All other rules seem fine according to minions, but then we get to traits:

"some traits also have variable levels indicated by a number in parenthesis (X) denoting extra armour, multiple arms, or similar things. When taking a trait the number of this variable depends on the power level of minion as noted below and if a range of numbers is shown the player may choose a number from withing that range. "

First of all, why would anyone choose any other but the absolute maximum? Should there be a limit to this, or a randomized factor (like rolling the dice for it?).

second of all, why is multiple arms or various others even an option? shouldn't it be that your character should get freely to choose the normal amount of arms (1-2) so it wouldn't be an armless retard not able to do anything?

In vision players were supposted to use traits to describe their minions like
'I want a winged, 4-armed reptile-like mutant like the one in conan the barbarian cartoon so I'll give him multiple arms, flayer, some unnatural strengh, toughness and natural armour because he fights with a club and doesn't wear armour'.

Sadly the way rules are presented it very often is the other way round
'I'll get multiple arms, unnatoral T and S, fear, machine and regeneration and give him power armour because I can and then I'll say that it is servitorised mutant'.

GM is there to ensure that such minions have no right to be.

Only size (4) trait is default if you doesn't take any other but I ruled that unless you are making a servo-skull or sth like that your minion has 2 arms.



A lot of treads ago someone posted minion houserules which somewhat eliminate max level traits problem.
Here is the link www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

As ShadowRay said, they were meant to be more of a storytelling inspiration as such, but as it turns out the "best" minion is something along the lines of a flying mutant servitor baby psyker machine in power armor.

With the house rules you can actually make a minion is, you know, just a human. Then again, you shouldn't really try to make a lesser minion a human, even with the house rule. Unless you are fine with the minion being really really unhuman, and basically handicapped in most ways.

PnPgamer said:

There are some traits (like Size) where taking the maximum isn't necessarily what you want (indeed you might genuinely want something small rather than something big) but more generally the idea here is to give you options if you want them, not to produce results that are 100% balanced against each other.

As for Multiple Arms, the Trait isn't particularly well designed in the first place - in that there is a distinction between a character with two arms and a character with Multiple Arms (2). Your GM would have to be *extraordinarily* anally retentive to force you to buy Multiple Arms (2) just to give your Minion arms. I sort of assume that the "Multiple Arms (1-2)" entry is a mistake, and it actually means "Multiple Arms (3-4)" (although interestingly a character with Multiple Arms (2) gets a bonus attack which a person with two arms does not get by RAW - although this could represent the ability to dual-wield). It's also worth pointing out that there are a number of Minions you might want that actually *don't* have arms (Screamers of Tzeench, Servo-Skulls, beasts of burden) - so you could make a case for the "Multiple Arms" trait being in there as a perfectly reasonable price to pay for having a minion that can manipulate objects.

Basically you *can* min-max if you want to, and just whack all your trait points into building a flying, unnaturally tough, six-armed psychic regenerating death machine, but the game doesn't assume you're going to *want* to. The system assumes that the player will be working with the GM in good faith to produce a Minion with stats that make sense. I suspect it also assumes that the GM will be vetoing anything that looks like it was created "stats first".

Asoral said:

I'm confused about this. Why is a Lesser Minion necessarily "really really unhuman"? Its true that their stats will be *very* low (about 10% in most things) but that doesn't really make them "handicapped" in any technical sense, just bad in a fight.

Chastity said:

Well, its likely that you wont be getting much good out of them if you try to make them able to do more than one thing. Seeing how one of my players decided he was going to make his minion a melee fighter and come the first battle he realised that "yes, you can't really move all that fast with a agility bonus of 1"

And what I meant with unhuman is that "realistically" speaking nobody can survive with 10 in stats. A beast of burden might have more than 10 intelligence, for example. A baby most likely has more than 10 toughness or willpower. Do you see what I mean now?

Asoral said:

he should've dumped a 1 on something like perception and fellowship, and use the saved points for bringing up something else. As sad it is, You need to literally minmax your minions in order to make them useful.

As it is, system works for very narrow oriented minions. Some way of making it better is allowing to trade traits for talents, skills and stat points - I find trading 1 trait for 1 talent, 2 skills or 10 stat points working just fine.
Also Tome of Fate gave us 3 premade minions to choose from (something that should be made from the start) and with luck we'll get some new in future books. Meaby players could be allowed to take some creatures/advesaries from bestiary sections as minions (who wouldn't like to have tech-assassin as a minion?) but judging their 'power level' can be tricky.

You are aware that taking "greater minion of chaos" isn't enough to take a gretchin from "Rogue Trader edge of abbys" i think to high max stats, to high sum of stats.

Asoral said:

I see what you mean, I just think you're wrong.

A person with 10 toughness takes only two more points of damage from attacks than a person with 30 toughness. A person with 10 agility *is* very slow, but not inhumanly so (to be honest, I'm not sure how far *I* could move in one combat round).

A person with Intelligence 10 has a 10% chance of using any Int-based skill they're trained in, more than that if the skill is Easy. A character with Int 10 and training in Medicae has a 10% chance of healing on-critical injuries in the field without assistance. I honestly don't think you could train a cow to do that.

I agree that Minions are underpowered, and that it would be a very good idea to allow them to trade Traits for Skills, I just disagree with the term "unhuman".

Chastity said:

Goddamn it, I wrote a long reply to you, but then my browser crashed and I lost it.

Basically a Necron Scarab has intelligence of 5, Furies have intelligence of 11 and Only War ogryns have 2d10+5 starting intelligence and they are all creatures that are incapable of acting by themselves in anything else than a instinctual fashion. While mechanically a creature with 10 in intelligence can succeed in normal intelligence based tests 10% of the time, this doesn't mean that (atleast I wouldn't) from a roleplaying perspective they can be considered a totally humanlike creature able to succeed in intellectual challenges such as using a stove to make food without burning it/themselves or understanding why its not a good idea to tell the man inside a big spiked metal suit with a big gun that his face looks funny. So while he might be able to succeed in Forbidden Lore(Black Library) tests 10% if you give him that skill, I wouldn't certainly consider him to be a normal average human(or heretic, for that matter ).

Personally I feel that the rules for minions are quite good, except for the traits. But then again the whole minion system is supposed to be more of a "my character can't into lore skills, thus I will create a librarian to help me with such trivial matters!" than "with these talents you can have an additional player character to play with". Although I do have to say that having a minion or two with the group worked out quite well when my group only had two players available.

With the improved medicae rules introduced in Only War your minion wouldn't be able to succeed on a Medicae test on a patient who is either Heavily wounded (-10 test) or Critically Wounded (-10 plus additional -10 for every critical damage wound).

An adult male moves between 1.5 meters per second (walking on a street) and 5.9 meters per second (average speed of marathon world record athlete) so thats between 4.5 meters and 18 meters per round.

Asoral said:

I think this basically comes down to a philosophical disagreement about what game stats are supposed to represent. I basically think it's a mistake to treat the Int characteristic (or anything else for that matter) as consistently modelling the complete spectrum of neurological capability from "plant" to "Tzeench". As a great man once put it, that way madness lies.

Nowhere in the rules does it say that a character with a low Intelligence score is "incapable of acting by itself". The only effect a low Intelligence score has is a reduced chance of succeeding on Intelligence-based tests. Yes, Necron Scarabs have Int 5, but nowhere does it say that their Int 5 is the *cause* of their instinctive behavior. I'd also point out that Bloodletters of Khorne have an Int of 30 and are *also* effectively incapable of acting by themselves in anything other than an instinctual fashion (it's not like they make a *rational decision* to spill blood in the name of Khorne). Int 10 could mean all sorts of different things, it could mean "is a dog", it could mean "is easily distracted and therefore not good at paying attention" it could mean "bad at understanding abstract concepts" or it could mean "is a really bad doctor".

As for Agility, surely your examples make my case for me. The maximum speed a human being can run at is 18 meters per round - that's also the basic Run speed of a character with AB3.

A character with AB1 has a Run Speed of 6: comfortably higher than the 4.5m per round that can be covered by an average human walking at a comfortable walk.

It's probably also worth pointing out that, depending on whether you think "comfortable walk" means "half move" or "full move" then the average human being has an Agility Bonus of either 2 (only one higher than the level you consider "inhuman") or 4. If you read a comfortable walk as a half-move action it gets particularly silly, since it requires the average human to actually be *faster* than an Olympic sprinter.

As for Only War Medicae rules, I don't see how that makes a difference: everybody's chance drops to zero with enough modifiers. A character with Int 10 and the Medicae skill is a *really crappy doctor*, but the crappiest doctor in the galaxy is still smarter than a domestic cat.