Hey All,

This may be an inconsistent rule with the system, or it may hinge on the use of the word "Upgrade". So help me out.

STARTING DICE POOL

In the rules (page 19 EotE CRB), it states that to create the dice pool for whatever check is being made, you find the attribute and the skill, and compare the two. Whichever is higher, you use that as the base number of ability dice (green), and the lower number the number of upgrades. By doing this, you never need to worry about "upgrading" dice as per the Upgrading More Dice Than Available (page 21 EotE CRB).

UPGRADING

The rules (page 21 EotE CRB) state that when upgrading dice (I'm imaging after the initial dice pool), when you run out of dice to upgrade, you add an ability dice (green) then upgrade that to a yellow and so on. To explain graphically:

MINIONS

What happens here? The dice pool for these guys always remains static, and is "upgraded" the more that exist in a group. So graphically, is this what happens?

Almost.

With minions, you choose skills they are proficient at. Then they have ranks in that skill equal to the number of minions in the group past the first.

You are still building the dice pool the same as any other skill check, it is just that the skill ranks is variable, based on the number of minions. So 6 minions does not mean 5 upgrades, it means they have a skill rank of 5. If their characteristic is only a 3, that would start with 5 green dice, and then 3 of them would be upgraded to yellow.

So when creating the initial dice pool, they both work the same way as per the Ability/Skill method (my first example). That helps greatly.

So when creating the initial dice pool, they both work the same way as per the Ability/Skill method (my first example). That helps greatly.

Correct. The only trick is as your players hack away at the minion group, it loses skill ranks so you have to adjust as the encounter goes on. But I think you understood that already.

I'm playing with the Capital Combat shown in the last episode of the Order 66 Podcast, and am thought it weird that they did things one way for minions, and it worked differently for character skill checks. Good to see that according to the rules, they work the same way for both minions and characters in creating the initial dice pool.

Now to work out how those big banks of 6+ weapons work

I'm playing with the Capital Combat shown in the last episode of the Order 66 Podcast, and am thought it weird that they did things one way for minions, and it worked differently for character skill checks. Good to see that according to the rules, they work the same way for both minions and characters in creating the initial dice pool.

No to work out how those big banks of 6+ weapons work

Same as a minion group. Having more than 6 guns to the group just means that more guns have to be taken out before they start to lose skill value. So, then it is a question of just how many rolls do you want to make as a GM. 7 rolls with 10 guns per group, or 14 rolls with 5 guns per group. Less likely for the smaller groups to hit, but you're rolling more groups, increasing the overall odds that something is going to connect.

I'm taking a leaf out of GM Phil's book, and breaking down the batteries into groups of 3-6. So a ISD would look like this:

A majority of these weapons are slow firing so you are not using them all at once. The way I think they would be used is that for each bank used together would provide a boost dice per bank.

So lets say a Gunnery Crew have Agility 3, and the Gunnery skill. 5 together would provide 3 yellow and 1 green.

Example: An Imperial-class Star Destroyer has 10 port-mounted and 10 starboard-mounted heavy turbolasers. This would equate to 2 banks of 5 turbolasers on either side of the ship. Should the captain desire to fire all of the 20 turbolaser banks at a target, the 3 extra gunnery banks in addition to the first group of 5 turbolasers would provide 3 boost dice to the check. At the end of the attack, all weapons are considered to have been used, and must now wait for an addition two rounds to recharge due to their Slow-Firing 2 ability.