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But most attacks do get full db, and natural armor is not as strongly tied to db the way it was in RQ3 (or even in Gateway Bestiary). Kong vs. the dinosaur is one such example, but I'm more concerned with all those SIZ 30 ish animals and monsters. We have ample enough evidence that most fights between similar sized animals are not one hit affairs. But in RQ it often turns out that way due to the size of the db compared to the armor and hit point totals. Perhaps the db formula needs to be scaled down? Hit Points and Damage are obviously interrogated, and I think part of the problem with RQ/BRP has been that the flat +1d6 per 16 progression leads to die pools and bell curves which in turn make the db the major component to damage and almost require high hit point and armor scores to be able to soak a hit. Perhaps a non-linear relationship between SIZ(and STR) and damage bonus would help here. Either with an increasing die size or some such. If the dbs were lower than we wouldn't need high hit point totals to compensate, and big monsters would still be "fightable".

Which might be good for Glorantha but bad for everything else, as db now scales at a much faster rate that hit points. Anything larger than a troll can't take a hit from anything of the same size.

Ah, that makes some sense. Well, I guess I'll just have to hold onto my money until the line returns.

I went to look for the Prince Valiant stuff and I can't find the RPG or supplement listed on Drivethru or at Chaoium's site. Did Prince Valiant go out of print again? Was the license transfered to someone else?

Well there is this review of the differences. Some of the major differences are in that some of the annual glory awards in KAP are one time awards in Paladin, some differences with traits and passions, and that armor degrades when damage rolls come up with a "6" - apparently because cutting right through the armor happens a lot in the literature. But it's probably over 90% the same mechanically. Now story wise, it's Charlemagne and not Arthur, and that is probably the biggest difference between the two games, and, IMO the most important one.

LOL! Now I don't feel so alone about my Roman Legionary stats and notes for 470-495 Phase.

Okay. While I'm just getting into 439, I have to assume that SIRES will make things easier for me. From 410-438 I had very little to go on, other than a half dozen or so scripted events (PIct raids, Constatin become high King, Germanus' visits, birth of Constatin's sons) and had to make a lot of stuff up, or use real historical events to flesh out the campaign (Aetius campaigns in Gauyl, the rise of Attila). So SIRES gives me a more solid foundation to work from.

Yeah. I think this is partly due to the differences between games and reality. In a game, especially an RPG, we like to have everything clearly defined and explained to us. In reality it just isn't the case. In KAP, on paper, there is always a clearly defined pecking order, based on rank and glory. In real life, it just wasn't as clearly defined or even adhered to when it was.

Although I'm playing in an erlier period (Just made it 439 and into the Book of Sires), I have had King Constatin give one PK a manor as a reward for excellent military service abroad, after the PK captured the army commander at a battle (lots of luck and good die rolls). I did have the PK generate a Loyalty (Constantin) Passion, but I didn't have any of the other PKs generatew a passion. I could see that too. There is a good deal of overlap between traits and passions, especially with Honor. The Honor passion can pretty much cover just about anything a PK wants or thinks it should. Honesty, Justice, Loyalty, Love (Family) Pride, could all overlap with Honor.

You still have to be quite so the prey will run towards you and not off in a different direction.

Oh, yes, very much so.

That's a new one one me. I though directed traits were directed traits, not passions. Could you elaborate a bit? I'm not sure how to implment a directed passion. Loyalty (Uther)* 16, *-5 if he is acting like a rutting pig?

I agree, but apparently it is a fait accompli, so now it is more of an issue of how to deal with the situation as it exists. Personally I'd give the players the option to backtrack out of the passion, especially if it had been forced upon them or taken due to a misunderstanding. Yes, plus part of the whole feudal oath thing is in the "my country right or wrong" mold. That is, you are expected to back him even when he is acting up., as you pointed out with your " but he is our..." statement. It is also why Gorlois can't just get out of dodge by revealing that the reason why he left court was because Uther kept hitting on his wife.

No usually they wouldn't have to swear any additional oaths. The idea is that their actions would reflect upon the Count (Earl). Swearing another oath would undermine their Loyalty to Salisbury, too. Basically a knight only owes homage to one lord at a time, and generally a higher ranking one will tend to override a lower ranking one. So if the PKs swore fealty and homage to Uther that would normally be expected to override their loyalty to Salisbury. But... Thew knights got their land and livelihood from Salisbury, so they have strong reasons to back the Count (Earl) over the King should a dispute break out between the two (as with Gorlois and Uther). So it is usually much better for everyone if the PKs are kept as Salibury's men, and then rely on Salibury's Loyalty to the King. If I were you I'd just let the Players decide if they want to keep the Loyalty (Uther) Passion or not, after seeing the things they saw. That was those who want it will still have it (which they could always have chosen to take if they wanted to), and those who do want it (or don't feel loyalty to Uther after seeing what he's up to) can drop it. Just let your players know that you are doing this because you might have forced the passion on them in the first place, so they know they can't always discard a passion when it suits them. Overall you're in good shape. It's a minor issue and one that will correct itself, one way or another, in a half dozen years.

To Uther, probably not. In most cases taking Loyalty (Pendragon)< Loyalty (Arthur) or, in this case Loyalty (Uther) is optional to most PKs. If the PKs were household knights or held land from Uther then it would be required. They could have such a passion if they wanted it, but wouldn't have to have it. Part of the problem is that Loyatly (Uther) would typically imply that a character swore Homage to Uther, making him their liege lord over Roderick. That would put them under some severe restrictions regarding their oath and duty. But with typical PKs their loyalty should be to Earl/Count Roderick. Such as? In most versions of the story the only weird goings on were Igraine's claims of her husband appearing during the night, when he was away getting killed in battle. Brave, if a bit risky. I'm not sure what they could have confronted him with though, or what he could have said to make the PKs more supicious> "Merlin, did you use your magic at the siege?" "Yes, Sir Knight, to serve my king. Did you not use your sword for the same purpose?" Ah, so they have a good reason to suspect/believe that Uther is dressing up events and the real motivation behind things. I'd say that would be a good reason for adirected trait (Suspious Uther. PArt of the problem with this situation is that the obligations of medevial service generally do not have an "out" clause for when a liege is behaving badly. Probably a few of Uther's men and lords know the real reasons behind the siege, but as Uther's men they are still bound by thier oaths to service him. It would depend on how the got the Loyalty (Uther) Passion in the first place and how important it is to the players, and how high the scores are. If the players didn't really care much about the passion, and have low to moderate scores then you could probably let them drop the passion if they wish (I'd leave it up to them). If they are really into the passion, are very loyal to Uther and have high scores, I'd let them keep it and also let them use their Loyalty (Uther) Passion to oppose believing the worst about Uther, or somehow justifying it. A main difference here between medieval rulers and modern ones in free societies is that the right to rule for a medieval king comes from God (or, for pagans, his tie to the land/sovereignty), while for modern ones it comes from the people. This combined with medieval oaths of fealty and homage means that a king behaving badly or unjustly does not remove from him his rights as a king, nor do they absolve his vassals from their oaths of obedience. Something like a #MeToo scandal isn't going to bring down Uther they way it brought down a lot of big shots in Hollywood. But If I were running and my PKs had Loyalty (Uther) Passions, I'd ask them if the events shook their loyalty to the king and let then\m reduce or drop the passion if they wished, provided it was below 16). But a directed trait MIstrust: Uther +1d6 or so would certainly make sense.

I think we need a little more info here: First off how are the PKs connected to Uther and/or Gorlois? Are they just typical knights, or are they actually direct vassals of Uther in some way? Do they know/saw that Merlin transformed Uther into the likeness of Gorlois of just suspect some magical skullduggery? These things make a difference. Part of the problem here is that a liege lord acting like a jerk or doing some shifty stuff doesn't negate a knights oaths of fealty and homage. It literally is that you are supposed to follow your liege whether he is in the right or wrong. In most cases I would expect much if any drop in Loyalty among the PKs (basically, suspecting or even knowing that Uther might be acting unfairly doesn't justify a knight behaving disloyalty, especially if Uther has been fair in his dealings with the PKs and their liege lord). I would think a directed trait (Suspicious Uther, Merlin, or MAgic) might be more appropriate. The knights would really have to know a lot more of what is going on behind the scenes, basically that has all been trumped up so that Uther can bed Igraine before there could be a loyalty loss - in part because Gorlois is also in the wrong here, according to medieval standards, as he left the kings court without permission.

Except it isn't negated. As the tactic is noted to be risky it would appear that it is opposed by the opponent's weapon skill, as it was in the past. So grappling against someone isn't all that likely to save you. More likely it just hasten your defeat, especially as grappling is now DEX based and not a skill. Rather that grappling, I'd call for my squire and fight defensively behind my shield and rearm. DEX+10 is certainly better than DEX, and once outfitted with another weapon the odds are much better - unless a character's DEX is much higher than his weapon skills, which is highly unlikely with standard chargen.

From what I've read, the stuff is gone because Greg, for obvious reasons, no longer pays to keep the site up. So anything that you want from the the old gspendragon site will vanish unless you download it. Maybe it will show up again someplace else (I certainly hope the errata does), but nothing is guaranteed at this time.

I wouldn't worry about the cultural skills being overpowered. IMO it's practically a non-issue. In most cases it either overlaps with another combat skill that the PK won't use that much,like how Spear Expertise combines Lance, Greatspear and Spear-Lance is the key skill for a knight. Spear Expertise is probably the most "overpowered" one of the lot. If you are running 4E I don't see a need or reason to use K&L. KAP4 already has the detailed and expanded chargen rules the K&L brought to KAP5. The only reason why I could see using K&L with KAP4 would be to bring in new stuff like the new cultural skills or LUck Tables, and in that case the K&L chargen rules could just supersede KAP4.

Slight misunderstanding. What I meant is that grappling doesn't happen all that often, and that a typicality knight (doing 5d6) should get past a typical opponent's armor (10-12 points during most of the campaign) most of the time, even when shields are used. This assumes that most rolls will be doing 17 points or more (60% chance) and that the opponent doesn't always get his shield. In game terms, unless something is going on that makes grappling particularly desirable under the current circumstances, just sticking to melee is better. In all the years I've played, I don't think a PK has ever tried to grapple someone, and it certainly hasn't happened twice. Why bother when all the players are running knights, and are generally much better with a sword than with grappling?

But the old model with the £6 standard are still included, such as the standards of living (pp.184-184) Me too. It would be better if everything used the same economic model. Exactly. With KAP1 or KAP4 you know you are using an older edition. With BoM you have every reason to believe what you have in compatible with KAP5 and is the latest economic model. So I think it should be updated, replaced or at least related as obsolete. I was looking at it yesterday and noticed that the pay for hirelings doesn't exactly match up with the Book of the Entourage either. IN BoM it's £1 per skill, with £2 or even £3 for higher skill scores. This would greatly affect footsoliders kept at the manor, as a 16 skill is quite likely. I agree, completely. Either that or just update the contents to better match with Estate. That's not silly, that's historically accurate. Crops yields were highly variable back then. In large part because they didn't know as much about maximizing crops yields as we do today. What was considered a bumper harvest in the middle ages would be average to mildly disappointing today. That's a method. But I think it's much to secure, safe and fixed. People back then couldn't predict and rely on the harvest the same way the can now. In Estate a Knight knows he is going to make £10 per year and have £1 discretionary funds, and can rely upon that every year, barring a raid ro some such. Historically, it just wasn't so. Some medieval book I read so long ago I don't remember the title, but I confident I can find more sources to back it up. Most societies barely produced enough food to get by, even up to the late 19th century or so. It why you had 90% of the population farming. You needed 9 farmers to be able to feed 10 people, and so have 10% of the population be able to do something else (warriors, smiths, merchants, clergy, etc). I doubt your source. Just a quick search on wikipedia reveals: Famines were familiar occurrences in Medieval Europe. For example, localised famines occurred in France during the fourteenth century in 1304, 1305, 1310, 1315–1317 (the Great Famine), 1330–34, 1349–51, 1358–60, 1371, 1374–75, and 1390.[2] In England, the most prosperous kingdom affected by the Great Famine, there were famines such as in 1315–1317, 1321, 1351, and 1369.[2] For most people there was often not enough to eat, and life was a relatively short and brutal struggle to survive to old age. According to official records about the English royal family, an example of the best off in society, for whom records were kept, the average life expectancy in 1276 was 35.28 years.[2] Between 1301 and 1325, during the Great Famine it was 29.84 years while between 1348 and 1375 during the Plague, it was only 17.33 years.[2] It demonstrates the relative steep drop between 1348 and 1375 of about 42%.[3] But I'd love to see someone with some better numbers. Often the information it out there but it takes some digging and is pretty dry and boring. I dug though some of that for horses to figure out some stuff of the costs for feeding workhorses, plough horses and oxen, and if I hadn't been working on horse training rules at the time, I wouldn't have bothered. Let's not. I'm not all that fond of Green Knights rules changes, although I did like the Knight's Book, sans the triple training rule. Yes, he was always trying to improve upon the game. He did the same with Glorantha too. It's a mixed blessing. On the one hand,, it's nice that he maintained an interested in the game and kept trying to improve it (I do suspect that some of the early rules were meant to be place holders until he could come up with something better). On the other hand, it makes things more convoluted and confusing, making the game much harder for a new GM or player to understand that it should be (or has to be). I think just about everyone is. The only time I've seen people against it is if/when they are worried about adding in the complexity of the latter supplements to the core game. I believe that things can be made consistent without making the core game more complex or really changing much. Most of the rules in the supplements are in the style of alternate or advanced rules that can be used in place of something that exists in the game already, or adds to it. Very little really changes. The game mechanics re the same, and while manors may make more money, knights don't see much more (at least the get £1 to spend now). Likewise while you and I (among others) have been trying to give more appropriate and uniform armor types, the point value is the important thing game-wise. In most cases it doesn't really matter what exactly constitutes 8 point armor.

To be honest, it isn't. In RPGs is often is because of the better protection, but realistically someone has little or not chance of sneaking up on a prey animal while wearing full metal armor. I could easily see applying thew armor DEX penalty to Hunting skill in such circumstances, especially when rolling 1d6+Hunting-Avoidance to see how close they can get for "the Kill!".

Yup. I'm more fond of the one in BoEnt, though. I think it works better. Amen! One of the things that disappointed me abotu KAP5 was starting as knights. Squires were a great way for someone new to learn the game while having some sort of safety net. Starting as a knight, when you don;'t understand the game system can be dangerous. Things like double teams or foots vs horse can quickly throw a fight if a player isn't aware of the way they modfiy the battle. I have platyed and seen several. I've even started a campaign with everyone coming in as 15 year old squires.

I think you mised my point. I('m not saying you can't run a manor using BoE- that's what I'm doing now. What I'm saying is that I'd like BoE and BOM to be compatible with each other. BOM uses an older economic model and I'd like to see it brought up to date, especially as everything post BOE uses the BoE model. I don't want luck tables either. What I would like is to allow for some randomization with income by harvest, but in a simpler fashion than in BoM. IMO just being able to replace the fixed results with a variable die roll would work. Yes, it would be easy to implment. I'd prefer something with more variantion than a +/-20% though. Historically, when things went bad they went very bad, and there was famine nearly one out of three years. I don't either. I'd just like to see BoM updated to the BoE economic model. Same with the KAP core rules. They still use the £6 manor. I hostly consider this to be bad game support. Unless someone is aware of the supplements and is up to date with them, he could easily fail into the problems from BoM or be confused by the different economics used in BoW or BoU. Same with the different types of armor. Game stats and armor definitions should vary from supplement to supplement. And it's not like it all that difficult to update PDFs. I agree. I'd be equally happy with either updating BoM to the current economic model or pulling it entirely to prevent it from causing more confusion and messing everything else up. But having ONE supplement that works on an different economic model than everything else is a bad thing. BTW, I think ransoms need to be updated to fit the current economic model in some fashion too. I don't mind if the values stay about the same, but I think they should be tied to income in some way. IN many ways I think 4th edition was superior. It was internally consistent and complete and there were far fewer bugs and errors in it. I think KAP5+ does have some nice stuff in it -mostly in the supplements, but overall KAP4 is a fully realized game while KAP5 feels more like one that isn't -it's a game that is still evolving, and will probably continue to do so until/if become KAP6.

I don't see them being all that different. I think the differences are that: BoE deals more with "income that you don't see" by making allowances for guard, servants and other retainers. BoE used fixed results instead of variable rolls (probably based on the idea that it tends to average out large scale), but I thin a lot of BOMs random rolls could be streamlined (i.e instead of rolling randomly and then multiply the results by the harvest the harvest could be represented by the random rolls and modifiers). BoE uses "space" to put some limits of things to prevent players from going overboard by building 100 apiaries or some such - which was a potential problem in BoM, as after a certain point it could mutate into a ever increasing feedback loop. Call me crazy but I think it could be done (yeah, I know that two things are not mutually exclusive). I think most of it would port over. Maybe some things would need a scaled down version, kinda like the difference between jousting area and jousting list, but I think most of it just take s a little number crunching and streamlining. Back before BoM I used to simulate the harvest with a £2d6 roll for income, reflecting the variable harvest, with modifiers for things like blessings, curses, raids, stewardship rolls, and so on. I could also see some of the variable rolls being combined into one roll. For example, rather than rolling separately for the manor (£10) and for the dairy (£2) the two could be combined (£12) and then (optionally) converted to a variable roll (say 2d6+5 or 3d6+2) on a table. Things which gave an income that wasn't affected by the harvest would be tallied up and rolled separately.