Hello everyone,

I'm been playing EotE for a while now but just started GMing a few weeks ago for my group. I have a few questions if you guys and gals don't mind helping me out here.

1.) With the minion rules if they possess a skill does the number of minions in the group affect the skill check or the dice pool that you make when you roll it? (Example: would an attack from a group of three stormtroopers be a different dice pool than a group of 20 stormtroopers?)

2.) I've got a few players (one who's been playing a while with us and one who just started) who are force-sensitive and on the lookout for a lightsaber or two. When is a good point to have those accessible in the game to those players? I'm thinking of ways to implement their discovery into the story but I am not sure if it is still too early or not.

3.) What is the ideal size for a party and how can I streamline combat with a large party? (I use a lot of rivals because I don't want 8 PCs taking shots at a minion group before they have a chance to do a single attack against them but now combat rounds take forever). I know there is a suggested size limit to parties but we're a big group of a bunch of friends that like hanging out and roleplaying so there MUST be a way to adapt combat to bigger parties.

4.) Crits cannot be triggered unless you have a successful hit with an attack, correct? Can weapon qualities be activated on a failed check?

5.) Why are Hutts so powerful??? THEY ARE SLUGS

6.) I understand the soak mechanic, but a lot of my PCs are frustrated when they can't pass an enemy's soak threshold when doing an attack (especially in unarmed combat). Besides getting ranks up in that skill is there something I'm missing to give them a better chance at breaking past that soak?

Thanks for the help!

1. Each minion in a group upgrades the combat check once. So one stormtrooper would be just three green, two would be one yellow three green, and so on. Minions don't really have skills on an individual basis. A group of 20, aside from being extremely difficult to defeat, would probably best be managed by breaking it into three or four minion groups.

On the question of weapon qualities, yes, several qualities activate off of the number of Advantages regardless of success. Blast and Guided both come to mind, but I'm sure there are more.

The soak thing is something that comes up in my FaD group fairly often, as we have a Nautolan who likes to punch things a lot (particularly stormtroopers). Remember that the weapon information contains the damage, i.e. a purely unarmed strike is your Brawn plus the number of Successes on the roll. With a Brawn of 3, you only need 3 Successes to get past a stormtrooper's armor. Granted, it's only by a single point, but that's better than nothing and gives you a Critical.

As for group size, my ideal number of players ranges from three to six. With three, I can pretty much guarantee everyone's Obligation and backstory will play into the main plot; with six, maybe one or two Obligations will factor into the main plot while everyone else has to wait for their "day in the limelight" situation. For eight, all I can recommend is increase the number of minions, let nemeses go twice in the order, and use squad rules to back them up.

5. Hutts are powerful because they are very long lived. If a successful human can make a few hundred million in his life span of 80 years a successful Hutt will make significantly more in their 800-1200 year life span. You also have to imagine that a Hutt will, again because of the lifespan have a completely different view on how to invest. A human will require a payoff in 5-10 years, a Hutt can easily wait 50-100, so space exploration, colonisation and terraforming planets over human generations is quite a reasonable return for them.

When you have 8 players, split the party. Even in the same game. Particularly because of comlinks and relative party size, you can actually afford to be in multiple places at once. This also seems to really help pacing once you can handle it well, as the four friends who are "off screen" can get snacks, chat, etc. while you give good, faced paced story to the other four, then flip back at a good point. It takes practice, but it's become the Modus Operendi for our group to the point we do it even when they're only four or six of us.

Encourage non-combat characters, this goes a long way to making combat quicker, because they're not fighting for initiative slots (they take the last ones) and typically make fewer rolls. They also reduce the challange you need to bring forward to combat the party. Physically separate your minion groups (five guys come in from the right, another five from the left, and five with rifles at long range) so different players have different ranges/cover/accessibility to different groups. This makes concentrating fire less attractive.

Also, if you have 8 in a party, the Wayfarer is your friend.