I have just started GMing a EotE game after never having played the system but being a huge fan of SW rpgs. We are 3 sessions in (the PCs have a little bit of XP and earned a few credits) and and soon I am planning on running the WEG adventure Heavy Lifting and adapting the story to EotE rules. At one stage, a named bounty hunter and his 7 goons with blaster rifles burst in on the PCs and start firing. The named BH is obviously a Rival and the 7 goons would be Minions however, I am concerned about running big groups of Minions (well it feels like 7 is big). From what I have read in the corebook, if these 7 minions start shooting they attack 1 PC a turn and given an Agility of 2, they will roll 4 green and 2 yellow against PCs diving for cover in close range (derived from Ag 2, effectively 6 ranks of Ranged (Heavy)).

I am concerned that this will splatter a PC in one round. I am fine with a PC dying if they make a stupid/brave choice but in an inevitable round of combat, it doesn’t seem fair/good for the story. Am I worried about nothing, the dice pool is fine? Should I split the minions into 2 or more groups? What advice do you have for a new FFG GM?

Cheers

DH

If you have the rules for squads, you could split them so that five are on "offense" - shooting as a minion group, while the other two act as a damage shield for the Rival.

I'd split the minions into two groups. That way they are shooting at more targets, but not doing quite so much damage. But the squad rules work well too.

PCs are actually quite hard to outright kill in this system. A PC (or a Nemesis) with no critical injuries cannot be killed by goons with a blaster rifle, the goons just aren't capable of getting the crits needed unless the character is already really beat up. Worst that will happen is the character is knocked out and takes a crit.

The only things that can outright kill a PC, according to the rules, are the criticals The End is Nigh and Dead, an Extreme range fall (GMs discretion) or being on a ship that explodes. Other factors (bleeding, drowning, suffocation, vacuum exposure and all other damage) eventually start inflicting crits to kill the victim. If they can't score at least bleeding out (which goons without weapons with Vicious or the talent Lethal Blows won't be able to do unless their victim is already messed up) then they only knock them out.

And if these minions are just thugs then the PCs will start to drop them pretty quickly if they focus fire. And if they have anything with the Blast quality, then minions will go down very easily.

Splitting minion groups can make things harder in some ways. It gives them two chances to deal damage instead of one, their dice pools will still be decent enough, and you have to split up your attacks to eliminate them.

The point is, don't worry about killing PCs outright if they are still healthy. It's actually quite difficult to do in this system, if they are even remotely smart about it.

Thanks for the responses, it gives me good stuff to think about. Where are the squad rules? AoR I imagine?

Squad rules are in the AoR GM's kit/screen. They're good for Edge too since pirates, gangs, and soldiers are still going to come in bulk.

As far as the established scenario in the module, I'd suggest reducing the number of goons by one and simply using two groups of three minions each if you want them to be a credible threat, or three groups of two minions each if you want them to be a lesser threat and something to draw fire away from the Bounty Hunter who sounds to be the major opponent in this particular encounter.

The thing to keep in mind with minion groups is that the more of them you have in a group, the more of a threat they pose to the PCs. Garrett aka barefoottourguide of the Threat Detected podcast was quite stunned to see that a minion group of 4 stormtroopers were very capable of disabling his PCs in this system after years of seeing stormtroopers be disposable cannon fodder in Saga Edition; seriously, a stormtrooper is barely a speed bump to Saga Edition PCs once they reach 4th level, and not that big of a threat before then.

I don't know the XP level of the PC's in the OP's group, but I'd suggest that if they're fairly new characters that you stick to using minions in groups of two, and only use them in groups of three or four if you want them to be a major threat to the PCs. As they get more XP and pick up various defensive talents like Dodge, Side Step, and even Toughened, then you might consider using minion groups in higher volumes, though the book itself suggests not going above four minions in a group. Which seeing as how said group would have an effective three ranks in their group skills (such as stormtroopers having Ranged:Heavy), that could make them a pretty severe threat as they're going to pretty reliably hit the PCs and be require two or three attacks to whittle the group down unless the PCs are packing some serious combat gear (lightsabers, vibro-axes, autofire weapons).

I don't know the XP level of the PC's in the OP's group, but I'd suggest that if they're fairly new characters that you stick to using minions in groups of two,

The PCs have earned about 30XP so far beyond the base 100-110. I have thrown a few pairs of droid minions (a virus has driven some customs droids crazy and they have declared all living things contraband and to be eliminated) at the group and even with just holdout blasters, they wrecked the droids without any issue so I want to ramp up the threat now that they have blaster pistols and a carbine. Thanks for the advice, I thought it would be best to use groups of minions but without any previous experience with the system, the only time I have to get it right is when it is "live fire".

With minions, if one group proves too weak, you can just have another group arrive on the scene.

If a group is proving too strong or doing too much damage to your PCs, you can fudge the numbers and have more of them get killed when the PCs shoot at them.

In fact I seldom track specific wound thresholds for minions groups. I prefer to know generally how many there are but if I need a PC's shot to take out two instead of one I have no problem doing that.

I think it's a real question of what you want. Looking at the scenario (Var and his Stalkers in the Vaporscream Cantina) there' s some observations to be made:

• Ranges will be pretty close, the Vaporscream isn't a big place, with the exception of a back privacy booth to the bar, most ranges will be short at most, probably engaged in a lot of cases. If the Stalkers have blaster rifles that means their difficulty will typically be P or maybe PP , with a few B added for clutter and fleeing patrons. With difficulties that low, even 2 grouped minions will hit more often then miss.
• The players are expected to flee rather then fight.
• +30XP isn't bad... but what about equipment? Do the players have heavy armor, or anything like that? How specced are they towards combat? Will they be laying on the hurt, or spraying and praying?
• The next combat encounter is expected to happen later int he same day, so there's limited time (and factoring in their cargo limited resources) to patch anyone up. Fortunately the next encounter is far more interesting...

Considering those facts I'd actually think about leaving the minions ungrouped, or grouped in teams no greater then 3, with the option of bringing in additional minions if the players roll hot. Idea is the ungrouped minions won't hit the players often, but will be in sufficient numbers that at least a couple should hit (and with rifles hits that land will hurt) plus with 8 Init slots on the board things will look bad (possible a small fear check too?) hopefully sending the right message. Var is going to be the real threat here, and you may want to give him an imperial valor type talent to keep him healthy, as well as considering the double turn option if you really want the players to feel the hurt...

Hi mate!

Wherever (dit I write it correctly? XD) how many minions are, try to limits packs as 3 minions per group or above. I based this on a suggestion from Sam (FFG) because if minion groups (with attributes of 3 or more) are in packs bigger than 3, your player can have serious problems.

If you wouldn't want to name them all... there might be too many minions.

Sometimes the point is to have a faceless horde that keeps coming. In such cases, I've used 8-man squads of Stormtrooper minions to increase staying power without giving them lots of attack rolls (but the one they do get is nasty and doesn't degrade until a few of them drop).

• +30XP isn't bad... but what about equipment? Do the players have heavy armor, or anything like that? How specced are they towards combat? Will they be laying on the hurt, or spraying and praying?

I really appreciate the effort and thought you have gone to, thanks.

It will depend on how the interlude between the episodes go. They will get a stack of credits from the contraband they will try to fence but knowing my players, they will spend most of it on Corellian ale, improving their bunks and installing more comfortable seats in the cockpit. The weapons they have recently scavenged are all clearly Imperial Navy standard issue so they will need to decide whether to keep them or fence them for something less conspicious.

The Hired Gun enforcer has a carbine, the other 3 (smuggler pilot, explorer archeologist, technician mechanic) each now have upgraded from hold out to "proper" blaster pistol. I think they have about 6 ranks of personal combat skills between them (1 rank of Ranged Light on the 3 non-Hired guns) so yeah, combat skill light at the moment but I do want to give them "big risk, big reward" opportunities.

I guess I will find out tonight if they get up to this scene.

If you wouldn't want to name them all... there might be too many minions.

I have named an entire company of space marines for a Deathwatch campaign so yeah, I can imagine quite a bit.

I guess I will find out tonight if they get up to this scene.

You can start out by throwing minions groups at them with just two minions per group and a total number of targets/target groups that is equal to the number of PCs in the group.

If they slice through them like a knife through hot butter, then more groups start coming in, each of which has three minions in it. When the three-member groups go down too easily, start bringing in four-member groups.

Keep increasing the number of minions per group (and re-forming the existing groups), until such time as you find something that is really challenging but doesn’t create an excessive risk of a TPK.

I like minions, several small groups are quite a challenge for my players. It also makes my bounty hunter very happy as he shoots and one falls over. It also makes my other players pretty happy as they are not going to be vastly overwhelmed by minions.

I have found about 3 minions per player makes an interesting encounter for my group and unless they get unlucky the players will come out on top. 4 Minions per group per player will be tougher, I would expect that this will have my players sweating and having to be careful about the use of cover, their use of initiative order and creative use of advantage and triumph. I think I am also likely to see a critical effect or two.

One very good thing about minions is you can be creative in how you spread them around. I may well have 12 minions but if I put 5 against my BH and 3 against my smuggler and 2 against my rather gun shy droid and mechanic. They’ll all get a good action packed combat and I will ensure that the risk of actually hurting them isn’t terrible.

As a GM my aim is to make combat exciting as possible, ensure that the players perceive a risk and at the same time not capitalise on the risk to injure or kill the players. Having said that combat shouldn’t be trivial either, so there has to be a risk to the players and if they fail to respond correctly to the violence then they should be in trouble too.

Always give the players a way out, never trap them, unless you want to have them captured. Think of the movies or TV shows where there is a chase and they go down a dead end ally. The person being chased looks around in fear, then finds a doorway which they can open or run into.

Dangnabbit double postin' varmint...

Funny enough. I had to split my group during one of my games. The two social characters ended up being paired off. They got to the very end and due to some poor rolls, combat broke out. It took them 3 or 4 rounds to kill 2 ungrouped minions. It was hilarious, but an enjoyable scene nonetheless.

If you want to have that feel of the party being rushed you can make big minion groups just don't give them any combat skills, instead give them support type skills. a great example is something like a velociraptor pack, small, fast and lots of them, but not particularly skilled in combat, but possibly have the cool skill to represent their ability to set an ambush, and stealth.

The session finished with the cliff hanger (I try to finish on cliff hangers to kick the next session off hot) of the BH bursting in and the goons starting to fire. The Enforcer has already said he is going to kick over a table and provide covering fire, the rest are already poised to run so I suspect this combat after all will be a short encounter while the PCs bolt for it. I suspect they prefer sneaking around to a straight fight.

I might break them up into groups of three or four and have the arrive separately as reinforcements

The follow up to this, I split them into 2 groups of 3 wielding blaster pistols plus the Rival BH with a carbine.

Well, the combat in EotE is brutal! The PC goon in the group got felled by only 2 carbine shots. I say "only" as it was nearly impossible for the bad guy to miss so two turns of trying to provide cover fire made for a near guaranteed KO. Lucky for him and the rest of the group, we hadn't read the wounds section close enough and I thought it was just crits that took you out of action where as exceeding his wound threshold would have seen him pass out and probably condemned the whole group at that stage.

The PCs fire on stun so as to not kill any random civilians should they miss. The did managed to take down 1 group of minions while the Rival and the other group survived unscathed, ready to make chase on the street. The group goon is now dosed up with stim packs, keeping him awake and nursing another crit he took in the subsequent street chase

The next challenge for me is the Z-95s making chase as they try to escape the planet and system. I am thinking of scaling the 6 in the mission down to 4 and using them as pairs of minions. They are flying a stock GHTROC 720 and while super durable, the stock weapons leave a lot to be desired. They have already decided that the money they get for this job they are going to invest in a ventral turret - and when they do, I will feel more comfortable throwing more enemies at them.