Force Push vs. Throwing Storm Troopers At Each Other

[Quintus Valorum 12]

I know there have been threads on how a Force push would work with the consensus being that you just move people like objects if you don't want to do damage, and use the hurl objects control upgrade if you want to do damage against them. There's is still one question I haven't seen addressed.

 

My scenario is your F&D character is faced with two stormtroopers, and you want to Force push them. You would need to spend one force pip to move them, one force pip to upgrade the magnitude by one, and one force pip to upgrade the silhouette to one, then make a discipline check versus silhouette one difficulty.

 

In this circumstance wouldn't throwing one stormtrooper into another cost less Force. One pip to use move, and one pip to upgrade the silhouette to 1. Make a discipline check versus the silhouette of one, and throw one stormtrooper into another and they take equal damage. It is more cost effective, but it's something seen in none of the films. For the jedi in the films they just push, and a number get knocked over. Is there something I'm missing? Would like to hear your take on this.

[Ghostofman 8,319]

Depends on the details you left out. For example, Stormtroopers are (mostly) minion level characters. As elite shocktroopers it's highly probable they will be grouped into a single minion group. In that case you really can't do something to one without it effecting the other. That's actually what you usually see in the films. It's not Obi knocking down 3 battledroids, it's him knocking down a single minion group, which is for all intents and purposes, a single character.

[Quintus Valorum 12]

It was my understanding that it did damage of 10 based on a silhouette of 1. That probably wouldn't take out more than one minion.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Quintus Valorum

[Ghostofman 8,319]

It was my understanding that it did damage of 10 based on a silhouette of 1. That probably wouldn't take out more than one minion.

It's not about damage dealt, it's about the grouping of minions. 2 minions in a minion group are still one character when it comes to most effects due to their shared pools and abilities. If your GM is trying to run grouped minions as individuals he's just going to give everyone a headache.

 

And it's actually pretty easy to grease two stormtroopers with a Sil 1 move attack at short range. You're looking at a minimum damage of 11, so after soak that's 6 Wounds enough to remove one. Add in some advantage or a triumph and you're either removed another, or enacted some other positive effect that will make the defeat of the second trooper pretty easy.

[Decorus 672]

Force Push is actually in the bind tree.

Its a control upgrade that lets you spend a force point to either move a target one range band closer or farther away.

 

You can do it with move, but its much easier to use bind to do it.

[Kilcannon 177]

So are you saying if you target a minion group with Move push or Bind:Force push th at all minions in the group get affected? If that is the correct or intended way I'm all for it considering I love the cinematic of that effect. But as a GM would only stay away from that if it is come tell going away from the rules

[vilainn6 306]

I know there have been threads on how a Force push would work with the consensus being that you just move people like objects if you don't want to do damage, and use the hurl objects control upgrade if you want to do damage against them. There's is still one question I haven't seen addressed.

 

My scenario is your F&D character is faced with two stormtroopers, and you want to Force push them. You would need to spend one force pip to move them, one force pip to upgrade the magnitude by one, and one force pip to upgrade the silhouette to one, then make a discipline check versus silhouette one difficulty.

 

In this circumstance wouldn't throwing one stormtrooper into another cost less Force. One pip to use move, and one pip to upgrade the silhouette to 1. Make a discipline check versus the silhouette of one, and throw one stormtrooper into another and they take equal damage. It is more cost effective, but it's something seen in none of the films. For the jedi in the films they just push, and a number get knocked over. Is there something I'm missing? Would like to hear your take on this.

If you really want  them to test their discipline, opposed the resilience of the target like as mentioned in the beta. That make force hurl less broken on living target.

[Ghostofman 8,319]

So are you saying if you target a minion group with Move push or Bind:Force push th at all minions in the group get affected? If that is the correct or intended way I'm all for it considering I love the cinematic of that effect. But as a GM would only stay away from that if it is come tell going away from the rules

It's never explicitly stated, but the system doesnt work right when you dont and only a masochist would have each minion in a group count as an individual when applying effects.

Think about the following:

You make an attack that applies the Disorient effect to one minion in a three character group. On their turn the group of three fires. How do you apply the Setback to one and not the group?

You make an attack that applies knockdown. How does one spend a maneuver to stand and the others dont?

And my favorite; You use move, sending a single minion across a river to long range and leaving the other two at short range. Next turn your buddys wookiee marauder charges into the two close ones with his vibroaxe and does enough damage to remove five minions, so the two at short range die, and the one on the other side of the river....loses the will to live? Or perhaps the Wook is also an Olympic swimmer?

See,to make it work you need to either

A) remove the affected minion from the group, changing the group operation and adding to the initiative chain (defeating the point of grouping and largely removing the purpose of applying an effect to a minion group)

or

B) apply the effect to the entire group and keep going.

So, now look at the minion rules, stats and the results. A minion group of 3 will have roughly the same skills, WT, and action options as a rival level character. If you keep them all at engaged range to each other (remember engaged is pretty big in this system so that's not weird) they can be managed by the GM as easy as a single character, while generating the appearance of three.

Make sense?

There's certainly instances where you might want to do something to one minion in a group, and theres always an exception to the rule, but generally speaking the system holds up better if you treat the group as a single giant character.

[Decorus 672]

Minions are by nature not designed to be anything more then speed bumps for players. They should never be considered a serious threat. As such in a Cinematic game they get annihilated en mass by the players its thier job.

[knasserII 2,557]

Minions are by nature not designed to be anything more then speed bumps for players. They should never be considered a serious threat. As such in a Cinematic game they get annihilated en mass by the players its thier job.

This is not true. Minions are often quite dangerous and meant to be. Minion status is a rules conceit to make it easier to manage combat where the enemy are all roughly similar and are not detailed individuals in their own right. But whilst such individuals are typically less dangerous than then named, special enemies, that doesn't mean they're there just to be a speed bump. A squad of stormtroopers could be a dangerous thing to PCs. Those skills deck pretty fast and a squad of three Ties is no joke.

Edited June 25, 2015 by knasserII

[FuriousGreg 1,667]

So are you saying if you target a minion group with Move push or Bind:Force push th at all minions in the group get affected? If that is the correct or intended way I'm all for it considering I love the cinematic of that effect. But as a GM would only stay away from that if it is come tell going away from the rules

Since Damage affects all Minions in a Minion group, and Force Push etc. does Damage then they might as well have been moved as well. Minion Groups should be treated as a Single NPC unless they are so far apart that it's reasonable to think they wouldn't be, at which point the GM should break the Minion group into two or more groups. The only exception I know of is when dealing with Blast, then the GM determines if additional Blast Damage is applied if it's reasonable that the Minions are Engaged with each other.

[Donovan Morningfire 10,200]

Probably not close to being 100% Rules as Written or even Rules as Intended, but here's how I've handled the "Force Push" effect when dealing with a minion group of Silhouette 1 enemies in the past.  It's worked well enough for a couple other GMs I know, including one that I gamed under with a PC that got quite proficient with Move.

 

As for base requirements, the PC would need the Move basic power, at least one Strength Upgrade, and then the "hurl objects" Control Upgrade.  He'd also need a Range Upgrade, but that's solely for having to purchase the Control Upgrade.

 

To attack, the PC makes their Move power check against the minion group, and needs to score two FPs to trigger the base power and the Strength Upgrade.  Of course, if the minions are larger than Silhouette 1, then the PC either needs more FPs to activate their one Strength Upgrade multiple times, or need to have purchased multiple Strength Upgrades.  They'd also make their Discipline check against an Easy difficulty (again assuming a Silhouette 1 target) to "grab" one of the minions and then narratively hurl them into the rest of the group.

 

Presuming the PC succeeds on the Discipline check, the minion group then takes damage equal to 10 plus uncancelled successes, with a Triumph able to be spent to trigger a critical and thus take out one minion automatically.  So if a PC scored 3 successes to use a "Force push" against a trio of antiquated battle droids (EotE pg410), they'd inflict 9 points of damage after the droid's soak of 4 was applied (they've got a Wound Threshold of 4), leaving 1 droid standing.

 

It's not a lot of damage, and really only works against enemies that are fairly frail (like B1-series battle droids) unless the PC in question has a killer Discipline dice pool.  But it works and it's not too overpowering.

 

As to whether the PC should be allowed to use the Magnitude Upgrade to attack using an additional minion, that's something that's not come up.  Personally, I'd allow it but also use the rules for autofire as directed under the "hurl objects" Control Upgrade (increased difficulty, need to spend 2 Advantage to score the additional hit).  But it would seem feasible, and probably explained why Qui-Gon was able to so easily take down a full minion group of battle droids in one go.