In the official demo, there were 3 starting PCs against 1 Gor and 3 Ungor Henchmen. How did that go?

In our experience the henchmen were just a speedbump and got trashed failry easily. The Gor, and Wargor, were another story though. They were manly, well, beast-manly

Mark

Mark Theurer said:

Cheers. Would 1 or 2 starting PCs have difficulty against 3 Ungor Henchmen?

I think the PCs would walk through them. The PCs have the advantage in Init (2 rolls v 1) and in number of actions being played per turn. The combined henchmen in your scenario have (approx) equal wounds to just one of the PCs so there's that, too. I'd bet on the PCs in a rout.

Mark

Mark Theurer said:

Cool. The Henchmen do get +2 Fortune Dice at least to start, but I think you are right.

It also depends on how careful and experienced your players are. I had two people brand new to RPGs playing that demo, and they almost got wiped because they ran in and didn't do much that was helping them out tactically. But if you've got three players and they all have their wits about them, I'd say Mark's assessment is just about right.

Most of the time, when I plan my adventures, I used Henchman groups (and not henchman). So if it says 2 Henchman Groups and there are 3 characters, that means 6 henchman. If there are 4 characters, there are now 8 henchman. It makes for easier scaling (theoretically).

uhm...one. Unless the PC is really into menage trois. than I would say two.

3 Players (Grey Wizard, Dwarf Hunter, Reikland Mercenary), all substantially battle oriented, quite experienced players

Destroyed 2 Gors and 2 Ungor henchmen groups with ease (mind you, they succeeded in the Observation check so there was no ambush)

They were wounded but mainly because this was the first time we played WFRPv3 and everyone was still a bit wondering about how exactly everything works. Aside from Gors' charges everything was pretty easy for the players. Fighters had 2 and 3 defence rating + shield wall + assistance + 2 dice from Active defenses + 1 misfortune dice as the players held a higher ground (they stood on a wagon) - poor monsters didn't have much chance to hit, especially after their Aggression was gone.

I played monsters in a bit 'munchkin' way (i.e. attack from long range to avoid being shot - 1 free action, 2 actions for wounds and Charge action) but it still didn't help much. After this battle I homeruled no assistance in field combat is possible (you can assist in a narrow corridor if you have a spear and can corner the enemy but you can't assist in an empty field to each other every turn).

Of course should you have Charisma based characters, results will be different...

Skywalker said:

It's worth noting that henchmen group in numbers equal to the party. So up against a group of 2 PCs, 3 henchmen become a group of 2 and a single. Against a single player it's 3 singles.

That's important I find due to the "carryover damage" of henchmen groups. 3 henchmen can go down from 1 hit, whereas 3 groups of 1 henchman @ take 3 hits. So in 1 vs 3, a lucky PC still has 2 attacks against them even if acting first using a regular "not multiple target" attack.

Rob

I'd figure the number of groups of henchmen stay the same (i.e. always 2 groups of Ungor) but the number of characters in each henchman group scales with the party size.