3WhiteFox3 said:

I think it's now set for anyone to grab it.

So I'm preparing for my next game, and was going to use the spaceport security officer (p.200), he has the ability - SQUAD BONUS but it's not described, anyone know what it does. Like-wise the sector ranger (p.203)  has BRUTAL 1 listed and no rules listed for it's use.

Also as a side note the spaceport security officer is listed as having padded armor (+2 soak) but his soak / defense is listed as 4/1 with a brawn of 3 it looks like he should be wearing armored clothing (+1 / +1).

 I'm a bit confused about minions who operate in groups. I ran a test combat last night in which I threw a couple of groups of stormtrooper minions against a party of PCs. I used miniatures on my table to represents positions and distances. For my two squads of stormies, I had three minions in each, moving around in formation at short range from each other so as not to be obvious grenade fodder.

One of the PCs ran up to one of the stormtroopers, engaged it and attacked it with a force pike. The resulting damage was sufficient to knock out two stormtrooper minions, but the PC was only engaged with one of them. By rule, attacks against a group of minions target the entire group at once, but I wasn't sure how to handle it if the attacker was only engaged with one of the stormtroopers.

The rules seem to be written with the assumption that the PCs are making ranged attacks against the minion group, as there is no mention of how to handle melee attacks and engagements against groups of minions that are spread out.

What do you guys think?

 Also, the Sector Ranger has a special ability called "Brutal 1", but there is no explanation give for what that is.

 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.