I just had a player ask if we can add one more player bring the group from 4 to 5. We haven't started yet so sure why not? But I can't find a good reference in the book about group size vs combat difficulty and a general rule of thumb. I know that one way is just throw another wave of minions at the group but how big should a group be? Is there a sort of X wounds for Y players explanation? If anyone could point me to the right spot in the book, I've looked at Minions, GM section and flipped in general but having some trouble. Any advice would be great!

Thanks

Bs4W

This is a good question. I honestly don't know if there is a good formula.

My groups are between 3 to 5 players. I've come to prefer a group of 4 at most. Recently, I've had a lot of fun with a group of 3 players.

One factor in any such formula should be the combat skill of the PC's. Do you have a group entirely composed of deadly Bounty Hunters, or a group entirely composed of civilian Traders? Secondly, and this may be difficult since you are just starting out, how do you see the PC's reacting to conflict, i.e. will they charge into combat headstrong or will they instead mostly opt to avoid combat by sneaking, deception, etc.?

Since you are just starting a new game / group, I suggest having a group discussion with your players on what type of game they want to play. How often do they want combat? Do they mostly want space or ground combat? Etc. It's never a bad idea to set expectations, including the GM. Perhaps then you'll get some answers or, at least, some good insight into your new group.

Overall, I'd say don't sweat it. If your players are defeating the bad guys with ease, just have the bad guys call for reinforcements and then another group or two of minions appear. Use your judgement and GM ninja skills. Pay attention to how your new group handles some 'easy' combats and/or conflicts in the beginning too, and then later extrapolate from that for building end session boss fights.

Semper Fi

My group is a set of very experienced gamers. I'm the least experienced. They are generally up for everything, space combat will be the interesting part. I fully expect them to relish in combat but also enjoy the social. Have at least 2 that typically play the face. Break down is going to be:

Hired Gun - Marauder - Droid... (think Chappie / Rock 'em sock 'em Robot) should be interesting, wants to be all brawl.

Colonist - Politico - Twi'lek going scathing tirade all the way wants to berate people something fierce.

Explorer - Scout - Chiss my most rounded out player I think, very much the planner, going to be the pilot

Bounty Hunter - Assassin - Klatooinian he's still developing his character but very much ready to be a murder machine, interested in getting into the gadgeteer/technician stuff

Technician - Outlaw Tech - Wookie she is the new player but in our Shadow Run game was the melee badass that wrecked face

Thankfully the group all knows, new system, new GM we'll sort it all out, but was hoping to hear people's thoughts on running with 5 as I had been planning on 4 and starting with the beginner game despite custom characters and then rolling into Long Arm of the Hutt and then figuring out where they'd like to go from there and picking from the currently published books to sprinkle in all the various modulars and adventures to fit their interests.

Bs4W... shutting down for a few hours, look forward to reading more! Super excited for my first session.

IMO, 3-5 is the ideal party size, where you can fairly easily adjust for the number of players, etc…. It takes more work as you get further and further away from those ranges.

Generally speaking, I believe that you generally want to start out with at least one target per PC, whether that target be a minion group, or a computer terminal that needs to be hacked, or whatever.

If your party ends up getting pasted too easily, you can make the minion groups smaller (and thus weaker), or reduce the number of targets.

If your party just rolls over the enemy, then you can increase the size of the minion groups to make them tougher, add more minions groups, etc… as necessary.

And anything you can do with minion groups, you can generally do with Rivals and Nemesis NPCs.

The way we have played it so far, Rivals are generally slightly weaker than the PCs. The day before your PC became a PC, they would probably have been a Rival.

And Nemesis NPCs should generally be tougher than the PCs. Nemesis NPCs should also have minion groups around them to use as a meat shield, among other things. And Nemesis NPCs should be pretty good at escaping by the skin of their teeth, or somehow managing to survive, so that they can come back in the future and continue to harass the PCs.

At least, that’s my take on it. YMMV.

The way I looked at it when I started my game was to look at the positions in a starship. So you absolutely need a pilot, and having a co pilot is a good idea, and then you probably need somebody to shoot, two if you have more than one gun, and having an engineer/mechanic isnt a bad idea.

So anywhere from 3-5 is ideal, I ran with six for awhile which got a little tricky when my players scattered during "investigation" phases. 3 is easy to manage but might leave the group a little lacking in some areas and six is almost too many, so I recommend 4 or 5.

Looks and sounds like an awesome group.

I ran the beginner game for a group of 4. They played a Droid / Bounty Hunter - Assassin, Wookie / Bounty Hunter - Assassin, Human / Smuggler - Scoundrel, and a Duros / Smuggler - Pilot. This group of 4 handled the encounters as written in the adventure with ease.

If I had to do it all over again (with the same group) this is what I would do;

1. Start the game by playing the Star Wars fanfare music and read out loud the opening crawl text for the adventure. As the game starts with the PC's ducking into a cantina, play the Bith Band cantina music from Episode IV (I just looped both songs until the scene was over). I had holograms of the Bith Band playing on the stage. Make sure there is one bad guy (Gamorrean) for every PC in the cantina fight to start the game and have everyone fight one on one. Also, use the Star Wars sound effects soundboard on the starwars.com website for blaster sounds, etc. If a PC shots a blaster, play the sound!

2. Be prepared for your players to rob the cash register at the cantina and junk / mechanic shop. If they do it, I'd say only let them find like 5 credits each (or a very small amount that they can easily divide up amongst themselves).

3. Increase the number of Stormtroopers and have the Stormtroopers patrol in groups of 4. One stormtrooper in each group of 4 should have a light repeating blaster. You could even make one of the 4 a Stormtrooper Sergeant who is a Rival with special skills and bonuses to lead Stormtrooper minions. I'd say 4 groups of 4 should get your PC's moving. Maybe throw in an Imperial officer too.

4. In the fight at the docking bay, I'd say increase the number of enemy security droids to equal that of the players, at least. But, if your players breeze past them, maybe add a couple more security droids to make it more dramatic. Besides, if a PC or two get too hurt here, or go down, you can simply have the group find stimpacks aboard the ship afterwards to get them back in the fight. Plus, you could always have more imperials running to the docking bay to get your players moving.

5. The space combat to wrap up the adventure; be mindful that with 5 players you have something for everyone to do. You don't want a bored player. Sounds like you'll have a Pilot, Co-Pilot, x2 Gunners, and a Tech (who can run around the ship repairing it). I'd have the rules for space combat, showing a player what they can do, handy. For this scene, we used the X-Wing ship miniatures and I played the music from Episode IV when the TIE fighters attacked the Millennium Falcon. Don't forget to use the starwars.com sound effects for the TIE fighter fly-bys (coolest sound ever), blaster cannons, and explosions. When the group escapes Tatoonie, I even played the sound effect of the Millennium Falcon going in hyperspace. The End. I then played the episode IV end credits fanfare.

For what it's worth, that's what I learned. My players greatly enjoyed the beginner game. They loved that I used Star Wars music and sound effects. That really helped with immersion too.

Good luck! I'd like to know how things turn out.

Semper Fi

I'd suggest starting the campaign with a few light combats. See how the party handles round up (party size/2) groups of 2 minions. Then up the number of minions to 3, then up the number of groups by 1. In those 3 combats (which you might want to have happen over the course of 2 days as they get chased by X), you should be able to figure out who are the heavy hitters, who are the support characters, and how the party responds.

It'll also give the party the opportunity to gel as a group.

Make sure they enemies are only using blaster pistols at first, then have the last combat (the 4th) of the little initial adventure include an appropriate number of minion groups with blaster rifles (assume about double damage output from these groups compared to the earlier ones) and one rival with a pistol.

Run them through something like that and you'll have a good idea of their limits.

Awesome! Great advice here, thank you. I've got almost 3 weeks left before we run so I'll be sure to look over their skills and space rules to make that fun and interesting. I know I'd love space combat to be awesome, it's a big part of Star Wars to me.

I just tested my soundboard set up last night! So that'll be fun.

Great tips about minion group and npc strength, thank you, that was exactly what I was looking for. After Escape from Mos Shuuta and Long Arm of the Hutt I should have a general feel using these recommendations. I gave the group the heads up that the first 3 sessions or so will be learning before we really delve into their story.

I'll post back my experience when I run it mid September.

Not sure if this helps, but here's my experience:

My group currently has 6 players, but we tend to lose a player from time to time so we're averaging 5. The group consists of:

Farghul Charmer/Trader

Cathar Aggressor/Enforcer

Corellian Pilot/Outlaw Tech

Human Archaeologist/Marauder/Force-Sensitive in Exile

Coynite Heavy/Force Sensitive in Exile

Bothan Shadow/Slicer (I always forget the exact branches for him, so I could be way off)

With a setup like this, and the fact they have about 150XP post-chargen, you'd expect more combat. Surprisingly enough, not so much. Half of the group consist of experienced roleplayers of various systems, while the other half are still relatively new or are very focused in game mechanics (d20, namely), and they balance each other out.

The group tends to talk their way out for the most part unless they are really twitchy (like two games ago, they decided to go right for combat without thinking of a plan). When combat DOES break out, the Marauder goes to town with a gaffi stick (no mods beyond the option of folding it into a truncheon), the Heavy breaks out a cutlass (he's a newbie), and Aggressor takes out a truncheon (he's trying to learn how to use the "lightsaber" the party found), while the Pilot and Charmer hang back with pistols and medpacs.

When against Minions, I've learned the Marauder has a field day, so I tend to have a group just for him. Otherwise, it's just guesswork and knowing what my group is capable of to scale it. I haven't had an issue, and I've even made opposition that could survive the group's hijinks and make them think twice (a Selonian Marauder with 1 rank of Adversary, a glaive and decent armor; a CorSec agent/pilot with 2 ranks of Adversary and smart tactics).

With some of the playtests I've done, I've had to take my group (5-6 players) against the stuff in the adventure, and it usually got ugly for the opposition, even against the Big Bad. As soon as you level the field with minions, though, it becomes pretty fair.

Just my two credits. Hope it helps you out!

Oh...

One other thing that my group and I did to help make learning the game more manageable was to use only the core EotE rulebook to start.

This made the amount of material we were all trying to learn more manageable, helped scope the game, and we were more organized.

So all races, careers, specializations, equipment, vehicles, etc. all came from just the core EotE rulebook our first game.

All our other Star Wars FFG RPG books stayed on the shelves that weekend.

We had two copies of the EotE main rulebook on hand, and they got passed around quite a bit.

After our group finished the beginner game, and the PC's were roaming the galaxy, all books became available.

Just something we all agreed to do to help us learn the game in more manageable chunks at a comfortable pace.

Semper Fi

Totally Sarge!

I made that clear with my group that I was only allowing the core book and no force sensitives. I ended up having one player kindly ask if they could play Chiss and to be fair I was like ok ok, Species ONLY from other books. I let them know that until the other source books for Technicians and Bounty Hunters come out I want to limit sourcebook usage. Seeing as they haven't even been announced that should give me ample time Else just like you said it is too much to juggle on where to look up Rule X or Rule Y etc. Some of the awesome stuff they'll just have to play more frequently if they want to get to it mwhahaha which not only will make them happy but me too. If I could get the game to run consistently for a year with happy players would be a huge success for me and we'll easily get into the content published!

I've had the best luck with 4-5, though if we're missing someone it occasionally drops down to 3. Most of the published adventures have scaling encounters depending on number of PCs - it's something I have started tapping into, myself. Have some wiggle room, and until everyone in your group has several combats under their belt - try and shoot for too easy on them. (And probably skip space combat unless the enemy TIEs are launching NERF darts.)