If a minion group of 4 NPCs has 1 soak and 5 health each, and the PCs do a 14 point hit, how do you resolve it?

Possibilities:

• 1 soak, 5 health but only one can die, so basically the pool drops from 20 health to 15. Extra damage wasted.
• 1 soak and 5 health dealt repeatedly. Kills 2 minions (guess they were lined up in a row?) and does one damage to the third so the group has 9 health left.
• 1 soak. THEN 5 health repeated (ie: the soak protects the group, not each minion). Kills 2 and does three damage to the third, so the group has 7 health left.

Alternative scenario: the PCs do a 14 point hit, but also roll enough advantage to deal a crit.

Tea

Essentially you're treating the minion group as one enemy for all intents and purposes in regards to health. Apply the soak (4dmg) once then deal 10 dmg (the 14 total). As each minion in the group has 5hp, 2 go down.

That's why they're called minions

Are you sure you apply 4 soak? EVERY minion adds in soak up front?

A minion group with 2 soak and five members would take no damage from a 10 point hit…

Tea

Nope, apply soak once, so in this case it's 1 soak taken from the 14 damage and then 2 dead minions and one with 3 damage.

Regarding the OP's "they're all lined up in a row." A single attack roll is not necessarily a single attack. If you take down several minions with one blaster roll, that means you popped out of cover, fired off four or five shots, and smoked a couple of them before ducking back. If you're in a lightsaber fight, you're not making a single attack with each roll, you're rolling to see if any of your attacks were able to break through your opponents defenses that round.

Ugh, my bad, I read the OP example wrong. Thought the minions had 4 soak, not 1. >.>

But as I said, you only apply the soak once. Lupex has it right.