I only have the beginners kit but Im a little confused about minion combat. Minions act as a group 1A and 1M does that mean that a minion group of 3 if one wants to take a defencive posture they all take it (even the ones not engaged). And does the squad of minions only perform one attack per round? just a little confused on this.

Magni

Magni said:

I don't have the BB (though did just order it since the price was back to where it should be on Amazon), but I can give you the answer as it appears in the beta text.

Since the minions act as a group, so if the group takes a defensive posture as a manevuer, all individuals in the group get the benefit, but also no longer have a free maneuver.

When making an attack action with a group of minions, the group only makes one attack. While operating the minions individually could score you more hits, the group as a whole has a single better roll, so it's a trade off.

Two notes:

• Remember that in this abstract system, one attack roll does not represent a single squeeze of the trigger (for PCs OR NPCs). Its a bit of a change from some other systems, but really just in flavor.
• THe minion rules are designed to streamline combat, keep things moving, and make minions on the field more threatening. If you find you don't like how they play, you can probably get away with not using them for your own adventures. I'd recommend sticking as close to the rules as written as possible for teh beginners game.

Hope that helps.

-WJL

Oh, one other note: Theres nothing that keeps you from breaking a minion group into smaller groups if conditions for individual minions change during play, or recombining smaller groups of IDENTICAL minions into larger groups for easier book-keeping.

However these kinds of manipulations should ONLY be used to streamline book-keeping and action economy to keep combat moving briskly. They SHOULD NOT be used to frustrate players or exploit game rules.

-WJL

Yeah, well when i first read through the rules, the low soak and minimum ways to boost defence made me kinda worried for players at low levels but i kinda like the realism it adds 1-2 shots kills a Slicer who was stupid enough to be running around in the open. The only thing that has me wondering is the "brawn stat" it adds to soak and to wounds kinda making it a must have for any combat oriented player were in most rpgs agility adds to defence. Am i just reading this wrong or do all the combat survival stats seem to be focused on one trait? Agility not adding anything and brawn adding everything?

magni

Magni said:

So… This is probably one of those 'can-of-worms' questions because view points are highly reliant on opinions and past experience.

Personally, I think there's already way too much emphasis on agility in all combat (Personal and Vehicular). So, while brawn is important for survivability, I still think its already over-shadowed by agility, which I find problematic.

To what I think is the spirit of your question, no, I don't think that Brawn is a "gotta have it" stat for combat survivabilty. In fact I'm not sure how frequently it'll make much difference because of the magnitude of the soak it provides vs the magnitude of most weapon damage, i.e. weapons do enough damage that tweaking a point of brawn one way or the othere rarely lead to a meaningful change in how many hits a character can take before running out of wound points. This was discussed sometime in the last week in a thread about PC's being too squishy.

Finally, rememeber that running out of wound points is NOT fatal, it will knock a PC out and cause a critical injury, but that's not the same as death.

Just my perspective.

-WJL