minions in BRP

Some battles in BRP are meant to be a challenge but

not a real threat to the characters. They should be
entertaining and maybe wear out some gear or get
the characters fatigued so they have a harder time
overcoming the real enemy in the end of the
adventure.
Minions are a tool for the Gamemaster to throw a
bit of a threat against the player characters without
the need of having a full stat block for them. You
usually need only some minimal statistics to run a
full combat.
As BRP itself is not meant to run huge battles, these
minion rules are designed to make large combats
quicker and be still consistent with the main rules.
They do not add or replace any BRP rule, but they
streamline them quite a bit.
With these rules you can easily handle a huge combat with about 50+ enemies per side!
minions Game Mechanics
Minions are assumed to have a 10 in all
characteristics
They always strike last in a combat round
They have a weapons skill of 30% doing 1D6 of
damage, which may be in melee or at range
They do not Parry or Dodge
They do not wear Armor
One Hit will take them out
After being successfully attacked, you subtract the
Armor value from the Damage that is done to them
(as per BRP rules). For every 3 points of damage
they receive one Hit. Once they receive their maximum number of Hits, they are removed from play.
Removed minions may not be dead, but they are too
beaten up to take any further part in that combat.
These rules will work fine for most combats involving human minions. If you need a minion to make
a non-combat skill roll, assume his weapon skill rating as his skill level. For characteristic rolls multiply
their value by 5 (as per BRP rules).
As a hint: since Minions use only straight percentages (30, 40, 50%, etc.), you can roll for many Minions at once. Simply use one d10 per Minion and
roll for all Minions attacking one target at once.
Don't worry about the smaller 1%-9% chances.
This speeds up play while not changing the odds in
any way. Usually it is also not needed to know which
Minion hit the target as there are no differences for
the damage roll.

Stronger minions
Sometimes a basic combatant is not threatening
enough. If you need tougher foes, feel free to modify their stats:
The default characteristic number can be increased
from 10 to 12, 14, or 16. If you need different values for different characteristics, you should create
a complete NPC.
Faster minions might strike first, or go immediately before or after the characters. This rule ignores
the standard rule for the order of actions in a
combat.
Weapon skills might be 40%, 50% or higher. Stay
with whole 10s, do not use 45%, 47%, 53%, etc.
for them.
Damage done in combat can be increased to 1D8,
1D10 or d12. Make sure the maximum possible
damage exceeds the PC armor by 2 to 3 points not more!
They may Parry or Dodge at their normal skill
percentage (e.g. 40%, 50%, etc.)
They may take more than a single hit. Tough minions might need two or more hits to take them
down.
A special or critical result will always take out a
minion, regardless of the number of hits it would
normally need.
A minions Armor is subtracted from the Damage
he receives, as it is for regular BRP characters. For
every three points of Damage a minion takes one
hit.
Using minions
Since they are not really good fighters or strong
enough to be life threatening, the GM will need to
bring a large force to battle the player characters.
This concept is completely new to BRP, so make
sure you can estimate the threat Minions pose.
Do some trial battles with Minions and a few fully
fleshed out characters to get a feeling for these rules.
As a rule of thumb you should bring 3 Basic Minions per player character and you will loose one
Minion every 1.3 rounds per player.
The players in return will suffer 1 point of real damage every 4 rounds.
So, a combat with one PC and three Minions will
last about four rounds and will inflict about one
point of damage. Obviously this all depends on how
good your player characters are and how you design
the Minions in comparison.

-1-

After the battle

For minions who received the maximum number of
hits, make a Stamina check after the battle. Those
who fail are dead, those who make it can be attempted to be healed with First Aid.
After a battle minions can be healed with the First
Aid skill. Each successful application of the skill
heals one complete hit (not 1d3 hitpoints). This
means minions can be patched up easily, but the
downside is you can only try to heal each hit once. If
failed, the hit cannot be healed during this game session, but may be retried in the next (or is automatically healed if the Gamemaster decides so). You can
still try to heal a second (or third, fourth ...) hit.
Leading minions
Minions can be used in different ways during a
game. It is possible the characters hired them to
have some fire support. Maybe they lead a group of
soldiers through a jungle, or they convinced the
town people to come with them and battle the
threatening evil.
Allow the players to control these minions. They
lead them, so they should let them face their fate. A
character can attempt to command a number of
non-player subordinates equal to his or her POW.
See the Command skill (p.53) in the BRP rule book
for more information. These alliances might be a
one time thing and break apart once the goal has
been archived.
Minions may be cannon fodder, but they are not
stupid. If the characters hide behind heavy cover, so
will their minions. They are not suicidal! In such a
case the Gamemaster should overrule the players intention as he sees fit. The characters might give
them orders, but the minions may disobey.
If the characters on the other hand are leading their
minions into battle, this might be worth some bonus. Use the Command and Strategy skill for additional advantages.

minions in BRP

- even if you do not really use them to show their

position in the battle. Just use the figures to place
the Hit markers next to them. Try it, its fun!
Gone are the times where you have situations like
these: You are surrounded by a tribe of warriors.
How many? Err, hmm, lets see ... there are
three. Three? A tribe of three warriors? You are
kidding!
Now you can play a combat with 30 warriors and it
does not slow down your game at all.
Adding Flavor

Use the following examples to add a bit of flavor to

the common minions. Just because they are only the
cannon fodder does not mean they are not worth
being a bit different from time to time. Do yourself
a favor and do not use more than one of these specialities for a group of minions.
Distracting. There is something about the creature that impedes all attacks against it. Maybe this
is by physical appearance or psionic powers, camouflage or something completely different. All
attacks against these creatures suffer a penalty
equal between 20% and 40%.
Top Notch. The minions are the best of their
class or race. They do double the damage and take
+1 Hit to go down.
Fast. These minions are faster than the characters
and use hit-and-run combat tactics as often as
possible. They always act first, and duck behind
cover. Attacks against these minions are always
Difficult.
Now create your own specialities and let the (pulpy)
fun begin ...

Minions for the Gamemaster

For the Gamemaster, minions might be everything
he needs during a battle that rose surprisingly or unprepared. Minions also add flavor to the game as the
action gets more intense and imaginable. It is a huge
difference if you tell the characters there are 25
zombies heading towards them or putting out a
sheet in front of them showing clearly they will have
to combat this horde - no joke.
If you are using miniatures, putting 50 figures on the
table is always worth to see the players jaw dropping

Basic minion

advanced Minion

Attack: 30%

Attack: 40%

Hits: 1

Dodge: 40%

Damage: 1d6

Hits: 2

Stamina roll: 50%

Armor: 1
Stamina roll: 60%

Leading Minion

Advanced Leader

Attack: 50%

Attack: 60%

Dodge: 50%

Dodge: 60%

Hits: 3

Hits: 3

Armor: 4

Armor: 6

Stamina roll: 70%

Stamina roll: 70%

(c) 2010, 2014 by Robert Sabath

-2-

minions in BRP
Why these rules
Its easy. A short time ago I was evaluating two
RPGs: Savage Worlds and Basic Role Playing. After
play testing both for a long time, though my BRP
play testing was done over the last 24 years or so,
I came to a point where I wanted a final decision. I
never really liked the idea of Feats, Traits, Edges or
Advantages (and their counterparts), so I tended to
use BRP as my system of choice.
But I wanted to make sure that I did the right decision, so I took the strongpoint of Savage Worlds:
fast combat - is it really so fast as they always say?
For three days a friend of mine and I fought the
same battles with both systems. Our final decision
was clear: both systems run nearly equally fast if you
know the rules. Writing down the number of hitpoints a NPC has left took the same amount of time
as putting on a Shaken marker and taking it back
again. No system was really faster.
What we observed though, was that we did forget
about Edges some NPCs had or we did not want to
use them as they would have slowed down the game
speed at that moment (doing a Wild Attack and
tracking the -2 Parry penalty with 3 NPCs of 5 possibles with 80 figures per side is a bit hard to remember without placing a marker next to them).
Same went for use of terrain, cover and situational
modifiers. Not to talk about Taunting or Intimidating other NPCs.
Things really screwed up as we had lots of Edges for
different NPCs. You simply forget about that -1 to
Dodge Modifier when in the middle of a huge
combat.
To sum it up we ignored all the cool stuff Savage
Worlds gives you as a player, because it was not
worth the time it would have taken to use it.
The outcome was a bit of a tasteless RPG that actually felt like a tabletop combat simulation. It was a
very tactical one and we had heaps of fun, thats for
sure, but it was not a RPG any more.
Whats up with BRP now? Is it better? Our answer
is No, its different. While playing the same battles
with the BRP system, we had a bad time getting the
right figure on the tabletop connected to the piece
of paper we used to write down the hitpoints. It was
a mess. We finally realized it is only worth counting
hitpoints up to the amount of a Major Wound, as
that would need a character to make a POW x 4 roll
to stay conscious. Since most Thugs have 12 hitpoints, the Major Wound threshold would be at 6
points. That was the moment we came up with the
idea of placing chips next to the figures, each chip

worth 3 hitpoints. Once a figure had 2 chips, it was

out of combat. From time to time we actually rolled
for the Mooks if they stay conscious, but most time
we just assumed they failed the roll - they are Mooks
for a reason.
The less combat options in BRP were not a bad
thing in this case, in fact combat did not change at
all. We used all the options we always did in combats, without missing anything.
Does that mean combat is BRP is not so much fun?
That depends on your gaming style. If the characters
do not come up with cool stuff during a battle in Savae Worlds, combat there is as much as in BRP.
You can involve taunting and intimidating an enemy
in BRP as you can do in Savage Worlds. You might
not have these cool Edges that give you the permission to get yourself a bonus granted by the gamemaster, but as I said: that depends on your gaming style. If someone has a well written background, there
are certainly more possibilities for cool special actions as a character with no background info will
get. Role Playing is more about playing the character
than relying on rules to get a bonus on dice rolls.
What about the rest, all these nice Edges ... dont
you miss them? No. Really. Most of these can either
be role played or is actually shown in a PCs skill rating. Savage Worlds does not have granular skill ratings, so it needs to come up with something else Edges and Hindrances. These Hindrances can be taken in BRP as well. Have a look at the Super Powers
chapter, it is called Character Failings.
If a PC wants a special power, there is a rule in that
chapter as well. You can simulate anything special
with that.
We love the simple hitpoint system of Savage
Worlds though. It is really beautiful, easy and fast. In
fact, that is what the system makes it fast. So why
not implement it into BRP? Its simple and you get
the same fun out of it.
We really do not hate Savage Worlds, in fact we like
it very much. It just did not click with us. It feels
too light to be a real RPG for us. And as mentioned before, we do not like Edges/Feats/etc.
We play Solomon Kane at the moment and enjoy it
very much. It suits the genre, is fun and up to a certain time will be the game for our Friday evening.
But sometimes we think about converting it to BRP
to be it more crunchy.
Less talking, more gaming!

-3-

Basic Mook
Attributes
Hits

10
1

Stamina
roll

50

Attack
Defense
Armor
Damage

30
0
0
1d6

Advanced Mook

Attributes
Hits

12
2

Stamina
roll

60

Attack
Defense
Armor
Damage

40
40
1
1d8

Leader Mook
Attributes
Hits

14
3

Stamina
roll

70

Attack
Defense
Armor
Damage

50
50
4
1d10

Distracting - All
attacks against
these creatures
suffer a penalty
between 20% &
40%.
Top Notch - double
the damage and
take +1 Hit to be
down.
Fast - always act
first, Attacks are
Difficult against
these enemies.

Basic Mook
Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Attributes
Hits

10
1

Stamina
roll

50

Attack
Defense
Armor
Damage

30
0
0
1d6

Advanced Mook

Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Attributes
Hits

12
2

Stamina
roll

60

Attack
Defense
Armor
Damage

40
40
1
1d8

Leader Mook
Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Attributes
Hits

Attack
Defense

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Stamina
roll

Armor
Damage

Attributes
Hits

14
3

Stamina
roll

70

Attack
Defense
Armor
Damage

50
50
4
1d10

Distracting - All
attacks against
these creatures
suffer a penalty
between 20% &
40%.
Top Notch - double
the damage and
take +1 Hit to be
down.
Fast - always act
first, Attacks are
Difficult against
these enemies.