I have a question regarding minion groups. Say we have 3 storm troopers acting as a minion group. They have Heavy weapons 2 becausethey are 3 (-1 because they get skill points for each member beyond the first). Ok, so they attack with GYY.

They are equipped with blaster rifles, base damage 9. But here comes the question. A single blaster rifle also has base damage 9. When in combat it's the NPC slot#s turn, the group acts as one, so the whole group can attack, and if it does, they focus fire on 1 player character? Or is it 3 times the damage, because base dmg of 1 rifle is 9, but there are 3 troopers?

From how I read the rules, it doesn't matter whether there are 2 troopers or 20 troopers in a minion group, they always attack 1 PC and always do 9 base damage (of course more successes will be added in a group of 20..)

That is correct. They act as if they are one person and therefore they can only focus their fire on one person at a time, unless they have an auto-fire weapon. Base damage always stays 9 and successes are added as usual. But the bigger the minion group, the better their dice pool, since they gain additional ranks in their group skills.

After the minion group size of 6, additional minions will not improve the dice pool, since the max rank is 5. But they will survive longer. This actually makes sense to me in the cinematic setting: Think of a large group of storm trooper attacking. Only the first row will shoot at the heroes, the troopers in the back don't contribute much. But once somebody in the first row goes down, someone else will take their place.

May the initiative roll be with you :-)

Fred

Ah okay, thanks. That seems a bit weird, that they always focus fire. Would make up a house rule, that after the damage is calculated that damage can be split up to as many PC as there are individuals in the minion group. Any big downsides on this?

I mean, in every movie it's "Blast them!" and not "Okay guys, blast him, then him, then her!"

Well, the PC's may have different ranged defense, and splitting up damage probably means they don't get over soak.

If you have a bunch, may make sense to have several small minion groups, each attacking a different PC.

1 hour ago, MasterZelgadis said:

Ah okay, thanks. That seems a bit weird, that they always focus fire. Would make up a house rule, that after the damage is calculated that damage can be split up to as many PC as there are individuals in the minion group. Any big downsides on this?

I mean, in every movie it's "Blast them!" and not "Okay guys, blast him, then him, then her!"

Minion grouping rules aren't meant to make tactical sense. They are to give the GM options for scaling difficulty for groups.

What I've done, or my friends have done, is have two smaller groups, for example two squads of 5 Stormtroopers, focusing on one PC each per turn. This way the damage gets spread out, so you don't have one or two PCs with critical injuries and one or two with no wounds. Then just scale the amount of groups or their size depending how difficult you want the fight to be for them.

Keep in mind that not everything in the narrative is dictated directly by the dice results. When that stormtrooper squad opens up, blaster bolts fill the air and the sharp tang of ozone fills your nostrils. Some of the PCs dodge and weave through the incoming fire, but one gets winged by a couple of bolts that punch through his armor (resulting in 9+successes damage, but narrated however you like).

Also remember that rounds are much longer than in most tactical simulator-type games. There's a lot going on from one round to the next, and a lot of fire being traded back & forth. The combat check & resulting damage represents the net of what occurred during the round - it's not meant to represent a single pull of the trigger by a single stormtrooper (or PC, for that matter).

Thanks guys, we played our second session yesterday, and it was a blast for all of us. Stayed with the focus fire, worked...

Still have a few problems interpreting Advantage results. In many cases t takes very long time until I or a player comes up with a way to use them.

Dice interpretation can take a while until everyone gets the hang of it and the feel for how much weight to add to the symbols. Just remember, especially while learning the system, it's ok not to use all the results and it's often (but not always) better to keep the game moving then to wrack your brains on what that left over odd advantage can be used for.

Just removing some strain or giving a boost die are easy, default options that don't require a lot of mechanical consideration. Boosting has the added advantage of acting as a segue into the next player's action, which enhances the cinematic feel of the game.

With the odd advantage you could always ask the player what they want to do with it, for example they might come up with a small thing that goes wrong which adds to the current part of the story - or they might just want to take the strain instead.

18 minutes ago, VikingWolf said:

With the odd advantage you could always ask the player what they want to do with it, for example they might come up with a small thing that goes wrong which adds to the current part of the story - or they might just want to take the strain instead.

Unless I'm mistaken in my reading of this, your suggestions would be more in line with interpreting threat, no?

13 minutes ago, Edgehawk said:

Unless I'm mistaken in my reading of this, your suggestions would be more in line with interpreting threat, no?

Oh yeah, my bad ( )! But the concept still applies with advantage. Such as the PC could decide something reasonable happens with the amount of advantage, for example a blaster shot misses but reveals what could be a secret door. Then it gives you options for the story, such as you could use a dark side destiny point to then get rid of this door etc, keeping the story flowing and interesting.

Edit: This is a piss poor example btw!

22 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Minion grouping rules aren't meant to make tactical sense. They are to give the GM options for scaling difficulty for groups.

They're also there for streamlining combat. It's really nice to be able to hurl three full squads of eight stormtroopers each at your players and have the same amount of threat as twenty four stormtroopers without having to roll twenty-four attacks.

To clear this thing up:

Every minion group shoots once every round. Correct?

So a group of three storm troopers gets GYY. Does that value change if one minion is eliminated (to GGY)?

Thanks!

3 minutes ago, Seam said:

To clear this thing up:

Every minion group shoots once every round. Correct?

So a group of three storm troopers gets GYY. Does that value change if one minion is eliminated (to GGY)?

Thanks!

I have always ran it as each ground shoots once each turn. They deal the same amount of damage regardless of how many are left in that group.

33 minutes ago, Seam said:

To clear this thing up:

Every minion group shoots once every round. Correct?

So a group of three storm troopers gets GYY. Does that value change if one minion is eliminated (to GGY)?

Thanks!

Yes and yes

36 minutes ago, Seam said:

To clear this thing up:

Every minion group shoots once every round. Correct?

So a group of three storm troopers gets GYY. Does that value change if one minion is eliminated (to GGY)?

Thanks!

Each group gets one turn per round, initiative roll is also determined for each group.

The dice pool is determined by the number of minions in a group and will change as minions go down.

Example: One minion group of three stormtroopers (wound 5 each, total WT = 15) will start with GYY. Once they received more than 5 wounds, one ST will go down, thus the pool gets reduced to GGY. Once they received more than 10 wounds, the second ST will go down, leaving the last one with a pool of just GGG, since no group ranks are left.

At more than 15 wounds the last ST is also down.

Note: to eliminate 3 single ST, you need to deal at least 18 wounds, since each one of them needs to exceed their Wound Threshold. To eliminate a minion group of 3 ST you only need to deal 16 wounds, because only the first one needs to exceed their Wound Threshold and then one more goes down for every 5 wounds.

May the your minions be with you!

Fred

This is my take on how minion groups work:

One Stormtrooper will probably not be able to hit the broadside of a lambda shuttle, but put 3 of them together in a group and at least one of them will have a decent chance every round.

At that works with how it was in the movies also.

1 minute ago, SilindeT said:

This is my take on how minion groups work:

One Stormtrooper will probably not be able to hit the broadside of a lambda shuttle, but put 3 of them together in a group and at least one of them will have a decent chance every round.

At that works with how it was in the movies also.

That's the focus fire I mentioned. But on Endor that would mean that 3 Troopers first concentrate their fire on Han, then on Leia, after that on R2, and so on..

Well, maybe the narrative variant could work.. "3 troopers send a barrage of blaser bolts on your group, and a few bolts hit SC xy"

1 minute ago, MasterZelgadis said:

That's the focus fire I mentioned. But on Endor that would mean that 3 Troopers first concentrate their fire on Han, then on Leia, after that on R2, and so on..

Well, maybe the narrative variant could work.. "3 troopers send a barrage of blaser bolts on your group, and a few bolts hit SC xy"

Correct, or think of it as on Endor there weren't very many troopers so they were singles, they didn't group up until the big battle and then 1 group (or more) for each hero.

wrong topic

I see no issue with occasionally adding the ability to a minion group that allows them to work as if they were linked and/or automatic fire weapons to reflect their training as a unit, when it makes sense.

Note: I am still new to the system and learning the rules, so I may be off base with this idea.

On 3/31/2017 at 2:19 PM, MasterZelgadis said:

Ah okay, thanks. That seems a bit weird, that they always focus fire. Would make up a house rule, that after the damage is calculated that damage can be split up to as many PC as there are individuals in the minion group. Any big downsides on this?

I mean, in every movie it's "Blast them!" and not "Okay guys, blast him, then him, then her!"

Use more minion groups to split fire. Downsides of splitting the damage is that they become even less effective than they are already and you increase the book keeping.