For those of you that have played more than 1-2 games: are you finding that the majority of minions have way too much (4+) soak?

I know that this was harped on earlier (specifically with regard to stormtroopers), but many of the minions have stats that are equivalent to, or better than, your typically PC even after a few games… Considering how the dice mechanics work (more dice > upgrades) AND considering that character creation is somewhat limiting in terms of characteristics (BR 3 isn't "common"), it just seems strange that a street thug minion is running around with BR 3 and 4 soak. That's just one example of many.

A couple of my PCs (hacker, doctor) are sitting around 2 soak, but minions are mostly twice that.

Seems like minions need a characteristic retune. And also shouldn't be running around with 500+ credits worth of gear. To be clear, I'm NOT referring to stormtroopers (although their encumbrance is whacked if you add it up).

Exalted5 said:

I dont necessarily think its a problem - I mean a street thug … a Hells Angel biker …SHOULD have brawn 3+ .. and a 16yo skinny girl would have problems fighting him off (Brawn 1) … that being said I too observed that IT IS tough playing a Brawn 1 character, then again …then dont play a Brawn 1 character dumping a stat to 1 SHOULD hurt …and speaking of soak, after a session or two most characters should be able to pick up a soak 2 armour.

My feeling is that many people who are frustrated about the powerlevel / soak etc - expect this or would like it to be a balanced tactical game akin to D&D whereas Im expecting more of a WFRP2 feel where some characters just simply are not fighters (nor should all minions be!) … and where I wouldnt necessarily expect combat encounters in every session …

Exalted5 said:

Well, minions also have the serious drawback of only have a Wound Threshold of 5 and no Strain Threshold. So any talents (Politico has a doozy) or other abilities (like the Influence basic power) that deals Strain damage instead get applied to the Minion's Wound Threshold with their Soak Value not allowed. Further, a critical hit takes that minon out of the fight, even the attack only did a single point of damage, and I don't think there's very many (if any) minions that have a Soak Value greater than 5, which means your basic blaster pistol will do damage on a basic success.

To my view, it's akin to 4e's take on minions, where they're going to have slightly better defense values than a regular foe of that level, but they go down automatically if you hit them. So EotE's minions, particularly the ones who are geared for combat, like street thugs, stormtroopers, Imperial Army, and such, need a better Soak Value than your average PC, as they can't withstand as much damage as the PCs can. Heck, a PC with a blaster carbine or rifle is quite capable of dropping a minion with a single shot each round with a basic level of success and no additional talents or weapon qualities.

Boehm said:

3WhiteFox3 said:

depends how much u get shot

3WhiteFox3 said:

A bit off-topic, but a fair question.

Frankly, if there's going to be any combat during a session, the Brawn 1 character is at a significant disadvantage, something I saw first hand with the Twi'lek Technician/Mechanic that was a test PC in a demo game I ran. After the first combat and witnessing how dangerous combat could be, her first priority was to seek out cover try to draw as little attention to herself in a fight as possible so as not to get blasted.

You can get by with an Agility of 1 so long as you're not a ranged combatant, as a buddy who played a Trando Hired Gun/Marauder quite aptly proved during a Skype session. Granted, having to resort to melee combat in a game where ranged combat rules the roost means you're going to get shot up a good deal more than the PCs who are using blasters, but that's true regardless of what your Agility score is.

Intellect 1 really isn't much of a drawback, especially for a combat-character, as it mostly impacts skill checks, leaving you to rely on raising your skill ranks to get more ability dice, and pretty much being capped at 1 proficiency die on those Intellect-based skills. But odds are good there's going to be other PCs with a decent Intellect, so that's much less of an issue in terms of group information… just don't get caugth solo when you've got to hotwire a door lock or plot an Astrogation course.

Back on-topic, this past Friday the Skype game I played in had a Defel Assassin as one of the bad guy, along with a Barabel that got used as target practice and a couple groups of Quarren thugs.

And with Adversary 3, my combat-focused PC was probably the only one in the party with a decent chance of hitting him using my primary weapon (blaster carbine), with the Brawl attack I made only connecting mostly due to sheer luck (both Challenge dice came up blank). Any of the other PCs probably would have needed similar quantities of luck with their main attacks. And given that most of the careers don't have access to a lot of combat skills, it'd be quite easy to have a party of non-combat pros suffer from lots of failed rolls (no Successes, few if any Advantages) when facing something like that.

This kinda got me to thinking, that maybe the Defel Assassin should only have Adversary 2, and that Adversary 3 should really be reserved for really big-league threats, like the Black Sun Vigo and the Emperor's Hand, and possibly the Forsaken Jedi (who can get by with Adversary 2 quite well thanks to having the 'sense danger' upgrade for Sense). Maybe it's just my point of view, but Adversary 3 should only be applied to the major villains, who when finally confronted would be the equivalent of an end-of-story-arc Boss Battle in an video-game RPG, who have a name and some back story beyond "tough enemy that's fighting the PCs." Granted, I probably don't know the full story behind what the GM (Cyril) has in mind for this Defel, but it kinda felt like that particularly combat was a "mid-story" encounter, and that perhaps the Defel was a bit too tough with having Adversary 3, seeing as how this was only our party's second "adventure" overall.

Just some thoughts.

Donovan Morningfire said:

What power level were your players' characters? That's pretty critical information to be including here.

Without that infomation, its a completely unfair way to judge a mechanism used to increase difficulty if you throw some newly minted PCs at a henchmen with Adversary 3 that probably SHOULDN'T be able to handle straight out of the gate and then claim the stats need to be nerfed.

-WJL

Assuming that FFG never intended Adversary to go over 3, and that Adversary 3 is considered the equivalent of the toughest opponent(s) in Saga edition, I'd say that it makes sense that for every 5 CR of the opponent (in Saga terms), the opponent should have 1 adversary, i.e.: CR 1-5 = Adversary 0, CR 6-10 = Adversary 1, CR 11-15 = Adversary 2, CR 16+ Adversary 3.

So, looking at the table of equivalence I reverse engineered between Saga XP and EotE XP, that means that for every point of adversary the party should have earned roughly 200-250XP (and less than 200XP you probably shouldn't be throwing foes with Adversary - or at least greater than Adversary 1 - at them).

Of course, FFG may instead assume that EotE only spans the equivalent of level 1-10 (Or maybe even 1-5) in Saga, in which case you'll have to adjust the numbers accordingly.

This seems to match up pretty well with my (limited) experience, that the master hunter, with Adversary 1, was a very tough opponent for my party of characters with 2-3 sessions under their belt (which would be the equivalent of a CR 4-5 opponent in Saga).

After my first playtest last weekend (FINALLY!) we ran into confusion over a set of Bounty Hunter Minions.

First we ran into confusion over the Soak value listed. The Wounds are multiplied by the total number, but the Soak couldn't be (it would be impossibly high if it was), but this is not clearly listed as such. We determined that you had to overcome Soak for each individual with remaining damage continuing on to the next Minion. So 14 damage would pass 3 Soak, kill 1 minion (6), Soak 3 on the next, and do 2 more damage. It appears everyone else just determined that the Soak is just applied once. This is fine, we just made a quick decision since we could not find a answer. More clarification in the final book would have prevented this.

Second of all, we determined that the skill rating would go down for the group as their number is thinned. I don't believe we read this actual rule either, just made the determination on how the rule for the Group Skills worked. Anyone else doing this?

BrashFink said:

The way that I've been running it, and I believe Cyril has as well, is that the Soak Value is only applied once. So for for your example, the 14 damage would pass their Soak 3, leaving 11 damage, which would be enough to take out two minions (assuming 5 Wound Threshold each) and a point left over to be applied to a third minion. If nothing else, it does help keep combat flowing in that it doesn't take as much time to take down a group of minions. I guess the source for my interpretation of that is that minions are considered a "single entity" for most purposes, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to keep re-applying Soak Value for every single minion in the group.

As for skill ratings, I'd say that less minions in the group due to attrition means less skill ranks for that minion group. So if dealing with a minion group consisting of 4 bounty hunter minions, taking out two of them would drop their Ranged (Light) skill ranking from 3 down to 1, making them less dangerous as more damage is dealt.

BrashFink said:

The book isn't clear on this. The way our group plays is to deduct soak once. The applicable passage reads as follows (page 196, under Minions fight as a group ):

"Damage inflicted to any member of the unit is deducted from the total, with individual members being elimanated as their share of theat wound total is exhausted."

I don't think the example in the book provided isn't particularly illustrative on this point. When I read "Damage inflicted to any is deducted from the total" I read that to mean the damage that remains after accounting for soak once. If a group has 5 members, 25 wound, and soak 3, your damage roll of 14 above, would inflict 11 damage (14-3), therfore deduct 11 wound from their total. Two minions are incapacitated, 1 more takes one damage.

This interpretation is consistent with the interpretation I provided re: minions & grenades in a different thread . It seemed to meet forum consensus.

I'm not saying your interpretation is wrong, however. The rules simply aren't clear.

BrashFink said:

I think you're spot on here. As the groups numbers are thinned, their skill ranks are essentially reduced.

-WJL

Yeah we mulled over the soak thing for probably 15 mins wondering if it should be applied once, but were baffled why it did not state once, where it was pretty clear on how to handle the Wounds. Something as simple as "Wounds: 6 (each)" on the Minions and we would not even had had the discussion. It would have be obvious the wounds were multiplied, the Soak was just as listed. Really, doing the Multi-Soak method was kind of hideously cumbersome. I am pretty glad that is not how it is.

As for the skill level, it is good thing we had fairy experienced players and thought this out. I could see a lot of people not catching that with how it is currently written. We had a small confusion over how the Minion skills worked, and went over the section real quick, we were like… "Wow, you know what that means? They get worse the less there is. That is BRILLIANT!" At the same time however, we wondered if that is what they intended. Again, one sentence would clarify that for anyone reading.

My players all loved it. We are converting from a WEG D6 campaign we started at the beginning of this year. As most people, the loved the dice and how they worked, even though I have a set of slightly modified dice I made to be able to use a ton of them: which can be seen HERE . We all had a blast.

LethalDose said:

This is exactly how we've been playing it as well. If you're a minion group, you're a single entity for the purposes of the rules. You get one attack per round and are targeted as an individual. To me that means you get to apply your Soak once to an incoming attack. Sure there may be five of you, but it's the price you pay for acting together to increase your effectiveness.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Yep, I've been running it that way as well. I started a thread about some of the gray areas with minions and I hope we get more clarity on how they work in the final book. How soak works with minion groups is one of the areas that could use more specific rules.