Elemental Forums
I thought they were, but they aren't, at least not for the A.I.
In my current game the A.I. Relias has an army of half a dozen shieldsmen, most of them with crippling injuries.
Tooltips say they are supposed to die, but they don't. Makes them seriously abusable.... Especially since they don't have to go home when they die if your sovereign lives.
+200% xp Relias, anyone?
Challenge accepted!
It's just a flesh wound!
The problem, as Altar clearly demonstrate, is that the AI has no clue how to keep it's henchmen alive (they need to be babied). As a result, if you make them die, Altar gets pretty crippled by its special units (it would just be a massive influence drain for them). This is the same logic behind perma death for champions.
As long as no injuries (curse you typhoid fever!!!) don't effect the rest of the units in a stack ... I can't see immortals as a weakness >.>
I had a warrior that was blind in one eye and close to -50% hp, he was pretty fucking worthless after 4 injuries. Although most of my injuries happen in the early game where I am gambling a lot more and fighting a lot of one champ vs monster battles.
henchmen are really thoroughly overpowered. However i don't think taking away their immortality would be a good way to weaken them .it just wouldn't be fun 
The immortality of champions is a means to discourage save scumming. It's really annoying to constantly reload to avoid losing your favourite pet lv30 unit. it sucks fun out of the game. Letting them live, but with an injury, is a way to penalize death that players can shrug and accept, compared to the permanance of death which is just annoying.
The main issue with them is that auras like shieldwall, tactician and trainer seem to stack infinitely. enabling them all to boost each other's xp gain, defense and initiative to silly levels. Making only one instance of each aura in an army count, would help to fix them a lot. In addition i'd say give them a penalty to xp gain compared to champions, and give them a longer recovery time after dying (10 turns?)
I know. My last game I kept running into piles and piles of Shieldmen. It's bloody annoying when you fight an army that is basically all gimped Shieldman units. And then when you finally get them down to their last city there's piles of them inside the city walls, immobilised due to injury.
I think henchmen need to be limited in number, and the AI needs to learn to build more than just Shieldman units, and it needs to learn how to build a design them with a belt of precognition, a monk's robe, and a monk staff. And keep them in the back row as a support unit (Haste everything else). Shieldwall is a lame way to build up defence and yeah, my Blizzard Mages can get around it.
ohh number limits are a good idea too. perhaps a limit of 1-2 henchman for every champion you have, or one per each city, or every two cities.
in my last game i just made an unstoppable army of my soverign, a krax spearman i found, and five henchmen of differeing specialisations. by endgame they were all around lv32 and my army rating was long since past "epic" 
You should have added two more and then you could have had your very own Fellowship of the Ring. 
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