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On further study, I find it particularly hilarious that something like 25% of the Henchmen stink. As in, they LITERALLY stink. Apparently, Stench is one of the more popular Talents for them, because they can't actually be penalized for it (since NPCs refuse to talk to Recruits and Henchmen anyway).

On a related note, there are a lot of useless skills and talents scattered across them, too. I already mentioned that Charisma (and by extension, Politician) are both useless on a henchman, but this also extends to Barter (since again, NPCs won't talk to them, which precludes trading). One of the extreme examples of this is Claresta, 1st Level Cleric, who's starting stats (+3 Int, +2 Spd), Skills (+1 Barter, +1 Charisma, +2 Lucky Charm), and Traits (Pack Mule, What a Rush) almost literally make her into nothing more than a mule for carrying stuff (no weapon skills, no magic skills). There are also several minor examples of characters with Talents that they gain no benefit from, such as a Ranger who has no magical skills - but still has the "Far Out Man" talent. In one particularly comical case, there's a low-level warrior who's specialized in using Two-Handed weapons - but doesn't actually have enough Strength to wield one.

From a min-max standpoint, it's worth keeping in mind that any Recruits or Henchmen WON'T get bonuses from Traits, so a player trying to plan out the perfect party will want to keep any Trait-affected skills on their two main characters. Early-on, this includes skills like Barter, Charisma, Crafting, Leadership, Lucky Charm, and Pickpocketing - all of which are skills you'd only want to build on a single character anyway (since there's no benefit to spreading them out, and some of them are useless to Henchmen anyway). Sneak is questionable, since my current experimentation seems to imply that unless you're ready to do a lot of micromanaging, it's not worth having more than one character trained in sneak (and even then, your Main Two can get a bonus to Sneak from one of the Traits). Although I haven't seen it yet, I seem to recall both Blacksmithing and Lockpicking being affected by Traits as well during the Beta, so those might be more ideal on the Main Two as well - but otherwise they can be safely relegated as Henchmen duties.

This quickly makes a lot of the Warriors (Knights especially) and Rogues less than ideal henchies, from a min-max standpoint. It also rules out most of the "Crafting" and "Leader" henchies, since one of the Main Two will more efficiently fill those roles. This results in the most ideal henchies being the bare-bones Rangers, Wizards, and Warriors who have a focus on combat-oriented skills (such as the way Madora is built).

From a party layout standpoint, the henchies tend to drag behind the rest of the group when you're moving around (although this can be adjusted somewhat by rearranging the party order with the drag-and-drop portraits). Personally, this has led me to mostly stick to using range-based henchies such as rangers and wizards.