I'm not sure why people get so hung up on the "treat minions like one entity" thing so much. It's not a mandatory thing. The GM can elect to use it, or not. In which case all those baddies go back to counting as individual baddies.

It's supposed to be for ease of gameplay for the GM. They can roll once and say that overall they fire a bunch and maybe a few shots hit. Or you fire in their general direction, and maybe some of them get injured.

It doesn't mean that the platoon of Stormtroopers meld together into a glob of useless armor and flailing blasters like some kind of D&D ooze.

If you're trying to use Move to hurl something at them, that's one thing. If you're trying to grab one of them and move them about, that's something else. Throwing a crate would be fine, since it hits and bounces and maybe hits a couple of them or something. But using a single Move to levitate an entire platoon of Stormtroopers at once is ludacris. Unless you're going for Force Unleashed, then you're not going to wave your hand and knock them all on their butts. Nor are you going to wave your hand and simultaneously convince them all to drop their rifles or go home and re-think their lives.

Look at old Ben, sneaking up to the Tractor Beam controls. Only 2 guards standing side by side, not much of a minion group but still, he was only able to affect one of them to believe they'd heard something in the distance.

Even Galen Marek (the Force Unleashed protagonist) could only levitate one stormtrooper at a time, and then could upgrade it to what, like 3 maximum? I don't think the PCs should be able to have this ability with only the base power and one strength upgrade.

Move basic power doesn't mention "targets" like in combat checks, but "objects." A minion group is not an object, but rather a group of objects. So you can move one of those objects.

Donovan Morningfire, that was a very persuasive post. I'll probably end up agreeing with you and taking your suggestion.

But...

I'm going to try a little number crunching to investigate your conclusion.

Let's jump to Knight level (Base+150xp) treating Minions groups as a single target using a Seer with Move, but also requiring an opposed check on groups as I originally proposed.

So if a Human Seer focuses on being good almost exclusively at Move at character creation he maxes out his possible XP and takes the Seer talents up to a Force Rating of 2 (costing 60 xp), buys Willpower 3 (30 xp) 3 ranks in Discipline (1 human, 1 career, +15 xp) and let's call that creation (maybe a couple other skills at 1).

He then has 150 earned XP available which he'll spend on Move and a higher force rating (90 xp gets him to FR 3). He buys Move Basic (10) 2x Magnitude (10), 2x Strength (20), 1 Range (5) and 2x Control (15).

This force user can now roll 3 Force Die to affect 3 objects up to silhouette 2 at Medium Range, can hurl objects with a combat check, and pull gripped or mounted weapons.

So let's say he's facing a Minion group of 3 apprentice bounty hunters at short range (no Discipline skill, Willpower 2).

1. If he treats the group as a single entity, as I suggested, he needs to roll 2 points (base power +1 strength for silo 2). He can't fail the force points, but must succeed at an opposed check of YYY vs PP (success if very likely).
2. If he treats the group as 3 entities, he needs 3 force points (base +1 str for silo 1, +1 mag for 3 targets) and doesn't have to make an opposed check. (so he may have more skills or more Move upgrades). He can't fail here either.
3. If it was a minion group of 4. Scenario one is unchanged. Scenario two needs 4 force points to activate magnitude twice.

If it's a minion group of 5 (Silo 3 by my suggestion).

1. If he treats the group as a single entity he needs 3 force points (must activate Str twice for silo 3, as I stated groups of 5+ are considered).
2. If he treats the group as 5 entities, he needs 4 force points as above, he already activated magnitude twice

Let's extrapolate and go for another 150 xp (400 spent now) and just say he has the whole Move tree purchased.

1. Minion as single entity: he needs 2 force points (base +1 str) to throw a minion group of any size. He still needs an opposed check which against a disciplined group (or Athletic group depending on the GM call for opposition) of size 4 or higher is very tough. (YYY vs. YYY).
2. Minions as individuals: he needs 3 force pts to throw 5 people (minions or otherwise). No opposed check needed.
3. 4 minion groups of 6: He needs 3 points to throw all 4 groups (base +1 mag +1 str). Opposed check is YYY vs. RRRPP if skilled opposition. But with the very same 3 pts (which he can't fail to get) he could throw 5 groups. With 4 pts he could throw 9 groups (activating all mag upgrades again). With 5 force points he could throw 13 groups (78 people). With 6 he throws 17 groups (102 people). Actually at this point the size of the minion group is irrelevant. They're not going to be enough of them to justify treating them as silhouette 5.
4. 24 minions (groups irrelevant): He needs 6 points to throw 17 of them (base +4 mag +1 str). No opposed check. He will always be able to throw at least 5 of them (3 pts needed) and very likely more.
5. The opposed check never really loses relevance as both the PC and Minion groups max out at YYYYYG. In fact at higher levels the PC is more likely to fail due to this than anything else. And it will take him a long time to raise Willpower to 6 so skilled minion groups are likely to outpace him there (like Stormtroopers for example). Which is likely to be more frustrating than not affecting minion groups at low level.

Okay, you've all convinced me. Thank you all very much for letting me go on. That was fun!

Interesting note: Regardless of the minion rules, with a roll of 6 force points this guy can move 9 Victory Class Star Destroyers (base +2 mag, +2 str, +1 range to extreme) and their combined crews of 54,000+.

That is unless I'm totally reading the Force use rules wrong. Which I'm certainly willing to consider.

Generally agree with Morningfire's estimation on things.

Though I do have to say that folks are reading waaayy too much into the "disposable minions" thing. Yes at its most basic your hierarchy is Nemesis>Rival>Minion. That dosnt mean that all minion groups need to be throwaway rodian thugs.

In my games stormtroopers are almost always divided up into minion groups, but are scary as hell to fight. Especially organized with Sergeant or 2 commanding them. They will use tactics and grenades, and their base damage 9 rifles can mess up even a tanky character if they're not careful.

Minion groups are tools. Nothing more, the mechanics behind them might involve the party facing them as a final boss. I had the end of a major story arc in a F&D I briefly ran, be the PC's facing 10 minion groups of 10, starving refugees. I had tweak the rules a little bit, but the minion groups were the best way to run mobs..

Point is it's case by case, there's lots of good guidelines listed here on this thread, but no GM using this system should get too bogged down by minutiae. Try to stay consistent, and if you're tweaking the rules explain to your PC's at the start of the encounter how this scenario is slightly different than others they've been in.

First Move requires a discipline based ranged attack to toss around minions.

Second it will do the sil in damage to the minion group.

Now a lot of people are complaining about how Harm would decimate minion groups, I'm confused how does 10 damage decimate a minion group?

If you treat a minion group as a single entity it only takes damage once so it actually makes more sense to treat them as a single group.

The player can't have it both ways either they are a single entity in which case the damage is applied once or they are multiple targets in which case the damage is only applied to each individual they target with magnitude upgrades.

When storm trooper bowling its going to inflict damage once to the minion group even if they are using an entire minion group as the bowling ball.

Now personally when people start tossing multiple groups of minions around, because of the required ranged attack I treat it just like autofire upgrade the check and require 2 advantages for each multiple to hit, but thats just me.

With Harm, it's the fact that the damage ignores the target's Soak. So with a decent Intellect and the Control Upgrade to add your ranks in Medicine to the damage, that enables the PC to very easily take out multiple minions in a group, something that Move (the measuring stick for "easily abused Force powers" in terms of power) generally requires you to hurl something really big (Silhouette 2 or bigger) to reliably accomplish. If you're just doing damage with Move based upon a silhouette 1 object (base damage 10), then you'd need a degree of luck to get more than a single minion with each attack, going by the average minion stats of soak value 4 and wound threshold 5; a silhouette 1 hurled object would take out 1 minion for sure, but you'd need a lot of successes to get a second minion, and even then you need 2 Force points to accomplish it (1 for the base power, 1 for the Strength Upgrade).

Heal/Harm just requires a single Force point, as the Control Upgrade in question doesn't have an activation cost, plus you've got a decent chance to recover a substantial amount of strain with an easily obtainable Control Upgrade. A Knight Level PC could very easily begin play with Heal/Harm, 2 Range Upgrades, and the Control Upgrades to add Medicine ranks to damage dealt and recover strain while doing so, while also having an Intellect of 3 (at least) and 3 ranks in Medicine, which itself will be fairly easy to boost once the character starts earning XP.

I'm not seeing a problem considering for way less xp and a bit of cash someone can pick up Jury Rig Auto fire and wipe out entire groups of minions in a single attack.

The key to determining broken status is if it costs less then 15 xp to buy and obliterates 4 or 5 groups of minions in a single attack.

Harm to do what you claim costs 70 xp Move costs 35 xp

Harm deals wounds, and minions share a common Wound Threshold. Whether or not you're "targeting" a single minion or the whole group is semantics. The mechanical effect is that they take wounds as a group.

The Pressure Point talent ignores soak, and adds ranks in Medicine to the damage dealt. Someone with a high Brawn and tons of Medicine ranks could decimate a minion group. 5 Brawn + 5 Medicine = 10 base (stun) damage, unsoakable.

Lightsabers essentially ignore soak. And they can be thrown!

I don't think Harm is all that OP in the grand scheme of things. Plus that, it's an eeeevil power. Killing people with the power of your mind...you get conflict just for using it. That is the price of the strain recovery. And besides that, you are creating plenty of disturbances in the Force for the Empire to be able to locate and destroy you. All told, I don't think it deserves its own special rules for how it treats minion groups. KISS.