D&D 5E (2014) Are henchmen/troupe-play viable in 5E?

[manuzed78]

The Battlesystem rules for mass combat should make it easy to run fights with many followers .

I hope so ! I wish, I prey for good rules as promised !

 

[Uchawi]

Henchmen were possible in any edition as long as the DM is prepared to make adjustments due to combat, metagaming, etc. I see nothing in 5E that will prevent it. But one thing I do not want are classes like a necromancer placed in a game where they can summon hoards of undead to take over the action economy. That could be stated for any summoning class. So I hope any henchmen rules or modules, includes provisions for hoards of minions.

 

[jodyjohnson]

But one thing I do not want are classes like a necromancer placed in a game where they can summon hoards of undead to take over the action economy. That could be stated for any summoning class.

For me, this falls under DM advice.

If I have 2 players, I can see a super-summoner, beastmaster, or necromantic horde. When there's a full table of 6 or more. Extra NPCs would be limited.

Troupe play would be similar. It is a DM and communication issue.

A related issue is just having something as simple as a horse or mule and having the DM blow them up every chance he gets.

 

[Umbran]

Perhaps more importantly - while troupe play may have started in a game with massive power differentials, that power difference really isn't required. So long as players have multiple characters they use (and some would say, they are used in different contexts) you're good for troupe play.

 

[Halivar]

Perhaps more importantly - while troupe play may have started in a game with massive power differentials, that power difference really isn't required. So long as players have multiple characters they use (and some would say, they are used in different contexts) you're good for troupe play.

Here's how I implemented troupe play in 1E:

• Every player had enough henchmen to make a low-to-mid-powered balanced party.
• Each player left purely superfluous henchmen behind, or sent them on a side-quest.
• If enough henchmen are on a side-quest, we'd actually run those characters' quest as a separate session instead of rolling for it.
• If a PC dies, that PC can select their favorite henchman to replace them.

It was a lot of fun, and because I have creative players, the henchmen were typically as plot-hookable (or in some cases, more) as the PC's themselves.

 

[Umbran]

Here's how I implemented troupe play in 1E:

That works just fine. But it is still using the "henchman" dynamic, and that's not required.

I have seen another form of troupe play. Imagine you have a core party: Wizard, Cleric, Thief, and Fighter, each played by a separate player. They do normal adventuring stuff.

But each of those is also connected to an organization. There's a church for the cleric, a guild of thieves, a convocation for wizards, and the fighter's in tight with the city guardsmen.

So, everybody also has a character involved with the church, the guild, the convocation, and the guard - a total of 4 characters per player. Characters are swapped based on context - when dealing with church matters, everyone plays their church character. When the cleric goes off adventuring, they play their adventuring characters. The adventurers find an artifact, which is taken to the convocation for study and that kicks off play with the convocation characters, and so on.

 

[Halivar]

/snip

That sounds like a pretty fun game right there. Definitely going to yoink!

 

[Umbran]

That sounds like a pretty fun game right there. Definitely going to yoink!

Feel free!

We found troupe play to be most appropriate when the group meets frequently - like once a week. It also isn't really conducive to fast levelling, if that's your thing. But, it can lead to a very rich social structure in your game

 

[gyor]

There are also summon monster spells I believe, as well as a spell to summon a mount for Paladins, the Familiar Feat, Animate Undead, and so on.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I enjoy that style of play. We called it "expedition" play rather than troupe play. It was a holdover from Keep on the Borderlands, where each sortie to the Caves of Chaos left the keep with 20 or so hirelings, and came back with 4-5 survivors. Rich survivors. This was with OD&D in the 1980s.

You could run a henchmen-heavy game in 5e pretty easily, with each acting on their own initiative. Or you could do it 13th Age style, and aggregate your henchmen into one "creature". One attack per round, good damage (something like d10, +1 per henchman), with a HP threshold instead of a pool of HP: for every 8 HP of damage from a single attack, lose a henchman. Multiples of 8 (or whatever) damage remove multiple henchmen; "extra" damage is discarded and not tracked.

That'd simulate something like the group of warriors that accompanied Perseus in Clash of the Titans, or your typical squad of sellswords.