Individual Stormtroopers or Squads

[Vinush 4]

Hey guys, after a quick bit of help.

What do people think is better to use, individual Stormtroopers or squads?

I ask because my group of players seems to be able to take out squads of stormtroopers incredibly quickly, often before they even get a chance to respond/attack as one player has a blaster carbine and an abnormal ability to get 6 or 7 successes each roll and they always seem to get the initiative over me, meaning a squad of 4 troopers dies really quickly whereas 4 separate troppers would take longer to dispatch.

What do people think?

[SEApocalypse 4,439]

I think you are mixing up minion groups with squads. Anyay, minion groups are supposed to dwindle quickly, they are minions after all, helps to keep combat short as well.

IDamage output of your players seems to be indeed a good case of actually using the squad rules and using a stormtrooper sergeant as leader of the group and using 5 stormtrooper minions to the squad. You get now a pretty resilient group which requires 5 hits to even just expose the sergeant to incoming fire, get the bonus of using squad formations and aversary 1 on top of all.

But as initially said, the purpose of minions is mainly to die and entertaining the players with their death, they are a tool to make the players feel badass without wasting time on fighting them. If you want more dangerous enemies it is usually a good idea to use rivals. 

Still, splitting minions up into several groups makes sense, so nothing wrong with using single minions or groups of two from time to time. As such small groups should rather often miss the PCs they add a certain kind of flavor to the PCs too, who now dodge all the incoming fire. 

[Vinush 4]

Thanks for the comments.

I guess I need to reread the squad and group rules then.

 

[Donovan Morningfire 9,998]

It's a trade off.  Going to presume that when you said 'squads' you were referring to 'minion groups' with regards to my reply.

Using stormtroopers individually will allow them to last longer, but they won't be as effective in combat since they'd just be rolling their base Agility, and it's more bad guys for the GM to keep track of.

Using them in a minion group is less hassle for the GM (mechanically, it's one adversary to keep track off instead of several separate adversaries), they're more of an immediate threat to the PCs given they'll have the benefit of skill ranks (better chances of success and possibility of a Triumph to really make things hard on the PCs), but they can be whittled down fairly quickly if you've got PCs that either roll outrageous amounts of successes or routinely get enough advantage to score a critical; if you've got a PC using a lightsaber that's been modded for increased damage and a crit rating of 1, minion groups of pretty much any stripe tend to go down like bowling pins at a championship bowling tournament.

The design intent (or at least my read of it) is that combats in this game were never meant to "drag out" and that the ideal is that a combat that's not an encounter with a plot-important adversary really shouldn't last more than a couple of rounds, especially as the PCs increase their combat skills and pick up talents to bolster those combat skills.

Also, these are stormtroopers, pretty much the poster boys for "disposable cannon fodder" in terms of combat viability.  We see stormtroopers getting dropped with almost casual ease by the heroes in most Star Wars media.

Honestly, it sounds like what you may want to consider doing is instead having bigger minion groups is to instead have more of them.  So in this instance, instead of a single minion group of 4 stormtroopers, consider two minion groups of 3 stormtroopers, which should give you a better chance to have at least one of those minion groups survive long enough to act.  Also remember that smaller minion groups can combine into a single, bigger group; away from book but I think it's a maneuver to do so, and as long as the minions are within short range to each other I wouldn't require any more than that one maneuver since there's nothing in the rules saying that members of a minion group have to be engage with each other.

[SEApocalypse 4,439]

2 hours ago, Vinush said:

Thanks for the comments.

I guess I need to reread the squad and group rules then.

The squad rules are in the AoR GM Kit, the GM screen is worth as reference for players as well, and the adventure included is an ok buy, the squad and squadron rules are a very good addition for some specific cases. So it is easy to mix them up with the minion groups from the Core Rule Books as this is one of the less obvious places to look for such rules. 

[Edgehawk 2,456]

I love my FLGS, but that didn't stop me from recently picking up the AoR screen on amazon for about $10.

[Vinush 4]

I already own nearly everything released for the game, but it's getting harder and harder to get them in the UK.

[Richardbuxton 7,287]

Squads of 15 storm troopers don't go down so easily... (and their dice pool of AAPPP won't change until there is less than 6 left)

[Mark Caliber 840]

We're still trying to gauge how combat works in the minion groups vs solo combatants.  (solo not 'Solo' 'cause he always shoots first).

My biggest issue with answering this question is that our group tries to avoid combat.

That said, We've face a combination of both, and what you will use will depend on the opposition forces deployed (OpFor).

Large crowds of mooks are going to be best represented by minion groups.  However, you can also throw in a couple of rival individuals in the encounter as well (Good ol' Sarge comes to mind too).

Our last combat involved two Inquisitors and three Dark Troopers.  Each was run as an individual rival or nemesis, because they should be!  It was a tough fight and a ton of fun.

Another recent fight featured one of the PC's soloing against an AT-ST & 1 minion group of vanilla Storm Troopers.  He went down to the troopers. (Fortunately the AT-ST drivers couldn't hit the broad side of an Ortolan).

I guess if I have a point is, be ready to use different sets of OpFor based on who the PC's face.  And there might not be one right answer for each encounter.

 

 

[LithiumBlossom 106]

I've found it's best to mix things up a little, keep it unpredictable and context appropriate.

However I've found a good combination for a group of four players was four pairs of stormtroopers. It gave them an equal amount of activations, made them a slightly tougher nut to crack and gave a moderate edge in combat, This has led to some pretty entertaining fights that challenge without bogging down. For tougher fights I may recommend about three to four minions per player with a group each.

The aforementioned Squad rules are also fairly useful. I don't use them for NPCs often but it can make some moderately powerful Rivals into a more satisfying challenge. Say for instance, a TIE Ace with three wingmen suddenly goes from being an accident waiting to happen to an achievement for players to take down.