OK,
PC barrels into minion group of 5.
Can the minion group shoot at the PC?
Can the minion Group split in half to continue shooting at one PC and leave the others engaged with the melee PC?
Do they all whip out their knives and dive in?
IS Melee minion combat just like Ranged combat??
Any advice is welcome.. thanks.
First response: Keep it simple. Whatever makes sense at your table and doesn't require too much bookkeeping is the right answer, IMO.
Sam Stewart has definitely described cases of a single group being split into separate areas. In a response to a question about Blast versus Minions, his answer was basically, if the minions are close together it might make sense to affect them all. If they're far apart it might not.
Likewise with melee. You could either split them into two minion groups, or you could just have part of the group disengage and shoot at the player.
They're minions, it's not meant to be too complicated.
Can the minion group shoot at the PC?
Can the minion Group split in half to continue shooting at one PC and leave the others engaged with the melee PC?
Do they all whip out their knives and dive in?
IS Melee minion combat just like Ranged combat??
- Yes, but with the engaged penalty. Even though not all of them might be engaged, it's simpler.
- Yes, but I normally upgrade difficulty when shooting into melee...on a despair you might hit your own teammate.
- If you like...
- Yes, one roll representing all the participants.
Typically I would run one of two situations:
(a) The PC can reasonably only engage some of the minions (i.e. a group of security guards lined up behind a barricade rather than bunched up). You now have two minion groups - one which is fighting in melee and the rest doing whatever they were doing before.
(b) The PC can attack or draw in the entire group. The PC is now fighting the minion group. Of course unless they can trap the minions in melee somehow, some might split off to do something that makes more sense.
Generally I split minions whenever it makes sense to not treat them as one unit. The only caveat being I would obviously avoid doing so where a special advantage would be gained (i.e. you can't have them shoot and then split some off into a new group that shoots again).
I wouldn't be afraid to split the minion group mid fight. During the turn they split I would just have them use the same action/maneuver pool. They wouldn't get their own set of actions until the next round. I would probably also put them in the initiative order either right after the original group or just stick them in at the very bottom of the order. I would probably do the very bottom of the order in my games.
For the purposes of targeting the now split groups i would treat them as separate groups after they split. That could give the splitting group an advantage but it could also put them at a disadvantage too. Depending on the situation it would balance out.