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You don't. Remember that the sheet you found is somebody's house rules. Unchecking is not something that happens in in the normal rules.

It really comes down to whom a knight will follow should two lords fight one another. For example, let's say a PK is a landed knight and a vassal of the Count of Salisbury. So his Loyalty (Salisbury) is also Homage (Salisbury). Then the knight goes off to war and captures and enemy commander for the King. The king rewards the PK with a manor and the PK needs a new Loyalty (King) passion. Now since the King outranks the Count, this passion is now the PKs Homage score. The idea is that the knights loyalty to the king should now override his loyalty to the Count. Now the Count might not be entirely happy with this, but there isn't a lot he can do or say about it without looking like he might want to go to work against the King's interests. Plus the PK now opens up another line of communication to, and influence in, the King's court- so it's not a total loss. Generally speaking this sort of thing doesn't come up that often - only when a PK with one liege lord does something to really impress another. This is more likely to happen the higher up the social ladder a knight is. Also in reality it can get a bit more complicated as a knight has good reason to back their lord who gave him the most- or at least try to figure out a way to avoid working against one or the other lord. Historically these situations are why some nobles send sons to back both parties in a conflict- that way the land will stay in the family no matter which side wins. So most PKs will only have one liege lord and not need to bother with the distinction between the two. They will owe both to Count Salisbury. It;s only those PKS who end up taking Loyalty (Arthur) who will need to worry about it, and then only if their normal liege isn't a fan of the Pendragon. BTW, the example I gave in the first paragraph was something that happened in my campaign and lead to one PK in the group having a Homage (King Constatin) passion. The rest of the PKs didn't get the passion.

From what I've read 96 is the current threshold. According to Greg the 80 was an error based on the idea of five traits x16 =80 instead of the six chivalrous traits (6x16=96). Greg stated that he didn't notice the error until after 5th edition. Now one thing that I will point out is that it tends to be much easier for most player knights to get the chivalry total up to 80 in KAP5 than it was in previous editions, especially if you are using the Knights & Ladies supplement for character creation. Most Knights from Logres rolled up with K&L can get 80 points during character generation. So if you are running in 5th edition (including 5.1 and 5.2) you probably should go with the 96. According to Greg it was a math error based on the idea of there being five chivalrous traits when there are actually six. I think the thing is that in KAP5 or later it is easy for most PKs to get a total of 80 points during character creation, while it has required a bit of work and/or luck before. It was more than a single post, it was an entire thread, and he talked about making the bonus more of a matter of degree. I think the reason why they used 96 in the PDF was that it was an official change, but the full revision hasn't been published in anything yet.

It's just a quick and dirty method for estimating relative ability. It doesn't take much into account but it probably okay for the general run of the mill monsters, which tend to have low to moderate combat skills and no magic. Factoring in for skill, magic, and tactics can completely alter this. For example one character with Bow 100% who is across a ravine might be far more dangerous to the PCs than a tiger. That's why any formula for determining how dangerous a given opponent is can only an estimate. There are too many factors, especially those that are relative to the characters or to the situation that need to be accounted for.

First off it depends on which side has to declare first. Normally I have the NPCs declare first, but if the situation warrants it (such as am ambush) I might force the PKs to declare first. Sometimes there might be an advantage to declaring first, but not usually. Then it depends on how close everybody is and who has the better movement. If one character can intercept another it might change things. For example, if Sir Girgor were mounted he could probably intercept the bandit before he could reach Sir Herringdale. Generally it works out as declared, which would be your option #3, unless distance and movement would indicate that one of the characters could intercept another, or not be able to reach another character at all, then option 1 or 2 could come up. In a skirmish situation I usually let the side that wins the Battle roll decide. But if you want to keep it simple just say the each have one bandit and either decide who get double teamed or let the PKs decide. Either way it works. As I mentioned above an opposed battle roll to see who has the best tactical position works great here, especially if you don't use any sort of map or figures for positioning.

It's not an official adventure, but some time back I had an evil knight seize a manor and kill the landholder and his family. The evil knight had some men, mostly low grade sergeants and bandits, plus a redcap! Legends of recaps note that they sometimes will serve an evil Lord. The "Lord of Pain" would seem to be just the sort of fellow for a redcap to follow. That could give the Robber Baron some firepower while still keeping the numbers small enough for PKs to deal with. A redcap with a bunch of rabble to keep enemies dispersed is a formidable threat.

I was thinking more of the knights. Uther died before Gwen was born.

More like Recognize than Awreness. The guards on watch knew someone was riding up and demanding the gate to be opened, they just thought it was someone else. Idenifying someone who is in full armor, with the visor down, carrying a shield, at dusk isn't quite so easy. Once the PKs got inside and up close it would have been trickeir, but the PKs just brushed past claiming important infomation for the lord and got tot he keep before thier cover was blown. Yes, that would have worked out much better. Even more justification for blowing off the guards and riding into the keep to see the lord with the damosel. I'm not sure if any of the Pks would have risked the dress though.

Unless you subscribe to my wacky theroy that Merlin and Uther prepared things for Arthur before Uther's death. So Leodegrance was responsible for selecting a core cadre of skilled loyal knights for Arthur. Maybe Uther even gave him some libra to finance the extra knights.

Yeah, well basically KAP doesn't distinguish between knives and daggers. I was considering allowing for weapons like a Seax that do +1d6 against lightly armored opponents (soft leather or less) similar to how maces hammers get bonuses. This could make fighting daggers as useful as swords in court where most characters are unarmored or bundled up in furs.

Swords are usually allowed, although not always carried. In most courts there are probably a few weapons on the walls here and there so a PK should have a chance to grab a weapon if he needed one. Daggers are pretty much universal so no one is every really unarmed. Armor is more qustionable. If the Court is supposed to be friendly then there would be no need for armor, so wearing it would be like asking for trouble. Knights would probably wear armor when travelling on escort duty though, and would probably arrive and leave fully armored, plus there are tournaments and other events where armor makes sense. But generally if someone is wearing armor he is preparing for a fight. Someone posted as a gaurd at a door could probably do it, as they have a reason, but otherwise the PK is probably aggravating a situation.

Yeah, plus I like to keep enough seats vacant so the PKs have something to aspire to.

Oooh, now that's a great way to run something like this. The PKs could set themselves up as bait, appearing as rich but weak pilgrims to lure the robber baron out. Yup. In a similar adventure I ran long ago, a knight killed his liege and took over the castle-then tried to force the dead leige's daughter to marry him in order to legitimize his claim. In that adventure the PKs defeated some knights sent out to capture the aforementioned daughter, then some of the PKs swapped armor shields with the enemy. The PKs just rode up to the gate disguised as the enemy, with the "prisoners" and just ordered the gate opened. It worked like a charm.

Well, why do you expect/want to do? Control of the PKS is mostly in the players hands. Traits can sometimes play a factor but it is still mostly up to the players to decide what they will do. Such as? What sort of things do you want to do that they can't. Most of the restrictions in the game are more social in nature. That is you can't just walk into the King's bedchamber to take a nap, because you are not the king. Yes the do-that is essential what the Book of the Estate does, smooth things out. Yes a knight should try to run his lands responsibly. It's just that there are other factors in play that could upset the apple cart. Uh not really. That's more of the ideal situation. The reality is something else. First off, constant population increase is not the norm in the time period, unlike today. War, famine, etc. all help to keep the population down. A knight would have to be very lucky to get that sort of gradual increase. Then there is a question of where to put all those peasants. This goes back into the concept of space again. By the Book of the Estate a knight can just clear land and build more hamlets and villages as long as his funds hold out. Realistically, however, that's just not the case. A knight only has so much land to work with, and if usually bordered by other knights with other manors. Clearing land usually require permission as it comes from woods or other areas set aside for hunting, and there is only so much a knight can do to expand his holdings before he has to fight some other knight for more land. Just take a look at a map of Salisbury where today and see how close the villages are to each other. Then there is the harvest. This is something that the PKs have limited control over, but is the major factor here. If the harvest is poor, then the peasants are starving and the knight is scrambling for funds. If the harvest is good, the knight gets extra income, but has lots of ways to spend it (new equipment, ransoms, conspicuous consumption, tournaments, feasts, ransoms, rebuilding lost structure, improvements to the manor, and, finally, reducing the peasant's hate). What you are thinking of is certainly the goal, but generally speaking the knight will probably only be partially successful in do so, mostly because of the various things beyond the knights control such as the weather or raiders. For example, if a knight gets captured in battle (or tournament) and has to pay ransom, then that ransom has to come from somewhere, so the knight might be forced to squeeze the peasants in order to pay, and that will increase hate. You might be coming at this from a more modern viewpoint, where towns are always expanding and building new businesses, but that's a recent thing. In medieval times most wealth/income comes from farming. Most extra income tends to come from knightly service to the liege lord, adventuring, and ransoms. To sum up, what you are envisioning is possible, but more of an ideal case where everything goes according to plan. In actual play things will probably not work out that well. Porr harvests, ransoms paid out, raids, paid tribute, plagues, fires, etc. will cause problems that will prevent the manor from being a utopia. Note that is won't necessarily be a wasteland, it just will be a typical manor, with ups and downs like all the rest. Having land isn't necessarily a burden that will break a knight. Land is the foundation on which all the nobles wealth is based upon. It's just that there are a lot of ups and downs, and most of the time the knight will break even. It takes a lot of bad luck and/or bad management for land to break a knight. Something like constant raiding and poor harvests for decades. The landed knight is better off than the household knight in several ways: He gets glory from the holding. He can marry and produce heirs to carry on the family name (and replace the PK when he dies or retires) His son will inherit the manor and thus be guaranteed of being a knight The land will sometimes provide income above what the knight requires to maintain himself (in BoM this is determined by the Harvest, while in latter books it is a set £1 per year) that he may spend as he sees fit The manor can be improved which can increase income, glory. The manor gives a knight a place to store things, including big things like furniture or horses. The manor allows the knight to have men of his own to defend his holdings. The manor can be fortified bolstering defense and adding more glory.

That generally doesn't hold up under the circumstances. It would be like someone coming up to a tank and taunting the tank commander to open the hatch and step out where he can be shot at. It's not so much a matter of honor or courage, more like intelligence (or lack thereof). If it were that easy, then there'd be no reason to spend all that libra on fortifications. The only way that sort of taunting would work would be if there were some sort of personal feud going on between a PK and the robber baron, or if there was some previous challenge that could only be settled man to man. But just riding up to within earshot and calling the Baron a coward all day long for not coming out from behind his walls won't cut it. Possibly, but unlikely. In general if the PKs manage to defeat one or two groups of his men, why would he keep sending them off to be slaughtered? If the PKs can deal with one group of minions then he could either try to take them out with numbers, or hold up in his castle until they go away, starve, or have business elsewhere (like back at their liege's court). Generally speaking this sort of thing isn't all that practical for PKs unless the enemy is fairly weak, or the PKs can get inside somehow. Otherwise all the advantages go to the defenders. That's one of the reasons why someone else hasn't cleared the guy out already. I ran one good siege in my current campaign, and it really turned into a grind, with the PK defender doing his best to delay a superior opponent, knowing well how expensive the siege would become if he could hold out long enough.

Thanks for the assist! I wonder if someone has compiled an index of what's where for KAP?

That's the basic siege approach. The problem is that it's hard to do. Basically the Pks need to have enough men to keep the defenders penned in. If they don't then the defenders will sally out and try to drive them off. Typically "starving them out" take a long time (months or even years) and the Pks will have the same problems for their forces. It's not in the core 4E book. I'll go through my books to let you know which one it is is. Yup, not to mention the harvest, stewardship, sickness, castle stores, or how much wealth he has on hand to hire mercenaries. A GM could pretty much make the adventure as difficult (or as easy) as he wants. A band of PK, by themselves, will probably be hard pressed to do much more than raid and harass the Baron. Maybe kill a few men, burn some fields but not much more than that. The Baron would probably send out a large band of men to deal with the knights, with good odds (2:1-4:1, or better depending on the quality of troops), but if that doesn't5 work he can hole in in the castle. The thing is, a siege mostly favors the Baron as he has the castle and should have supplies while the PKs have to forage for everything or send out men to buy it - which gets expensive. Castles exist for just this sort of situation.

There is a series of linked adventures for reclaiming some holdings in Oxford for the Countess of Rydychan (THE ADVENTURE OF THE OXFORD USURPERS in the GPC, although a longer form exists for 4th Edition), as well as the ADVENTURE OF SIR GORBUDUC THE FIEND. Both present holdings taken by evil "men" and detail their followers a bit. Well since the Lord of Pain holds a strong Motte & Bailey then you have to assume that he either had the strength to take it, or at least that the has the strength to hold and maintain it. Otherwise someone else would have driven him out. I'd start off assuming he has the wealth and land of a small estate holder or so- basically enough for someone to be able to build the castle, and give him the same number of men as a estate holder with that much land. Then I'd reduce the quality of most of his troops (sergeants instead of knights, maybe bandits or Poor Quality spearmen instead of normal foot soldiers and archers) and maybe their numbers, to reflect how greedy the Baron is, or how reluctant men might be to work for him (because he is cruel and could take it out on his own men). It's possible that many of the common soldiers doesn't like they guy, but have little choice in the matter. That should give you a place to start from and a lot of leeway. The biggest obstacle for your PKs, IMO, will probably be the walls of the castle. Unless the Pks can afford to raise a small army, and siege equipment to breech the walls, they have no real way of getting to the Baron.unless he wants to ride out to face them. That is unless the PKs can sneak into the castle or catch him away from the keep.

Expansion is a desirable thing and Sir Whosit would be smart to do so, if he can. But it isn't quite as simple as it looks.The thing about both population increases and building new settlements is that they are not entirely within the PKs control. First the population actually has to increase, which takes a bit of luck and some time. Then the knight has to have the funds to build the settlement and the workforce to do so. Depending on the knights income it could take several years to build a hamlet or village, which would mean that the peasants turn to banditry before he can do so. Banditry is far from being a good adventure hook, as the bandits raid the holding and could steal goods and damage buildings. As far as the commoners automatically hating you it is really a matter of circumstances and degree. While there is an initial hate score, it is the knight's actions, and yearly events that will matter in the long run. Sometimes, bad luck, poor harvest and the like will result in the peasants really hating the landlord and there being little the knight can do about it. Other times things will go well for the knight and he can work on reducing the Hate, even into negative values. But a lot of that will depend on the individual PKs and the events that occur in the campaign. In my campaigns I've had knights who to pay tribute and ransom and were forced to shortchange themselves and squeeze the peasants to get by. They were hated by their peasants for things that were mostly beyond their control to fix. I've also had PKs who did so well at tournaments that the manor was no longer their major source of income, and they were able to make all sorts of improvements and investments, and took less rent than they were entitled to during lean years. They were loved by the peasants. Most PKs wound up somewhere in between. Some wanted to do nice things but could afford it; some did a little; others could have but chose not to. with Pendragon is that the path isn't as clear cut or as easy as in some other RPGs. There is no "right path" to take. There are many paths, some of which could prove to be right, under the circumstances.

Yes, use RQ3 Category modifiers. In RQ3 APP not only affected the starting skill scores, but it also applied to improvement rolls. This meant that someone with a high APP not only started with a better fast talk/orate/etc. but also that they would tend to improve faster.

Makes sense to me. In our games we mostly track player squires. Most NP squires are just handled per the rules for such (per the latest edition/supplement at the time). Once in awhile (say one or two per generation), I'll introduce a NP squire who is significant in some way and he gets a little extra attention. This is ususally story driven. Either I have something in mind for him, or he's an interesting character idea that might prove useful later on, or both.

Yup, especially for the squires of the more heroic knights. That also holds true to inexperienced knights adventuring with famous heroes. In my last campaign the group's Unit Leader in Battle managed to get on a hot streak when improving Sword and managed to get it up to 34. This allowed him to fight his way out of a lot of double teams and other bad situations, so he would often pick risky but questionable tactics and then wonder why all his NPC knights kept getting killed and captured. The other Oks were just good enough (and well armored enough) to surive the risky tactics, but for most knights the Unit Leader was like a meat grinder. I suspect following Lancelot around for a year as a squire would be similar.

I understand. I just wanted to let you know just in case. And there are always used books floating around on eBay. TO give you a little insight into the game, it was really designed as a RPG that could be taught and played in a few minutes as opposed to most RPGs which take time to explain and to generate characters. To put it very simply, Prince Valiant uses a very simple set of game mechanics where you toss coins instead of dice. Generally you toss coins based on stat and/or skill, plus any modifiers. In extended contests (such as combat) the loses subtracts the diffidence from his coin pool for future tosses. Characters earn Fame while adventuring and when they get 1000 points they can improve a skill on their sheet. Yes there is more too it, but that's the basic game mechanics.

There are still a handful of hard copy rule-books still available over at places like Amazon.

First off a bit of caution. Despite the similarities Pendragon and RQ game mechanics are different. As combat is decided by a single opposed roll, rather than with alternating attacks & parries, combat plays out much faster. Armor plays a much bigger roll and shields tend to be the difference between taking a minor scratch or no damage at all. Most unarmored opponents will take a major wound and drop on a good hit. Run a mock fight with some of the pregenerated characters and some generic NPCs to get a feel for the game. For a green GM and player's I'd recommend the introductory adventure that's in the core rules - it was designed specifically for that purpose. Just be sure to go over the hunting rules and use book marks or possibly print out the relevant tables to make that part easier on yourself. The intro adventure has a lot of tests and die rolls that not only help to teach the game system, but also give the players some chances to learn and to fail without serious consequences. Okay, I changed my mind here, and replaced my #1 Tip: My number one tip is to have enthusiasm. If the GM in interested in the game and presents it to the players with enthusiasm, then it becomes infectious and everybody becomes vested in the game and will have a good time. if the GM isn't enthusiastic, then the players won't be all that interested and it won't go well. Yes, the ups & downs of the adventure, die rolls and all that play their part, but none of that matters if nobody cares about the results. The best way to get everybody else to care is for you to care. Do that and the rest should sort itself out. Don't worry too much about the rules and such. All GMs make mistakes from time to time, and experienced GMs are just better at recovering from them.