In our latest game one of the players wanted to use Influence against a group of minions.

At first I thought this might be OK, because I was thinking of Ben Kenobi mind tricking the squad of Stormtroopers looking for the droids in Mos Eisley.

In practice, though, I decided in this particular case that I wouldn't allow it, because it was a superstitious angry mob who would be pretty difficult to talk down (especially with a Force Rating of 1).

This was totally cool with the player and I'm happy with how it worked out in our game. Our player with Influence gets a lot of use out of it so he didn't mind the application.

Just curious if this has come up for anyone else?

I think I would just make it an opposed check with lots of setbacks and/or challenge dice, depending of course on the size of the minion group.

It's an abstract mesure but, if you consider that fits, don't roll on minions, just let the scene go.

In the Ep 4 scene, Obi make influence over the ST Sargent (Rival), and the rest of the group just follow their sargent orders. Roleplaying isn't just roll dices or win checks. Its also about to build an awesome story between players and GM's. If do you consider that the scene is so cool and it's "factible" (enough reasons or power level) then just let it go.

Based on F&D rules, in general therms, Force is Super-Effective! against minions and some "non-named" rivals. In some cases consider that there is no need to roll as I said.

By the way, if you are decided to make the roll, awayputurwpn recomendation it's pretty good. Add Setbacks or even more if do you consider it necessary.

First fun, rules second

In the case of the "affect minds" Control Upgrade for Influence, I'd just use the group's Discipline score and treat them as a single entity for the purposes of the ability.

So to use the Kenobi example from ANH, I'd treat that batch of stormtroopers as a single minion group, with Ben rolling his Discipline vs. theirs, and being successful the rest of the group didn't raise any concerns when their nominal leader said let them go. Yeah, Discipline would be a group skill for the troopers, but this is Obi-Wan Kenobi, who probably has a 4 in both Willpower and Discipline and just needs a single success to pull off the mind whammy.

Then again, if a PC wanted to use Deception to fast-talk their way past such a patrol, I'd handle it much the same way, though with a setback die added for the fact it's a group of stormtroopers instead of just one or two, and possibly more depending on the situation at hand.

In short, if the target's a minion group, don't over think it. They're minions, and their primary purpose is to pose a limited threat to the PCs while also giving the PCs a chance to look good with whatever means they employ to overcome that threat.

Yeah, in fact in previous encounters we had done something similar as you suggested, Donovan, which allowed the PC with Influence to mind trick a group of minions.

In fact this was kinda the reason I ruled it out against the angry mob, the PC with Influence had used Influence against almost every NPC they'd encountered

So I felt like when they were up against an angry mob it would be a bit much and wanted to escalate things a bit more. It all worked out well for us.

So I felt like when they were up against an angry mob it would be a bit much and wanted to escalate things a bit more. It all worked out well for us.

In the spirit of "Yes, but..."

How big was the mob? Because a minion group effectively caps out at, say, 9 or so if they have a base characteristic of 2 and are trained. This mob might not have have really been trained in Discipline, but for the purposes of the story they might as well have been, being angry and unwilling to listen. So a Discipline check against one group of 9 might have been RRRRR, and one would assume the mob would be bigger than that (mob kind of implies "over a dozen" to me).

Yeah, in fact in previous encounters we had done something similar as you suggested, Donovan, which allowed the PC with Influence to mind trick a group of minions.

In fact this was kinda the reason I ruled it out against the angry mob, the PC with Influence had used Influence against almost every NPC they'd encountered

So I felt like when they were up against an angry mob it would be a bit much and wanted to escalate things a bit more. It all worked out well for us.

In the case of the angry mob (presuming said mob was at least over a dozen people), I'd agree with you're not allowing Influence to be used as there's just simply too many folks to affect all at once, at least not without triggering Magnitude Upgrades a whole bunch of times.

Yeah, in fact in previous encounters we had done something similar as you suggested, Donovan, which allowed the PC with Influence to mind trick a group of minions.

In fact this was kinda the reason I ruled it out against the angry mob, the PC with Influence had used Influence against almost every NPC they'd encountered

So I felt like when they were up against an angry mob it would be a bit much and wanted to escalate things a bit more. It all worked out well for us.

I'd avoid saying, "No," whenever possible.

Were I running this situation, I'd probably add 2 Setback dice (1 for it being a large group, and 1 for having to combat an angry mob-mentality), and I'd spend a Destiny point to upgrade the difficulty once as well. If the mob is especially large, I might add yet another Setback, or might increase the difficulty by 1. Despair would yield the worst possible result, the opposite of what you're trying to do, or have them do--they immediately swarm the Jedi screaming about sorcery, or attack that NPCs you're protecting, or rush past to board your ship.

I don't think there's any reason to say that Influence is unusable in this situation. Minions are treated as a single entity by the game. If you're concerned about the player being able to influence a really huge group with one check, split them into multiple medium-sized minion groups.

In this case I ruled that he'd be able to use Influence to mind-trick one individual person, but that there was a growing mob of angry folks which might not be swayed by one guy changing his mind.

Everybody was happy with this ruling at our game so it worked out well and we had a great session.