So i had an experiment over the weekend on minion groups and that was to give them linked = group size. Of course everyone on the PC side were fighting with squads so they had ablative armor so to speak but I kind of liked the mechanic. What do you guys think of minion groups with the linked ability?
more deadly minions
It's been suggested before. It is a good idea, as is simply adding other weapon effects via weapon load outs to minion groups.
glad to know I'm not the only one
There are a bunch of ways to up the usefulness of minions without discarding the concept. Personally, I like them to stick around a little longer, so minions are killed 1 per hit max (apply soak at HT to each one), but for rule of cool, each crit activation kills a minion too.
I have been looking at adding several officer/non-com rivals with powers to boost the minions as well. Currently you can add blue to their roll, but I was thinking of adding orders of "get to cover" which grants defense +1 to all applicable minions (i.e. Stormtroopers for a Stormtrooper Sergeant).
Honestly when you just equip them with better weapons they're pretty friggin lethal as in.
I would probably give them something between Linked and Autofire. Doesn't necessarily need a written rule, but I would rather spread the damage among the PC's than really hammer on one.
They're called grenades.....
This won't make them more deadly but probably more survivable but giving Adversary to minion groups can throw the players for a loop when you first pull it on them.
I've tried a lot of things but the one thing that's worked the best for me is to just add a minion or two.
the biggest downfall of minions in my campaign is action economy. There's constantly 5-6 players at the table and I usually double the minions so there's 10-12 of them. and usually a sergeant for storm troopers anyway. I normally have to make the minions in largely clumped groups to make them survive any amount of time which makes them super deadly most of the time. But because they only get maybe 2-3 turns out of the round as opposed to the 5-6 the players get they get mowed down pretty quickly. So i'm mostly thinking about ways to have more smaller minion groups but still have them be as effective as the less larger groups.
More groups.
that's the plan I just trying to not put in like 6 groups 5 strong XD
6 hours ago, MamoruK said:the biggest downfall of minions in my campaign is action economy. There's constantly 5-6 players at the table and I usually double the minions so there's 10-12 of them. and usually a sergeant for storm troopers anyway. I normally have to make the minions in largely clumped groups to make them survive any amount of time which makes them super deadly most of the time. But because they only get maybe 2-3 turns out of the round as opposed to the 5-6 the players get they get mowed down pretty quickly. So i'm mostly thinking about ways to have more smaller minion groups but still have them be as effective as the less larger groups.
3 hours ago, 2P51 said:More groups.
Having said that, more groups can dramatically increase the time an encounter takes. Not only do you have to account for the extra turns that your minions have, you also have to account for the fact that they'll probably survive longer. Fine if that's what you're going for, but I've had a couple of encounters that ended up really dragging.
Personally, based on my own experience, I would start with larger groups and then divide them if need be.
7 hours ago, MamoruK said:that's the plan I just trying to not put in like 6 groups 5 strong XD
But why? It's a dead-simple way to scale up encounters without having to do any real work.
4 hours ago, edwardavern said:Personally, based on my own experience, I would start with larger groups and then divide them if need be.
This is generally how I do it, for the reasons you expressed. Start adding a minion or two until that doesn't work, then split the groups and try again. I try not to quibble too much about mooks getting destroyed.
The biggest problem with adding more mooks is the believability problem. If you are boarding a ship with a crew of around 100, there is a limit to how many of that crew will be stormtroopers.
My players currently have 2 autofire weapons, and mow down minions in droves. But I have a realism problem, where I can't stack 4 sergeants with every 10 troopers.
2 hours ago, Edgookin said:The biggest problem with adding more mooks is the believability problem. If you are boarding a ship with a crew of around 100, there is a limit to how many of that crew will be stormtroopers.
My players currently have 2 autofire weapons, and mow down minions in droves. But I have a realism problem, where I can't stack 4 sergeants with every 10 troopers.
That's an excellent point. This seems to be the time to either upgrade the minions or accept that they're paste before your PCs. I've had luck adding Adversary in this instance but with PCs of that capability, I often revert to time limits and environmental complications to spice up combat rather than just increasing minion counts.
I generally put in 1 sgt per 6 minions
I haven't used a lot of minion groups since my first campaign well over a year ago. Decided to use Stormtrooper groups on my nearly 300xp players and they worked pretty well against the split party in their two combats. It was tough but wasn't over the top as I only sent a certain number of groups against them.
As far as how many I would put in a group, the squad rules say a squad is a max of 11 minions (plus the person running the squad) so 12 minions to a group is great if you want them to survive a bit. 2 groups of 8 worked fine for what I was going for.
Next session they walk into a literal den of wampas (on purpose!)
Someone may die. Several wampas will die. It's going to be intense.
On 5/16/2017 at 1:00 PM, MamoruK said:So i had an experiment over the weekend on minion groups and that was to give them linked = group size. Of course everyone on the PC side were fighting with squads so they had ablative armor so to speak but I kind of liked the mechanic. What do you guys think of minion groups with the linked ability?
'Linked' is a pretty good idea- would probably use it only for military-themed minions myself, because I'm a weirdo. I have had some luck adding the adversary quality to minion groups, as that chance of a despair coming up will occasionally give PCs cause. (Oddly, they never choose to upgrade MY rolls.)
But there's one other thing. So lately I've been thinking about my own tactics- how to take advantage of their numbers, how to place them in the encounter area more effectively , how better to use their abilities, etc. Only problem is that I have a hard enough time keeping track of crap in the middle of a combat encounter anyway, so I've been focusing on ways to front-load as much of this as possible. If we're going to focus on narrative play here, it seems more appropriate for it to LOOK like the minions have the upper hand when the encounter starts- they score a couple good hits in the first round or so and then their strategy begins to break down. Has anyone had any luck doing this sort of thing consistently?
I like the idea of giving them linked or auto fire. What I've done is give them one or two more soak and 3 more wound per minion.
There already exists a way to upgrade minions. It's called "rivals". Or even "nemeses".
Minions are supposed to be cannon fodder. If you need to increase the challenge level beyond what you can achieve with increased group sizes, I think you'd be better off using rivals instead.