Getting ready to run WHRP again and have a couple of unclear things which I need to figure out to play the game as intended.

1. When in combat mode PCs and NPCs can use fatigue to gain extra manouvres. With these manouvres it is possible move really, really fast. In basic monsters case this means they take wounds instead of fatigue (in other words "run themselves to death). But what about henchmen. If a group of henchmen uses their one "free" maneouvre to move 1/2 of the long range and then 1 to move the rest of the long to medium, 1 to move medium to short and 1 more to engage. This is a total of three extra maneouvres, which in basic villain's case means they take three wounds. Now with really weak henchmen this might mean that one of them dies due the wound loss of the group. How do you play this?

Overall the NPC's running around like lightnings is a bit weird. According to RAW it is possible for an NPC to run from extreme to engaged and hit a PC during one turn, if GM is willing to make the villain "run to death". Do you do this or do you prefer more "they approach slowly and let the elf shoot them to shreds" - approach.

2. When disengaging from combat, do you give the opponent some kind of free strike or possibility of stopping the fleeing person? In one of the scenarios I had a cultist leader just use extra maneouvres to disengage and run away (taking wounds) from the players. It is according to rules, but my players felt it was really unfair as they had no chance of preventing him from fleeing. How would you explain it so it make sense and would you give an engaged PC some kind of chance of grabbing and stopping the fleeing NPC?

I know there will be a lot of times when the arch villain just needs to get away to fight the PCs for another day. I need to set up clear rules and hopefully explain my players how it happened without them having a chance to stop him.

3. When in combat the PCs normally start off as being engaged together. If a monster attacks them, it would be wise for the sturdy and armored dwarf to protect the mage from being hit. How do you decide who to hit and do you give the "tanks" or "defending characters" some chance to step in the way when a monster is charging in? There are some action cards for this, but they don't really seem to cut the mustard.

4. When an PC action causes stress to the henchman group, does it apply stress to each individual hencman or does the whole group get just one stress as a whole. Example: A group of 4 henchmen is targeted by a spell that causes 1 stress. Do they take 4 stress (= 4 wounds) or just one stress (= 1 wound)?

What about weapons like blunderbuss, which attack everbody in the engagement? One roll for the whole henchmen group or damage to each henchman individually?

Thanks.

Hi ya,

Firstly in my games I prefer not to use henchmen unless for goblins/skavenslaves/snotlings, as I want my players to feel combat as a genuine health risk all the time..

But to try and help answer your questions;

1) I opt for a house rule of max 2 extra movement maneuvers for PCs or NPCs, an exceptionally fast NPC may get more (D elf/skaven assassins) but generally this keeps combat movement from seeming silly.

2) No free strikes. If an enemy flees but stays involved in the encounter use the above rule. If an enemy flees and keeps going I give the players the immediate option to give chase, in which case they leave the encounter also. The encounter then continues as per normal with everyone left in it. The chase scene is then resolved using opposed athletics checks vs 1purple +misfortune for terrain/poor light/fatigue/encumbrance/etc. But either way a chase effectively removes the participants from the original encounter. This remove a direct fatigue arms race and gives you as gm a chance to narrate the chase with minimal rolls.

3) Well my party usually get the combat focussed PC engaged with the beastie and keep the wizard/priest at close range... well they would except the two combat PCs are the two priests but the principle is the same. The way I run it you simply cannot "stay out of trouble" in a messy skirmish, and you cant "pin" a troll with a tank dwarf. If you cant take the heat see no 2).

4) In your example I would probably rule 1 of the henchmen bottles it and legs it. reducing it to 3 remaining. And yeah blunderbuss gets everyone in an engagement, friend or foe...

Hope that helps

Hi mate and thanks for your answers.

1. Your two extra movement maneouvres per turn sounds like a good rule of thumb. I think I'll go with that too.

2. Also like your way of handling the chase. But what then if the chaser wins the chase. What prevents the fleeing one just to wait for his turn and run away again? Will it be another chase? Or do you end the chase in a way that the other one is too tired / gave up on trying to get away / ended up in a dead end, etc.?

3. It is true that one cannot stay out of the combat easily. Maybe I just have to play the dumb monsters more randomly and the more clever ones will target the soft targets first.

4. Killing one henchman per one stress (or fatigue) makes it very powerful weapon against henchmen and I don't think this is intended. I'm planning on using henchmen a lot as they bring a new cool dimension to the combat situations.

I'm aware that blunderbuss targets the whole engagement, but the question is does it target each "person" individually. I guess I just target the henchmen as a group, not individually (which actually makes blunderbuss less effective against the henchmen compared to normal NPCs as it only hits them once ).

Mordjinn said:

1. I let NPCs use Aggression dice as extra maneuvers. That gives them that extra push before taking damage. You may want to give them 1-2 extra dice to compensate.

Also, how many fights start at extreme range, anyway? I think I've used it twice total. Unless you are fighting out in a field, long will usually allow you to somewhere that you can turn a corner or something (the Forest location card maxes out visibility at Long, for example).

2. The best idea I've seen is to make disengaging cost a number of extra maneuvers equal to how many your group is outnumbered by. So, if your party of 6 is in an engagement with 4 goblins, it would cost 1 maneuver for a pc to disengage and 3 maneuvers for the goblins (They are outnumbered in this engagement 6-4, so the difference 2 + 1 base). A group of 6 vs 6 would still cost 1 for everyone.

3. We usually roleplay it out. If one person is getting up on the enemy's face, he's usually the target.

Plus, the guard action is more useful than it looks.

4. It should be applied to each target, rather than lumped, but there's a good argument for lumping it together.

The blunderbuss should do damage, per target. You can lump that total damage together as above, if you prefer, but to only hit the group once for damage defeats the purpose of having a blunderbuss.

Hi,

As to a repeating chase, the athletics checks during the chase should start giving fatigue from banes (and potentially nasty falls from chaos stars). Other than that I hand out an extra fatigue to the fleeing character for initiating the chase after using disengage maneuver. If the chaser catches the target but cant kill him before he flees then the chase continues. Narratively there was a brief skirmish across the scenery, wounds may or may not be dealt and the chase proceeds on as you say until one is forced to retire. Additionally I rule if the fleeing target defeats his opponent three turns in a row he escapes, the chase being scored on a progress tracker.

Sorry for misreading your OP on the last question. Yes I would apply the damage individually to all targets, but to be fair I do only use weak opponents as henchman so they can happily all get shredded! You could rule only half the group get hit to a min of two if you want tougher henchmen?

Unless you want your players to fight 20+ creatures at a time, I don't see the need for henchmen. They feel wrong to me. For weak monsters they could make sense, but then the monsters are weak enough as it is. For strong monsters I just don't like it. In Winds of Change my players fought 4 cultists, 1 demon parrot, 5 feathered fiends and 3 coloured fiends. It was a tough fight, but they all survived. One player almost died, but that was 13 enemies total.

Perhaps henchmen would make sense to me if the players fought a mob of weak wretched mutants or something like that and the whole idea with the scene was the image of them ripping through foe after foe like heroes.

You can always find regular NPCs that are so weak that henchmen aren't needed.

Has anyone had occaision to use the henchmen rules on a staggering enough quantity of enemies that it just seems like an endless flood of foes? Are there any situations where the "gang-up" style actions would be helpful if used by henchmen? Stuff like Mob Justice, Bone to Pick, Dangerous When Cornered, Swarm-Em, Induce Panic, etc?

I could totally see how a few groups of four or five one-hit-wonders would leave a lot to be desired (other than to keep the fight centered on Johnny Toothgutter the Orc Warboss). But those random outlier occaisions where, like, a teaming throng of skaven are pouring into a dead end sewer after the players, as they try to pry an old rusted hatch open could be kinda fun. Even though the characters are cleaving foes a bit too easily they've still got themselves in some hot dang water and they have a decision to stay and try to hack their way free (assuming there is a surmountable end to the foes) or they tinkle their pants a little and try to get that hatch open.

Amazing suggestions everyone. I personally like henchmen and intend to use them at least when the characters are rank 1 lowbies. The disengaging and fleeing ideas from Doc and No:12 sound like great idea and I think I'll go that way. Cheers to everyone who contributed, you just made our game better