I'm really starting to warm up to this houserule. I think it's best use for tougher PC groups or for really challenging fights.

Maybe we could water it down to a simple NPC ability.

Elite - All combat checks made by this NPC or Minion group gains the linked-1 property.

Throw that on your Stormtrooper group and you have the 501st after your NPCs.

Yoink!

Well, I have been schooled!

Lets go to the book! Page 390 of EotE:

"A minion group gains one rank for each member of the group beyond the first. So a group of four stormtroopers would count as having three ranks (for the three troopers after the first) in any checks the group is called on to make."

So with an Agility of 3 and a squad of 10, considering the cap in skills, you'd have a dice pool of 3 yellow and 2 greens and you'd have to kill 4 troopers before you started removing yellows.

Ahh ok, I knew I had been capping the skill, but I couldn't remember the exact reason. It's probably why I don't create many groups above 6 minions, and I just make multiple groups.

As for the OPs houserule, I could see increasing the Linked beyond 1 for larger groups. While I wouldn't normally field a group of 15x stormies, I could see giving them Linked 3 (or something like that).

Lets go to the book! Page 390 of EotE:

"A minion group gains one rank for each member of the group beyond the first. So a group of four stormtroopers would count as having three ranks (for the three troopers after the first) in any checks the group is called on to make."

So with an Agility of 3 and a squad of 10, considering the cap in skills, you'd have a dice pool of 3 yellow and 2 greens and you'd have to kill 4 troopers before you started removing yellows.

^ I realized this not too long ago and since then my PCs have been facing a full squad of troopers (8 troopers and a Sergeant) as the norm from the Empire.

I don't see much need for putting a limit on the Linked/Autofire as the GM will be deciding how many Advantage to allocate to the extra hits and can just limit it to whatever seems appropriate at the moment.

As an aside, I'd like to see something similar to the Barrage rules applied to minions. Especially the Blanket Barrage that would let a minion group lay down harassing fire that increase the difficulty of any checks the target makes. This would be a great way to simulate that scene in RotJ when Han and Leia are trying to get the door open. If the target rolls Threat they take a hit at base damage (which isn't so bad).

The dice pool isn't likely to routinely result in being able to use even Link 2 terribly often, Link 3 and needing 6 As plus a successful attack can happen but it won't pop up that much. Although, those bothersome Triumphs.....

Use this and start lobbing Stun grenades. Super way to wreck PCs plans.

To further improve upon the houserule, you could make the Elite ability be ranked; granting increasing the linked rating to all attacks by the number of ranks in "Elite".

Of course, you could always create cybernetically-enhanced minion groups, which would bring their skill cap to 6

Of course, you could always create cybernetically-enhanced minion groups, which would bring their skill cap to 6

Isn't that for Ability? Or does it work with skills as well?

Why not just give them blasters that naturally have the Autofire quality? Yes, you would have to declare you were using it and increase your difficulty, but to me that is not a problem.

Why not just give them blasters that naturally have the Autofire quality? Yes, you would have to declare you were using it and increase your difficulty, but to me that is not a problem.

There are a lot of good weapon options with good weapon effects that make a group of minions much more challenging, particularly grenade types.

The idea of giving minion groups the Linked quality is interesting, but I do think the concern about one PC getting hammered (especially if the minions are using blaster rifles or other big guns) is a valid one.

I like the idea of giving them Autofire more, as the GM can certainly decide how many hits to dish out; after all, just because they rolled 6 advantage doesn't mean that the GM has to use them for 3 autofire hits. It also provides the option of spreading the pain around where Linked focuses it all on one character.

Of course, you could always create cybernetically-enhanced minion groups, which would bring their skill cap to 6

Isn't that for Ability? Or does it work with skills as well?

It increases the max for both skills and characteristics by "one step", so characteristics can go to 7 and skill ranks can go to 6 (EotE CRB pg. 173, second paragraph).

I think we can all agree, even for minion groups, everything is cool when you're part of a team.

Amirite?

Also linked in a minion group is devastating! OP'd minions +1!

They just dropped my Wookie Marauder in a single round.