Hi Jason

Information about permissions required to under take a command is documented
in Books Online for the topic about the given instructions e.g.

For backup BOL says

"BACKUP DATABASE and BACKUP LOG permissions default to members of the
sysadmin fixed server role and the db_owner and db_backupoperator"

For CREATE TABLE BOL says

"CREATE TABLE permission defaults to the members of the db_owner and
db_ddladmin fixed database roles. Members of the db_owner fixed database role
and members of the sysadmin fixed server role can transfer CREATE TABLE
permission to other users"

Therefore db_backupoperator and db_ddladmin may be the lowest privileges
that you can grant the person, but this may allow them to do too much!

John