Hey all, if 3 stormtroopers (minions) are going to make a ranged light attack..how many yellow and green dice do they roll? It says their Agility is three and they have a skill in ranged light, so does that mean as a group of 3, it would be 3 yellow dice? One yellow for each stormtrooper collectively?

Thanks!

First, I'll assume you mean Ranged (Heavy). Because Ranged (Light) isn't a Stormtrooper group skill

Minion group skills work thusly: 1 Ability upgrade for each minion in the group past the first one. A single Stormtrooper rolls 3 Ability dice, since the Ranged (Heavy) is a group skill, so ONLY groups get skill ranks. 2 Stormtroopers roll 1 Proficiency & 2 Ability dice. 3 Stormies roll 2 Proficiency, 1 Ability. And 4 roll all 3 yellows. 5 Would roll 3 yellows and a green, and 6 would roll 3 yellows and 2 greens. etc.

Yes my bad , excellent explaination, thank you!

Yes my bad , excellent explaination, thank you!

s'all good.

I don't have my book here, so can someone confirm what I think is the right answer: as the number of minions goes down, their skills go down as well, right? So the group of four minions that start out with Ranged (Heavy) and an Agility of 4 roll YYYG at first, but when two are destroyed, roll YGGG?

Correct, as the number in any given group decreases, their dicepool reflects the change.

Thank you, Tenrousei. GMing has been tricky, but at least I got that part correct.

My understanding is that skills cap out at 5 just like players do, but that more minions in such a large group (that is, more than needed to hit that skill rank cap) is essentially "ablative armor" against said 'skill dice pool reduction'.

My understanding is that skills cap out at 5 just like players do, but that more minions in such a large group (that is, more than needed to hit that skill rank cap) is essentially "ablative armor" against said 'skill dice pool reduction'.

I don't think you'll find that in any of the rules. NPCs are not PCs, and can have as many skill ranks as you like. PCs too can have more than 5 skill ranks, though they can only purchase up to 5 (much like they can only increase characteristics up to 6 by conventional means of XP expenditure). Equipment, notably cybernetic enhancements, can increase these things.

Of course, dice pools can get to ridiculous sizes, so you'd be perfectly within your rights as GM to modify the pool however you saw fit. If you wanna get crazy with numbers though, just have 5 groups of 5 stormtroopers rather than 1 group of 25. It's much more narratively appropriate that way. As a point of interest, one could note that, if the Star Wars Dice app only allows 20 dice in a pool, that's probably a good indication of an upper-limit in the design intent

(Also, I'm gonna edit what I wrote previously. For some reason I had it in my head the extra minions in a group simply UPGRADE the ability. They don't; they actually add skill ranks. I'll change my post to reflect that )

I see this thread has been dead for some time but let's say there are 4 stormtroopers that are in a fire fight with the PC's. When it's the 'troopers turn, how many times do they get to roll their ranged (heavy)? It looks like just once per turn per group of minions but that seems unrealistic. Ive just been splitting them up to individuals and letting them roll their base pool.

I see this thread has been dead for some time but let's say there are 4 stormtroopers that are in a fire fight with the PC's. When it's the 'troopers turn, how many times do they get to roll their ranged (heavy)? It looks like just once per turn per group of minions but that seems unrealistic. Ive just been splitting them up to individuals and letting them roll their base pool.

It's one attack per minion group. So if those 4 stormtroopers are one group, they roll one attack. (This reflects how stormtroopers and battle droids seem to function in the movies - lots of shooting, not a lot of hitting.)

In a situation like that, I might split them into two groups of 2 minions each. You could have them as four separate minions, but then they'd be separate for all purposes - each would have to be attacked individually, probably separate initiatives, etc.

Understand that 4 stormtroopers firing individually at 4 brand new PCs represent a real threat. The grouping system for minions is to streamline and speed combat, not make things 'realistic' in the setting a long time ago and far, far away....

What the Pirate said. The purpose of grouping minions is to represent a larger number of low level mooks but only having to do the record keeping of a single character.

So 3, 8, or even a dozen stormtroopers can all be compressed into a single initiative slot, take one action and maneuver, and so on like a single person, but still get to be described as a blob of doods.

Also note that minions CAN group, not MUST. So if you want the Stormtroopers to act as individuals, you can. Typically you would break them down into groups to represent their training and ability to work together, but there's plenty of situations where you might not want that for whatever reason, like a need for a lone sentry, or if you wanted to spice things up just a little and have a trooper flank the players.

Just for any reading this now or in the future here is a guide to determining a dice pool for a Minion group.

1. Is the skill listed under the Minions entry?

No: just roll the number of Ability dice that Minion type have for the relevant Characteristic, no matter how big the group is.

Yes: proceed to step 2

2. Determin how many ranks in that skill the Group has, this is equal to the total group size, minus 1. This number can not exceed 5 as Skill ranks are limited to 5 (6 with Cybernetics).

3. Build your dice pool in the usual way; whichever of Characteristic or Skill Rank is higher sets the number of Ability dice to start with. The lower of the 2 numbers determines the number of those Ability dice that are Upgraded (replaced) to Proficiency dice.

The overall result of this is that generally a Minion Group gets stronger the more you add until it reaches 6, then it just lasts longer but is no longer getting more effective... If a dice pool of 5 dice was ever not effective!

I see this thread has been dead for some time but let's say there are 4 stormtroopers that are in a fire fight with the PC's. When it's the 'troopers turn, how many times do they get to roll their ranged (heavy)? It looks like just once per turn per group of minions but that seems unrealistic. Ive just been splitting them up to individuals and letting them roll their base pool.

..not that brekning down attacks into single shots, gamey mechanics is or feels, in any way, more realistic than what you can do in the narrative flow for that matter...

For some nice examples on how a single dice roll can be much more than one swing of a sword or shot from a blaster read through this page of a game:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/201621-the-shadows-mark/page-28

2. Determin how many ranks in that skill the Group has, this is equal to the total group size, minus 1. This number can not exceed 5 as Skill ranks are limited to 5 (6 with Cybernetics).

Good steps. But I'm not sure about that skill rank cap for minions there, I don't think those limits apply to minion groups.

2. Determin how many ranks in that skill the Group has, this is equal to the total group size, minus 1. This number can not exceed 5 as Skill ranks are limited to 5 (6 with Cybernetics).

Good steps. But I'm not sure about that skill rank cap for minions there, I don't think those limits apply to minion groups.

I can't see why they wouldn't, there is a rule that caps how many ranks you can have in a skill, and there is a rule for determining the number of ranks a minion group have. I don't see any way of there being an exception to that.

Dev question I guess?

Dev question I guess?

Sure, but I think it applies since they chose to use the verbiage that each minion adds a Skill rank and not each minion adds an upgrade. There is a little precedence for going higher than 6 but I doubt the devs wanted it in the case of minions.

Dev question I guess?

Sure, but I think it applies since they chose to use the verbiage that each minion adds a Skill rank and not each minion adds an upgrade. There is a little precedence for going higher than 6 but I doubt the devs wanted it in the case of minions.

After reading the rules again I still don't think so.. I could be wrong of course...

Well the rules say Skills cap at 5 so I don't know what you're reading that makes you think that way. I think you're assuming based on what isn't written, not what is written, which generally answers the question for you when you review past dev answers.

Might be a question for the devs, however I'm pretty sure the language used when talking about the limitations on skill ranks applies to NPCs as well as PCs.

Dev question I guess?

Sure, but I think it applies since they chose to use the verbiage that each minion adds a Skill rank and not each minion adds an upgrade. There is a little precedence for going higher than 6 but I doubt the devs wanted it in the case of minions.

This is exactly my thought. No matter the size of the group there is a limit to what they can do.

It's not really come up in my group much, but I've got a house rule that any more than 6 minions in a group would only add Boost dice, not skill ranks. And it's literally only came up once; an enemy had formed a squad of 7 minions and got a triumph, so that's the ruling I went with for their attack. But you know, that was kind of a spur of the moment thing, and haven't really thought it through too much.