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More likely the tone of the game. In most RPGs the odds are usually with the PCs and their survival is the expected outcome. In CoC the PCs are extremely lucky if they can hold their own and survive long enough to go permanently insane!

StonesThree, feel free to ask away-that's what a forum is for! Generally, lance charges on a hunt are rare and you only get them if the lead hunter manages to get close enough for the "free" surprise attack per the Avoidance rules on pp. 210-211. If a knight can fight mounted or or foot has to do with the terrain, circumstances, and if he wishes to risk a fine horse. You certainly can (and should apply modifiers to hunts for the terrain, that's just what the obstacle tables does! But remember that coursers are trained for this , and get a +5 to Horsemanship rolls in the forest. The hunting rules in KAP 5.2 are broken up over three section, which makes it a bit more difficult to use. One of the best ways to get your head around the rules is to run some "sparring practice" between the Player characters. Have them use withheld blows (so actual damage is halved), and let them fight it out. You can even do a dry run without the players to familiarize yourself with how it works. Basically: Both sides make an opposed roll. Winner does damage to the loser. Compare the full damage roll to the lower's SIZ to check for knockdown. If SIZ or greater than a DEX roll (foot) or Horsemanship roll (mounted) is required to stay up. If 2xSIZ then loser is knocked down automatically. Being knocked off a horse does 1d6 damage through armor. Then take the damage rolled, halve it (because they are withholding blows and not trying to kill each other) and subtract the loser's armor. If his roll was successful (a partial success) he gets to subtract his shield, too. When sparring like this no one should get seriously hurt, and someone should stop the fight is someone gets hit for more than a couple points,or if someone gets knocked down a few times. Afterwards the wounded get treated with first aid (that's per wound, so in this case most if not all damage should be patched up right away). Valorous Rolls: It depends,. If it is their first bear, then probably, but for a seasoned knight, no. But feel free with trait rolls. Greg tended to be much freer with them in the adventures than indicated in the core rules, and the best way to learn is by doing. Try to give each PK a trait roll or two in each adventure to start. Then you can adjust the frequency from there to suit your taste and style of play. Basically, the trait rolls reflect the setting and source material, and make it challenging for a PK to act in a virtuous or heroic manner all the time, but many players don't like how that restricts their actions, so you have to work out just how often you want to roll. Personally, I like a lot of trait rolls, as do my players. But you might not, especially since it is a new concept. In old D&D terms it's kinda like alignment, but instead of penalizing the PC for playing "out of character," it defines just what is in character for them.

In this case it might be worth it. This is a problem but is rather subtle and can slip under the radar and really ruin a good campaign with escalation. The esasies way to get golory and land shouldn't be the childbirth table. Yup. I had an adventure where the PKs (who were in exile at the time) were working to protect a princess and regain her kingdom (think Pennath, not king) from the treacherous vassal knight who had slain her father and usurped the land. Needless to say the PK all generated an Amor for the lady, and they went off to try and defeat the baddie. It turned into one an all-nighter of the most memorable adventures we played, with players still talking about it over 25 years later. The PKs, plus Mordred (that's another story) manged to sneak into the castle, lower/ruin the portcullis, and then assault the keep. One PK in particular got on a hot streak and not only was critically inspired by his Amor passion, but started rolling phenomenally as well, and went though the opposition like it was paper. Usually without even noticing. There were two headless dead type things starting guard at the main entrance, in full armor, and he went up, split his attack still, criticalled them both and went inside without even realizing they were just normal footmen. Everyone else had a hard time just keeping up with him. He pretty much turned a suicidal assault into a victory. . He won the day, killed the usurping knight and won the hand of the princess. It all became rather anticlimactic when she died in childbirth. Yup. While the mortality rates in the middle ages were high, they weren't that high. Perhaps the only RPG where a player character had a higher character of survival adventuring than his wife and kidded did "safe" at home. I'll probably incorporate the new childbirth rules next week. One of my PKs pursued and won a faerie wife (getting the Griffon Egg wasn't easy), and no sense putting all that effort to waste.

That's an understatement. I've found it to be the biggest glory and land inflation problem the game: Knight get married, gets more glory, more libra and and possibly another manor, wife dies in a few years, knight remarries and repeats the process. Carry that though two or three of generation and everybody ends up as legendary knights with massive estates. I always thought the simple fix for this was to give the wife a CON roll to survive, and if she does it is treated as if she recovered from a Mortal Wound, which will possibly lower her CON for the next time.

I'm working on a GM screen, not really for play, but to be a quick reference for the tables and reference that get used a lot, like the Winter Phase. You managed to condense all this stuff down to one page! Saved me a lot of work. I just have to shoehorn it to fit my screen size.

It's not. Knights generally aren't supposed to manage land, that borders on doing work!. That is what their wives or a steward are for. The exception is if a knight is a officer for a noble, in which case it is okay for them to do it. But generally knights only get some skill in this just to be able to follow what their land manager is doing.

NICE!

Good Luck. Does InDesign allow for mutiple layers? That might be a work around. It's probably more of a page two thing, IMO. Most player know or quicjkly learn which orse carries what, in a basic sense and rarely have to look up which horse is carrying their armor and what not. It usually just "Make a Squire roll" to get something. The family sheet is very useful for the Winter Phase. Tracking sons (the next PKs) is important, and having a sheet that keeps that stuff all nice and neat is great. I've been working on trying to combine teh family sheet like yours with a followers sheet with info for Squires, Wives and the Army. In my campaign the landed PKs have been upgrading their footsoldiers as finances and circumstances allow, so tracking them is become more of an issue.

I think there were a couple of characters in RQ2 that had SR 1/6/11 in some supplement, but I'd have to make a difficult Library Use roll to find them.

Most. The lasted batch of offical sheets put cross sysmbols next to them, which IMO don't work as well. I was looking for underlines due to the workding of the Relgious Bonus box. I didn't suggest it becuase players aren't "idiots" (that a whole different debate) but merely that lines make for neater looking writing. In that case why bother wasting space on the character sheet? You could put something else there. From my experience, I've rarely had situations where what was on which horse come up, and then it was more a case of explaining why they can't ride around in armor all the time. I've found it more useful just to have a list somewhere (on a back page) with just what is war gear, personal gear etc. Stuff like "Do I have a hatchet?" It's a good character sheet and page 3 is pure gold, and I am going to print out copies of that for my players to keep track of their families. You could probably make that it's own PDF.

From a strictly KAP view, there is no need for a Book of Magicians or a magic system either. But I know I'm eager to see BoM. That is a great link. I don't quite agree with some of his stuff (sumpters do get promoted to roucys and then chargers, and did it really take ten years to train a charger?), but a lot off it is good stuff.I love his traitst chart, I had something like it in the works but he went a lot further with it. I noticed he did something with shields that was similar to something I had in mind, although I wouldn't give a kite or oval shield lower protection that a heater. It would spend on how much can be comfortable crammed onto one card. Maybe there could be a statblock for the prey on the card over a semi transparent silhouette? That way we could use the same space for two things. Then a hunting obstacle could be put on the top or bottom. As far as identifying the prey goes, hunters should probably be able to identify most beasts and get a good idea of their SIZ by looking at their tracks. So I would be fine with the knights knowing what the prey animal is and it's approximate SIZ with a hunting roll. Even I can tell the difference between wolf tracks and deer tracks. Now special exotic beasts would be another situation, and some of those heraldic combination beasts, like a hippogriff, could leave tracks that would be quite misleading. Maybe there could be a patteen of animal tracks on the front side of the cards that the GM could use to pick a track to show the PK? Yes, although I think some animals could be trained by the PK himself.

Looked at the new version. It looks nice, but you forgot to underline the religious traits. Some suggestions: 1. You might want to add lines next to the check marks for players to write in new skills and passions. 2. The Gear section needs to be bigger. There is really not space to write down the personal gear, war gear, etc. 3. You might want to expand the wife section a little to include some of her other important skills, that are likely to get rolled in play, such as First Aid, Chruigery, and Siege. In fact most of the family info on the second page is sort of redundant when you have page three entirely devoted to the family.

I actually have done a lot of legwork in this regard. Years ago I was working on a bestiary with another poster here for starting up animals for BRP. The idea I went with was to use the RQ3 SIZ table and scale up or down the attributes in accordance with the cube-square law. For instance if someone wanted to stat up a gizzly bear, or megalodon, they would start with a similar animal, such as an RQ Brown Bear or Large Shark, and scale then up per the square-cube law to get the SIZ, STR and other stats. Later on, while researching dinosaurs, I discovered that this is exactly how Paleontologist do it to work out the mass for new discoveries. I've cracked the formula for SIZ in KAP, and have SIZ tables (like so), SIZ Weight 1 5-14 2 15-24 3 25-34 4 35-44 5 45-54 6 55-64 7 65-74 8 75-84 9 85-94 10 95-104 11 105-114 12 115-126 13 127-139 14 140-153 15 154-168 16 169-185 17 186-203 18 204-224 19 225-246 20 247-271 21 272-298 22 299-328 23 329-361 24 362-397 25 398-437 26 438-481 27 482-529 28 530-582 29 583-640 30 641-705 31 706-775 32 776-853 33 854-938 34 939-1032 35 1033-1135 36 1136-1249 37 1250-1374 38 1375-1511 39 1512-1663 40 1664-1829 41 1830-2012 42 2013-2213 43 2214-2435 44 2436-2678 45 2679-2946 46 2947-3241 47 3242-3565 48 3566-3922 49 3923-4314 50 4315-4746 51 4747-5221 52 5222-5743 53 5744-6317 54 6318-6949 55 6950-7644 56 7645-8408 57 8409-9249 and and got a pretty good headstart on this, and could share what I got. I think I've got most of the math worked out, and have spreadsheets for horses, deer, and a correlation for giants between height and SIZ. For example: Horse SIZ 4d6+14 (28) DEX 3d6 (10) STR 4d6+16 (30) CON 3d6 (10) Armor: Damage *3/4, caps at 5 Move: (STR+DEX)/5 Damage: (STR+SIZ)/10, d6 Modify for type: Cart Horse: +-13 SIZ, -15 STR, -1 Move, -1d6 damage (probably more to lack of aggression since horses than cannot be combat trained seem to lose 1d6 off their damaage) Charger: +6 SIZ, +7 DEX, +2 CON, -1 Move Courser: +2 SIZ, +15 DEX, -6 STR, +5 CON Note that the formatting and baseline stats could be fiddled with. For instance if we make SIZ and STR 4d6 (14), then we could simply the math by making all the SIZ and STR modifiers adds. Uh, not really. At least they haven't up to now. For the most part animals followed the (STR+SIZ)/10, d6 formula for damage from KAP1, with some animals bumping the damage stat up or down a die. It wouldn't be difficult to reverse engineer the stats. I've done so for some animals already. I've even caught a few goof in the published stats such as the wrong SIZ for Camels (they aren't bigger than elephants!) or the wrong damage for coursers. For instance here is a revised table for Fallow deer (Buck) Stats. that uses the a formulaic approach, the cube-square law, and matches up more closely tot he stats Greg gave for fallow deer in KAP than the ones in Lordly Domains. SIZ DEX STR CON Move Armor Uncon MW KD Hit Points Heal Damage Buck Small 13 20 13 13 9 3 7 13 13 26 3 3d6 Medium 15 20 14 14 9 3 7 14 15 29 3 3d6 KAP 5.2 Deer, Fallow Large 17 20 15 15 9 3 8 15 17 32 3 3d6 Great 18 19 16 16 9 3 9 16 18 34 3 3d6 Large Great 19 19 17 17 9 4 9 17 19 36 3 4d6 BTW, the smaller SIZ in Lordly Domains is probably more indicative of the species. I understand. Not every GM is into this aspect of the setting, and most experienced GM can fiddle stats a bit and work out reasonable values. But that probably could apply to just about any aspect of the game. Thats why the Book of Battle, Estate, Manor etc. aren't for everyone. Personally I have some use for hunts, but they aren't a major focus in my campaigns. That said, I do try to vary adventures from week to week in order to keep things from feeling the same, and not fall into monotony.

So would I. I've got to find the files. I'll look through the hard drives. Yes it would. You start with a blank sheet and get to put things where you want.It actually takes more work to try and get the layout of the existing sheets. Now when I used it for KAP and D6 Star Wars I put the text boxes and such on top of a normal character sheet to match the look of the original, but that was actually more work. It's a free program so you can download it and give it a try and play around with it. . It might be easier for you that the ay your are doing ti now, and can automate some of calculations (such as hit points and damage dice). But I'm just throwing it out as an option. I don't own stock in the company or anything.

Uh, yeah.I can't believe I missed that. Okay now we're up to 2. Another 99,998 likes are we'd probably have a supplement in the works!

There is free character sheet designer program from NBOS that I used to use for KAP 4. You might want to look at it, because you could use it to make an editable sheet where you could pick culture related stuff. That could let you get away with one sheet for multiple cultures. I could send you my old sheet if you want something to start from. It's KAP 4 but it would still save you some work.

Okay, I'm just tossing together some ideas that were mentioned elsewhere about the potential usefulness of and possible contest of a Bestiary for Pendragon. Here the stuff that could be in it. Please feel free to comment on, add to, subtract from or disagree with anything I started of with, because that's what forums are for. Maybe in the end some good could come of this? What should be in it (just some thoughts): Beasts: Basically the stats for every animal, and heraldic beast that we've seen so far, collected into one easy to reference spot. Maybe with a special section for Faerie Beasts? There could also be sections for Saxon and Roman beasts and monsters that would fit the setting. Horse, Dogs, and Birds of Prey: Yes they are beasts and would be covered but I think that as the mounts and hunting animals of knights they should have their own expanded sections, with notes and stats for different types and breeds. Something similar to what we've seen in the past, maybe not in the same exact way. Animal Training: Since this sort of stuff is important to knights. Stuff like what it takes for a courser to be able to be combat trained too (as some can be). Animal Breeding: Because a knight who gets an exception mount that has +3 STR or some such would probably want to try and breed a line of stronger horses. He might not succeed but he'd probably try. SIZ adjustments: This could either mean examples of animals of different SIZes with adjustments to DEX, STR, CON and the other stats, but it could also be just a table that shows how much you increase STR when you increase SIZ , and how much you need to increase SIZ to double the weight of the creature, (per the SIZ table it seems to be around around 7 points) or what doubling all the dimensions of a creature does to it stats (per cube square law and the KAP SIZ formula it looks like something like +21 SIZ, -4 DEX, +14 STR, but +21 STR would seem to be a better fit in Pendragon, +14 CON. ). The idea would be than we could turn any animal into a giant sized or miniature version just by apply a set of modifiers to the stats. This could also be used to work out rough ideas to the height of giants or the length of dragons and such, which can add more drama and fun to encounters. After all, telling the players that the giant is 55 feet tall is a lot more impressive than saying the giant is SIZ 80. Variable Attributes: Similar to SIZ adjustments, but basically this would mean allowing for a random die roll for stats so that not every charger, bear, boar, red deer, griffon's have the same stats. Derived Stat formulas: They sort of exist, but having them listed it would make it easier to know how much more STR or SIZ an animal would need for another damage die, or what that might mean to it's armor rating. It would also make it much easier to spot errors in the printed stats. Hunting: Maybe a bit more on hunting, similar to Lordly Domains? A Deck of Beasts?: The idea here would be a deck of cards with Beast stats and possibly hunting obstacles on them. During a hunt a player draw one (or maybe more than one) and that would be the prey animal he was hunting, or the obstacle he had to overcome, saving everyone the trouble of flipping back and forth though the rulebook to look up the various tables and prey stats. The deck could have animals of different sizes and the frequency of each animal could be similar to that on the tables. This could also give us a chance to add more hunting obstacles to the mix. Players could also get and hold a face down card each turn to track the hunting turns for each day). Maybe a rough guide for adapting this to Prince Valiant? Okay, I started the ball rolling. If anybody else has any thoughts on the subject I'd love to read them.

Yeah, but I suspect someone going from say, Broughton to Nether Whallop is going to get there somehow. Yup and there were quite a lot more of them that make it on the KAP maps, too.

Okay, I'm game to start kicking the can down the road.

Well, cards could replace the prey and obstacles tables. Maybe cards could have a critter's stats on it, and/or some sort of obstacle roll. If we allowed for varible sized beasts, ala Lordly Domains, the deck could handle all which size beasties one finds too. Hunters who make their roll could probably get a good idea of the SIZ based upon the size of the tracks. Book of the Beast? Add in: A method for randomizing beast stats somewhat. Even if it s just some guidelines or a short table with modifiers based on SIZ. Horse training rules Hawk and Dog training rule too. Probably something for breeding animals to get or keep desired traits (like faster bigger or stronger horses). Probably stats for a few different breeds of some animals Maybe this idea is worth it's own thread?

Maybe, but that's not what I think this particular rule was mean't for. Hence Spot Obvious. The typical clues that a detective picks up usually aren't obvious. That's why the readers/audience are so impressed with the detective's ability to solve the mystery. If it were something obvious, they'd have solved it themselves in the first few minutes and not be all that impressed when the detective finally catches up with them. That's a different sort of situation though. There are pros and cons to the GUMSHOE approach, but it should be discussed as different topic in another thread.

I don't see it as a boring choice, more as a feature, and something of a secondary reward for clever play. Plus by making HPs come at the cost of improvement keeps them in check. But that's just my preference. Yup. But, on the other hand, if a character always shines when under the spotlight, is also boring. If the risk of failure and the consequence that go with failing that keep things exciting. Actually it is. Making tough choices and accomplishing difficult things are what makes gaming fun. If all the choices are easy and the tasks simple then the players can just "phone it it" and lose interest. That's why I'm not fond os completely linear adventures and so called "balanced" (they're not, they are most definitely unbalanced encounters) encounters. Try it. But be warned that too much of a good thing isn't good. I'd suggest that if you go that route you should work out a reward rate for Hero Points and then when players spend them they are gone. You will want to keep Hero Points fairly rare or else the players can start spending them like water, and then still won't have any left over when under the spotlight and it is their turn to shrine. I've seen a lot of that in the D6 system. Since the players know they will get points back or that more are coming they end up wasting quite a few on rolls that they want to succeed at, often trivial stuff. Then when crunch time comes, they are out of points to spend. If they have more points? Then they just waste more and still don't have any for when they need them.

Yeah. Lordly Domains did something like that, and could be a good frame to work from. Plus a good medeival beastiary would include heradic and magical beasts too, and probably soem alternate version both in SIZ (for instance a dragon the size of a large horse, similar to what we see in most period illustrations)and in capabilities based on origin (i.e Celtic Dragons vs. Norse). Perhaps a system to randomize attributes and skills a little. THat could all help to flesh out such a book. It's the lifesblood of most RPGs. But, in defense of the powers that be, its' not like they are opposed to new adventures. It was one of the things Greg was asking for, and I think they were planning on a book of short adventure ideas, similar to what was done with Prince Valiant (a great resource for KAP). Well, too much is terms of a realistic expectation for something we could expect to see in out lifetimes. Regional books, at Salsibury level are a lot more reasonable, especially if they use Savage Mountains, Beyond the Wall, and such as a starting point, as the maps and key locations shouldn't change all that much., Maybe do a small area down to a manor or two just to highlight regional differences. That's seems feasibly possible. Maybe a handful of place, such as Cameliard, Lothian and Cornwall could be given a more extensive treatment? Once thing I'd like to see would be the region trait and passion modifiers explained. SIRES does help with some of that, but sometime you don't know why knights from one place are more brave than those from someplace else.

I don't think this is really for spotting a clue, but for putting the pieces together. Sometimes (often) my players "spot" all the clues but then somehow don't manage to connect the dots. This is only partially the players fault, as often things that seem obvious to the Gamemaster aren't obvious to the players. A couple of my players have had to sit back and let other players do thing when thier characters "weren't there" and they've often comment on how they notice things or get ideas watching that they don't get while actually playing.

That's a valid argument, up to a point. Yes, they tend to be slower with releases that some of the other companies. Of course they don't put out as many "garbage" supplements as some companies too. But it's not like they only work on one product at a time anymore. There are several supplements "in the pipeline" that are apparently very close to being completed. So then it becomes a case of "what next?". As far as I know there is the Book of Castles, the Book of Magicians, and the Book of Salsibury in the KAP pipeline. Then there are probably a few supplements that I don't know about. But assuming the stuff it the woks all gets released, what then? I for one would love a KAP Beastiary (Book of the Beast or Book of the Hunt?) Something that compiles the existing stats for things we've seen over the years and puts them all into one resource. Maybe give a couple SIZ variants like they did with giants, and in Lordly Domains. Something on Horses would be nice. It might not be full "Book of.." Size but at bring back the detail given from previous editions. Some new adventures would be nice. Technically, I don't think there has been any official KAP adventures other than what in the rulebook, the back of SIRES, and, of course, the GPC. But published adventures tend to be the lifeblood of an RPG. I'd love to see them detail each county like Salisbury is apparently going to be, but just to cover all of Logres would take quite some time, let alone all of Britain, so that seems unlikely. .