I have this small 3-5 session campaign I wrote I've been itching to run for years now, and these are the rules I want to use for it. Because I have crusty old antagonistic-gaming-style friends who aren't much into Star Wars (passing familiarity with basic themes is all...), I have to make it somewhat generic. Also, I will have to give them pregen characters because I don't want to bog down a whole session with character creation, as we only meet once every couple months at most.

The setting is: the characters are undercover cops who got too close to somebody important. Somehow the tables got turned on them and they got framed for drug dealing and murder, justice was fast-tracked, and now they're on a prison ship headed for some place terrible (I'm so bored with Kessel, but that's the idea). Lots of hush money has been paid to make this happen, and there are a few NPCs, including the ship's captain and other prisoners, who have relevant info on what really went down. The PC's goal is to get out, clear their name, and, if they choose, exact revenge.

The tale opens on the prison ship, but things quickly go haywire as the ship hits something or the engines fail or whatever...in any case, we now have a prison ship full of inmates and guards all at each others throats vying for the escape pods...and it only gets worse from there

So I need to pregen some undercover cops. I'm not too worried about spending extra XP to get the right Talent trees and skills--after all, their past histories suggest decent abilities--but I don't want to go overboard and make them too tough.

The Smuggler seems like a perfect fit, with usually Scoundrel or maybe Thief as the first specialization. After that, adding either a Trader, Assassin, or Mercenary Soldier tree would probably give enough proper class skills, and enough variety of talents to complement each other.

Any other things I should consider? How much extra XP would give these guys a flavour of competence?

This may seem weird, but wouldn't they all be hired guns or maybe bounty hunters with a secondary skillset as their undercover persona?

Their secondary skillset would be things like slicer, thief, etc. Give each character about 20 xp used directly on the secondary skillset to give them enough experience that they would have passed inspection undercover.

I thought of that, but it seemed too martially oriented. In order to allow them to have the social and other skills they'd need to be convincing, I think I'd have to give them too much XP. But thanks, I'll give it another look.

Why not just use the Sector Rangers in the book?

Why not simply create a House Career and three specializations to go with it? Use some of the talents from other specializations that work for your ideas. Then post them up for everyone to enjoy.

I see a version of "Troopers" in the making.

Why not just use the Sector Rangers in the book?

Those are NPCs, not a foundation for PCs.

Why not simply create a House Career and three specializations to go with it? Use some of the talents from other specializations that work for your ideas. Then post them up for everyone to enjoy.

I'm leaning that way, but I think it will take a lot of work, and I have enough to do with building the story and major scenes. If I do I'll post it.

They are NPCs, but you could absolutely run a game where the PCs play Sector Rangers. That would be mega fun!

The way that I would do higher-level starting characters is do character creation like normal, and have them spend their starting character XP. Then, grant them a chunk of additional XP after they do their character creation XP, which they can immediately spend as non-character creation XP (no characteristic increasing, but you can get skills past rank 2.)

I'm going to do that with the one-shot I'm running Thursday.

The players won't be doing the creation, I will. We meet so infrequently I don't want to waste the time. (I will let them tweak to their heart's content, if they get into it.)

Here's the start of a custom Peace Officer Career. No trees yet, but I'm more concerned about skill selection at this point as they won't have enough XP to buy a lot of talents if I go the "max your attribute" route.

Thoughts?

Career: Peace Officer

Peace Officers, aka police, cops, badges, etc., are responsible for enforcing local laws and resolving conflicts between citizens.

Peace Officer Career Skills: Athletics, Brawl, Discipline, Negotiation, Perception, Piloting (Planetary), Ranged (Light), Vigilance

Detective Specialization: Coercion, Perception, Knowledge (Underworld), Streetwise

SWAT Specialization: Leadership, Ranged (Heavy), Resilience, Vigilance

Undercover Specialization: Charm, Cool, Negotiation, Streetwise

Thoughts?

I would think Skulduggery would be in there somewhere.

Gotta throw a slicer into the mix. he got nabbed trying to slice into an Imperial computer. Can be used to assist the PCs in hacking their way out of the cell block...before meeting his demise

Edit: my bad, you're talking about PCs.

I would think Skulduggery would be in there somewhere.

I agree (at least, for the Undercover), but what to replace then? The career gives you 8 skills, the specialization 4 more. Probably should replace Charm with Skulduggery.

But cops are not supposed to be good at criminal activities. Why give them skullduggery? They need skills like perception and such to detect such activities. Charm or Coersion would be far better to interview or interrogate people as needed.

I would get rid of Negotiation for use with the Undercover spec.

But cops are not supposed to be good at criminal activities. Why give them skullduggery? They need skills like perception and such to detect such activities. Charm or Coersion would be far better to interview or interrogate people as needed.

I would get rid of Negotiation for use with the Undercover spec.

The pattern seems to be that three of the four specialization skills in a career are new, and one is overlapped with the base career, which is why I kept Negotiation. If you have a suggestion for removal, you need to offer a replacement

But cops are not supposed to be good at criminal activities. Why give them skullduggery? They need skills like perception and such to detect such activities. Charm or Coersion would be far better to interview or interrogate people as needed.

I would get rid of Negotiation for use with the Undercover spec.

The pattern seems to be that three of the four specialization skills in a career are new, and one is overlapped with the base career, which is why I kept Negotiation. If you have a suggestion for removal, you need to offer a replacement

Actually, I wouldn't give the undercover spec skullduggery in the first place. I somehow doubt that it is taught in police schools. Perhaps I am wrong?

SWAT should have Cool.

I'd think you can build "cops" as PCs using the existing careers and specs already. You'd just need to reskin the fluff a bit, that's all.

A Hired Gun/Merc could be a SWAT officer, a Smuggler/Scoundrel could be an undercover cop, a Technician/Slicer a "tech crimes" cop, and a Bounty Hunter/Gadgeteer a beat cop.

I don't view the Career as their career. For example, a cop who's exceptional at tracking down fleeing suspects may be a Bounty Hunter, but he's not a bounty hunter. An exceptional pilot may be a Smuggler, but he's not necessarily a smuggler.

It's like in that fantasy game. Just because you're a Thief, it doesn't mean you have to steal things.

You'd think that police agencies would look for people with different skillsets, especially for undercover missions. Look at police today. They have desk workers, pilots, dog handlers, investigators, beat cops, meter maids, and so on. They're all police, but they have widely varied skillsets.

So, I'd make a pretty balanced team. Maybe a Smuggler/Pilot (the combat driver/helicopter pilot), a BH/Survivalist (for tracking down the actual targets), a Hired Gun/Mercenary soldier (weapons specialist/SWAT guy), and maybe even a Colonist/Politico as the "Hannibal" of the team.

Secretly, they'd all have credentials as peace officers, of course. But they'd all have the skillsets necessary to maintain the illusion of their criminal aliases.

And, if you need an alternate prison world, you could always go for the Old Republic era and choose Belsavis. Even if you want to go OT era, Belsavis is still largely unexplored, and it's quite possible that parts of the old Rakata prison system are still in use as such, even if it's never mentioned in OT fiction.

SWAT should have Cool.

Replacing...?

I'd think you can build "cops" as PCs using the existing careers and specs already. You'd just need to reskin the fluff a bit, that's all.

A Hired Gun/Merc could be a SWAT officer, a Smuggler/Scoundrel could be an undercover cop, a Technician/Slicer a "tech crimes" cop, and a Bounty Hunter/Gadgeteer a beat cop.

That's where I started (undercover-wise anyway), but that didn't seem to appeal.

SWAT should have Cool.

Replacing...?

Either Resilience or Leadership, but most likely Leadership. Not every SWAT officer is a leader.

I looked up some online programs for Law Enforcement Training and came up with some differences.

Even in the empire most cops have to be able to handle incidents without simply blasting everything in sight, so I would make the Leadership skill core. They are also frequently the first responders to injuries, so Medicine is also generally trained. They learn a lot about law and laws, which is covered under education. They may have to intimidate to keep crowds under control, which is covered under coercion. Since they have high-tech stun-clubs and such, I would go with Melee over brawl... They are trained in fitness and shooting so I agree with athletics and ranged light.

For the specialties, I have Patrol, Swat, and undercover. A Patrol Officer cares more about streetwise than the ephemeral undworld, may have to brawl, but is really focussed on non-shooting crowd control (hence the double coercion). Since they are the ones out patrolling, they are the most likely to get advanced driving training. SWAT's are the entry and combat specialists, so more weapon training and combat preparedness is in order. The undercover cop, on the other hand _does_ care about the underworld, since that's what they are there to bring down, They learn to keep cool under stress, stay aware and negotiate for things their persona wouldn't have access to. that leaves my list as follows:

Very nice, thanks. The only possible issue is there is no overlap between the career skills and the undercover specialization skills. I'm not sure if that's a requirement, but it does seem to be the pattern.

As a Star Wars RPG fan and realworld cop of decades, I agree with the poster above that a Patrol specialization of some sort is needed. It's the primary form of cop. Patrol could also include a legal bounty hunter since their skills would be similar whether you are patrolling looking for crime or hunting down an escaped convict. The other specializations are also good suggestions - Investigations, Special Response, and Undercover. If needed, you might be able to merge Investigations and Undercover together. They often are combined in the real word (same division) and their game skills should be similar. I also agree with a Slicer version of a cop for a Star Wars setting.

Skills only need to be in the skill 2 range, with one or two skills at 3 - very few NPC's have more than 3's in skills, and those are basically Nemesis level opponents.

Prime tree should probably be bounty hunter... with 30-50 XP spent on the tree, and then 20-30 XP in their cover tree. That above and beyond the core character.

I see that SWAT keeps getting Vigilance rather than Cool, but Cool is used for prepared situations, like making an entry and sniping.

The explorer Trader does not have overlap. Starts with Cool, Knowledge (Lore), Knowledge (Outer Rim), Knowledge (Xenology), Perception, Pilot (Space) and Survival.

Gains: Deception, Knowledge (Core worlds), Knowledge (Underworld), and Negotiation.

I'm working on this for a PC (mine) who recently finished serving as an officer in the Imperial Customs Service, and is trying to make a living (legally) on a small craft he and his brother (another PC, who does fit with some of the bounty-hunter types, since he was Imperial ground assault and enlisted). Basicly, he is a believer...