Hey, guys, I hope someone can help me on this. If a minion group of 5 stormtroopers (Wound Threshold 25) gets hit with a Blast 10 effect, is the damage subtracted from the Wound Threshold, meaning they are down to 15 and two stormtroopers are out of the picture, or is the damage applied to each individually, meaning the whole group is out of the picture. I would also like to know how this applies to damage done to minion groups with the Move power. If the same group is slammed against a wall for 10 points are they all taken out or do they just take 10 points to the overall Wound Threshold. Thanks.

You are correct. 10 damage from a "flurry" of blaster fire would kill 2 of the 5 stormies. If you have a player using the move power you have to think of the situation natively. The move power being a little OP makes the situation a bit harder to make the narrative work. So If the player takes 2 guys and slams them together for 20 points of damage I would limit it to the two guys being defeated since the player declared 2 targets. If they said "I use move to damage as many as possible" I think I would limit it to the number of figures he is able to affect with his move skill.

I see. However, minions count as "one target" so with the Move power a player could probably easily affect a minion group, which brings me back to the damage issue. I believe that the damage would just effect the minions Wound Threshold, but I'm being told that the developers said in a podcast that in such an event each individual would take damage, thus making it possible to take them all out. It seems very OP to me and I'm not sure that goes with the rules as they are written in the core book.

A minion group is considered a single TARGET. Each minion adds to the overall wound pool, but as their individual contribution is EXCEEDED they are removed, I'll show you how I track wounds, using your example above:

Before the hit:

Stormtrooper squad

WT5, Soak 5: 0/0/0/0/0

After the hit of 15 damage, Soak reduces it to 10:

Stormtrooper Squad

WT5, Soak 5: 5/5/0/0/0

So the first trooper in the squad has had their wound threshold exceeded, they are out. But the second one is AT their threshold. So after resolving that attack one minion has been removed from the group, one is almost down and 3 are at full health.

Now onto Move. Since a minion group is considered a single target there is no need to activate Magnitude to effect the entire group. A common house rule though is to increase the silhouette size by 1 if it's a larger group (roughly 5 or more). So those Stormtroopers become a single Silhouette 2 "object". Whilst making moving the group a bit harder (Average instead of simple check and an extra Strength upgrade), it isn't as hard as if you treated them all as individuals, and it has the added bonus of increasing the damage they suffer when smacked into a wall. It's worth pointing out that using Move to attack with the Magnitude upgrade is very difficult; it becomes an "autofire" attack with a maximum possible number of hits equal to the total number of objects your able to move. So that increases the difficulty by one more, but also requires 2 Advantage or a Triumph per additional hit beyond the first... it gets expensive quick!

Stormtrooper Squad (suffered a hit of 20 damage from Move+ 1 for success, reduced to 16 by Soak)

WT5, Soak 5; 5/5/5/1/0

So this time 3 troopers where eliminated.

Now onto the one exception to the rule... Blast. Let's say there is a Rival Officer engaged with the troopers, a PC throws a grenade at the Officer and gets enough Advantage to trigger blast. The intention of the Blast rules is for each Minion to be hit;

Stormtrooper Squad (Hit by Blast 8, with 1 Success on the roll, so 9 damage):

Each individual suffers 9-5=4 damage

Total group suffers 5x4=20 damage

WT 5, Soak 5: 5/5/5/5/0

So from that blast 3 are eliminated, 1 almost eliminated, and one unharmed.

It's very important to remember The purpose of minions. They are intended to be canon fodder. They are there to make the PCs look cool when the PCs take out a huge number of them easily. The other thing to keep in mind is there are always reinforcements one destiny point flip away.

Thanks, both of you, very helpful. I love the narrative style system, but it has a bit of a learning curve as oppose to more traditional gaming systems out there.

Just think of Minion Groups as a kind of cheat. It allows the GM to say "There's 10 stormtroopers over there" but only have to do the paperwork and tracking for one really beefy guy. It's a tool to keep the GM from going insane and the game to keep flowing.

Also note that you don't have to group minions. Typically you will, but there's certain situations where having a straggler or not grouping them at all is appropriate.

Good point Ghost, there is also no requirement that all the Minions of a group are engaged with each other. It makes things easier, but sometimes it's more narrative to say "this group is spread over an area of short range." Thus reducing their exposure to the Blast quality.

I would suggest you keep a group at least Short to each other just to avoid weird narratives.

"My wookiee attacks the stormtrooper he's Engaged with using his video axe!

*Roll roll*

Woo hoo! OK I kill the stormtrooper, and the three others at long range are so impressed they fall over dead too!"