MAN!! why ppl are so scared of "epic" in their games? what they charachters do all the time in the perilous Old World?! they sip tea at the tavern and when fight rise on they are like "ah,ok..but..just one enemy at the time... and please: no blows under the belt!"?!??

Players are supposed to get in desperate situation when they are surrounded and the stacks are like 1:2 or even worst against them! so...just imagine a party of 3 standard pc against 9 standard goblins. Do u think they will have a single chance to get out alive, whit 9 attacks per round??!even if they can...it is 90 wounds...do u play 8 hour just to manage one single encounter??! I think that there are only two option to solve this A: skip any encounter which is beyond 1:2 ratio B: use henchmen!!

Even if in the end everyone, of course, will set up the game the way he likes most...i still think that enchmen rules speed up the game because:

1.less wound = brief combat

2. less "entities" to manage for the GM

3. less pools of dice to throw

This Quote have been edited

Ghiacciolo said:

easy big fella, chill down please We all play warhammer, and we all play it different for various of reasons. Some might fancy a sip at the tavern, while others want to take on a whole orcish war party. And you know what? the current rules support either way. The simpliest solution to the henchmen rule is to leave it out if it bothers you (not you), or embrace it for the epic battles it bring.

What it all comes down to is something that began the first time 2 players from different RPG groups met: they both try to argue that their playing methods are the best, and neither is succesful.

But here is the Golden rule that goes back to the first rpgs and have been so forever: If a rule bothers you leave it out (again not you).

Good gaming and remember the golden rule

Yeah, I have to admit I dont quite understand how 'epic' is a dirty word or something to be avoided. In fact, I'm not really even sure what people mean when they say 'epic'? Do you just mean larger combats? The only thing I can think of is the stigma of D&D4's 'minions'?

I can certainly understand not wanting to continually provide fodder for PC attacks to slaughter them en masse (the Helm's Deep bridge scene with Gimli and Aragorn, anyone? ). But I dont think that is really in the intent behind henchmen. I think they are exactly that...henchmen...minor characters not quite skilled/strong/commited enough to be a 'full' opponent. They are the 'extras' in many scenes. They help flesh out certain encounters and give a sense of scale.

Hmmm... I agree with Uncle Joe, except I think you can perfectly well use henchmen for slaughtering enemies en masse à la Helm's Deep and I for one, think that's a lot of fun I agree it's not the ONLY way to use them, though.

By the way, my players felt the coach scene in Eye for an Eye was much too unforgiving (for a bounty hunter with toughness 2, a priestess of Shallya and a Grey Wizard). They were practically powerless against even a single Gor. I actually plan to be very careful about using enemies in official scenarios as written, since they tend to be far too lethal for my party. Using more henchmen may help.

Again It all comes down to what kind of game you want. Use them or don't use them.

Schmee said:

Shoo shoo!!! You and your reasoning is ruining a perfectly good discussion, away with you!

Henchmen sucks! <ducks for cover>

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

What kind of sickly bounty hunter has a toughness of 2? Nobody toughness 2 has any business leaving the safety of a city, if you ask me.

Anyway, like many others, I don't like the henchmen rules. It doesn't fit the danger and grittiness that Warhammer is supposed to be about. I'd rather have a fight against a handful of tough foes, than one against a dozen that go down easily.

I've got one idea that might make henchmen more palatable, though:

House rule: Henchmen don't die any easier than anyone else. They're just not as brave, much of the time they stand around doing nothing or giving a bit of moral support at best, and when their pals get hurt, they're very likely to run away. So when you deal a lot of damage to a group of henchmen, you may not even kill one, but 3 of them run away.

Just keep in mind whether it's appropriate for that kind of monster to be that cowardly. Also, I think it's appropriate for skeletons and zombies to be brittle and ineffective enough to justify using henchmen rules. Just keep in mind that these aren't going to be terribly scary skeletons.

mcv said:

LOL! My initial thought was "A Toughness of 2? What was he thinking?" Pretty much taking anything thing under three is handicapping ones self.

Schmee said:

my thought exactly. 3 is average

but some like the challenge of having an inferior characteristic or two. Again what if someone wants to play a character with only 1 in a characteristic? would you allow it? or would you say its practically a death-sentence?

I have to be honest, I didn't anticipate the impact such a low Toughness would have on the PC or I would have warned the player. In character generation, we were paying a bit more attention to Talents and Actions, apparently at the expense of stats, I'm afraid... I'll communicate that to the Bounty Hunter player.

Anyway... This is probably the wrong place and time to say this, but I'm starting to get just a wee bit... tired, you could say... of the current use of the words "grim", "gritty" and "perilous". Don't get me wrong... I like & appreciate that the Old World is a dangerous place full of corruption, decay, betrayal and chaos, where death lurks behind every door and your own mother would sell you to settle her gambling debts, etc. Great!

But... I also like me a nice, wholesome epic struggle of good & evil or a heroic showdown with firebolts and limbs flying around here and there you know, kind of like what's pictured on the WFRP box. Call me an old-fashioned simpleton! In fact, I like that kind of gaming much more than player characters being butchered by the first giant rat or bandit they'll come across and dying in the gutters before they can achieve anything... That's just not the kind of gritty that I or my players find enjoyable. I completely understand how other WFRP players love precisely this about the game, but we don't. So I think we'll just play it slightly differently. And it doesn't have to be D&D. I love the Warhammer world and I love these mechanics. But my PCs like to be the heroes in a world starving for them, the speck of light in the darkness, the... you get the idea, something like that.

Of course, all of this does still mean that that Bounty Hunter is really going to need a higher Toughness :-)

Nothing wrong by that, you run the game as you think it should be done.

Afterall even in a grim perilous world there is heroes. And my players are heroes in my campaign, fighting the good fight. It really takes to be a hero in such a corrupt and dark world, makes it even better. Being a hero in a world filled with goodytuchies and where the wrongdoer is always evil...that my friend is no challenge.

Don`t make the world too grey, shades are fine, but something will and forever remain black and white. Emphasize on that in your game and you will be just fine without ever violating the warhammer code.

...and Good gaming

Mal Reynolds said:

This will be the first time I use this stupid wording, but here goes:

"This"

I agree 100 percent. It is your game. Run it the way you want. It is not like the Warhammer Swat team is going to break your door in, during game night and arrest you.

Over the years, I have played in 'Heroic and Epic' games. And, I have a friend who just approached me about running one. They are fun. Just not the sort of game I run.

I think you probably would have a hard time finding a sizeable number of GMs who can even agree on "what grim and gritty" even means.

To be honest, one of the reasons 2E didn't appeal to me was a lot of it was way to over the top for me in the "Grim & Gritty" Dept. Or at least what "they" felt made the game what it was. A lot of elements I choose to down play were cranked up to 11. Of course including "Storm of Chaos was part of it...

Other of course will disagree.

Any way, yeah. Play the game you want.

Just out of curiosity, Schmee, are there any elements in particular that you could point to that felt like they went too far in the "G&G department"?

I'm just wondering how other people perceive these things.

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

...and "That"

Guys, I didn't read all posts on this thread, so probably I'll repeat some ideas. But I want to share my thoughts and now I don't have time to go through every post, sorry.

Anyway, I really liked the Henchmen rule at first glance. I do love the concept of multiple enemies acting as one, specially for smaller than human creatures, and specially for vicious creatures like goblins.

I think we already have a lot of good ideas (just from reading the first posts) about how to flexibilize descriptions on what means killing more than one individual enemy in a henchmen group with "the same stroke".

And I do think a high mortality rate in combat doesn't make a scene like a super hero magazine, at least not necessarily. Combat with medieval weapons was really gruesome. It was messy and full of deadly mistakes. A swing of a broad sword generates a lot of kinetic energy, and that swing could actually hurt more than one peoplewhen they are so closely engaged.

Henchemen can fall easier in an nidividual aspect, but they are fearsome because of extra dice. There are individuals, specially with organized people or groups of vicious, savage creatures that have mostly weak individuals, who tend to work together, and that can be either because of training and strategy or instinct and tatic. If you can get one of these groups to split just a little, with a good stand, they lose a lot of defense capacity and moraly, and it's easy to picture them falling like flies. Again, it's already stated that one attack is not just one swing of a sword.

I have more problem in imagining henchmen with larger types of creatures, like Beastmen, even ungors. But that is just my taste.

I do think that players, knowing about the way the system works, understand precisely when you are describing a henchmen group or a group of individuals, and can differentiate teh challenge they are facing. So I don't expect a group becoming foolshly bold because of henchmen mechanics.

Nevertheless, it is just one rule among many. It's not hard to avoid it.

On a last thought, I would create a House Rule that prevents ranged attack of ever killing more than one individual in a henchmen group. So a long bow fired against a henchmen group of individuals with toughness 4 could do 4 damage maximum (after subtracting toughness and sok value). That would be more realistic, changing weights of capacity of success against a mob between ranged and melee. If then you evaluate that a combat is becoming too dangerous, other individuals (that could also have been kill by the amount of damage made by a ranged attack) break and run for it.

You could also do that for melee, but that would make henchmen groups a lot harder to kill and an even more fearsome enemy.

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

In a nutshell? I just did not care for the changes in "tone", that 2nd edition made to bring the RPG in sync w/WFB (which had many years of "evolution, while WFRP was stagnant). Not only was there a general shift in the setting, but quite a bit was lost all do to the fact that WFB no longer included those elements. The games "attitude" regarding chaos became much more "IN YOUR FACE!", thanks in part to the SoC.

Now I am sure people who play WFB like the shift. Or maybe some of them didn't. Me I didn't at all. But, I have ever looked at anything WFB related, let alone play it. So it really just did not appeal to me in the least.

I think we already have a lot of good ideas (just from reading the first posts) about how to flexibilize descriptions on what means killing more than one individual enemy in a henchmen group with "the same stroke".

I think it works fine if you visualize an 'attack' as a flurry of attacks or shots rather than a single stroke. When you are 'reading' the dice, I look at each Hammer as a blow that landed and each 'Challenge' as a block. So for visualization purposes, it shouldnt matter if multiple henchmen are felled by the same attack. It doesnt necessary represent the same blow.

jamesfx said:

Just to be clear you do realize that a group of henchmen only attack once ... so they are only doing one wound.

Mal Reynolds said:

An extra challenge could certainly be interesting, but keep in mind what you're challenging yourself in. Toughness is what keeps you alive. If you take low Toughness, you'll be challenged in the staying-alive department. Your game will be mostly about how long it takes before you die. If that's what you want, then go for it.

But in the end, WFRP3 rewards spreading your characteristics evenly. Increasing a low characteristic is cheap, increasing a high one is expensive. It's really very easy to make everything at least 3.

Remind players that any characteristic at 2 will be a very noticable shortcoming. Intelligence 2? You're a retard. Toughness 2? You're sickly. Agility 2, very clumsy. Fellowship 2: socially inept. Etcetera.

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

Then the henchmen rules are probably perfect for you. By all means, use them! But if you want to be big heroes wading through masses of enemies, you definitely need a high Toughness.

he he

I usually advice my players to not to have less than 3 in any characteristic, since that is average (average + racial bonus). this is for the sake of longevity, and to avoid too many insanities (after all much easier to get temp. insanity if you are both distressed and fatigued).

plus being halfway decent in everything is better than being awesome in just a few selected areas, and suck in the rest. Afterall this is warhammer you can never know for sure what to expect.

Good gaming

My players learned very quickly that this was true. The simple fact is, there are really no "Throw away" characteristics in this game.

I had one player-the closest thing to a "Power gamer/Munchkin", in the bunch. He shorted himself in one stat, so he could be "Awsome" in another.

By the 3rd session he was asking me if he could "roll" a new character.