Samurai Storm Trooper by Clinton Felker. His blog is here. Deviant Art here.
I love this samurai stormtrooper concept art and I wanted to make some for my players to fight.
Let’s assume a couple of things
In our fantasy world, cloning isn't an option. Hence, stormtroopers are drawn from the normal folk, and their ability scores would be based on a 3d6 roll. That would make their average score 63 ability points. Since they are supposedly elite soldiers, let’s assume they are in the top 10% of individual total scores of possible results. This creates an ability score total of 72 (ish). This just happens to be the standard array. CR 2 is probably a good range. The veteran and knight are CR 3, and I am not sure that the stormtroopers are to that level yet. They are still soldiering.
Making each one different
Let’s also make them variant humans to emphasize the difference between combat roles such as your standard stormtrooper and scout trooper. To make things interesting, the Martial Adept feat would be a great choice for the standard trooper. Remember, despite the body count in the movies, these are elite soldiers. They know things.
For the scout trooper, we will go with Sharpshooter.
Making it simple
Don't tell my players this, but I forget to use monster powers on a regular basis. I am a sucker for simple monsters, so we will simplify the feats to make them more palatable to DM’s like me. We will take the Marital Adept feat, make it once per turn, and select 3 maneuvers can all be done on the stormtrooper’s turn. Although, Reposte is amazing for a player, it requires too much additional tracking for me. Also, striping down the feat to once a turn means we don’t have to track martial dice.
For the Sharpshooter feat, I took the cover and long shot buffs, and then just added sneak attack damage. Kinda lame, but it fills the scout trooper’s intended purpose as sniper and scout.
Reskinning/Fluff
I didn’t give the stormtrooper a shield because I imagine that they carry two swords. They are offensive. This can open up a can of technical rules, so just gave them two attacks. There is no substantial difference in the damage if the stormtroopers have two swords and thus attack with one in each hand, or if they do two attacks with a longsword held with two hands. DM's choice.
Not all parties are on the run from the (galactic?) Empire. Accordingly, these soldiers can be reskinned to serve as elite troops for any well financed group. Maybe they are top tier caravan guards or wardens that protect the northern settlements against encroaching elves. Regardless, they could be found in any organization with the patience to recruit, train, and equip an army.
You can download a PDF of them here. Let me know what you think.