I feel like I should already know this, but I'm drawing a total blank...

I attack a group of 3 minions (lets assume Stormtroopers opening wielding their rifles) with a Sunder quality weapon. I get 4 Advantage and 1 success. Do I remove one rifle from the group, or minor damage all? If I remove one, does that alter the groups roll on shooting attacks?

Does the attack need a success at all, or can I Sunder on just advantage? Narratively it seems like I could, but as I said, I'm drawing a total blank.

I always assumed only one guy was firing his rifle anyway. The rest were just encouraging him.

It's not really spelled out. You don't need a success, but whether you can split the Advantages I think will be a discussion. If you destroy a weapon in the group, if they don't have a similar back up weapon I would say you downgrade their dice pool accordingly.

It's not really spelled out.

Ok that at least makes me feel less stupid...

No biggy, you know these rules, you gotta jump around and check a little in more than one spot to make sure you have it all right.

Page 2 of the FAQ/errata states the following about weapon and item qualities: "In the Item Qualities entry, at the end of the fourth paragraph add: “Weapon qualities can only trigger on a successful attack, unless specified otherwise.”" So unless Sunder specifically states the it can be activated on an unsuccessful combat check, you need one success. I'm pretty sure Sunder doesn't state that, so you need one success to activate it.

Now about the other part of the question. You could either remove one weapon, and as mentioned above, if they don't have a backup, one of the minions cannot join in the attack, and so the group receives one less upgrade. Or you could damage all the weapons I guess. This last solution is a bit in a vague area, as minion groups are groups of individuals, that can all be damaged by one attack... I'd probably allow it.

Yah my bad, I was confusing success with exceeding soak. Just need the success.

Yeah, I suppose it depends on the situation in hand: the weapon used, the spacing of the minion group, etc. I also think it's really up to the player. Sundering a minion's rifle isn't nearly as cool as doing the same to a rival or nemesis, so I might allow a player to sunder two adjacent stormtroopers' blaster rifles for the price of one, because it's cool. But yeah under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have a problem at all with spreading out the advantage for sunder over multiple minions, as long as it makes sense spatially.

Yeah, I suppose it depends on the situation in hand: the weapon used, the spacing of the minion group, etc. I also think it's really up to the player. Sundering a minion's rifle isn't nearly as cool as doing the same to a rival or nemesis, so I might allow a player to sunder two adjacent stormtroopers' blaster rifles for the price of one, because it's cool. But yeah under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have a problem at all with spreading out the advantage for sunder over multiple minions, as long as it makes sense spatially.

The situation was the players fought their way out of an old mine through Stormtroopers. There was more then one lightsaber involved. The sunder issue didn't come up thank goodness, but there were enough other things about the encounter that bugged me I've been reviewing the whole thing to see if I can improve before introducing a similar situation in the next adventure, where I need the Stormtroopers to push the players in a direction instead of just being a speedbump.

Instead of stormies, why not use Motivation/Obligation to have the PCs go a certain direction, or Despair/Threat to cause a cave-in?

This might help you decide. In an early episode of the Order 66 podcast, GMChris mentioned a game he played with one of the FFG devs from Gencon (This was before the official release of EotE). At one point Chris generated enough advantage and wanted to disarm a battle droid. The Dev thought it would be fun to disarm all 3. It wouldn't be a stretch that the battle droids were part of a minion group, and the dev wanted to disarm all 3 for easy bookkeeping.

In short, They're minions. Why not?

This might help you decide. In an early episode of the Order 66 podcast, GMChris mentioned a game he played with one of the FFG devs from Gencon (This was before the official release of EotE). At one point Chris generated enough advantage and wanted to disarm a battle droid. The Dev thought it would be fun to disarm all 3. It wouldn't be a stretch that the battle droids were part of a minion group, and the dev wanted to disarm all 3 for easy bookkeeping.

In short, They're minions. Why not?

This is a good point.

In that vein, since a minion group is treated as being a single entity for most purposes, if the PC wants to use Sunder to wreck their blaster rifles, then let them. After all, I'm sure we've all seen action movies where the hero wrecks the weapons of a bunch of goons in a couple of swings. And with SWFFG's combat rounds taking closer to a minute, it's even more plausible that a PC with a Sunder-capable weapon would be able of hewing a minion group's weapons to pieces during that one combat exchange.

Instead of stormies, why not use Motivation/Obligation to have the PCs go a certain direction, or Despair/Threat to cause a cave-in?

In the case of the mine hacking their way out was the intended encounter resolution, so all went perfectly.

But I've got another open-air encounter planned for later where I need to keep the players moving. The Stormtrooper component is working as intended, it's all the other nitty-gritty I'm trying to hash out in advance so the games flows smoothly when we execute.

Thanks all. Think I've got the answer I needed, at least where Sunder is concerned.

Only issue is sundering multiple guns if the minions are in a group but not standing in a cluster. Just creates an immersion issue, but that's hardly a massive problem from the mechanical end.

Only issue is sundering multiple guns if the minions are in a group but not standing in a cluster. Just creates an immersion issue, but that's hardly a massive problem from the mechanical end.

I've found that it's usually easier on everyone if minion group members are engaged to each other unless there's a very specific reason for them not to be. It's just simpler and more romantic.

I'm all in favour of beating the stuffing out of minion groups. However, in this situation I'd probably go with having the disarmed minion split off from the group. This would reduce the group's dice pool while still letting the disarmed minion at least try and do something. He probably wouldn't be very useful, but still.

Only issue is sundering multiple guns if the minions are in a group but not standing in a cluster. Just creates an immersion issue, but that's hardly a massive problem from the mechanical end.

Yeah, but in most in-game instances I've found a reasonable explanation to why a character is able to sunder/disarm/whatever a group of non-adjacent minions. After all, we're talking about up to a minute's worth of action.

Interesting. I don't know the rules backwards and forwards like some of you guys, but my inclination would be to not allow qualities like Sunder against minion groups... the 'dramatic' reason being that you're firing/swinging at a bunch of guys, wanting to take them out with minimal detail (matched by their own minimal detail). The sunder I'd save for Rivals and Nemeses.

BUT - I'm sure some of you more rules-savvy folks will tell me why that doesn't work!

Interesting. I don't know the rules backwards and forwards like some of you guys, but my inclination would be to not allow qualities like Sunder against minion groups... the 'dramatic' reason being that you're firing/swinging at a bunch of guys, wanting to take them out with minimal detail (matched by their own minimal detail). The sunder I'd save for Rivals and Nemeses.

BUT - I'm sure some of you more rules-savvy folks will tell me why that doesn't work!

It's not really about the rules. It's just the feel you want in the game. If you want your minions to feel more like cannon fodder, there's nothing wrong with shaving a couple barrels off their blaster rifles. Yes, I would generally save sunder for Nemeses and Rivals, but there are those times where you roll a bunch of Advantage and you just wanna take that group of stormtroopers down a peg without killing them.

And also, if a character with a lightsaber is trying to play towards Jedi ideals, I would absolutely reward that with a multiple-minion sunder when appropriate.

More food for thought: with minions, disarming and destroying weapons should be considered one and the same, IMO.

On a related topic, how are crits handled with minion groups?

I don't have the books handy - but I believe a crit is an insta-kill for a minion, right?

So say a PC rolls X damage and enough success for a crit. Does the crit kill one minion and then the damage rolls over to the next minion? I'm a little fuzzy on what can and cannot roll over in minion groups.

That's correct.