20893-Minions in BRP

8/10/2019 20893-Minions in BRP

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Some battles in BRP are meant to be a challenge butnot a real threat to the characters. They should beentertaining and maybe wear out some gear or getthe characters fatigued so they have a harder timeovercoming the real enemy in the end of theadventure.

Minions are a tool for the Gamemaster to throw abit of a threat against the player characters withoutthe need of having a full stat block for them. Youusually need only some minimal statistics to run afull combat.

As BRP itself is not meant to run huge battles, theseminion rules are designed to make large combatsquicker 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 com-bat 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 damagethey receive one Hit. Once they receive their ma-ximum number of Hits, they are removed from play.Removed minions may not be dead, but they are toobeaten up to take any further part in that combat.

These rules will work ne for most combats invol- ving human minions. If you need a minion to makea non-combat skill roll, assume his weapon skill ra-ting as his skill level. For characteristic rolls multiply their value by 5 (as per BRP rules).

As a hint: since Minions use only straight percen-tages (30, 40, 50%, etc.), you can roll for many Mi-nions at once. Simply use one d10 per Minion androll 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 inany way. Usually it is also not needed to know whichMinion hit the target as there are no differences forthe damage roll.

Stronger minions

Sometimes a basic combatant is not threatening enough. If you need tougher foes, feel free to mo-dify their stats:! The default characteristic number can be increased

from 10 to 12, 14, or 16. If you need different va-lues for different characteristics, you should createa complete NPC.

! Faster minions might strike rst, or go immediate-ly before or after the characters. This rule ignoresthe standard rule for the order of actions in acombat.

! 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 possibledamage exceeds the PC armor by 2 to 3 points -not more!

! They may Parry or Dodge at their normal skillpercentage (e.g. 40%, 50%, etc.)

! They may take more than a single hit. Tough mi-nions might need two or more hits to take themdown.

! A special or critical result will always take out aminion, regardless of the number of hits it wouldnormally need.

! A minions Armor is subtracted from the Damagehe receives, as it is for regular BRP characters. Forevery three points of Damage a minion takes onehit.

Using minions

Since they are not really good ghters or strong enough to be life threatening, the GM will need tobring a large force to battle the player characters.

This concept is completely new to BRP, so makesure you can estimate the threat Minions pose.Do some trial battles with Minions and a few fully eshed out characters to get a feeling for these rules.

As a rule of thumb you should bring 3 Basic Mi-nions per player character and you will loose oneMinion every 1.3 rounds per player.

The players in return will suffer 1 point of real da-mage every 4 rounds.So, a combat with one PC and three Minions will

last about four rounds and will inict about onepoint of damage. Obviously this all depends on how good your player characters are and how you designthe Minions in comparison.

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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 attemp-ted to be healed with First Aid.

After a battle minions can be healed with the First

Aid skill. Each successful application of the skillheals one complete hit (not 1d3 hitpoints). Thismeans minions can be patched up easily, but thedownside is you can only try to heal each hit once. If failed, the hit cannot be healed during this game ses-sion, but may be retried in the next (or is automati-cally healed if the Gamemaster decides so). You canstill try to heal a second (or third, fourth ...) hit.

Leading minions

Minions can be used in different ways during agame. It is possible the characters hired them tohave some re support. Maybe they lead a group of soldiers through a jungle, or they convinced thetown people to come with them and battle thethreatening evil.

Allow the players to control these minions. They lead them, so they should let them face their fate. Acharacter 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 aone time thing and break apart once the goal hasbeen archived.Minions may be cannon fodder, but they are notstupid. If the characters hide behind heavy cover, so

will their minions. They are not suicidal! In such acase the Gamemaster should overrule the players in-tention as he sees t. The characters might givethem orders, but the minions may disobey.If the characters on the other hand are leading theirminions into battle, this might be worth some bo-nus. Use the Command and Strategy skill for addi-tional advantages.

Minions for the Gamemaster

For the Gamemaster, minions might be everything he needs during a battle that rose surprisingly or un-prepared. Minions also add avor to the game as theaction gets more intense and imaginable. It is a hugedifference if you tell the characters there are 25zombies heading towards them or putting out asheet in front of them showing clearly they will haveto combat this horde - no joke.If you are using miniatures, putting 50 gures on thetable is always worth to see the players jaw dropping

- even if you do not really use them to show theirposition in the battle. Just use the gures to placethe Hit markers next to them. Try it, its fun!Gone are the times where you have situations likethese: You are surrounded by a tribe of warriors.How many? Err, hmm, lets see ... there are

three. Three? A tribe of three warriors? You arekidding!Now you can play a combat with 30 warriors and itdoes not slow down your game at all.

Adding Flavor

Use the following examples to add a bit of avor tothe common minions. Just because they are only thecannon fodder does not mean they are not worthbeing a bit different from time to time. Do yourself

a favor and do not use more than one of these spe-cialities for a group of minions.! Distracting . There is something about the crea-

ture that impedes all attacks against it. Maybe thisis by physical appearance or psionic powers, ca-mouage or something completely different. Allattacks against these creatures suffer a penalty equal between 20% and 40%.

! Top Notch . The minions are the best of theirclass or race. They do double the damage and take+1 Hit to go down.

! Fast . These minions are faster than the charactersand use hit-and-run combat tactics as often aspossible. They always act rst, and duck behindcover. Attacks against these minions are alwaysDifcult.

Now create your own specialities and let the (pulpy)fun begin ...

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 dvanced Leader

Attack: 50% Attack: 60%

Dodge: 50% Dodge: 60%

Hits: 3 Hits: 3

Armor: 4 Armor: 6Stamina roll: 70% Stamina roll: 70%

(c) 2010, 2014 by Robert Sabath

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Why these rules

Its easy. A short time ago I was evaluating twoRPGs: Savage Worlds and Basic Role Playing. Afterplay testing both for a long time, though my BRPplay testing was done over the last 24 years or so,I came to a point where I wanted a nal decision. Inever really liked the idea of Feats, Traits, Edges or

Advantages (and their counterparts), so I tended touse BRP as my system of choice.But I wanted to make sure that I did the right de-cision, 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 thesame battles with both systems. Our nal decision

was clear: both systems run nearly equally fast if youknow the rules. Writing down the number of hit-points a NPC has left took the same amount of timeas putting on a Shaken marker and taking it back again. No system was really faster.

What we observed though, was that we did forgetabout Edges some NPCs had or we did not want touse them as they would have slowed down the gamespeed at that moment (doing a Wild Attack andtracking the -2 Parry penalty with 3 NPCs of 5 pos-sibles with 80 gures per side is a bit hard to rem-ember without placing a marker next to them).Same went for use of terrain, cover and situational

modiers. Not to talk about Taunting or Intimida-ting other NPCs.

Things really screwed up as we had lots of Edges fordifferent NPCs. You simply forget about that -1 toDodge Modier when in the middle of a hugecombat.

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 ac-

tually felt like a tabletop combat simulation. It was a very tactical one and we had heaps of fun, thats forsure, but it was not a RPG any more.

Whats up with BRP now? Is it better? Our answeris No, its different. While playing the same battles

with the BRP system, we had a bad time getting theright gure on the tabletop connected to the pieceof paper we used to write down the hitpoints. It wasa mess. We nally realized it is only worth counting hitpoints up to the amount of a Major Wound, asthat would need a character to make a POW x 4 rollto stay conscious. Since most Thugs have 12 hit-points, the Major Wound threshold would be at 6points. That was the moment we came up with theidea of placing chips next to the gures, each chip

worth 3 hitpoints. Once a gure had 2 chips, it wasout of combat. From time to time we actually rolledfor the Mooks if they stay conscious, but most time

we just assumed they failed the roll - they are Mooksfor a reason.

The less combat options in BRP were not a badthing in this case, in fact combat did not change atall. We used all the options we always did in com-bats, without missing anything.Does that mean combat is BRP is not so much fun?

That depends on your gaming style. If the charactersdo not come up with cool stuff during a battle in Sa-

vae 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 mightnot have these cool Edges that give you the permis-sion to get yourself a bonus granted by the gamema-ster, but as I said: that depends on your gaming sty-le. If someone has a well written background, thereare certainly more possibilities for cool special ac-tions as a character with no background info willget. Role Playing is more about playing the characterthan relying on rules to get a bonus on dice rolls.

What about the rest, all these nice Edges ... dontyou miss them? No. Really. Most of these can eitherbe role played or is actually shown in a PCs skill ra-ting. Savage Worlds does not have granular skill ra-

tings, so it needs to come up with something else -Edges and Hindrances. These Hindrances can be ta-ken in BRP as well. Have a look at the Super Powerschapter, it is called Character Failings.If a PC wants a special power, there is a rule in thatchapter 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. Infact, that is what the system makes it fast. So why not implement it into BRP? Its simple and you getthe same fun out of it.

We really do not hate Savage Worlds, in fact we likeit very much. It just did not click with us. It feelstoo light to be a real RPG for us. And as mentio-ned 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 cer-tain time will be the game for our Friday evening.But sometimes we think about converting it to BRPto be it more crunchy.

Less talking, more gaming!

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Hits 1Attributes 10

Basic Mook

Staminaroll

50

Defense 0Attack 30

Damage 1d6Armor 0

Hits 2Attributes 12

Advanced Mook

Staminaroll

60

Defense 40Attack 40

Damage 1d8Armor 1

Hits 3Attributes 14

Leader Mook

Staminaroll

70

Defense 50Attack 50

Damage 1d10Armor 4

Distracting - Allattacks againstthese creaturessuffer a penaltybetween 20% &40%.Top Notch - doublethe damage andtake +1 Hit to be

down.Fast - always actrst, Attacks areDifcult againstthese enemies.


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20893-Minions in BRP