TheSagaContinues

Increasing the challenge beyond CL 4

Now there is a good bit of variety in those CL 4 builds, and you could do more, even if they all have the same class structure.  The offensive ones can have attack bonuses that may still threaten even 10th level heroes which the rules say should almost be able to ignore CL4 opponents but if you look at the hero 10 as having REF Defenses of 22-26 those CL 4s can still hit those.  Give the troopers some good officier support and tactics they can easily be punching well above their weight class and I believe provide a good experience for what I consider to be high level PCs.  Of course you may eventually want to increase the challenge potential of these Elite Troopers so that's what I'll talk about here.

You have two pretty basic ways to increase the CL of the base NPC Elite Trooper:  One is to simply add more class levels while the second is to replace some of the levels that are already there. 

The first is pretty straight forward, you start with your 10th-level Elite Trooper and then simply add heroic, PrC, or even more non-heroic class levels.  Adding base classes is easy as they have no requirements to meet and can thus be used as desired.  PrCs have requirements that need to be met which can complicate adding those a bit but the examples I provided for CL4 ETs show some that can be met without going too far out of the way.  At CL6 you could do a NH8/Soldier1/ET1/Gunslinger1/Officier1 which happens to hit all of those +4 class bonus to Defense scores although there's not a lot of wiggle room in this build.  I mention adding heroic base and PrC levels but adding Non-heroic levels can also be done.  Going up from NH8 these may not always be the most efficient but it can push the BAB with the least CL cost although it doesn't do much more to expand the character; NH16/Soldier1/ET1 is supposed to be CL 7 with a +14 BAB and base skill modifier moving from +5 to +9 but the Defenses haven't increased any, hp go up 8d4 (32 with my base although CON increases could push it higher), two or three +1 ability boosts, and it just gains three more feats to work with.  Now if you're just working to boost attack and hp a bit this is actually pretty nasty but we're making them into glass cannons.

The second way of advancing the CL 4 Elite Trooper is a bit more nuanced as it requires changing out some of those non-heroic levels for heroic levels to boost the overall CL.  Taken to the extreme you get back to your purely heroic character although if you're going to keep the Non-heroic at the start of the build you should keep NH4 for the +3 BAB for +1 CL.  When replacing levels if you replace a level that gives BAB it needs to be a level that provides BAB thus making Soldier and Jedi levels ideal uses for replacement although it is possible to squeeze in a PrC level it it doesn't require a +7 BAB.  To that end NH7/Soldier1/Officer1/ET1 and NH7/Gunslinger1/Soldier1/ET1 (both CL5) are possible while the NH6/Soldier1/Gun1/Off1/ET1 (CL6) may be possible only if the species selected can kick in one of the needed feats.  More likely "replacement" versions take up to 4 level of NH and replace them with heroic levels.  NH4/Soldier-Jedi4/ET1 works at CL6 although it actually drops overall character level.  Going with a NH4/Soldier1/other baseclass can let you meet the requirements for other full BAB PrCs to put in to meet the ET requirements; NH4/Scout3/Soldier1/BountyHunter1/Elite Trooper1 is now up to CL7.  Now all of this may make the substitution method of increasing the CL more complicated but if the overall build goals require other PrC levels trading out the additional NH levels that get you a CL for more base heroic classes can let you meet various PrC requirements at a lower overall CL.

One thing to note with all of these higher CL Elite Troopers is that the addition of more heroic levels will make the character less dependent on armor which is really needed to make the CL 4 version live up to the Defense expectations of it's CL.  This means these characters may abandon armor completely or they may need to look toward the Armor Specialist talents to keep wearing their armor or even keep using it to boost REF Defense.  A CL5 NH8/Soldier1/ET1/Gladiator1 may do fine wearing armor without talent support but move that character to a CL7 NH4/Soldier4/ET1/Gladiator1 you may start reconsidering.  Now the Armor talents can be used to enter ET so there's not a loss there but to keep armor alive it'll need to be used but in the case of Battle Armor Improved Armored Defense could still be adding +4 to the REF of these characters.