpful

I do have a bunch of ship cards as well that I have printed for use in my games and I can post these too if people are interested. The only trouble is for some of the bigger ships like the Venator and Lucrehulk they can be pretty tight for word-space - which is okay if you're using the high-res image on your laptop/phone etc but I wouldn't describe them as best for printing as a hard copy.

I'll post some later today when I have access to my main computer, but if I recall correctly I have most of the Clone Wars-era staples done (the LAAT, the Torrent fighter, the Vulture droid, Munificient, etc)

Edited by Kualan
16 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Have you considered doing ship cards? It would be helpful to separate out era appropriate ships. Doing the same for gear would be cool too. but I think Ships would be really helpful

Further to my previous post, the front page has now been updated with the following:

1st June Update:

- All images have been updated with new 'Official' or 'Custom' tags so you know which stat blocks are from an official source and which are my own creation.

- A good number of typo corrections and other errors courtesy of @Demigonis 's keen eye.

- The total number of cards has increased from 153 to 186.

- Cards now include a number of vehicle cards for the Republic, Separatist and Mandalorian factions in addition to new characters such as Palpatine, Durge, Dexter Jettster and even Jar Jar Binks.

Edited by Kualan

Haven't been able to go too in depth again yet, but a few things I noticed:

  1. In the "full archive of individual cards" you have a card ' DeathWatchSoldier .jpg' and ' DeathWatchSoldiers .jpg'. DeathWatchSoldiers .jpg (plural) card is erroneous and has the old Vigilance typo in it, it should be removed from the archive.
  2. This one is somewhat of a nit-pick, but many (not all) of your custom minion cards refer to the minion in plural fashion. The game is pretty consistent with stat blocks remaining singular, including minions and rivals. (ie: 'B1 Battle Droid', not 'B1 Battle Droids'. That wasn't a mistake you made, just using that as an example.) Some cards that I noticed using plural for the name on the card: DeathWatchSoldier (filename is correct, on card it's plural), BuzzDroids (name on card is correct, filename is plural), WeequayPirates (incorrectly plural on card and in filename), YinchorriSoldier (filename is correct, on card it's plural)
  3. Your custom IG Lancer Droid has a Willpower of 2 and Presence of 2. This seems quite irregular to me because almost all other droids ( Aqua Battle Droid, B1 Battle Droid, Pilot Battle Droid, B2 Super Battle Droid, Buzz Droid, BX Commando Droid, LM-432 Crab Droid, DRK-1 Probe Droid, Droid Brain (minion and rival), Droideka, Dwarf Spider Droid, and IG-100 Magnaguard ) all have a Willpower and Presence of 1. The only droids with higher Willpower or Presence are the 2 types of Tactical Droid. I think it makes more sense for the IG Lancer Droid to fall in line with the majority of other droids and have a Willpower and Presence of 1. This would of course effect their skills as follows: Coercion would drop to YG, Cool would drop to YG, and Vigilance would drop to YGG.

The characters that have been statted in Collapse of the Republic will have official cards made up for them in short order however I am still waiting on my pre-order to arrive here in the UK (no word yet when it is hitting our shores). If anyone wants to PM me the stats in the meantime I can start work on them.

Characters that have had their own custom stats but appear in CotR (Cad Bane, Savage Oppress) etc will remain available as custom cards, but will have additional official ones made for them too.

Edited by Kualan
On 7/15/2019 at 5:13 PM, Kualan said:

The characters that have been statted in Collapse of the Republic will have official cards made up for them in short order however I am still waiting on my pre-order to arrive here in the UK (no word yet when it is hitting our shores). If anyone wants to PM me the stats in the meantime I can start work on them.

Characters that have had their own custom stats but appear in CotR (Cad Bane, Savage Oppress) etc will remain available as custom cards, but will have additional official ones made for them too.

I have a copy of collapse, do you still need the stat blocks sending?

8 hours ago, Dsylosis232 said:

I have a copy of collapse, do you still need the stat blocks sending?

Thank you for the offer but fortunately I have my copy now! I have a couple of non-SWRPG projects I'm working on at the moment, but when those are wrapped up I'll get round to updating these with the COTR stuff.

How do you get the die symbols in photoshop?

16 hours ago, player3565321 said:

How do you get the die symbols in photoshop?

There's a link to the font on this page: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37660/roleplaying-games/star-wars-force-and-destiny-system-cheat-sheet

Hope that helps!

While I'm here I might as well point out that many of these statblocks have been tweaked or updated as part of my ongoing Heroes On Both Sides project (found HERE )

The plan is to eventually update the cards with the final versions found in Heroes On Both Sides, but since HOBS is a work-in-progress at the moment I won't be doing any further updates here until that is done.

I have seen HOBS posted for download. Any chance of an update that includes the HOBS info?

22 hours ago, Khyrith said:

I have seen HOBS posted for download. Any chance of an update that includes the HOBS info?

That's the plan at some point, to totally revamp all these cards with up-to-date info from HOBS. Haven't got round to it yet, so no ETA.

Edited by Kualan