ok I'm still new at running SW EOTE and I'm having a problem. 2 in fact.

1. The marauder is melee and very powerful. She usually sweeps like 3 minions a pop. Now her character is very intimidating and melee oriented. So she like to get up and tear things up. But I keep running into the problem of: "oh if she engages we get a black dice to combat checks while she's engaged with the target-- so let the shooters shoot first. So it can end up with all dead minions and her just yawning and waiting for some action to come again. Lame. Now here is a question; if she engages the minion group since they are a minion group-- is she technically engaged with the whole group or just one dude in the group so only setback to the one dude she is engaged-- but than is it thematically oriented if she does 1 kill and enough crits to kill more minions? Or is that only working if she is technically engaged with the whole minion pack?

2. how do I fix the problem of her getting benched because initiative roll is almost a group effort which PC can slot into a PC a lot on the initiative order because they always vote shooters first melee last because a dinky black dice. She gets sidelined even though she years through minions better than the whole group.

Thanks for help

I would say that most of the time she would probebly be engaged with the minion group as a whole but it really comes down to their positioning. If its getting in the way of players enjoying having fun then let your minion groups scatter a bit and let her just be engaged with some of them at a time or either make several smaller minion groups out of your NPC´s, or add a few rivals.

That's what I was thinking to solve the issue-- a bit of arbitrary GMing to say she charge in but engaged the initial one guy in the group ...but the crits represents maybe long arcing sweeps or knocking over baddies in general melee style stuff. They keep pushing her last on the list because of one little dice. She's not really happy about it.

Sorry it's an upgrade to the difficulty to fire into engaged not setback and despair is used to hit the ally.

If all the minions in every encounter are engaged with one another, then there is your problem right there. I'd suggest spreading them out, and also splitting them up into more than one group.

I find that 3-4 groups of minions is usually a nice starting point for the encounter.

Edit: sorry if my original post came off snarky.

Yeah, I agree. Either give the others threats further down range, or have too many groups for her to engage all at once. Perhaps the enemies have heard about her prowess and so occupy her with a mini-boss while the minions deal with the rest of the crew.

Indeed, there is nothing about minions that say they have to be in the same range band, much less engaged with each other.

I'd also consider starting one or more minion groups out at a further range, giving the shooters a tacticaly better target then the one the Melee character can rip to shreds.

1. I'm going to be the voice of dissent and say that a minion group should be engaged. If they are not engaged, then break them out into separate groups (which I would recommend you do anyway).

Not having them as such is unjustly penalizing melee attackers, keeping them from taking out multiple minions, where ranged could do it at their leisure.

If a player wants to make a character that mows through inconsequential enemies, and the rules support that, then let them do such or disallow the Marauder spec.

Now, if you want to challenge said Marauder, use the environment to your advantage. Have combat happen at range (Barrage time), and put obstacles in between the players and antagonists. Make multiple small minion groups, spread them out, and then put things between them that must be overcome.

2. That's a player issue. Using rules to solve a player issue never ends well.

They should talk it out. Could it be because they want a chance to take out minions before they are all eliminated? That also could be solved through encounter design.

For simplicity's sake I also would tend to keep a group of minions engaged with one another. I just don't want to try to remember where they all are if they're treated as one entity.

Would also like to mention the possibility of using tokens or miniatures. I use miniatures in my games, started back in Saga Edition and it makes many combat situations alot clearer. Might make it easier to see who is in range.