If I hit with a critical, and my dammage is less than tthe enemy armor+toughness, the rule states that, instead of doing the minimal 1, I turn a critical card and use the severity rating as the number of wounds inflicted.

So far so good, but what if I trigger two criticals?

Do I add the severity ratings of two critical cards and inflict normal wounds?

Do I do inflict normal wounds for the first card, then, because of the second critical, transform one of those wounds into a critical?

It's all right there in plain english in the rulebook, on page 59 (emphasis mine):

If one or more critical damage effects are triggered when the difference is zero or a negative number, then the attack inflicts a number of normal wounds equal to the total number of critical damage effects generated.
Even if an effect is triggered that would convert normal damage into critical damage, if the only wounds inflicted are due to the minimum wound result, the wounds are all normal wounds.

In other words if any damage is inflicted due to the "minimum damage" rule, then there cannot be any critical wounds. And the severity rating does not determine the number of normal wounds.

For example, 10 damage and 3 critical wounds against an IronBreaker with 10 soak (5 to + 5 armor) would produce only 3 normal wounds.

Seems I misread that - shame on me. Lesson learned, never read rulebooks when you feel light-headed due to medication.

jfmongrain said:

I don't think you misread, just got confused, probably due to the medication. There is a rule similar to what you were talking, but it applies to henchmen and minions only. From page 42 of the ToA:

Henchmen do not suffer from critical wounds the way characters
or standard creatures do. When an attack or an effect would inflict
a critical wound to a henchman, a critical wound card is drawn as
normal. However, rather than being afflicted by the effect listed on
the critical wound, the henchman suffers a number of additional
wounds equal to the critical wound’s severity rating. The critical
wound card is then shuffled back into the wound deck.

So, in the case of henchmen, what you described is applicable. What still needs to be decided is whether or not soak applies to henchmen. From the descriptive text of the "Henchmen Share Health" section above on the same page of the ToA. The snotling characters do not get any benefit from their Toughness. The text reads, "Inflicting 6 wounds with a single attack would kill three snotling henchmen.", and since snotlings have 2 toughness they should really be soaking at least 2 wounds off, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

So based on that, there is never a minimal wound result for henchmen, as there is no bonus for soak or defense. They just die impaled by your wounds, which strangely only seems to add to the over-powered nature of the PC's in this rule system.

Possible House Rule to make henchmen more powerful:
Personally, I would use soak and minimum wounds. I would also make each henchman subtract soak individually. So an attack of 6 wounds against the snotlings would result in one dying and one snotling with 1 wound

Snotling 1: 4 wounds - 2 soak = 2 dmg. That 2 damage leaves the snotling with 0 wounds, which leads to a dead snotling

Snotling 2: Receives the remaining 2 wounds, to which the 2 soak is once again applied. The result is 0 damage, kicking in the minimum wound result. Thus 1 wound is administered to the remaining snotling.

Perhaps they mean 6 damage after soak?

That's a pretty strong assumption to make, since that's verbatim what it says (and twice) on the rulebook:

Against henchmen, there is no wasted damage. Inflicting
6 wounds with a single attack would kill three snotling henchmen.
Inflicting 7 wounds would kill three snotling henchmen, as well as
contribute the remaining one wound towards killing another.

And never does the word soak even creep into the matter. It really seems like they were going for a fast resolution of henchmen. But it does have its drawbacks by eliminating the effects of soak and toughness, it makes many classes of henchmen characters very similar. They might want to correct that example in the FAQ, but as it stands that's the RAW from my perspective.

The best fix to henchmen is not using them... they are silly

Gallows said:

I like the concept of simple bookkeeping they embody. But perhaps using only their toughness for wounds goes a bit too far. I dunno, so far I haven't really had many problems with them in game. So it might be a case of premature optimization.

Lexicanum said:

The henchmen rules work perfectly. I just don't like the concept.

I don't like one standup representing more foes. I don't like how weak they are and how players can kill more than one in a single blow. They are breaking our immersion into the gritty and dangerous Old World. That's the real reason. The rules are ok.

Gallows said:

I am in agreement with you. I like the Henchmen concept and think it works great in DnD where heroes fought off hordes of monsters at a time. The few times I have played, I get the same feeling with my WFRP PC which doesn't sit right in the setting for me.

Henchmen are meant to be used in large-scale encounters. They *are* meant to die in droves and the rules are meant to immensely simplify and speed up resolution. Large groups of henchmen are not meant to be equal in power to the same number of non-henchmen. For example, should the players need to participate in a portion of a battle or a couple dozen minor underlings are sent by the main bad guy to swarm the PCs while he finishes the ritual, etc.

Two general rules of thumb for henchmen that I use:

1) a single group of henchmen should more members as there are PCs (at least initially)

2) There need to be enough enemies for at least 2 henchmen groups.

So, if there are twice as many 'mooks' as PCs, then I might consider using the henchmen rules. Anything less and I use normal enemies and just 'group' them as far as initiative if there are more than a few. For example, when my group of 4 PCs fight a group of 6 enemies, I might split the enemies into 2 groups of 3 ... so the enemies have 2 initiative slots and 3 enemies act at each initiative. Each "group" has its own action card recharge and A/C/E pool.

Creating a 'mook' style rule that uses the best of the henchman rules but keeps the individuality intact is something I'd be onboard with.

Sometimes a horde of low-level NPCs makes for good storytelling, esp if the bookkeeping is kept to a minimum (not that the game doesn't already do that).

Gallows said:

Im going to be using Henchmen against my group tomorrow. I like the idea of them, a group of 3 characters can be attacked by 8 orcs ( two individuals and 2 gorups of 3) and have a chance. Against 8 standard Orcs they would likely gt torn to pieces. The game is still gritty and I'm not going to tell them they are fighting henchmen, so I certainly wouldn't be using only one standup for each group.

The killing with one blow is just in how the dice are interpreted. The examples on page 23 all describe multiple blows so it would be easy to translate this into multiple hits possibly killing multiple opponents.

The same works the other way. One roll for the Orcs but if the action is described in such a manner that it inst obvious that it was all from one roll, look for successes etc on those bonus dice to describe the character getting hit multiple times etc i think the action will be pretty cool. I don't see why this has to make the game any less gritty

As for them being weak well it is going to take 12 damage to a single Orc or Gor minion, and a further 5 for the next. Two in one roll pobably isnt going to happen often. Maybe finishing off an injured one and killing a second uninjured, but even then that is a single hit doing 13+ damage.

Some opponents dont make much sense as henchmen though, troll henchmen does seem a bit silly, for example.