Why would I use Stormtroopers as minions?

[facenorth23 6]

I'm very new to rpg, but this star wars EOTE thing got me completely hooked… I started a party with me as a GM, but I can not get this thing out of my head… maybe I'm wrong…

The adventure book states that as a GM I should warn the PCs that it would be wise to run from the stormtroopers, because they are very strong… Now, if I play them as minions, it seems that they are less strong than as an individual… Wouldn't it be more interesting (and more difficult) to have the stormtroopers scatter around and surround the PCs… Now they can act as individuals, and have a seperate turn each round… no??

I really don't see, how they would become so powerful… I did a test with my wife, playing Oskara… Hell yeah, she had them twice out of three fights…

Help me out here…

[New Zombie 128]

the beginner box is designed to incrementally expose a GM and player to some of the rules of edge of the empire.

the purpose of the stormtrooper encounter(s) is to introduce the minion rules.

minions are designed to get that sense of a scale i.e. 6 opponents on the field at one time - while minimising/mitigating the increase in time it takes to take actions for each combatant.

also those blaster rifles are nasty. 9 damage plus successes can drop a character quite effectively. the 2 minion groups severely damaged my players.

[Sturn 2,958]

When I started playing FFG Warhammer, they had minions also and it took me a bit to accept the idea. Now I love them. It gives power to weaklings (they are better in a group) and makes the job of large numbers of opponents much easier for the GM. Imagine D&D with a horde of 1st level Goblins going up against some mid level players. The players would wade through them almost invincible as the GM had to roll over and over for all of the Goblins just hoping to get a 20. With Minions, the horde has teeth by combining their attacks into one, tougher, concentrated roll. As their numbers dwindle, they lose power. If you ever played old-fashioned miniature battles, just think of minions as several minis on one "stand".

You can still spread out minions by the way. Just because you have perhaps 5 minions grouped together doesn't mean they can't be represented by different tokens on the table. These tokens could spread out and still shoot at the same target. The narrative battlefield is abstract, so you would not necessarily run into LOS problems. If you do, you could always say, "These 2 shoot at Stan while these 3 fire at Bob" while reducing their effectiveness to the proper dice for the lower group sizes. You could do this just temporarily one round and still consider them a group. I don't see anything wrong at all with that.

I too like my Stormtroopers tougher so I understand what you are saying. New Zombie is right in that the encounter is just meant to introduce minion combat and Stormtroopers are used for the dramatic effect. You could consider changing the Stormtroopers into Imperial Army/Navy goons instead? Not as dramatic but then you could save a later tougher encounter in your campaign for the elite Stormtroopers.

[bobfrankly 16]

Our Twilek was put down by one of the minion groups, while the Smuggler solo'd (pun not intended) the other group through some creative cover and use of stealth (taking a strain hit to get the distance needed to be able to hide). As a noobie GM, I almost felt guilty rolling that shot that took down the twilek, almost.

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

fire teams of 4 storm troopers are rolling 3y to hit. This means they usually hit at short, hit about half the time at medium,  often miss at long. 33% chance of one or more Triumphs, too. 75% 1s+ vs 2p, 63% vs 3p, 51%vs 4p

A pair of  fire-elements of 2 men each are rolling 1y+2g. they are slightly less likely to hit, but a lot less likely to crit - 8.3% chance of a triumph. 65% v 2p, 53% vs 3p, 42% vs 4p… but this also means a 12.5% chance of a total miss and 42% chance of doble hit vs 2p , 22% and 28% vs 3p, and 34% and 18% vs 4p. 

So, yes one group of 4 mooks is better for your group than 2 groups of two mooks.

Oh, and mook wound thresholds seem to be half that of racial base.

You put 8 individual skill 0 stormtroopers out there, they will gun down PC's, due to Agl 3. Mook them together, and they do LESS damage.
 

[john_nld 34]

aramis said:

fire teams of 4 storm troopers are rolling 3y to hit. This means they usually hit at short, hit about half the time at medium,  often miss at long. 33% chance of one or more Triumphs, too. 75% 1s+ vs 2p, 63% vs 3p, 51%vs 4p

A pair of  fire-elements of 2 men each are rolling 1y+2g. they are slightly less likely to hit, but a lot less likely to crit - 8.3% chance of a triumph. 65% v 2p, 53% vs 3p, 42% vs 4p… but this also means a 12.5% chance of a total miss and 42% chance of doble hit vs 2p , 22% and 28% vs 3p, and 34% and 18% vs 4p. 

So, yes one group of 4 mooks is better for your group than 2 groups of two mooks.

Oh, and mook wound thresholds seem to be half that of racial base.

You put 8 individual skill 0 stormtroopers out there, they will gun down PC's, due to Agl 3. Mook them together, and they do LESS damage.
 

 

wow….what? Ok the abbreviations put me off not the statistics and what is mook (see I am new as well ) played for the first time last night up to the interlude and my players loved it but they still need to go up against the troopers and they are a bit triggerhappy.

 

[facenorth23 6]

Sturn said:

You can still spread out minions by the way. Just because you have perhaps 5 minions grouped together doesn't mean they can't be represented by different tokens on the table. These tokens could spread out and still shoot at the same target. The narrative battlefield is abstract, so you would not necessarily run into LOS problems. If you do, you could always say, "These 2 shoot at Stan while these 3 fire at Bob" while reducing their effectiveness to the proper dice for the lower group sizes. You could do this just temporarily one round and still consider them a group. I don't see anything wrong at all with that.

So if I understand correctly, I could split them up temporarly and let them shoot at Stan and Bob with a downgraded pool for Ranged Heavy… Rank 2 at Stan, and rank 3 at Bob??

Or not?

 

thanks for the rply btw…

[Donovan Morningfire 10,200]

As far as using Stormtroopers as minions goes, this actually goes a long way towards solving an issue that's plagued many of the prior Star Wars RPGs.

Simply, how can the GM keep stormtroopers from being a viable threat against the PCs from the start of the campaign to it's finish?

The d20 versions ran into this problem, particularly Saga Edition, where a group of stormtroopers (even using the Squad rules introduced in the Clone Wars Campaign Guide) were soon reduced to target practice by the time the PCs hit 5th level, as most stormtroopers could barely hit them, and when they did, the PCs often had enough hit points that your average blaster rifle shot wasn't that big a deal.

D6 faired a bit better, though stormies apparently had some hidden rules that were so well hidden that most GMs (myself included) never used them, reducing the Empire's elite soldiers into being little more than Keystone Cops clad in white armor.

Here, in EotE, a single stormtrooper isn't much of a threat, but when they start showing up in groups, that's when the PCs should get worried.

facenorth23,
On your specific question, if splitting the stormies up as Sturn suggested, I think it'd be something like this:

Stormtrooper Group shooting at Stan: There's only 2, so they'd only get one rank in Ranged (Heavy), for a base pool of 1 Yellow, and 2 Green (Agility 3, one die upgraded per the minion rules for there being 2 minions in the group).

Stormtrooper Group shooting at Bob: They'd get 2 Yellow and 1 Green (Agility 3, two dice upgraded per the minion rules for there being 3 minions the group)

A lone stormtrooper would just be rulling his 3 Greens due to his Agility of 3, since he's operating alone.

That help any?

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

facenorth23 said:

Sturn said:

 

You can still spread out minions by the way. Just because you have perhaps 5 minions grouped together doesn't mean they can't be represented by different tokens on the table. These tokens could spread out and still shoot at the same target. The narrative battlefield is abstract, so you would not necessarily run into LOS problems. If you do, you could always say, "These 2 shoot at Stan while these 3 fire at Bob" while reducing their effectiveness to the proper dice for the lower group sizes. You could do this just temporarily one round and still consider them a group. I don't see anything wrong at all with that.

 

 

So if I understand correctly, I could split them up temporarly and let them shoot at Stan and Bob with a downgraded pool for Ranged Heavy… Rank 2 at Stan, and rank 3 at Bob??

Or not?

 

thanks for the rply btw…

In so doing, you increase the likelyhood that they're going to hit one of them. They're actually LESS of a threat as a team of 5 - but as a team of 5, they WILL hit, and will likely hurt whomever they hit.

[facenorth23 6]

Donovan Morningfire said:

facenorth23,
On your specific question, if splitting the stormies up as Sturn suggested, I think it'd be something like this:

Stormtrooper Group shooting at Stan: There's only 2, so they'd only get one rank in Ranged (Heavy), for a base pool of 1 Yellow, and 2 Green (Agility 3, one die upgraded per the minion rules for there being 2 minions in the group).

Stormtrooper Group shooting at Bob: They'd get 2 Yellow and 1 Green (Agility 3, two dice upgraded per the minion rules for there being 3 minions the group)

A lone stormtrooper would just be rulling his 3 Greens due to his Agility of 3, since he's operating alone.

That help any?

Ah, Yes… I miscalculated… one rank for every 'extra' minion… Thanks…

[Donovan Morningfire 10,200]

aramis said:

In so doing, you increase the likelyhood that they're going to hit one of them. They're actually LESS of a threat as a team of 5 - but as a team of 5, they WILL hit, and will likely hurt whomever they hit.

Yeah, I'm working on converting a rather nifty SWSE fan module, and part of the final encounter is a battle with stormtroopers.  The module used one trooper per PC, but I'm thinking that I'll use 1 minion group of two troopers each per PC instead, as the main villain is going to wind up pretty severely nerfed due to lack of certain material.