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It should. Most mineral water does. It starved to death ages ago.

I think part of the problem is that not only is the armor random, but as it is handled with a single die, meaning it has a linear distribution, so any value is as likely to come up as any other. I believe that if the random armor rolls used two dice, and had a bell curve, the random armor method would work out a lot better. For example, instead of plate with helm protection 1D10+2, it could protect 2D6, or 2D6+1 or 2D4+3 or some such. That would still keep the "chink in the armor" effect of the random method while making armor more useful. Another possible way to accomplish the same thing would be to do something like roll three armor dice but take the middle one. So if someone in full plate (1d10+2) would roll 3d10s (say 2, 6, 9) and take the middle die (6) as his roll. This would keep the range the same, and still allow for the occasional extreme results, while making armor more likely to work. I think it's worth noting that the versions of BRP that use Major wounds with fixed armor (Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu) seem to go over better than those what use random armor.

Or for people deciding between the two. Not much, but I will say most of the players of BRP-related fantasy games tend to prefer RQ3 rules and hit locations over other systems (i.e. Stormbringer/MAgic World) once tyhey become familiar with them. But, from the viewpoint of opponent/monster deadliness which option someone uses can make a difference, not so much becuse of the difference between hit locations and major wounds, but because of the difference in armor that accompanies that decision. Most versions of BRP that use major wounds also use random armor protection, something that greatly increases the leathiality, while versions of BRP that use hit locations tend to use fixed armor protection.

It's trickier than you might think. While superficially similar to BRP, Pendragon does just about everything differently. While some things port over faiulry easily, and some others can be alterted to fit, some things are troublesome. One of the big hurdles with a Robin Hood type game is that Pendragon handles armor, shields, and weapon defense differently enough from BRP to essentially make a Robin Hood campaign unplayable without making some sort of change to the combat system. Just what that change should be to best reflect the setting is "tricksy". Well having a somewhat deep understanding of KAP and probably some understanding of the criteria required due to both the former and some understanding of the setting, I will suggest that your ideas here are good ideas. Just not so easy to pull off as the usual port from one BRP game to another.

Which has both hot locations as an option and major wounds as an alternative, and BTW, hit locations tend to be the less deadly of the two.. That's what really makes estimating creature deadliness so difficult in the game. In D&D with PCs and monsters each taking their turn and inflicting damage on the other, and with damage not really meaning much until hit points are gone, combat is handled by attrition. A fight isn't really dangerous unless a PC can be reduced to 0 hp or less. What make BRP so much more deadly is that just about any attack from any opponent has the potential to reduce a PC to 0 hit points, or take him out of the fight with a major wound or disabled location. Even something very safe, such as like a fight between a 13th level Paladin and a 1 hit die Goblin is still deadly in BRP/RQ- as the story of Rurik and the Trollkin shows. You can never really "balance" combat deadliness in the game, it's just don't designed to work that way. That said, what you can do is get a idea as just how deadly a given opponent will be by comparing it's combat skills, damage, hit points, and protection to those of the PCs. Plus factor in for intelligence (or lack thereof) in the opponent (and in the PCs). For example something like a lion had mediocre combat skills but does enough damage to drop an average PC on a hit, unless parried or stopped by armor. It had fair armor protection, and more hit points than a PC, so it will probably take a few hits to drop it. It also can get more than one attack a round. So the GM could compare that to what the PCs have in the way of abilities and equipment to try and gauge the letheality of the encounter. I suppose a formula could be worked out based on skill, number of attacks, average damage, armor, hit points, and so on, but it would probably be a bit misleading, as it would be a general number and not one based on the PCs abilities, plus it would probably exclude things that should factor in (such as poison, or terrain).

Yup, the longform version is in KAP4 too. Yuk, bath water tastes terrible. Me too. Plus it more local and low keyed. The big dates are Imbolic in Febuary, Beltaine in May, Lugnasa in August, and Samain in November, when villagers with gather around someplace, make offerings, and maybe celebrate.

Most of the good movies have already been suggested. The thing isd there is a lot more bad Arthurian films, that will give the wrong ideas and are are best to avoid, than good Arthurian films that help with the atmosphere and give the right ideas. I mean Monty Python & the Holy Grail was a comedy and still did a better job of things than the vast majority of Arthurian films. So be careful about what your players watch so they don't pick up the wrong ideas.

GURPS is one of two games that I think do a really good job handling Appearance. The other is the James Bond RPG (which does something similar, but uses the Charisma skill in conjunction with Appearance). The Bond RPG has Quality Ratings for success (similar to RQ's success levels) and depending on the initial reaction roll a PC could end up making quite an impression on an NPC, which in turn could apply modifiers when interacting with that NPC later on. This lead to one good looking PC being quite the charmer and able to talk his way into and out of a lot of situations with hotel desk clerks, maids and so on. That kind of approach (+5 for success, +10 for critical, -5 for fumble, or some such) might just work in Pendragon. I could see averaging APP with the appropriate social skill (Courtesy, Folklore, possibly Faerie Lore) for the "reaction roll". That would help to strength APP while still keeping the "charm" factor, and character behavior in the mix.

Yup, it might. But then if someone had a high change of scoring a critical they probably would bother with doing a double feint. 10d6-12d6 is usually enough to get the job done, and when it's not, double feint probably wouldn't help. Maybe. I can think of one game that has a wounding skill specfically for small weapons. Basically you roll it sperately and if you make the roll you increase the weapon's damage. The idea is that it was more useful for small weapons, that didn't do much damage to begin with. Hard to justify. I could see APP being used to help lure a character into getting stabbed, but would normally treat that as a surprise bonus to the attacker.

Maybe this concept might be best served in a supplment based around such high powered characters. Long ago, inspired by the fact that one of my players had the nickname of "Bear", I had the idea of letting a PK draw the Sword in the Stone in 510, and then basing a campaign around the PK being Uther's son, secretly raised in exile (under a false name). My plan was to let the other PKs form the core group of main heroes around the PK King Arthur and see how they handle the major events. I had planed to cxreate some sort of mechanic to let Arthur call in Merlin for help. Kinda something like Stormbinger's Elan/Allegiance system. Early on (when Melrin is desperately needed to put Arthur on the thone and keep him there), the PK would have a lot of "Merlin Points"l, but as time go by and he uses up the points faster that they replnetish, the PK would have to be more selective on when to aks Melrin for help. Eventually, when the point pool runs down, Merlin would disappear. The gaming group changed, and I once clued in some of the players on the idea, which prevented me from implementing it-at least so far. On the plus side, my players are never quite sure if I'm going to spring that on them, so they still have hope whenever they try to pull the sword from the stone.

Except that K&L seems to give some Romans who are not city dwellers, such as in Dorset. THere were county villas as well as urban ones. Once again, historically there were villas that were far enough away from the cities to be more like manors. Tsbury and Grateley in Salisbury were both Roman villas, for example. I think the manor system from the medieval period evolved from the old Roman villa model. Thengs just sort of broke down and became more localized with the loss of Roman engineering and sanitation to help with the cities and roads.

Oh, I know it in there, I just didn't apply it. I never like the two roll nature of it either. That's why what I was thinkng of was something like: Use Sword, Spear, etc. -5 modifier to skill (possibly greater depending on the weapon. I would think Swords and Spears would be the easiest to do this with, axes and maces harder, and fails the hardest). Ingore armor up to half the wielder's DEX so DEX remains in the equation). Possibly double the peanlty to ingore up to DEX in armor This was still in the though experiment phase. That Is it hasn't gone anywhwere except for one email and then here.

That';s mostly true. There are a few places, such as Dorset, where Country Romans exist, but they are the minority. I tend to view that as the effect of the breaking down of the old ROman city based administration and the beginning of the feudal system. But overall I agree with you. In my pre-Aurelius campaign I have a few ROman villas stilla round which will mostly evolve into "manors" over time. Grateley is one such place, with the town about a half mile north of the old Roman villa. The PK who holds the villa has already started the process by having his older, retired character living at the villa (which is just a compound, as the fields have been left untended for too long), and his son living at the manor house in the village.

Then I got to get Morien to contradict himself just to see what happens!

I don't see why this is obvious. Per RAW the DEx wouldn't help with jousting at all. OR are you using this or some other variant that make DEX play a factor here. Yup, that would be a given. What I was told was that knights wouldn't use it (because of the armor penalty) but Picts and other lightly armored characters would, so it made the game too deadly for knights. Now I never applied the armor penalty to the double feint (I figured if it didn't affect weapon skills it should affect tactics used with weapons) and wasn't worried so much about Picts using it (It kept them from being a joke). I'd love to see in back in some form, and have been working of an alternate version where it applies a penalty to the weapon skills to avoid some armor (like -5 for half DEX).

More likely got beaten in an opposed roll. One of the sublte changes in KAP 5 is that more rolls end up being opposed than before. IMO that's mostly a good thing as it helps to keep the game challenging for those with skills over 20. In my games when a character is trying to track someone who is covering his tracks, I used an opposed roll, modfied by things like twerrian and how hard the purcsued character worked to cover his tracks (the more work he puts into it, the harder he is to track, but the slower he travels, so the faster he is caught up with if beaten). Which is because the Grail Quest is a spiritual challenge, and he is morally compromised by the affair. Maybe. It's hard to judge from a single even as even a DEX 4 Character can get lucky. I'd say the majority of PKs are probably less than third tier heroes, but the potential for second or third tier is there. First tier is pretty much out of reach, excpet, perhaps for PKS who got really lucky with random character generation ands that streak held out for the first several years, allowing them to get a jump on the glory train. Yes, but that's kinda the problem. With standard chargen a PK isn't going to be that good. With random chargen it is remotely possible but very unlikely. It is if the GM opts to allow for the uses the Intentional Shaping method of chargen and allows the PKS to have such stats. It would be unsusal, but if the GM wanted to let a PK be raised by the Lady ofd the Lake and essentially be Lancelot, then he could allow for such superb stats. A cmapaign where the PKs take up the roles of the great knights of the round table, and maybe even King Arthur himself, could be interesting, but tricky to write and run. Yes that might help, but frankly it's still a poor man's attribute compared to STR, CON and SIZ. I still believe that it needs something, as does APP.

Oh. I'm okay with people being for or against the variant, but got confused as to who is on what side in this debate.

Uh, how? How does the 18 DEX guy go better at court than the 9 DEX guy? I don't see a single thing anywhere in the rules or any supplment where DEX helps in a social situation. Oh, wait, I did think of one thing, the Leap. But by RAW the 9 DEX guy could be just as good a dancer (or better) than the 18 DEX guy as DEX doesn't factor into things in anyway. Yes, and he is Lancelot. That's what makes him a terrible example. His capabilities are so superhuman that he can be help up as an example of anything, because he can't fail. Using him as example of the importance of non-combat abllities holds as much water as using him as an example of the importance of combat abilities. It doesn't matter really what the task is becuase if a knight can succeed at it, Lance will. Using him as an example is like making the case for PKs to start with 39 in all thier Knightly skills (like Lance). Tristam is a slightly better example, as he could (possibly) fail. He won't, but at least he might. The thing is though, if a GM were to run a Robin Hood type of game with lots of sneaking and jumping and such, then Sneak, Jump,. Climb, etc. would be brought back into he game system as skills (as they had been in other BRP games). Greg rolled those abilities into the DEX attribute in KAP because such things were not that important in the world of Pendragon.

Since your going historical here, the curent belief is that neither wall held, and that the peoples near the wall intermixed. How? If Phsycial skills, such as weapon skills, default to DEX/2 and Picts start with a higher DEX, then their default weapon skills will be higher and by logical extension they will become stronger not weaker. One problem I'm having with some of the objections to the alternative is that people are making claims and then not providing anything to back up their view. To give techni2a some credit here, his objection is that the proposed change is unnecessary becuase of how he interprets the rules is one that, while I don't agree with, did get backed up with an example and an alterative.. But I've read lots of posts where "this is bad, it will ruin X" but then there is either nothing to back the statement up, or what reasoning people give doesn't match up with how the proposed rule variant works, and the argument doesn't make sense. People claim that changing the defaults will ruin the cultural balance and so forth, but give no example or explanation how it will do so. I created this thread specifically so that people could indeed write up test characters using the alternate method so we could all see what the effects ould be and determine if it was viable or not. But, except for Morien, rather than actually doing so, people just what to argue as to why we shouldn't even test out the idea with sample character that will never be played. Have we reached the point where we can't even test out new ideas in a forum thread to see how the look before we condemn them? I do not see how having physicals skills default to DEX/2 hurts PIct characters, the ones with the highest DEX score, in anyway. .Could you please explain to me how it does so? Hzark10, that is a main point about KAP. It is a game about Knights. All the rules are "knight-centric". That's why the mounted bonus is so great compared to other games, even other BRP games (it's a +10% modfier for the rider in RQ, but a +25%/-25% reflexive modfier in KAP. It why armor protection isabout double compared to other BRP RPGs (becuase knights will be the ones with more armor) and shield protection halved (becuase everybody uses a shield). Reduced the mounted bonus to a +2 to for rider (only), make mail 5 points and shields 12 poin ts, and suddenly the footmen will be giving knights a real fight. It's also why combat tactics such as the Schiltron and mixed units of Pikemen and archers are glossed over in the book of Armies and Book of Battle- to preserve the knights dominance. Pendragon is a game about knights. So no, by RAW you can't play a Pict, Cambrian Tribeman or Irish Warrior. At least not in KAP5, since there are no rules for creating one. KAP4 was a bit differernt in that regard, but the game was still knight-centric. If you want to do something differernt then you will need do either do some work or drop back to KAP4, which is different than KAP5+. In KAP4 Picts still have the double feint tactic to keep DEX useful. In KAP5 they don't. In KAP4 random chargen is included in the core rules, so just what a PK had for attributes was random. Not in KAP5. In KAP5 PKa get a pool of points and are given no incentive not to have a high SIZ and CON at the expense of DEX and APP. So now we are seeing lots of big, clumsny, plain looking PK "ogres" becuase that is what the game rewards. But the thing is the proposed variant actually helps all those non-knightly PCs (including Lady characters) by making DEX and APP more useful. So all those cultures that get DEX and APP bonuses will actually get something useful (slightly higher skills) from it. I'm not viwing as an attack. I'm just trying to understand your objection. I agree with you that it does. But I think that in order for it to be more than it is, other aspects of the characters, such as DEX and APP have to be more useful than they currently are. What?! First you say the proposed system would weaken PIct characters, then you advocate doing the very same thing. I'm confused.

I disagree first off the game isn't about playing non-knight Picts. Even a Pict PK is going to gravitate towards a high SIZ and CON. The problem I see here is that with chargen in KAP5 being maining done by dividing up 60 points, and with SIZ and CON being so much more useful that DEX and APP, we are winding up with PKs all being very large. Secondly as far as court scense and normal daily activities, DEX isn't being used. How many DEX rolls do most PKs make each session? Yes, but game mechanics do not. In game play the APP4 character with moderate Courtly skills will outperform a high APP character with poor social skills. That was why most of agreed that something needed to be done about it. Now techni2a's idea has some merit, although there are some aspects of it that would need to be addressed. For example per RAW the type of distinctive features a character has (good or bad) are not tied to APP. Now, as techni2a has pointed out, a low APP character with a bunch of good features doesn't make much sense, but I beleive the idea of the freedom here was to allow for character who might be ugly but have one good feature or vice versa.Also, some feature would natually seem to affect other rolls, for instance, if features were to give modfiers to rolls then I'd expect a character with "bulging biceps" to have good arm strength. That was part of the purpose for this. The goals were to: 1) Make DEX and APP more important that they are now 2) Help Lady characters be something more than a trophy prize for the valiant knight. I hope the skills matter. Now admittedly not all skills are equal in the game, and just how important a particualr skill is can vary quite a bit from group to group. If not, why have them? But I think most if not all the skills in the game matter and are worth having. I think the real question here is if changing the values a point or two matters much. I'd have said no, and considering that the starting values have changed in various editions, a point or two here or there won't break the system. Does it matter? Quite a bit of KAP isn't realistic, but Arthurian. That's based on our understanding on the culture, but is both subjective, and depends on just what view of a culture you are shooting for. But I think a more important question is how important are the differences in skills between cultures, especially the minor ones. Personally I don't consider the difference between a (2) and a (3) to be significant in play and more of a bookkeeping chore than any real insight into the cultures. And quite a bit of that is on shaky ground. For instance, are Irish really better dancers than Cymri? Are Romans really less Aware? BUt Iguess people think so.

Most knights non-combat skills start fairly low (2-4). But there isn't all that much difference in those skills among the various cultures for starting knights. Most cultures are good (above 6-10) in a couple of skills and poor (0-5) in the rest. The difference between a 3 and a 4 is not significant. Such as? From what I see most of the skills for most knights start at the same skill level or near enough that it makes no difference. In fact, by the core rules there is no difference. K&L varies a few things but not all that much at the lower end. Now I have no problem with Saxon PKS starting with a higher boating skill, or Romans starting with a 10 Law or some such. It does for it to be significant. In play nobody really notices if a character has a 3 or a 4 on their sheet. No, I just don;t consider every Roman PK to be an adminitative noble. Yes there are the the high ranking Romans who run most of the cities, but not every PK is one of those Romans. Historically I agree with you. Rome went into decline (before 410, too, but that was when they pull out of Britain), and by 476 was pretty much done. That said, the Romans in PEndragon are a bit better off than thier hostorical counterparts. Part of the difficulty here is that in order to show Arthur as the ultimate King, they made him the Emperor of Rome, and so had to have some semblance of Rome around for his to conquer to prove his worthiness. So he has batle with actual Roman-type Romans that culminate is his Contentianl campaign and the conquest of Rome in the late 420s. It's not just the administrators, it's any Romanized-Brit who considers himself a roman citizen. Again I'll point out that Contiential Romans, from Rome do show up in MAllory and elsewhere. It's not historically accurate, but it's part of the story. First off there is no cultural balance of all skills. Greg even noted in K&L that Cymric characters get more than the others. As for the current cultural feel that is all from K&L The cuyltural skills were different in earlier editions (for instance in KAP 3-4 Cymric characters best cultural weapon was Sword). Now again, I have no problem with the cultural skills and other significant skills of each culture. They start at higher values that the default will be anyway. The idea with the variant rule was to do something with all those skills that stat at (2). But hey, after five pages of people being totally opposed to writing up so test characters to see how it actually looks, I'm willing to drop the whole idea.

Theyt could, although the way the homelands tables are set up in K&L is it far more likely that they are city dwellers.

Yup. That alos helps with "replay-ability". Since every KAP campaign uses the same setting, major characters, timeline and major events the ability to mix up styles and story elements helps to ensure that each campaign is still different from the previous.

Actually it was. Per the orginal idea, only the defaults is changed, not any improvment. All those skills that Knights get a 10 during chargen relfect thier training as squires, and so would still start off at 10 (or 9 or 8 or whatever). Not really. All you have to do to break the sterotype, as far as skills go, is to mnot imrpove the cultural skills. It's not all that hard either, as the PK will have a sword skill at least as good as thier cultural weapon, unless they work to promote the stereotype, and sword trumps other weapons anyway. It really the traits, passions, and religions that define the cultures amd they are much harder to break away from. Uh, yup. So? Per RAW there isn't much difference between starting PKs that don't put points into improving things. Pretty much all PKs start with Sword 10, Battle 10, Lance 10, First Aid 10, etc. Its the choices they make during chargen that individualizes them. Is it? What do you base that on? In the literature the various knights seem to be remarkable similar in skill sets. That KPA made it though to KAP4 without cutural meta-skills shows that the cultures were viable as distinctive cultures without the meta-skills. He's also right than a 1 point difference in a starting skill score is virtually meaningless in play. That once culture starts with Dancing 3 and another Dancing 4 does little to differentiate the two cultures in play. Which is why the Romans could never organize under a leader and how the Cymri were able to dominate Europe on the batlefield with Sword and Spear, except, wait the opposite was true. A Roman Legion with Spear and Sword would slaughter most Cymri armies, who in term spent more time on Courtesy and Intrigue than they did on Spear & Sword. I hate to say it, as I like the cultural skills, but neither history nor Arthurian lore supports the cultural skills in KAP5. And KAP 4 cultures lacked suck skills are were just as well defined. But that moot anyway, as the cultural skills always start off at higher than the default anyway.

The +10 for Gwen was per the GPC, but the incremental modifiers were not. If you want to set 3-=_+10 then probably something like 11-12+1 would match the KAP formulas. One thing to watch out for though is that the ability the GWen has to essential charm a character might be too much for a lady PK to get. Even with allow chance of working it could still leave a lady PK with a small army of devoted followers. 26 +8 28+9 Yes there is a point where you can't raise attributes without Glory, but skills tend to cap out around 20 too. Sure it's possible to raise a skill with an experience check, but with only a 5% chance of doing so a typical knight is going to end up with a 20 or 21 without glory. Yes some other things are that: 1) Skills do go up that fast past a certain point 2) Skills need to be higher that attributes to be beneficial. The typical NPK is going around with a 19 Sword skill, so a PK needs a 19 to be even with the typical NPKs.Now because players assign attributes and DEX and APP aren't all that importantr what is happening is that the typical PK now starts with a 17-18 SIZ. Yes an no. Yes they are not equal. But not just because attributes are better( Sword 20 is much better than DEX 20) but also becuase skills below a certian threshold are not good enough to be used- or are used as a last resort. Sword 5 will get a PK killed much faster than DEX 5 or APP 5. PKs with courtesy 2 or Orate 2 are better off keeping thier mouths shut and hoping to to draw attention to themselves and so on. Except the described system doesn't pun ish the PKs at all. Nothing prevents a low APP or Low DEx character from putting their points into DEX and APP skills. THey are not hurt in any way. In fact they would mostly start off with higher better skill scores since DEX/2 and APP/2 are still higher than most default skills now. Yes I have played in the Romance period. I've run several campaigns over the years and quite honestly, romance doesn't even come close to the glory won from battles and tournaments. THen there is the addtional wealth to cvonsider. But, as written, APP and DEX don't help all that much in the Romance period. Sir Ugly with Flirting 20 is still going to do alright at the feasts. Uh, once again you haven't grasped the proposed change. Characters won';t have to have do 3d6 damage to have decent skills. If anything the typical PKs starting skill scores will be higher than they are now. No it doesn't, but since you think it does, can you provide a sample character to show how they are being penalized in chargen by this method? Would you please stop and read the method proposed by Morien. I don;t know what you think this is supposed to be doing but it's not what was proposed. Your saying that it is going to do a lot of things that it won't. To clarify the proposed system works as follows: 1) The default value for Physical Skills will be DEX/2. The default value for Courtly skills will be APP/2. 2) Anything in chargen that results in a skill score being higher that the default applies normally. For instance characters who start as knights get Sword, Battle, First Aid, etc. at 10. This doesn't change as it reflects the PKs years of training as a squire. Liewise if a Culture provides a higher skill score during chargen then that score remains at the higher level. 4) PK Squires per the Book of Entourage start off at APP/2 or DEX/2 in the appropriate skills. Since Knightly skills started off at a 3 (Age -11) for such characters, any character with a DEX score of 5 or higher at least breaks even. Those with DEX 7+ actually come out ahead. 5)Any PK or player-squire with and APP or DEX of 3 or less is going to be bedridden and virtually unplayable, and so only characters with a DEX or APP of 4 areat risk of being "penalized" in any way, and that is only by 1 point or so, and quite frankly they should be more worried about taking a major wound and becoming bedridden than being a point behind the other squires in Sword skill at age 14. 5) Skills are not capped by attributes, nor are they reduced if the attribute is reduced.