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 Post subject: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 2:57 pm 
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Alright! With the holidays over, I can get back to the regular business of sneaking posts to the forums during naptime!

These Talents are shamelessly inspired by the National Brute Abilities from the 7th Sea Villains Kit. I haven't tested them out yet, but the minions in my intro scenario dropped so fast I think I'll be introducing these (as well as "patched" versions for the Minion Talents from GToA) into my home game very soon. Until they've been put through the paces a bit, I don't recommend giving any single band more than one of these Talents.

Formidable
Description: Formidable Minions get +1d to all attack rolls.

Resilient
Description: Resilient Minions require two hits before being dispatched. For instance, a witch hunter is attacking a band of 3 Minions, with a Threat Rating of 2. He rolls 4 successes. Normally, this would eliminate 2 of the minions, but only eliminates a single "resilient" minion.

Merciless
Description: Merciless Minions double all damage dealt.

Treacherous
Description: Treacherous Minions always roll at least 4 dice, regardless of how few are banded together.

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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:15 pm 

Joined: Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:08 am
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Hello Tom,

Nice ideas. I'm also a fan of 7th Seas and I see it as the spiritual ancestor of WH (rules-wise, anyway).

I'm a fan of mixing things up for the players, to keep them on their toes and these seem pretty cool. Please let us know (and tyhat goes for anyone else using these) how they work out.

I'd love to include a section in the new GToA on Minions and their Uses.

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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:39 pm 
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Henry,

I'll be sure to post the gory details. :)

There were two National Abilities that didn't really work out. Avalon, which was pretty much the Lucky Talent so why reinvent the wheel. And I expect there may be some redundancy with these. The other was Ussura which allowed more than the normal number of brutes in a squad. I played around with it and the math just kept getting messier, especially since the Rule of Tens don't apply to minions. So I figured that one just needed to be left alone.

Since most of the opponents witch hunters face will probably be minions of one stripe or another, I like the idea of having a focused catalog of minion talents that let them do cool things and die instead of padding them with RP filler that isn't really important to their purpose. So the more coverage of minions in GToA the better, IMNSHO.

Tom

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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:01 pm 
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Blusponge wrote:
Formidable
Description: Formidable Minions get +1d to all attack rolls.

Resilient
Description: Resilient Minions require two hits before being dispatched. For instance, a witch hunter is attacking a band of 3 Minions, with a Threat Rating of 2. He rolls 4 successes. Normally, this would eliminate 2 of the minions, but only eliminates a single "resilient" minion.


Tested that with the draft version of Arcanis a long time ago... it was horrible as a player. Better to give the minions a point of AR against each strike (so a good strike will still reap them like chaff).

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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 6:15 pm 
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I'm not familiar enough with the mechanics of Arcanis to compare it with Witch Hunter. So it could easily be all sorts of broken. I figure it's a good way to give smaller groups of minions some staying power. But yeah, a group of 5 threat 3 resilient minions would probably be nightmarish (6 successes minimum to take down each minion).

So there is probably a better way to achieve a similar effect.

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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 7:03 pm 

Joined: Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:10 pm
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If you want more resilient minons, id just make them low end lieutenants


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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2014 12:37 am 
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Uh...no. That changes the dynamic too much. Three health tracks, no banding, more complex stat block. There is a lot to be said for having a handful (not dozens or scores) of minion-only talents that give them a few tricks without weighing them down. I do want minions to fall, by the bucket load, in fact. But I also want the tools to spring a few surprises on the players. Resilient works in that regard, I'm just not sure when applied to a really tough band that it doesn't go overboard. But then again, I'd love for someone to test it against a group of high ranking PCs sand see what happens.

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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2014 9:48 pm 

Joined: Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:10 pm
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Then just make larger groups of minions. Minion mobs I've seen in play have not been much of a threat. You could just double their size. Or add a second minion mob.


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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2014 11:16 pm 
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Minion mobs aren't supposed to be a big threat. It's not my goal to turn them into PC slaughtering machines. You're right that for the real threat use multiple bands of minions. But it's nice to throw a surprise in there every once in a while. "What? More minions? I got this." Maybe your players rent as cavalier as mine. Maybe you've been spared your players keeping a running tally, Gimli vs Legolas style. Maybe you've never seen one of your players take down an entire brute squad (all this is 7th Sea experience) in one action with a few successes to spare. It's exciting stuff!

And I like having the tools to occasionally throw a wrinkle into the players' quest for glory. If only for the minions to live long enough to witness that patented Bruce Lee pause (slight blood trickle from the mouth and everything).

That's why I didn't do a straight conversion of the plus-sized squad ability. The math just started getting crazy. And that isn't what I'm going for.

(BTW, I did some tests on unconsciousness rolls working on a macro this afternoon and it was HARD for a dice pool of 4 to pull it out (-2d; D3 roll). I don't think I had a single "successful" roll in 20 tests. Damn!)

Tom

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 Post subject: Re: Minion Talents
PostPosted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 10:48 am 
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I've conjured up a few new minion talents to try out on unsuspecting players. Comments and critiques are appreciated as always.

Check em out!

Tom

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