8 hours ago, 2P51 said:

There's no right or wrong adversary class to put behind a long range weapon and no reason any GM should feel pigeonholed.

I guess it depends on whether you want the stereotypical "elite sniper" or just a hidden mook shooter with a long ranged weapon. I personally don't care about the terminology.

If you want minions, a "sniper team", as I described above could also be easily modeled with a 2 minion group. There's only one attack coming from this group. It is better with 2 since that leads to an upgrade per minion rules. If one is killed, the group is not as good at "sniping" since the upgrade is lost. This could all easily represent a sniper-observer team. With 2, the observer is making the sniper's shot better. If one of them is killed, there is only the sniper without an observer making the attack weaker. So for minions trained and equipped to ambush at range, give them a longer ranged weapon with perhaps an attachment or two. Add Stealth, Perception, and Ranged (heavy) as skills?

PS: Possibly related, does anyone have experience actually snipe hunting? Snipe hunters are probably all minions in my opinion. I suppose the advent of social media and Google searches has destroyed this old sport?

A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill and crypsis, or camouflage, plumage.

So the originals "Snipers" were minions? I think they would differ with your opinion!

(However as an American and a victim of the BSA "Snipe Hunts" I agree).

The other thing to keep in mind with sniper teams is that both team members know how to shoot. Indeed, many sniper teams have two sniper rifles. (One for backup).

The OP said the encounter will involve stormtroopers, deathtroopers, an inquisitor and a snipper. That clearly means the snipper is a stormtrooper at worst or a deathtrooper at best. Anyway he / she is an elite soldier and should be a rival or a nemesis. That means too he / she is enough a professional to know that after each shot he / she should move to change position before the next shot, to be more difficult to spot.

5 hours ago, WolfRider said:

The OP said the encounter will involve stormtroopers, deathtroopers, an inquisitor and a snipper. That clearly means the snipper is a stormtrooper at worst or a deathtrooper at best. Anyway he / she is an elite soldier and should be a rival or a nemesis. That means too he / she is enough a professional to know that after each shot he / she should move to change position before the next shot, to be more difficult to spot.

Yeah, if you're sending a team like that to hunt a group down you're not going to skip on your long range support! I built a sniper for one of my encounters to specifically counter the "charge in and kill" tactic that my team had developed. They were bounty hunters being sent to take my Gang down, so the whole team was designed to counter my table and pose a hard fight. Didn't stop them from sealing the exit and legging it, though!

So this is what happened in the actual encounter:

The sniper in question was part of an Inquisitor's "triumvirate." The fallen Jedi in question (a Gungan because, hey, why not?) had recruited a large Dowoutin brawler to back him up on melee and the sniper to cause chaos from above. He also had a team of deathtroopers along with dozens of stormtroopers. The encounter took place in the palace of Ord Radama, which I described as having a dozen different balconies for the sniper to hide in. The Imperial governor was also present but wouldn't be a combatant.

When the players made it there and the fight started, I had already rolled initiative for all of the NPCs (because there were a lot of them and I wanted to save time). I slotted in an extra spot for the main Inquisitor and another one for the sniper. I didn't reveal the full turn order to the players (which tipped them off that something was going to happen, but they were on edge anyway due to the sheer number of enemies).

I had the sniper fire relatively early in the encounter so they knew she was there. My players are heavily combat oriented, so they took out the Dowoutin brawler in the first two rounds. One of them used an ascension gun to get up to an empty balcony so he could try to spot the sniper, but since he's also the Jedi-in-training in the group, the main Inquisitor went after him as well.

Here's where things got crazy. The Stormtrooper minion teams were able to do a fair amount of damage, but the individual deathtroopers were awful. So many bad rolls, so many missed shots. It was pathetic. And it got worse. One of the players convinced the governor that the Inquisitors were a threat to him also, so the governor withdrew from combat and ordered the regular stormtroopers to go with him.

Once it was down to the useless deathtroopers, the main Inquisitor, and the sniper, the Inquisitor called for a "strategic withdrawal" from the battle. So the Inquisitor is still out there with his sniper friend.