Recently I've been thinking of some experimental things to add for unorthodox combat situations. To often I find that my players try to play the elimination game against opponents that I have added with the intention to rush players along/add tension and excitement to otherwise dull check rolls. Sure this is a fun and great method for the final battle, but when the point of an encounter is to hack into the mainframe to get data because the players know going against the full might of (insert villain's name here) is suicidal, I find that I am either forced to leave a few players hanging as the scene plays out for the slicer/stealth guy, or get tugged into a combat situation where the fighters methodically eliminate every minion before the other players try to move on to their task. There are a couple solutions I have thought up to add a surprise that jostles the players out of their tactical habits narrativly.
The first one is Rival groups. The point of these is simply to scare the PC's without putting the part at risk of a TPW. What i did last week was Introduce a large number of weak rivals, and run them as minions with a few key changes. The first was to not insta-kill on crits. the second my marauder's vibro-great sword DIDN'T cleave the head off his enemy instantly, he panicked, and started to think out of the box. Now, the PCs could have fairly easily dealt with the group presented before them. But this small change got them back into the story, and gave them a reason to think that they don't quite have have me figured out.

I talk abut this with one necessary understanding. This is something that should only be done rarely. It should be used sparingly because if the players ever decide to lay into the rivals, they will 1). learn they can still beat them bloody in combat, and 2) the combat will take longer ( the lack of inst kills) and the Critical hit becomes devalued.

Even understanding this I welcome feedback and criticism. as well as other ideas for this kind of unorthodox combat situation.

the second my marauder's vibro-great sword DIDN'T cleave the head off his enemy instantly, he panicked, and started to think out of the box. Now, the PCs could have fairly easily dealt with the group presented before them. But this small change got them back into the story, and gave them a reason to think that they don't quite have have me figured out.

I talk abut this with one necessary understanding. This is something that should only be done rarely. It should be used sparingly because if the players ever decide to lay into the rivals, they will 1). learn they can still beat them bloody in combat, and 2) the combat will take longer ( the lack of inst kills) and the Critical hit becomes devalued.

Even understanding this I welcome feedback and criticism. as well as other ideas for this kind of unorthodox combat situation.

You made a creative way to make your players think outside the box without directly nerfing their abilities, thus increasing the fun and enjoyment for all, by bending the RAW just a little?

HANG HIM AT DAWN!!!

In seriousness, that sounds like a great move! Did you find the bookkeeping becoming too tedious?

I think I am missing something.

You took Rivals and ran them like Minions? I assume you mean that you combined their WT together and had them move as a unified group. That could help some situations, but what did you do about their skills when working together? Otherwise I am not sure I see the point, you just took their stats and made them minions. I am glad it worked, but...

I think I am missing something.

You took Rivals and ran them like Minions? I assume you mean that you combined their WT together and had them move as a unified group. That could help some situations, but what did you do about their skills when working together? Otherwise I am not sure I see the point, you just took their stats and made them minions. I am glad it worked, but...

Well, I'm still tweaking how I'd run it in the future, and i guess i was a little sheepish in the explination of my ideas. Basically I counted all, or at the least most, skills as being able to be team-worked. instead of just a few. I also started the upgrade process from the level of their baseline. So, for example, if the single rival had two ranks of brawl and brawn 4, and it was a group of three of them, the roll was YYGG from the base line, and then upgraded to YYYY from the two extra people. I was thinking a triumph could be used to have the attack go again at YYYG, to simulate another hit getting in but this didn't come up in the game. I did combine the hits the group received into the segmented WT like Minion Groups. I also rolled crits, and had them apply to the whole group, rather than marked to a single individual. I'm still considering how to handle talents. Should lethal blows for example simply work for the group, or should that stack as the group works together?

One could just as accurately say that I am simply using stronger, slightly changed, minion groups. The stat blocks I started from during the customization were Rivals, which led me to call them "Rival Groups" here. Part of the point, for me at least, is to have a quick way to convert given stats into usable adversaries, letting me get more mileage out of the given resources that I have already computerized for myself. Additionally, its nice for my players not to know whether the 'group of XXXXX' is a minion group or something stronger before they engage. Of course I could change my narrative style, and I try to do so often, but this helps cover the slip ups.I think the idea could even work well with Nems at a high enough level of PC's. Let them come up against a crack squad of dangerous foes that function ridiculously well as a team or some such.

To answer invictus, it actually made book keeping much easier. rather than having 9 slots for different rivals I had three, that I tracked as one. It made my life easier than keeping up on all of them, but still lasted a little longer than cardboard minions do. Again, the purpose of this idea, for me, was never to replace minions, just to add a little insecurity to my players minds, and give me as the gm another option to roll out from tie to time.

Ah...now that makes sense.

Seems like a fine way to run Rivals as a group.