Okay, so I'm just curious if anyone has come up with some house-rules for squads/squadrons? As it stands, they're nothing more then meat shields for important PCs/NPCs. While this provides some merit (especially in space combat), it limit's their usefulness.

I was thinking about allowing them to act as a Minion group with their own actions. The only difference is they'd still provide protection for their VIP, and would get the small bonus of formations. Has anyone tried something similar, or come up with another way to make them more relevant?

The real fundamental issue with doing that is it makes regular minion groups really inferior to squad/squadron groups. You're giving the squadded up minions the same advantage regular minions have.

The chart does allow the minion group to attack if a triumph is generated. So you do still get that attack on occasion.

If you wanted a compromise, you might instead have the default be the minion group gets the base attack instead of the squad leader, and the squad leader gets that free attack on a triumph instead. I'd only do this if you've used the rules extensively and aren't happy with how they're performing on the table.

A separate compromise might be to allow the formations to apply to anyone in the entire narrative squad, not just the mechanical squad, but keep the offense and defense separate. Giving a non-squadded minion group and a few allies a single boost isnt going to break anything, balance wise.

Note that narratively speaking, you can split minions, have just have 2 "squadded up" with the squad leader for protection, while the others are in a standard minion group making an attack each round as normal, and you can still narratively (but not mechanically) consider them all part of the squad or squadron as far as story telling goes.

The rules are designed in such a way that minions should be falling in and out of the squad and a standard minion group, and various formations throughout the course of play, as the squad leader leverages their tactical options (squads for defense, squads in formations for special circumstances, and minion groups separated out for attacks. This adds some depth to play, and lets players interested in acting as more of a squad leader than a combatant get that feel of marshalling their forces in a tactical manner. You lose any of that if you just give the minions ALL the benefits all at once permanently.

Obviously, the only rule is fun. You should do whatever works best for your players at your table.

I've used the minion rules extensively, and the squad/squadron rules on several occasions. Honestly, I didn't think about splitting groups of mooks up with just a few providing protection, the rest operating as an offensive minion group, and then swapping in the occasional mook for protection as needed. That could probably alleviate my concerns. One of my players has a group of 6 followers, but he's been rather unhappy using them as a squad. Especially since he's more of a social character, and has limited combat skills. He misses his own shots more then he hits, and his groupies aren't a lot of help outside of acting as a shield for him. So your other compromise of using the groups attack rolls rather then the PCs would also be beneficial for him.

So one additional question: how would you handle a minion group of soldiers/mercs armed with blasters, that gets squadded up with a lightsaber wielder with Reflect? does his Reflect protect the entire squad (reminds me of clone troopers following jedi into battle)? If said jedi is using Sense to upgrade the difficulty of defense dice, does this apply to the whole group as well?

RAW, the squad increases in silhouette size when it is created. Attacks are automatically considered to target and hit the squad leader unless they choose to redirect the hit to a member of the squad, killing that squad member instantly.

Also, consider while in combat, generating a triumph can trigger a squad attack no matter what check the squad leader is making. If it is a more social character, encourage them to invest in leadership (a social skill). They can make leadership checks to change the squad formation, or just buff party members with advantage or various talent checks. If they have 4 ranks in leadership and a presence of 4, that's 4 yellows every check, meaning there is something near a 1 in 3 chance of hitting a triumph to trigger a free attack.

in the scenario you have outlined with the lightsaber/reflect squad leader, he'd likely just take the hits to himself, and reflect some of the damage and soak most or all of the rest, only redirecting hits to squad members (who die, regardless of damage when a hit is sent their way), when a hit is more damage than the squad leader feels comfortable taking after Reflect and Soak are factored, or after they have already suffered a lot of strain and aren't keen on suffering more to trigger a reflect.

If they use sense to upgrade the difficulty of attacking them, again, the target of any attacks is always assumed to be the squad leader (albeit at silhouette +1) , so yes, the difficulty WOULD upgrade.

Hope that helps!

1 hour ago, KRKappel said:

They can make leadership checks to change the squad formation, or just buff party members with advantage or various talent checks. If they have 4 ranks in leadership and a presence of 4, that's 4 yellows every check, meaning there is something near a 1 in 3 chance of hitting a triumph to trigger a free attack.

That is not mathematical sound, giving up three attacks to trigger one free attack is not reasonable. Now if you can find actually USEFUL actions, like defensive circle, force powers, scathing tirade, combat checks, actual helpful leadership checks (mission specialist and navigator formations can help with that), etc then those minions become a lot more useful as we are start talking about actual nearly free attacks instead.
And once showboat and master pilot come into play we are talking about massive gains for the minion group forming a squadron with its squadron leader. The one occasion becomes about twice per turn. I gotta love my squadrons.

Anyway, squadrons and squads are great, they just don't replace general usefulness of a character, especially as the leadership requirement to use them are super low, forming a squad before combat is after all a simple or easy check usually.

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 11:06 PM, TalosX said:

Okay, so I'm just curious if anyone has come up with some house-rules for squads/squadrons? As it stands, they're nothing more then meat shields for important PCs/NPCs. While this provides some merit (especially in space combat), it limit's their usefulness.

I was thinking about allowing them to act as a Minion group with their own actions. The only difference is they'd still provide protection for their VIP, and would get the small bonus of formations. Has anyone tried something similar, or come up with another way to make them more relevant?

Got notes on this. But so far just notes. Someday I plan on expanding and using it. If someone has something already I would be greatly interested in taking a look.

The notes I have delve into modifying the formations a bit, leadership uses (actions/maneuvers a squad's leader may make such as changing formations, directing fire, rallying, etc), discussion on communications on the squad level, and using the RAW Fear rules as some sort of morale system for squads.