vegas

Circling back to this issue after having spent more time with the text and carefully parsing it all, I think I now understand the rules as written and perhaps as intended. I also notice that my original post had missed the treatment of Combat Skill modifiers which appears to be different than the DEX and Move effects of encumbrance. So we are back to three sets of encumbrance rules. ☹️ Table 6.1 was a big source of my confusion when I first studied this, and I see now it is also incomplete. Here is how I think the Table should read: Armor Type Redctn. DEX Modifier Move Bonus* Combat Skill Heavy clothing 1 0 +2 +5 Padded armor 2 0 +2 +5 Leather armor 4 -5 +2 na Hard leather 6 -5 na na Chainmail 10 -10 na na Reinforced Chain 12 -10 na na * Increase in Movement rate bonus only available if character is also unencumbered Relabeling the "Heavy Load?" column "Move Bonus" removes some of the confusion with the DEX modifier, as it seems from context intention is not to decrement DEX twice as a result of armor (once for the "DEX Modifier" column and then again if "Heavy Load?" reads "Y" as Heavy Loads cause a -10 DEX modifier on p 97.) The RAW as I see it have 2 different triggers for encumbrance effects, armor & load, and 3 different thresholds for encumbrance: A) for DEX encumbrance modifiers begin either with leather armor or light loads, and since load and armor modifiers stack (the example on p 97 is explicit about that) the DEX modifier from load and armor can range from -5 to -20; B) the +2 Move bonus is lost from encumbrance from either "hard leather armor" or a "heavy load"; C) the +5 Combat Skill modifier is only affected by armor not load - padded armor or less and you get the bonus. To get this to work at the table, I think it requires some house rules: 1) encouraged by Morien I'd rule a sheathed one-handed weapon, and a shield carried on the back is neither a heavy nor a light load, so no additional DEX modifier applies besides whats explicitly on Table 6.1. Much more than that and you have at least a light load for an additional -5. 2) whether its RAI or not, I'd take away both the +5 Combat Skill modifier and the +2 Move bonus if more than a shield and weapon are being carried in hands. I do hope this topic gets a re-write in 6e.

Very fun, simple idea. Thank you for sharing.

@AlHazred, Sorry, the sentence got garbled in revisions. I'll edit it. (hint: remove the first "is"). The idea is a woman character rolls one time in her life to check for fertility, and if she succeeds at that "saving throw" by rolling 6 or higher on 2d20, then she is fertile and proceeds to roll on the childbirth tables normally (at least until she gets a "mother infertile" as a complication).

Thanks Voord! That is an excellent point and in fact I do assume the heir, spare, prayer roles for the first three kids of NPC families and I should update the rules to reflect that. Great point!

@Tizun After the 5 first years, do you still roll on the survival table? After all, the NPC adults must roll. For these house rules, you have to stop rolling at age 6, otherwise too many children would die. The target is 30% child mortality (that is both roughly historically accurate and matches the BoEstate) and these rules achieve that level in the 6 rolls, newborn to five, rather than 21 rolls. Why do it this way? First it is more accurate (though imperfect) because 85% of childhood deaths do happen that early and they are not spread out evenly every year from age 1-20 as BoEstate has it. Second I am sensitive to how many rolls the game asks us to make for NPCs and I am looking to cut down on bookkeeping and rolls where I can. But maybe you want to keep your players more stressed and not know that a child will reach maturity if they reach age 6? If that is the case, here is how to have your cake and eat it too: keep the house rule table, but if the child dies on roll in their 5th year, roll one more d20: and that is their age at death. (a 1-5 result all mean age 5.) You get the benefit of making fewer rolls, and your players don't know if they child will survive or not until they are 21. Do you use the standard of living modifiers? Except for extreme poverty, it seems not. I do not. A lot of work/thought went into that decision, but here is a quick summary. First (and Morien made this point) even an impoverished knight has a lot of money compared to a commoner so standard of living is highly relative. Second there is very little historical evidence that wealth had any effect on childbearing or life expectancy. Whether we look at ancient or medieval evidence, aristocrats tended to have the same or smaller families than commoners and aristocrats had the same life expectancy as lower classes. Now if you dig into the historical evidence, its a bit more complicated than it seems on the surface, more complicated than I want to (or probably could) model in some game tables. So I default to a simple but good enough answer: above 3 Librum in household income and you get a survival bonus. But do note, our family NPCs are also facing a high chance of death from the family events table; 10% of the time, someone dies each year. The bonus on the Survival table is intended to roughly balance the risk faced on the Family Events table keeping commoners and nobles with roughly the same life expectancy on net. Impoverished knights, alas, get the worst of both worlds. @Morien Thanks for the heads up on BoE. I will have to re-read that section because clearly I missed that. And while I have your attention, Morien, let me just write a thank you for all the resources you have posted: the thread on childbirth, your house rules, your suggestions for supplements. I am a Pendragon noob and I found your posts enormously helpful in getting up to speed efficiently on the game and the rough edges to think about. Thank You!

One more resource for you and I'm done with this topic. Rolling every year for every NPC is a pain and I imagine most refs ignore it. Rather than slavishly following that method RAW for adult NPCs, we could instead just use a life table and roll once to look up year of death. That way you are only making one roll for each NPC rather than rolling for all NPCs every year. To do that I took the UN life tables for a 35 year life expectancy and built a d100 Survival table in five year periods. (Could have done annual periods, but the table just gets really large and this is more than good enough for gaming purposes.) The instructions are on the attached table, though a ref could be creative and use it differently. Personally, as the note in the instructions suggests, I'd use the table as is for commoners and give nobles a bonus 5 years of lifetime. Survival Table Alternative Age of Death lookup.pdf

Morien has posted on this topic before suggesting the changing the childbirth tables so they were less deadly to mothers, and his thread got a lot of replies and some alternative approaches (CON saves). For my own reasons I was inspired to research medieval maternal mortality, fertility, life expectancy, etc. and after digging into it all, while I liked Morien's original solution best of what was suggested, but as he wrote, those changes still didn't go far enough and remained too deadly. I decided to bite the bullet and make some house rules with proper tables. I tried to keep close to core rules and the corrections found in the Book of Estate. I also wanted to minimize rolls and bookkeeping. I'm pleased with the result and decided to share it with you all. The 1 page house rules & errata are attached. Below is some discussion on the issues addressed and then footnotes for my research. I am sure most people couldn't care less about so much detail, but I provide for those who might. I had fun with this exercise. Enjoy! (Hopefully 6e has already fixed these issues.) ***** Issue 1, Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR): * The Core rules have an MMR per pregnancy of 20%! * Research: medieval aristocrats historically experienced a MMR around 1%.[1][2] * These house rules generate an MMR of 1.5%. Issue 2, Fertility with Age and Income * The Core rules use a fixed 45% per annum fertility rate. Greg's web page introduced the concept of reduced fertility rates with age, but these were never published and retain the high MMR. * Research: 16C English women aged 20-25 experienced a 43% fertility rate declining with age.[3] British peers with wives married before age 25 experienced a 42% fertility rate in the first 5 years of marriage from the mid-16C to mid-19C.[4] Modern medicine tells us male fertility decreases rates with age, roughly halving in their 40s.[5] * These house rules start with a 44% fertility rate for women under 25 and adjust them down with age consistent with the biological rate of decreasing fecundity. This adjustment is necessary if we reduce MMR, otherwise unreasonably large lifetime progeny per mother results. Reduced fertility for men is also added for completeness. The house rules also remove most effects of income on fertility as that just isn’t supported empirically – nobles didn’t have larger families than the population average. Impoverished knights are however required to take a year off of childbirth rolls if a child is born. (Nobility achieved short intervals of childbirth by employing wetnurses; presumably an impoverished knight has better things to use his limited money on.) Issue 3, Infertility * The Core rules are silent on infertility, while Greg's web page tables include it. * Research: while I could not quantify medieval infertility rates, childlessness was an issue for a material percentage (18% in one sample) of medieval aristocratic marriages[2] and it is a central issue in the tragedy of Arthurian lore. The modern rate of primary infertility is around 2% and secondary infertility increases with age to about 20% by age 40.[6] * Is this a game-worthy issue? I went back and forth myself and decided ultimately to include it in the house rules. It is easy enough to ignore it if you prefer (don't make the primary infertility roll and ignore the infertility complication), but if your table is OK with it in the game, it is a potential source of drama. The house rules have a 2.5% primary infertility rate and the tables add secondary infertility reaching 20% or lower at age 40 (depending on age of first roll on the tables.) Male fertility declines are also included in a simple manner to reduce conception chances without increasing chances of complications. Issue 4, Twinning * The Core rules have a twinning rate of over 11% of pregnancies! * Research: Identical twinning is biologically constant at ~0.4% of pregnancies, and the fraternal twinning varies from under 1% to over 4% depending on age, parity, race, etc.[7][8] * These house rules use a fixed twinning rate of 2%, with identical twinning at 0.5% and a 1.5% rate of fraternal twinning chosen as a reasonable estimate for the setting given the high parity implicit in the childbirth tables. Issue 5, Sex Ratio * The Core rules have an even sex ratio between males and females. * The observed medieval sex ratio was 110-115:100 males to females.[9] * These house rules have a sex ratio of 110.7. The sex ratio and twinning get fixed together in one change so I couldn't resist implementing it even though it is a minor issue. Issue 6, Infant & Child Mortality * The Core rules have an unrealistically high child mortality rate of 80%! The Book of Estate fixes this and reduces it 30%. * These house rules achieve the same 30% child mortality, but resolves all the mortality by age 6. Demographically we know over 85% of childhood deaths in low life expectancy populations occur in the first five years of life.[10] It strikes me as both a better simulation and playability benefit to cut out some rolls to simplify this. Issue 7, NPC Life Expectancy * The Core rules have no provision for NPC death from age 15 on (MMR being the exception.) The Book of Estate fixes this and removes immortal NPCs with annual survival checks. NPCs have a life expectancy at birth, E(0), of 35 years and at age 20, E(20), of 27. * Honestly, the Book of Estate tables are fine, but since I was already making my own table for children, I included adult NPCs as well. Arguably the E(0) is too low for rural nobility, but I left the house rules have very similar outcomes, E(0)=34 and E(20)=28, but they have a slightly more realistic "shape" to the mortality pattern by having lower mid-life mortality followed by accelerating mortality with age. They also provide for a higher mortality rate (and lower E(0)) for poor individuals, an adjustment that is lacking in the Book of Estate but was included in the Core rules. Notes: [1] Lewis, J. (1998). “'Tis a Misfortune to Be a Great Ladie”: Maternal Mortality in the British Aristocracy, 1558-1959. Journal of British Studies, 37(1), 26–53. [2] Podd, R. (2020). Reconsidering Maternal Mortality in Medieval England: Aristocratic Englishwomen, c. 1236–1503. Continuity and Change, 35(2), 115-137. [3] Flinn, M. W. (1981). The European Demographic System: 1500–1820. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, quoted in Clark, G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. [4] Hollingsworth, T.H. (1965) The Demographic Background of the Peerage, 1603-1938. The Eugenics Review 57(2), 56-66. [5] Harris, I. D., et. al. (2011). Fertility and the aging male. Reviews in Urology, 13(4), 184–190. [6] Mascarenhas M.N., et. al. (2012) National, Regional, and Global Trends in Infertility Prevalence Since 1990: A Systematic Analysis of 277 Health Surveys. PLoS Med 9(12): e1001356. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001356 [7] Bulmer M.G. (1970). The Biology of Twinning in Man. London, U.K.: Oxford University Press. [8] D'Addato A.V. et. al. (). Trends in the Frequency of Twin Births over the last Century: European Comparisons. Unpublished draft from 2004 & 2006 articles by the authors. https://epc2006.princeton.edu/papers/60568 [9] Bardsley, S. (2014). Missing Women: Sex Ratios in England, 1000–1500. Journal of British Studies, 53(2), 273–309. [10] United Nations (1982). Model life tables for developing countries. Population Studies, vol. 77. New York. Childbirth and Family Events House Rules.pdf

Thanks!

Dumb question: Where does this Pendragon Discord reside? I have found the Chaosium server, but it is pretty dead and I can tell from the forum posts these discussions are elsewhere.

Thanks Morien! I greatly appreciate the light touch of KAP rules and relying on judgement. Your post connects the dots for me that there are just two encumbrance systems not three; the Table 6.1 Armor "Heavy Load" column refers to the p119 movement rules and the text below the table affirms that. The DEX modifier column in 6.1 represents the "armor encumbrance" rule. Then we have the "normal encumbrance" rule on p 97. Your post says that there should be an "inconsequential load" with no DEX modifier, and I'll trust you on that because I haven't read any KAP adventures yet. I have done my best searching the Nocturnal archives and can't find a post that clarifies this. Left open is what constitutes a "light" load. I take it a sword and shield remains "inconsequential", I just wish p 97 was explicit about that. It would have saved me quite a bit of searching. Beyond that it is a judgement if a -5 or -10 DEX mod is appropriate.

Trying to understand the encumbrance rules, they seem to be under-specified and there is some inconsistent uses of terms. Here is the relevant text that I can find: KAP e5.2 p. 97 reads: p. 119 reads [emphasis added]: p. 139, reads in part (redacted to focus only encumbrance) Questions: p 97 seems to read that no matter what you have at least -5 on DEX rolls (excluding cases that have their own rule, e.g. sneaking): is that the intention? Or are we to assume there is an "inconsequential load" that would get no negative DEX modifier? What defines a "light load"? p119 seems to contradict p. 97 by equating encumbrance only with "heavy load" whereas the former had both light and heavy encumbrance. Given the context of p119, I assume only "heavy loads" affect movement rates and this language has no bearing on DEX rolls. p139 parses things a third way by having encumbrance equated with "heavy load" but the DEX modifier varies by armor type independent of load. It seems like the most straight forward reading and by inference from other text (e.g. p 108 "swimming") is that the armor table DEX mod is additive to the p. 97 table, giving net DEX mods for typical DEX rolls (again excluding sneaking) of Padded -5, Leather -10, Hard Leather -15, and Chainmail -20. Is this how you all read this?

Page 61. Year 457, the opening sentence of the events description was dropped, creating a non sequitur. As a noob walking through making a character for the first time, I was halted as I read it because it made no sense. I read forward and backward and there was no reference to these "rebels". Then I looked it up in 5.0 and found the missing sentence: "The eastern Britons rebel, protesting the policies of King Vortigern."

Working my way through the core book, I found a minor yet confusing editorial error. Is there a collection of errata for 5.2? Or is it fully-baked as-is, and we are to await 6 now?

Excuse me if this is the books someplace and I missed it (I'm a Pendragon noob figuring this game out) but I am trying to understand the dynamics of succession within a vassal knight's household. An illustration to help me frame my questions: A father is a vassal knight. His first son has turned 21 and is ready to be knighted. What happens? Understanding that PKs (or their players) might have their own personal preferences, what is "typical" practice? I imagine a lot of different possibilities: Does the 40-something PK retire more or less immediately and his son takes over the responsibilities of leading the household and manor and providing service to the Earl as required? If the elder PK does not retire, does his son leave to become a bachelor knight of another Lord? Or would the son stay home with the elder PK as the heir-apparent and second-in-command? Does the son go provide service along with the elder PK when the Earl requests his knights? Or might he stay home and mind the manor as the Earl is only paying for 1 knight? I probably haven't framed these questions very well, because I don't have a good enough handle yet on how succession works. Any help or insight appreciated.