54 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

normally paying extra advantage to "crit again" just adds +10 to the original crit percentile roll, I was expecting it to kill an extra minion in a minion group, can't remember where I got that.

I wouldn't change it now though, only If you start a new campaign

my players do love mowing down mooks, I'll put the 6 of them up against or so 30 minions and 2 rivals and it'll be over in 3 rounds, maybe 4 if they're unlucky.

But they finally ran up against a large group they won't be able to mow down that quickly. Muhahahahahaha.

Our last session January was the first of a 2 parter, we left it on a cliff hanger... they're ship a highly modified consular class light cruiser was being boarded by pirates, about 20 rivals being lead by 3 Nemesis built with the same rules as PCs (and adversary as appropriate), one the the pirates was a devaronian vanguard gunslinger named Inigo Montoya (yes there's a princess bride theme going on) who used his once per session talent (i think it's called seize the initiative) to make all of the pirates go before the PCs (essentially he tossed in a flashbang, that's the effect of talent although fluffed differently). So the PCs retreated from engineering (away from the airlocks) and that's where we called it. I expect them to slap a repair patch across the seam of the bulkhead doors to slow the pirates down and then have the ship's HRD gynoid (styled after Rommie from Gene Rodenberry's Starship Andromeda) who is synced with the ship's computer to open the airlock on the opposite side of engineering (since I'm expecting this I equipped all the pirates with vacuum sealed armor, and rocket boots so getting sucked out into space is a mere inconvenience for them, slows them down).

What the pirates don't know is last session at the beginning of the session (as a hint) I gave my players a weapon of mass distraction (imposes 2 black set back dice), it's the favored music of the ship's guard pig (gamorrean guard) Ke'Vin (as in Kevin Bacon, yes puns are thing in this game), Ke'Vin was trying to play his Gamorrean opera over his headphones and accidentally broadcast it over the comms to impose 2 black dice on all the PCs... this was to tip the players off that if they stole on of the pirates' comms they could pipe gamorrean opera over the pirates' comms and force them to either take 2 black dice to all checks (like I said a weapon of mass distraction) or shut of their comms which would allow the PCs to shank the pirates from behind one at a time quiet like.

I use minis and maps, I got deck plans for the consular from colonial chrome, you can see them here

https://red-talon-wanted-dead-or-alive.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-redshift-raven

by the way the stat block is an early version, the ship's stats are now a hybrid of a RAW raider 2 and a RAW consular class, plus attachements. I love me a sil 5 speed 5 ship (after the ion turbine upgrade)

6 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

normally paying extra advantage to "crit again" just adds +10 to the original crit percentile roll, I was expecting it to kill an extra minion in a minion group, can't remember where I got that.

I think it's a common house rule for minion groups since you can already kill multiple foes with one roll anyway.

On 15.4.2017 at 1:18 AM, DaverWattra said:

It seems to me that for any set number of minions, the more separate groups you bunch them into, the more dangerous they are for players to face. I have a number of reasons in mind:

As already stated, you are probably right. I'd just ask, what is the point of minions in your game? To challenge PCs, or to slow them down? Minions are designed to slow down PCs rather than serious challenge them. So, if you want to challenge PCs with minions, then you may need few tweaks to rules. Personally I use rivals and nemesis to challenge PCs. Players in my group have said they enjoy minions, because they really are minions. It's more like "how fast we can beat them" than "how can we win them".

On 4/15/2017 at 11:17 PM, SFC Snuffy said:

In my view, increasing lethality isn't necessary because the game isn't meant to be adversarial in that way. If that's the style that you & your players like, I believe you can expect to run into these sorts of problems with some frequency. If your PCs aren't finding minions to be challenging enough then perhaps you should engage them more creatively or, as the pirate suggested, upgrade their equipment.

No, there's no problem in my game or anything. It's not adversarial at all, it's very cooperative and story driven.

I just find the rules of this game fascinating from a numbers point of view, and so I was trying to make sure I understood the effects of minion grouping as thoroughly as I thought I did.

1 hour ago, DaverWattra said:

No, there's no problem in my game or anything. It's not adversarial at all, it's very cooperative and story driven.

I just find the rules of this game fascinating from a numbers point of view, and so I was trying to make sure I understood the effects of minion grouping as thoroughly as I thought I did.

Fair enough. Carry on!

Minion groups should be the size of the party unless it's somehow important to the story that they aren't.

7 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Minion groups should be the size of the party unless it's somehow important to the story that they aren't.

Why is this?

30 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

Why is this?

Scaling. It allows minion groups to adjust their relative power to party size, so you don't need to introduce more actual enemies to manage into the encounter when there are more players.

I think that he's asking why that exact value (minions = party size)? Why not party size minus one, or party size plus one, or some other formula?

Just to clear this up...

On 4/14/2017 at 6:45 PM, ShadoWarrior said:

There are precious few (if any) talents that PCs casn use to upgrade the difficulty of an enemy's attack against them.

Dodge, Defensive Stance (melee attacks only), Side Step (ranged attacks only), Body Guard (indirectly), Baleful Gaze. Except for the last one, they're distributed pretty good.

2 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

Just to clear this up...

Dodge, Defensive Stance (melee attacks only), Side Step (ranged attacks only), Body Guard (indirectly), Baleful Gaze. Except for the last one, they're distributed pretty good.

I should have said that there are relatively few specializations that have such talents. I have a Quartermaster/Gunner. Neither spec has those. My Commodore? Nope. My Rigger/Modder? Nope. Commando? Nope. Ace-Hotshot? Nope. Outlaw Tech? Yep (1 Side Step). Soldier-Medic? Yep (1 Dodge). Smuggler? Yep (2 Dodges).

The point? You sort of have to go out of your way to get one of those talents, unless your build concept already lucked out in having one of the specs that has them. Just going through some of the characters in my games, over half of the builds don't have trees with those talents. So odds are that PCs won't have the capability to upgrade an enemy's difficulty pool, unless the players specifically built their characters to gain that capability.

27 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

I think that he's asking why that exact value (minions = party size)? Why not party size minus one, or party size plus one, or some other formula?

Yeah. It should probably vary with PC experience level too.

The FFG adventure modules all recommend 1 minion per PC for starting (ie: zero earned XP) groups. For more experienced groups it's recommended that the number of minions in a group increase. PCs will have typically more skill ranks (and often better and/or customized weapons), so each PC's attack pool is likely to be better. The minion groups' attack pools should keep pace. GMs will have to balance deciding whether to throw a bigger group, or additional smaller groups, depending on the PCs' capabilities. Multiple minion groups tend to be more dangerous than single, larger groups, because they dish out more damage per turn. If the objective is to slow a PC group, throw a large group that the PCs have to whittle down. A large group's WT will take time to chew up. If you (for whatever reason) need to hurt the PCs, hit them with multiple minion groups.