Any downside to use all 4 henchman?

I am in Ascalon city (original campaign) and I can get a full group with 3 henchman for questing. With the 3 henchman I don't really have to do much, just go to the destination locations.

- Is there a downside of relying on henchman?

- will quests get latter harder even with the 3 henchman?

Henchmen have static, limited and rather inefficient skillbars. They're also not that intelligent either. They can get the job done, but they're nowhere near as good as heroes or other human players.

It is possible to go through the entire game with only henchmen as your support team, though in a lot of places you'll find it very challenging.

Thank you! I asked in-game and someone also said that drops are not so good as with an all-humans because of "scaling". Not sure what he meant with "scaling". But drops I do understand.

The game has a loot scaling system that gives each human player in the party roughly the same amount of drops regardless of party size. The simple way of explaining it would be that you don't get extra loot if you go with a smaller party, so there's no disadvantage to having a full party at all times.

The most basic way to describe it is that, let's say, an enemy drops 100 gold when it dies - when you pick it up, you get the message "100 gold is shared among your party": With your 3 henchmen, you'll actually receive 25g.

That's not loot scaling though - just basic reward apportionment.

Another thing to note is that by the end of the game you will be running around with 7 henchmen ^_^

Henchmen aren't the best but it's totally possible to play the game with them. I finished prophecies with henchmen only and didn't know much about the game. Just keep in mind that if you later want to tackle hard mode they and elite areas they simply won't cut it there. You need either heroes or human players.

Always wondered why you get less with heroes in your party, henchies I can understand, but heroes?

You pay for their skills, runes, weapons, etc. etc. etc. and they get to keep money and drops to do what???

How about the hero's pay for my runes, skills for a change, they must have a fortune now! (bah humbug)

Having 7 heroes would simply be so overpowered it'd make all of pve a joke even in hard mode, wich is why some people like myself have a 2nd accounts to run a 6 heroes team

He's talking about why heroes get their own drops as opposed to all of their drops dropping for us. After all, we pay for their runes, armor upgrades, weapons, and skills, so what do they need the money for? Paying off Margrid or something?

Unless you're hunting something with value, like purple/gold items, rare materials, tomes, etc. Basically only gold coins, collectables, and junk whites are subject to scaling.

hench are ok, i did 2 of the 3 games only with them on 3 of my chars. so yeah hench are ok and as you progress further in the game you can add more to your party

That's not exactly true. If it were, there wouldn't be thousands of solo and duo farmers in several places in the game. Loot scaling does have an effect, however, but you will still undoubtedly get a bigger share of the existing pie as the number of shares get smaller.

Ah misinterpreted the question then.

To clear one thing up - loot scaling is dependent upon the number of people in the party, but it is not affected by the number of henchmen in the party. You will get the same amount of loot in a party with 3 other humans or with 3 henchmen. If it's henchmen, you won't see their loot, so it may seem like less is dropping, but your share will be the same.

It's been mentioned in passing, but for emphasis:

Here's the biggy: Ectos are not affected by loot scaling.