I'm asking because it makes a degree of sense to me. Minions are sort of the definition of the weak-minded for example.

So I'm thinking that things like Influence, Misdirect, Bind, Harm, etc should treat them as an individual when it makes sense.

I would also make it an opposed check of some kind since there is more than one of them (so Misdirect might come with a Stealth or Skullduggery check versus their Perception and so on). If only an individual minion is being targeted then no opposed check.

This would add some flair to the force power uses even at lower levels of ability and seems to fit with the Star Wars universe where it is easy to effect groups of underlings (Stormtroopers, battledroids, etc) but trickier to affect more potent individuals.

Any thoughts? Red flags?

Thanks!

I would agree, mostly. I'm AFB, but I believe Stormtroopers have Discipline as one of their skills, so the more there are, the more skill ranks they have in Discipline, which makes sense for things like Influence.

It's a little different for things like Move, because technically you could pick up a minion and slam them into an NPC that isn't in their group, and I'm not sure the Magnitude upgrade would allow you to pick up multiple minion groups.

I think it would be a case by case power by power kinda of situation. Only when it made sense to do so in my opinion.

I agree with Kael that it'd be a case-by-case basis.

For powers that require combat checks (such as hurling things with Move or the Unleash power), then I'd say they'd operate under the general rules for minion groups and be treated as one target.

For powers like Bind and Harm, I'd say that it wouldn't affect an entire minion group, as being able to impact several targets at once improves the usefulness of those powers dramatically, in particular Bind which with the right Control upgrades could effectively shut an entire minion group down.

Influence can get a bit tricky from a lore perspective, as we saw Obi-Wan easily mind trick a stormtrooper, so either he targeted the whole group and then crushed them in the opposed Discipline check (which being a Jedi Master shouldn't be too hard for him), or he only affected a single trooper (likely a sergeant) and the rest of the troopers simply fell in line with what their CO was saying (which does seem to be the case in terms of Imperial doctrine in Legends being to not question your superior's orders) in spite of how odd it was.

Simple answer is yes. Minions are always treated as a group so one roll for all. Groups are typically 4-5 so if you have more than 5 minions you might want to have more than one group.

When it comes to player force powers and talents affecting them, I would target one unless the player has magnitude upgrades in which case apply as appropriate.

For powers like Bind and Harm, I'd say that it wouldn't affect an entire minion group, as being able to impact several targets at once improves the usefulness of those powers dramatically, in particular Bind which with the right Control upgrades could effectively shut an entire minion group down.

Well, since powers like Harm and Unleash inflict damage wouldn't they damage minions just like shooting them would? Admittedly bind also immobilizes the target (and later on can disorient and stagger) but is doing that to a minion group really a problem? By the time the PCs are that powerful, minion groups are really taking the place of a single reasonably tough enemy anyway.

Just my opinion which on this matter is admittedly untested in game play (which is largely why I'm asking so I know the answer before it comes up )

For powers like Bind and Harm, I'd say that it wouldn't affect an entire minion group, as being able to impact several targets at once improves the usefulness of those powers dramatically, in particular Bind which with the right Control upgrades could effectively shut an entire minion group down.

Well, since powers like Harm and Unleash inflict damage wouldn't they damage minions just like shooting them would? Admittedly bind also immobilizes the target (and later on can disorient and stagger) but is doing that to a minion group really a problem? By the time the PCs are that powerful, minion groups are really taking the place of a single reasonably tough enemy anyway.

Just my opinion which on this matter is admittedly untested in game play (which is largely why I'm asking so I know the answer before it comes up )

Using a power like Harm/Bind and shooting minions is two separate things. When using a Force power your not firing off multiple uses of that power in one go like you are with a blaster.

With Harm and Bind, there's no combat check like there is with Unleash; you simply roll your Force dice and if you generate sufficient Force points, the effect of the power is triggered. Where as a combat check with a blaster pistol or a lightsaber accounts for multiple "shots" as Kael noted, with a Force power effect it's typically "one and done" as we generally don't see Force users spamming Force effects multiple times within the course of a single minute (which is the general default for a combat round).

With Harm at least, 20 XP gets you three Magnitude Upgrades, which means for a PC with Force Rating 2, they can potentially hit up to 4 targets at once with damage that bypasses soak So it's not that difficult to be able to have Harm do some nasty damage to an entire minion group.

With Harm at least, 20 XP gets you three Magnitude Upgrades, which means for a PC with Force Rating 2, they can potentially hit up to 4 targets at once with damage that bypasses soak So it's not that difficult to be able to have Harm do some nasty damage to an entire minion group.

As a minor note on this last point: They wouldn't need to have a Force Rating of 2 to do this. They would need 3 ranks in the magnitude upgrade but they only need to spend 2 FP to do so because you would spend one FP to activate the basic power and one FP to activate the upgrade. Multiple ranks in the same upgrade stack for the same cost.

With Harm at least, 20 XP gets you three Magnitude Upgrades, which means for a PC with Force Rating 2, they can potentially hit up to 4 targets at once with damage that bypasses soak So it's not that difficult to be able to have Harm do some nasty damage to an entire minion group.

As a minor note on this last point: They wouldn't need to have a Force Rating of 2 to do this. They would need 3 ranks in the magnitude upgrade but they only need to spend 2 FP to do so because you would spend one FP to activate the basic power and one FP to activate the upgrade. Multiple ranks in the same upgrade stack for the same cost.

Harm takes 1 FP to activate and magnitude take 2 additional FP to activate the upgrade. So you would need 3 tomake the power effect any number of targets up to your base number of Magnitude upgrades. Thus Force Rating 2 is needed.

With Harm at least, 20 XP gets you three Magnitude Upgrades, which means for a PC with Force Rating 2, they can potentially hit up to 4 targets at once with damage that bypasses soak So it's not that difficult to be able to have Harm do some nasty damage to an entire minion group.

As a minor note on this last point: They wouldn't need to have a Force Rating of 2 to do this. They would need 3 ranks in the magnitude upgrade but they only need to spend 2 FP to do so because you would spend one FP to activate the basic power and one FP to activate the upgrade. Multiple ranks in the same upgrade stack for the same cost.

Harm takes 1 FP to activate and magnitude take 2 additional FP to activate the upgrade. So you would need 3 tomake the power effect any number of targets up to your base number of Magnitude upgrades. Thus Force Rating 2 is needed.

Your right, I forgot about magnitude requiring two FP to activate. I stand corrected.

The general consensus is that one could use harm on a minion group and it is still considered a minion group for that purpose. However, would I be able to trigger magnitude on targets within the minion group? Could I hit a minion group 4 times in one go with a few magnitude upgrades?

Or would magnitude only be good for hitting other minion groups?

It seems to me (again pure opinion here) that magnitude upgrades would allow you to target additional groups, not apply damage multiple times within a single group. According to the minion rules, any time a minion suffers damage it is applied to the group. So it seems force powers that deal direct damage (Harm, Unleash, Move) should affect the group.

But I see where it can get complicated with things like Bind, Influence, and Misdirect. Hence my posing the question for debate.

Even with everything said, I'm still leaning toward force powers affecting a minion group as a single individual. Minions are specifically called out at as "minor obstacles, and delaying tactics for more powerful foes". To me that lines up with the spirit of allowing the force powers to affect them as a single entity.

I'm going to be the sole dissenter. A minion group is a mechanical construct to make it easy to run multiple minor characters as one entity. Thus, by definition according to the force powers it would be to a single individual minor npc with the magnitude upgrades increasing the number of npcs affected.

It seems to me (again pure opinion here) that magnitude upgrades would allow you to target additional groups, not apply damage multiple times within a single group. According to the minion rules, any time a minion suffers damage it is applied to the group. So it seems force powers that deal direct damage (Harm, Unleash, Move) should affect the group.

But I see where it can get complicated with things like Bind, Influence, and Misdirect. Hence my posing the question for debate.

Even with everything said, I'm still leaning toward force powers affecting a minion group as a single individual. Minions are specifically called out at as "minor obstacles, and delaying tactics for more powerful foes". To me that lines up with the spirit of allowing the force powers to affect them as a single entity.

Sure do as you want. As I initially said .... case by case ....power by power situation. And as Donovan points out using them on groups makes more sense when combat checks are involved as the powers are not demonstrated as being used in a fashion that allows them to be spammed to multiple people in one go.

But do whatever you want in your games. You asked our opinion and we gave it.

Simple answer is yes. Minions are always treated as a group so one roll for all. Groups are typically 4-5 so if you have more than 5 minions you might want to have more than one group.

When it comes to player force powers and talents affecting them, I would target one unless the player has magnitude upgrades in which case apply as appropriate.

Well, that's not quite correct since Minions are not always treated as a group.

I'm going to be the sole dissenter. A minion group is a mechanical construct to make it easy to run multiple minor characters as one entity. Thus, by definition according to the force powers it would be to a single individual minor npc with the magnitude upgrades increasing the number of npcs affected.

Yeah I'd have to agree with this based on the reason as to why they are treated as a group.

Simple answer is yes. Minions are always treated as a group so one roll for all. Groups are typically 4-5 so if you have more than 5 minions you might want to have more than one group.

When it comes to player force powers and talents affecting them, I would target one unless the player has magnitude upgrades in which case apply as appropriate.

Well, that's not quite correct since Minions are not always treated as a group.

No you are correct, but as Patriot rightly says they are treated as being a group for the purposes of making the game player smoother and not having to track multiple NPC's.

Allowing Force powers to unilaterally treat minion groups as a single target can open up some major concerns.

A big one is the Move power. Going on a strict reading of the RAW, a PC with one Strength Upgrade could affect an entire minion group of Silhouette 1 adversaries, since as some suggest that the minion group is always considered "one target." This completely bypasses the need for a Magnitude upgrade to affect multiple 'targets,' and makes Move even more powerful than it already is; you could simply move the entire minion group since it's "one target" out of your way, or out over one of the many long drops that show up in Imperial installations with alarming frequency. It's very greasy/cheesy RAW, but since there's nothing in the rules about a minion group's Silhouette being increased, by said RAW it'd be very easy for a low-XP character with Force Rating 1 to affect the entire minion group regardless of how many members there are.

I'm sure we can all agree that Move as written is already problematic enough in terms of how potent of a Force power it can be. So no real need to boost it even further into brokenness by letting it affect an entire minion group so easily. As Kael noted earlier in the thread, it's best to treat Force powers vs. minion groups on a case-by-case basis. For powers like Bind, Harm, and especially Move, my take is to not treat the minion group as a single collective target, as it opens the system up to a lot of abuse, especially as the PC purchases further upgrades and increases their Force Rating.

It's all in the discription. I would never count a group as a single minon in purposes to force powers, except in certain circumstances.

"I use move to attack the group."

"Alight, since you only had enough strength to lift one person, you catapult one into the other, knocking both out with a push. Or you separate one guy from the pack +magnitude, weakening their fighting strength."

then, and only when the character has enough pips to affect a whole group

"you have enough pips, so you manage to shove the entire group back."

Otherwise we would have beginners disarming or moving entire groups despite being fairly experienced.

There are a few exceptions; mind affecting abilities targeting a leader might be appropriate and sometimes, it's just simply more epic to have a great illusion.

Its pretty much a moot point if the force wielder has enough magnitude and range upgrades. A single player could easily target a minion group with a force power with enough upgrades and lets face it those force powers aren't exactly expensive.

I think if the player is simply trying to deal damage to the minion group, then treating it as a single unit it fine. While there may be a conceptual problem with an inexperienced force user being able to move/hit multiple guys because they're mooks, I don't see a game balance problem. Narratively, this can easily be conceived of as the force user lobbing a barrel into a pack of oncoming thugs, or hitting a group with a "Force slam" to throw them into a wall. Of course, it works both ways: If the player wants to throw a minion group into a rival or nemesis, it still only counts as "one" object striking them for the purposes of damage.

On the other hand, if they're trying to accomplish some non-damage objective, then all bets are off. If you want to activate all of the stormtrooper's grenades at once, you need to activate Magnitude to create your massive explosion. Ditto for taking a group of minions and stacking them on top of each other to form a barricade. The minion rules are there to allow the players to quickly spread damage around a group, not to pretend that those battle droids have transformed into Voltron.

Early on, with misdirect, you have to get creative to use it to (for example) walk by guards, etc. You often just don't have the light side points toget to a big group. If you could affect a minion group all together like one rival, then prison breaks and so on become child's play.

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the debate. As I said in my first post I'm trying to see into the future with possible downsides to this and you've all named some that are worth consideration. I'm not trying to convince anyone I'm right, I'm just trying to think this through and all of your comments are very helpful to me in doing that...so thanks!

I understand that Minions are a mechanical convenience, however they exist to be obstacles and delaying tactics. They're meant to go down in one or two hits, and they have the effect of making the players feel like capable heroes. I haven't done this yet, but my plan is to scale the number of minions in a group as the game progresses. So as the players advance, the groups of 3 minions become groups of 4, then 5, then 6, but for the most part the number of groups for an appropriate challenge will remain the same.

With that in mind, it seems like treating the group as 1 entity, continues to make sense. At campaign start the PCs might have to sneak by 4 Stormtroopers, but they'd be 2 groups of 2, not 1. So Misdirect (as Streak pointed out) would still require creativity to employ... perhaps luring one group away. Add a Sergeant and now there are 3 entities to be considered and so on.

The same thing would apply to the use of Move. Sure at lower levels I can drop a group of minions off the ubiquitous Imperial long drop (excellent example by Donovan Morningfire), but if there are 2-3 entities present when appropriate I'm not sure it's an issue. I would be inclined to let the Force User move the minion group if he had either the Magnitude or the Strength upgrades appropriate (If he can move 3x Silo 1 objects, or 1x Silo 2 object- I would rule that two or more minions are Silo 2 btw. A Minion group of 6+ I'd likely treat as Silo 3) then he can go for it. So to affect a Minion group of 3 (would require spending at least 30 xp: base 10, str 10, and either 2nd str 10, or 2x Mag 5).

I guess these still seem like appropriate power curves to me. Additionally the rules are already conditioning us that individuals are not treated equally with regards to the Force. Only Nemesis level or named "plot important" rivals treat force use as an opposed check. So they're already different (I am advocating making Force use against a minion group also an opposed check, so larger groups are more likely to resist).

Just some further thoughts, please don't feel I'm ignoring or disregarding your comments. I may wind up agreeing with you, I just want to make sure I've considered it from all angles.

Well here's the thing...

The PCs are not going to be novice Force users forever.

As they accumulate XP, they're going to be purchasing talents with a mind towards boosting up their Force Rating (especially if they started out with Seer and Sage as their initial career), as well as spending XP on purchasing upgrades for their Force powers, allowing them to expand what they can do with those Force powers.

The core thing to remember is that this game is largely predicated upon Luke's struggles with learning the Force in the films, and that it took dedicated training under Yoda's supervision for him to really start honing his abilities. Luke at the start of ESB had trouble pulling his lightsaber to his hand, while Luke towards the end of RotJ could float Threepio around without much effort; he pretty much solos the Pit of Carkoon fight, something that he wouldn't have been able to accomplish way back in ANH.

So if you allow Misdirect or Bind or even Influence to be applied to an entire minion group in the early going, what happens when the PCs have boosted their Force Ratings and now have several Magnitude Upgrades? Do you now allow them to affect multiple minion groups at once? If so, congratulations on pretty much breaking the game as your PCs will seem minion groups as a trivial annoyance at best, something that is very much not intended with this system. And if you decide that at that point, minion groups don't count as a single target, then your group will very rightly feel slighted for your welshing on the implied agreement that you're not going to twist the rules just because they've reached a point of being effective with their chosen Force powers.

Honestly, you'll probably be saving yourself a lot of frustration/grief in the long run if you simply go by the idea that unless there's a combat check involved, each minion counts as a separate target when it comes to Force powers. Yes, it does mean that in some situations Force powers aren't super-useful, especially in the early going, but the PCs will certainly feel far more accomplished once they've boosted their abilities up to the point where they can affect an entire minion group with powers like Misdirect and Bind, or even pull an Obi-Wan and mind trick an entire minion group into thinking "these aren't the PCs you're looking for."