Hello and good day Community hopefully you can help me with some questions about enemy groups and dmg concerning Groups of enemies…here we go!

1. How enemies "group" and attack

The only rules I found, which are explaining how enemy groups are handled, are in the section regarding "henchmen". There it’s stated, that enemies group in packs to match the players in number. A.e if I got 4 players and 12 enemies, they can be handled as 3 groups with 4 each, which will give 3 white dice to the action this group will attempt and share HP. They soak only once and not for all 4 enemies per group. All 3 groups(if they are the same type) will share the A/C/E Pool and the cooldown on their action cards. That’s correct?

1.2 If that’s the case, a horde of goblins would be worse then a horde of daemons or beastmen since they do +1 dmg for every 2 greenskins in the engagement with their special "swarm´em" card?

2. How enemy groups are affected by AoE dmg

Now if I got those 3 groups mentioned and they are all engaged with my group of players (yeah its getting coazy) and he would use an action that hits „every enemy in the engagement" does he hit all 12 and they soak all? Or does he hit the 3 groups, as "one" enemy so each of the 3 groups would only soak once for each group? And how would the "stress" (or wounds for enemies) affect those groups if one of my players would be able to deal 1 stress to all enemy a.e through fear?

I feel that if I apply rule 1. It makes enemies overall a little weaker compared to the approach when I would handle them one after another, but that will take too much time for 10+ enemies for my taste of playing the game. Do you know better ways to handle 10+ enemies?

I don't have access to the rulebooks currently, but generally speaking:

When you use henchmen, count each group of henchmen as one creature. So if you have a henchmen group consisting of 3 goblins; you have to kill Goblin1 before you can hurt Goblin2 and you have to kill Goblin2 before you can hurt Goblin 3. When an attack hits one of more targets, the henman group counts as 1 target, not 3 targets. So a Fireball, or whatever, would have to kill Goblin1 before it could kill Goblin2 etc.

One note though: I'd generally discourage the use of henchmen. It makes the game too easy. Or rather, it makes each creature too easy. 3 beastmen might be a challange, while 3 beastmen in a group (henchmen) is just a bit harder than 1 beastman? How does that make sense?
The henchman rules are made to make it easier for characters to kill big groups of enemies, but you should ask yourself: should the group actually be able to kill big groups of enemies?
Does it seem reasonable that the party can meet a group of monsters that are more than twice as many as them and expect to come out victorious? The more henchmen you use, the more "heroic" the characters will seem. But it's a cheap kind of glory compared to actually defeating a group of "proper" enemies.
Also consider what groups you make into henchmen. Goblins and skaven work fine. Orcs, Gors and other thougher baddies become a bit toothless when you make them into henchmen groups.

Thanks for the quick response Ralzar !

Maybe I didn’t explain it good enough… we don’t use the henchmen rules, I was speaking of "normal enemies" not henchmen. But couldn’t find any rules that would make it easier to handle a fight with lets say 14 mutants. I don’t like the idea of rolling initiative and attacks for all 14 that would drag the encounters to hours and wont make them fun at all. So yes I DONT use henchmen I rather look for rules or ideas how to handle 10+ normal enemies for my group

Well, according to the normal rules for Initiative, you only roll once for each type of enemy. So you'd only roll one Initiative roll for the 14 mutants. If you had 7 mutants and 7 beastmen, you'd make one roll for the mutants and one for the beastmen.

As for handling big groups of enemies that aren't henchmen: there isn't any as far as I know. Allthough you could consider using more difficult enemies, so you can use fewer of them and still achieve the same level of difficulty.

By the way, fighting a group of 14 mutants is quite a lot of enemies. I'm thinking you'd need a rather large combat-oriented group of players to defeat them.

Well two players from my group, an Ulric-Priest and a Vampirehunter in the 2ed of Warhammer once stood alone and proud against 30 mutants and killed them all. We handled each mutant as one single enemy…that’s why we are looking for other rules to go around that hours and hours of rolling the dice.
Now we got the same GM and yeah we spotted some 40 Beastmen marching against a village…. you can guess what we will try?
Warhammer for me is the best system so far for creating real large scale battles and grim wars!

Some official reaction would be much appreciated!

Thx for reading and commenting!

For mass combat you need to use the rules for henchmen. There are no other rules for handling large numbers of enemies. WFRP is *not* about large battles, unlike the WFB miniatures game. This is a RPG, don't forget. The few instances where the PCs will be fighting a multitude of opponents are considered "cinematic" moments. Hence, the henchmen rules where the PCs slay enemies left and right … like Legolas and Gimli at the battle of Helm's Deep, etc. They are faceless foes of no real importance.

For anything else, then I suggest you roleplay the situation rather than trying to roll-play it ( ).

Keep in mind also that it will be difficult for more than 4 or 5 enemies to be in the same engagement as the PCs, so having more than that (that are non-henchmen) would see the majority of the enemies sitting around waiting for an opening before they could attack the PCs.

Honestly, though, it won't take very long for the GM to roll the same dice pool several times.

The PCs will essentially be dead facing a horde of non-henchmen foes that are remotely challenging. Each hit does a minimum of 1 wound. 40 beastmen attacking a single PC will likely do upwards of 10 to 20 wounds in a single round (being generous for misses and minimum 1 point of damage)

Ralzar said:

Ralzar, were you referring to henchmen rules or normal creatures? For normal creatures, each creature (irrelevant of the type) would roll for initiative. For example, if there are 2 gors (normal creatures), there would be 2 beastmen tokens on the initiative track. If there are 2 gors and 2 groups of x henchmen ungors, then there would be 4 tokens. It's on p72 of the player's guide as an example.

So, if Nishra decides to group all 7 beastmen as henchmen into a group, he would roll initiative once, but otherwise he would have to roll initiative for each.

Henchmen can be fun to use. It's like Gotrex & Felix, or Konrad, crushing right and left dozen of weaklings.

Cheers

Ceodryn

Thank you for you insight dvang and Ceodryn !

I will use the henchmen rules then and beef the groups up with some more action cards !

As for the cinematics, yes i tend to do it but also will have them fight for certain goals a.e if they what to take back a tower or hold a door. Maybe i should encourage that kind of play a little more, thanks for making me notice once again !

How about the AoE dmg for henchmen groups ?

The Henchmen system is a GM/Player communication method of identifying the important parts of a story and a time saver. If you think of it in terms of story it makes more sense. I mean when your players walk into a library and their is an important big book on a pedestal in the center of the room, you don't waste your time elaboratly describing the rest of the library nore do you want your players spending story time going through each book with interest because you took the time to describe them, you want them to focus. The big book is the foucs.

Its the same with Henchmen. In a battle there is going to be a main antagonist or two or three. These are the focus of the narrative elements of the battle, these are the creatures that are going to be "the conflict" in the fight. You are going to take more care to describe them in greater detail, they will have more powers and impact on the fight. The henchmen are the back ground, they get less description, less focus, the rank and file (the rest of the books in the library we dont care about). You save time by having to take less actions for those less important creatures and can spend more time focusing on those that will have an interesting impact on the scene.

The ponit of combat in a role-playing game is to resolve conflict, create cinematic action and challenge the players. So you have to think about it, how you can make that more interesting. Is it more fun to have 6 individual beastmen all with the same identical abilities for which you have to roll the same dice pool multiple times, or is it better to have 6 beastmen henchmen lead by a powerful chaos warrior who has spells, area attacks and plenty of other tricks up his sleeve?

I think Fantasy Flight got it right here, a combat has to be challenging as a whole, not every single individual member of the monsters party. All that matters is that it meats the requirements of being a conflic, having cinematic action and challenging the players. Henchmen allows you to show greater numbers, pose a threat to their resources tactically but the intention isn't for them to represent the main "interest" in a fight.

BigKahuna said:

Some time ago I posted in these forums asking if anyone had an idea which was the aim behind the rules for henchmen. These is for sure the most developed and enlightening answer I have got. Great!

Still I don like the henchmen rule, but that is a mater of taste

Yeah, I'm with Yepesnopes. I can see the point of the henchman rules, but they just don't sit right with me. If I was playing D&D or something I might not mind, but it feels too much like giving the players training-wheels. It somehow feels condesending to the players.

"Oh, don't worry, I'll protect you from the nasty monsters. I'll make sure they play fair, so you won't get a boo-boo."

If the players need to fight a largr group of monsters and they're not strong enough to survive the fight, I'll rather give them oppertunities to even the odds (recruit NPCs, get better equipment, set traps etc) instead of lowering the threat the enemies pose. However, if they choose to not use those oppurtunities, I won't help them out. Which the players know and makes things interesting.

In addition, they know I have made house rules for character generation that I want to try out. And in order to do that, I need them to die, so they make new characters. So they're under no illusion that I'm looking out for their well-being

Henchmen don't lower the difficulty of an encounter, they simply lower the difficulty of that particular group of monsters in the encounter. Encounters can be made as difficult or as easy as you want them to be with or without henchmen. Its just a different way of balancing combat in the interest of storytelling and saving time and is actually more realistic even if the rules for it are abstract than the alternitive of always balancing out fights based on numbers alone.

I can understand that tactically and rules minded GM's don't like henchmen because the rules are abstract, but consider what you are trying to achieve here. Are you after realism of the rules via simulation, or realism of the game world itself. The Henchmens mechanic is effectively an abstraction designed to allow realism and honesty of the game world in trade for simulation and realism of the mechanics. It makes more sense that beastmen, goblins and other such foul creatures travel in larger packs, attack smaller numbers. By balancing fight without henchmen your only alternative is to either make monsters weaker or use less of them, or alternively use weaker monsters in place of what you wanted for story purposes.

SPOILER ALERT FOR GM EYES ONLY!

For example in Eye for an Eye the players are required to face two groups of beastmen equal to the number of players plus 2 Gors. If you change nothing about this encounter your players are going to be facing 8 beastmen if they have a group of 4 and 2 Gors. With the beastmen bunched up into Henchmen group this fight is feasable, if you break them up, I don't care what 1st level characters your using, you don't stand a chance in hell. In fact even with henchmen this is a very tough fight. Still the game worlds realism is in check, beastmen who attack travelers and are trying to break into a fortified hunting lodge are not going to attack in a small group. They would try to over power the place with greater numbers. Point being you would have to make this fight easier somehow, else you are effectively setting the players up to fail.

SPOILER ALERT OVER

Whenever I as a GM consider a house rule, the first question I always ask is, "What am I trying to achieve? and Do I achieve what I want?" With a follow up "what did I have to give up, or what side effects does it cause". In my experiance very few house rules hold up to that scrutiny.

I do see what you mean. And I see the mechanical "goal" of henchmen. I just do not feel it is a goal that WFRP should have. However, the mechanic in itself is not bad, it's just a bit too wide. I think it would have been fine if it had been implemented slightly different:

There should be types of enemies that were defined as henchmen. Goblins, ungors, skaven slaves etc should be henchmen. They should not exist with any other rules than the henchmen rules. So a single goblin would just be single henchmen for example.

That way you restrict what kind of enemies are henchmen and you make those enemy types act consistently. So you do not get that kind of weird effect where a fight aganst a group of nine beastmen(henchmen) is only slightly harder than a fight against three beastmen(normal). Beastmen are beastmen, no matter how many or few there are of them.

May be we should move this interesting discussion somewhere else
Again, very nice exposition, it helps me understanding why the rules may be there. I am more in the line with what Ralzar says in his last post.

BigKahuna said:

I agree. The problem I have with the rule is not about the difficulty of the combat that, as you commented, does not depend on having or not having henchemen. The problem I have is that henchmen leave me with a wierd impression. Sometimes a group of Ungors (or anyother group of NPC) can be deadly, but when they comme in big numbers you can go through them like butter. This feeling is the one that bothers me. It is a too narrative based rule to fit in my idea of Warhammer world. In my opinion, if PC's have to cutt through some NPCs like butter, like Aragonr and co. do in the Lord of the Ring movies with the orcs, then they have to be like Aragorn. In the mean time they will have to content with less heroic feats.

BigKahuna said:

Totally agree with you. In my campaign, the encounter, as it is, is something a normal party of PCs cannot face when they are starting their careers. To solve it, what I would do is to look for other leveling factors. e.g. there are more guards helping into the fight, or with a few well placed social interactions the guards lower the bridge or open the gates and let the PC's move the fight within places where the engagements are reduced in numbers while they rainstorm with arrows the other beastemen from the safety of the walls…

As it happens, I didn't had to bother about it, because my party of PCs is composed out of 8 players, so I didn't even had to bother to change things too much, but still I included the above mentioned options (which also give a plus to non-combat oriented characters).

What I mean is that, if for a starting party of players a typicall band of marauding beastmen is a challenge too big for them, they have to focus on solving other things, or being more creative on how to win those figths. The henchmen rule gives an atmosphere of heroicity I don't like. In my head it is a bit like (and sorry for the stupidity I am going to write) if the game presents five levels of Dragons; dragons for rank 1 characters up to dragons for rank 5 chracters. When you have a starting party of players, you can inmediately play the story of rescuing the princess at the top of the tower and fighting the dragon, you place a level 1 dragon so the PCs can defeat it. That for sure will help the narration of the story, but may be, it is not intended for starting players to defeat a dragon. In my campaing players are not heros, they may become heros, we will see if the are though enough. They will have to start facing small problems and finding allies to solve the bigger ones. That is may approach.

I am not trying to convince anyone that the henchmen rule is a bad one. I find it a good rule, just that it does not fit my idea of warhammer world. There are always ways to involve PC parties in bigger fights and still made them a balanced without the need of degradating the lethality of the enemies.

Yeah, I guess what it boils down to, for me, is that it is a narrative tool that I feel breaks the narrative more than it helps it if you are not very carefully consistent in how you use it.

If you compare it to books, it would be as if Merry and Pippin suddenly started killing a bunch of orcs in the end of Fellowship. It would be a "When and how did they suddenly get so badass?" type of moment that breaks suspension of disbelief instead of helping it.

And it affects players in the same way. They see the mechanics while playing. They are going to pick up on the fact that whenever a fight looks really hard, I will downgrade the enemies to henchmen so it is managable. Which leads to "gamey" thinking on their part instead of going "By Sigmar, that's a lot of beastmen! Leg it!"

Well the thing about Warhammer professions is that there are Merry and Pipin professions but there are also Gimli and Aragon type professions. Another words, I don't expect a Commoner profession to do particular much in an encounter against a henchmen group of beastmen, but I would expect a Troll Slayer to have very little trouble going through them like a hot knife through butter.

I think the interesting aspect of WFRP is that it breaks a lot of common preceptions about what a role-playings structure should be or is traditionally has been. One of those breaks is that professions (aka classes in other games) are not created equally nore are they all combative or even balanced for that matter. Another one is that Rank is not level and is not an indication of power or experiance in combat, but rather experiance in their profession. You could concievably be a Rank 4 character and have no more or less combat abilities or experiance than a Rank 1 character.

I do understand what you are guys are saying about Henchmen and consistancy but again I have to point out that this is an abstraction by design setup for description to faucilitate realism through the abstraction rather than trying to create realism through the mechanic.

For example if I describe a lone Beastmen as "Vicious looking, with gnarled teeth, enormous arms swinging a cleaver that appears to be a veteran of battle full of scars" and describe 6 henchmen Beastmen as "Young looking, more timid than most beastmen you run across" the logical assumption that players will make is that the lone beastmen is a bad ass, but the henchmen are wussie versions even though mechanically speaking the only difference is one group is a group of henchmen the other a solo beastmen. The realism hence is the narrative, the rules really play no part in it.

The reason I find this more preferable is because I find that trying to create realism through mechanical means is only relevant to the GM behind the scenes. The players don't care and aren't usually even aware of wether or not a mechanic is realistic, they will be focused on the narrative description and to them the realism is found in the narrative.

I also think its preferable for players that a combat be faster rather than slower. The more dice you are rolling as a GM and more time it takes for you to get through all your creatures, the less time your players are actually playing the game. Its really one of the main things I didn't like about 4th edition D&D. In that game if you would have 6 players vs. 10 or more monsters, the waiting period for a players action is really long. So each player would take 1 turn individually and than spend 15 turns waiting for his turn again. This is extremly boring for players and something WFRP does away with in many ways.

The Henchmen Mechanic, The Initiative mechanic, The abstracted movement and positioning, less emphasis on health type abstractions, fewer rules within the scope of combat as a hole… All these things are designs that put the spot light on player decesion and quick resolution.

Of course as a GM you has to do what feels right for you and one thing I have learned over the years is that you cannot pass on experiance. I can't give you 30+ years of GMing experiance for you to apply to your games, you kind of have to go through it on your own and in a sense its part of the fun so I actually whole heartedly support GM's trying stuff out. But I would be weary of adding/changing any rules to the game that slow down combat or attempt to infuse realism through mechanics. As a GM you have full command of realism through the narrative, you don't need mechanics to support it but the more rules you add the slower and less attention the narrative gets.

I do agree with everything you say. And the point you make about how you describe the monsters ("Scary looking" vs "Young and Inexperienced") is pretty much the same as I suggested earlier with there being special "henchman" type of units. There used to be a type of beastman below the ungors called Breys:

(Quoted from Tome Of Corruption)
"At the bottom of the herd are the Brays. These are Beastmen with no
horns at all. Even the Ungors look down on these pathetic creatures,
mocking them and bullying them at every opportunity"

These would work as the henchmen version of ungors I guess. I might use this in the future. It is really all about doing it in a way that makes sense to the players.

And yeah, I have been a player of D&D4th edition for a campaign, and our group is NEVER going back to that It was like playing World Of Warcraft, only turn-based. You could try to squeeze in some roleplaying, but the rules were really just written for long fights with lots of dice rolling and moving fminis around on a gridmap.

I do absolutely agree on the fast combat bit. Particularly after my D&D experiences. But I feel that henchmen do not really speed up combat. They rather beef one enemy up slightly and attempt to make the players feel like their characters are accomplishing more than they really are. It just feels like a cheap victory. I might still change things slightly after this disussion though; by including more henchmen but make it clear to the players that no one is impressed when they kill them

lol .. who are they impressing?

Henchmen are just a tool for narrative purposes that allow you to implment larger numbers of monsters without overwhelming the group or creating imbalances as a result. Generally I use them sparringly and/or when a published adventure includes them, in which case their is usually a very logical and reaslistic reason why they are their. An eye for an eye is a good example of that where you have a band of beastmen attacking a fortified position.

Henchmen I find are really good in three types of situations.

1. Dungeons: The reason I like using them in dungeons is because you usually have more fights that have less "story" reasoning and more of a traditional kind of D&D effect of dungeons being filled with monsters and players are kind of expecting to swap paint with something in the name of nostalgia and tradition. It allows you to resolve the fights quickly, but with lots of narrative extragevance which is what most dungeons really need since otherwise they are considerably less entertaining.

2. Big Battles: When I want to present a larger fight where the players are in the mix, Henchmen are great for creating larger scales.

3. Expectation: Certain types of monsters like Greenskins for example, the players expect to find in larger numbers as really part of the warhammer universe sort of theme. I like the players to feel that the world isn't being adjusted in the name of balance or mechanical reasoning which is something that happens in a lot of role-playing systems. So its nice to be able to say "ya of course there is 30 of the bastards… their goblins!"

Generally though I honestly try to keep my games with the philosophy of less fights, but better and more interesting ones. Another words, I don't like random encounters or "you get attacked" kind of setups. Generally I like my players have say in whether or not they end up in a fight and what the circumstances are, but more important that they aren't constantly in a position of "ok we have to fight them"… but rather that this is one of several options. Its especially important in Warhamer where the large majority of the professions are not combat oriented.

BigKahuna said:

Uop! I agreed with you up to this point.

In my opinion, the rule of hechmen does precisely the contrary to what you said. The rules for henchmen adjust, for the sake of balance, the world of warhammer to the party possibilities. If the party faces 3 goblins posting guard in a cave, they are not henchmen; if the party faces a goblin band of 30 then they are henchmen. I agree that the rules for henchmen go in the direction of preserving the "appearance" of the world, but they do adjust the lethality of the Warhammer World for the sake of balance.

SPOLIERS An Eye for an Eye!

A clear example can be found in this scenario. The first fight involves 2 gors, while the last fight involves 5 gors in the form of a single group of henchmen. Why? for the sake of balance, an only for this. In that case, the world is being adjusted to the player capability.

What I did is no henchmen, yes, no henchmen at all. But I have the players different opportunities to win the fight through a good investigation. There where more guards at the manor for example that they could save from being poisoned. I gave them better chances to defend the manor from the walls, fire, boiling oil…

End SPOILER

Where a group of 8 goblins will for sure overrun an adventuring group formed by the barber-surgeon of Ubersreik and his apprentice, who deiceded to team up with the baker across the street and his wife; placing them as henchmen give the inexperienced party a the chance of defeating the greenskin menace.

For the party to feel that the world is not beign adapted to their possibilities, means that they cannot defeat a band of 30 goblins. If they face a party of 30 goblins they have to turn back and find another way. In my idea of Old World , only when the party are real badasses, carry a good set of armours and knew the best fighting techniques, can they face a fight where they are outnumbered 10 - 8 to 1 by goblins.

Let me add that this is a very personal way of seeing things, and maybe it is a reminiscence of my thays playing Rune Quest or WFRPG 2nd ed.

BigKahuna said:

Well, them selves and me. We are all sort of reading and writing the story, so we are impressed by the characters when they perform great deeds. And defeating henchmen is not one of them

BigKahuna said:

Yepesnopes pretty much summed up my feelings on this. We're all trying to paint a believable world for our players while still not outright killing them. We just differ in what we think is the best way to avoid lethal situations.
Since I do not use henchmen I make sure to not outright throw fights in their faces that they can not handle, but I like to have the characters have the oppertunity to get into fights they can not win and then give them the oppertunity to avoid the fight. It makes the world, and the reason the characters survive in it, more believeable.
For example, in my game the three players are trekking through the woods and the Scout spots a herd of beastmen with a minotaur walking through the woods. The Scout draws an arrow and aims it at them, but the other characters jump in and stops him. They wait for the beastmen to pass on into the woods and then contiue on their way, giving the beastmen a wide berth.
As GM I sat there with a poker face as the scout aimed the arrow, while inside I was thinking: "You loose that arrow and I will murder you all."

BigKahuna said:

Too true. I have yet to completely learn this lesson. I have had an episode or two where the story was progressing faster than expected and I saw I did not have enough material to last out the evening. So I figure "It's completely plausible for them to be ambushed by beastmen here. Let's throw some ungors at them." and then we did not have time to finish what I had planned because the battle took too much time

Definitly agree with you on the Eye for an Eye scenario and the Gor's, this I think is a good example of when the Henchmen rule shouldn't be used and kind of sets a poor example of the usage of Henchmen, in particular given the timing. Perhaps later on in the adventure if the group becomes more combative and heroic it might make sense for them, but given the nature and danger of an encounter with 2 Gor's just a day previous, I think it would be quite believable for the group to poop there pants if they suddenly face 5 of them.. but as you said, because of the Henchmen rule the lethality of the whole scenario is actually lower than the initial 2 Gors that where run seperatly which doesn't make much sense in the context and coincidently I also changed that encounter to suit a more realistic scenario where the Gors where run as Solo Monsters. It certainly gives your point of view plenty of credibility and I completetly understand where your coming from. Often a rule is only good when applied in the right circumstances and the Henchmen rule certainly has a time a place when it should and should not be used.

It can be said with any rule that is an abstraction that it has a time and place, its ultimatly the GM's job to know when that is and what else do we really have to go on but our own gut feelings? Its why I always say there is no right or wrong way to run a game, ultimatly whatever players enjoy playing in and you enjoying running is the right way. It also goes to illustrate an important aspect of RPG group differences, for example I know a lot of people in my circles that could never make peace with the many abstractions of WFRP, posing questions like "Where is the Hawk Training skill?" because they come from a GURPS background where if its not a specific it doesn't exist. Again, not right or wrong, just a different approach.

One thing that has helped me a lot as a GM is to be flexibile with the system and above all else try to come to an understanding of the intent of any given rule. Its often so (and I believe you share the same experiance) that a rule can seem stupid and out of place until you find out the reasoning for its existance, in which case you might still not agree with it but there is nothing worse than the sense of the existance of a rule for no apperant reason. This drove me crazy with 4th edition because their just seemed to be a lot of that kind of thing where I often asked my self "What the hell is this rule actually for or trying to acomplish?" I often found reasonable answers from other players on the forum, though I often found myself in disagreement with it anyway. Still, it was better than not knowing its purpose.

Suffice to say I think we about covered this topic from every concievable angle, any GM reading it should have more than sufficient information to make a call in his own game so .. job well done everyone!

BigKahuna said:

As I said, thanks to you for that!

BigKahuna said:

Yep, I think BigKahuna made some great points and answers.

Henchmen are intended to represent the cinematic Legolas/Gimli big-battle moments. They are intended to be "gone through like butter". GMs should take the initiative to adjust, perhap snot using henchmen at all, if this is not the intent of that particular combat.

I would suggest, however, that from a story perspective that mass-combat should either use henchmen, or the attempt should not be made to directly roll out large numbers of opponents. Rather, in general I would suggest the PCs probably are outclassed and should be strongly encouraged to roleplay as to avoid a confrontation.

Otherwise, I would suggest the use of a track and have a "tug-of-war" between the two sides. Have the GM decide on mechanics for determining the dice pools for each side, and make a series of rolls for each side to move the marker, representing the ebb and flow of the battle, rather than individual rolls for each combatant.

Yepesnopes said:

Yeah, that's a great explanation Big Kahuna.

I'm also not a fan of henchmen or other mook rules. My general take is if a character is awesome enough to mow down groups of villains I want him to be awesome enough to mow down groups of villains. I don't like the idea that capabilities of character changes based on how "important" that group is to the story. But that said, there are times when players just have to wade into more than ten goblins and this is a decent way of going forward. I think one way of keeping it clear is to have certain mook types that are always henchmen. Thus you don't have the disconnect as to why this particular goblin is tougher or better than the group of four you killed just before it. (And with the epic stuff from Call of Heroes I think it becomes even easier…all goblins are henchmen except exceptional ones. It makes a kind of sense to me.)

Great subject and well formed responses. An excellent read that kept itself remarkably civil. Thanks for this guys.