Hey all, looking for a few clarifications from fellow GM's who've worked with the Squad/Squadron rules out of the Age of Rebellion GM's Kit.

I'm working with a moderately high-power party (Average XP is just under 200) and all the swag that goes with that. Last combat was the first time I employed the option to use Minions as a squad to cover a few Nemesis NPCs to keep the two auto-fire abusers from wasting them in the opening initiative pass, and it raised a couple questions about the Minions in squad with the Nemesis.

1) Can the Minions be targeted separately from the Squad Leader? There isn't anything I or the other guy in my group who GMs this system could see one way or the other, leading us to believe yes, they can be targeted independently of their Squad Leader.

2) If targeting the Leader or the Minion group, and if that leader has Adversary or the Sense Power upgraded for defense, does the Minion group squadded up gain the benefits of those improved defenses?

3) Not directly related to squadding up, but if someone is using an ability that increases the difficulty of a check (Auto-Fire, Dual-wield, etc) on a target with Adversary or Sense, which is applied first - the increased difficulty, or the upgrades from Adversary/Sense?

If anyone has anything from the Devs, appreciated. If not, opinions would be welcome. Thanks for any help.

1,2) Don´t have the GM Kit yet.

but if the Minions can take theire own movements/action I would say they can, and wouldn´t profit from the advasary talent.

3) First you check the base difficultty and then apply the Players Talent/maneuvers/Actions and the the ones of the advasery.

Do a player with auto-fire will have to:

1. Look at range (let´ s say medium) ,

2. add one difficulty for Autofire = ,

3.Now apply Enemy talents like Advasery/ sense/ dodge (let´ s say Advasary 3 AND Doge 1(for 1 Strain) for 4 Upgrades) =

You wouldn't normally group the Minions with Nemeses and Rival because of the differences in the way the skills work for each type. The Nemesis or Rival can be Engaged with the Minions, allowing them to use Talents that benefit the Minion group or Rival/Nemesis.

I'm AFB to offer thoughts on Sense and Adversary upgrades and when to apply them. But I can tell you that you can give Adversary to Minion groups if you want to.

1. No, they cannot. You target the squad(ron) leader, with all their applicable talents and defences and if the attack hits the leader can choose whether to take the hit himself (with soak and wounds as normal) or let it hit one of the minions in the squad(ron). In the latter case you don't bother with damage, the hit simply kills one minion.

2. Yes, because you're targeting the leader. See above.

3. I would first increase and then upgrade, but I don't think the rules specifically calls out one above the other. I could be wrong, though.

3) Task Difficulty is set first, then upgrades. So in Autofire's case, you set up the range and the xtra die for Autofire, then upgrade that base Difficulty pool.

Thanks for the replies to all.

For those who don't have the Age GM's kit, the group that forms the squad loses their independent action to squad up with a heavy hitter. They move with their squad leader, and only get to do stuff in the event of multiple Advantage from the squad leader to do a Maneuver; and it takes a Triumph on the squad leader's combat check to give them an attack.

The first question is pretty open-ended, since the Age GM kit isn't terribly specific. I could read it either way, tbh. For right now, I'm honestly unsure on it. The notion of squadding up is a decent counter to heavy PC combat types blowing the piss out of the highest threat in their first initiative pass.... I really don't know. My best-guess says they can be independently targeted, but I could read it the other way quite easily.

The second question was poorly phrased.... the second was more conditional on the first. i.e. 'If you can target the members of the squad independently from the squad leader, do the squad leader's defensive Talents apply?' sort of thing. Which would kind of defeat the purpose of independent targeting, I suppose...

And for three, thanks, that makes the most sense. Guess I was wrong when I applied Adversary first.... which had the nice benefit of making checks remotely difficult for my two auto-fire abusers. *sighs*

Thanks for the input from all!

Other than beefing up big bads the Squad&Squadron rules are intended to simplify combat even more than Minions do on their own. For that reason keep it simple an rule that the minions can't be targeted separately.

On a side note if you having trouble with Autofire try to make a few encounters where big weapons are either not welcome or have very negative social effects. Crime bosses and Corporate negotiators do not tolerate heavy weapons in their presence, unless it's their own guards carrying them. Crowds of people tend to run screaming when 2 meat heads walk into your local street market carrying BFG's. Customs officials spend a lot of time inspecting a persons license to carry Big Bertha, especially when "you know who" is in town. Local Sheriffs just flat out kick you out of town or "look after that while your visiting town" by locking it in their safe (and no big city permit matters out here boy).

So, it looks like most questions have been answered here, but I wrote a sort of fictional scenario a while back to show how these rules should sort of look at the table, to give GMs who were confused about how they worked RAW. You can give it a read, and it might provide some more clarification about at least what my intent was when writing them. The general idea, though, was to provide some more durability to BBEG's and PC's (especially for space combat). Note that you are generally giving up some attack/damage-dealing potential to get this durability. However, if you have a high enough Leadership skill, Triumphs should hit often enough to reduce that penalty if you keep taking that free attack.

Scroll about halfway down.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/109944-gm-screen-squad-rules/page-3