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I've got Family History tables from 367-410. Maybe one day they can wind up in something.

Yes, but it also limits the number of success levels, so it's a trade off. Plus Pendragon and HQ were designed around the concept of opposed rolls, which didn't really exist at the time that RQ was created, but has since become a major component to most RPGs. So the method has its good points and bad points.

Not if it goes all the way through, but it won't go all the way through. It will probably only cause a shallow wound. With a thrust your hitting at least as hard with the spear, probably harder, than with the sword, but the spear concentrated the force over a smaller area. Now when the sword is swung, it length acts as a lever which makes it much more effective.Half swording or and such with a sword is an inferior attack, but one that could be useful under the right circumstances, namely when the sworsman cannot or for some reason doesn't want to swing the blade. Basically nothing is better at being a spear than an actual spear. A greatsworsman who gets into a stabbing contest against a spearman is at a disadvantage. The spearman has better reach , spear, and a weapon that is designed primarily to thrust. But the spears don't get as wide as as thick, unless your talking late lances, and they have a lot more force backing them up. The thing is, the burden of proof here is on you. You're assumptions that Glorantha greatswords could be thrusting greatswords comparable to something out of the High Middle Ages has nothing to back it up. No version of RQ has ever has a greatsword that impales, and nothing from any of the authors even suggests that a that the Gloanthan greatsword is a thrusting weapon. If you want to make a claim that the Glorthanan greatsword is based on a thrusting sword then you have to show something from a Glorantha source to support that notion. Not only that, but if the house rules presented, there is little to no reason for someone wielding a greatsword to want to thrust with it, and cut his damage in half. Realistically it might be useful in narrow corridors

Which is still wider as the hilt and tapers towards the point. So as the blade penetrate it will spread it's force out over an increasing impact area. No, but is isn't as wide as a greatsword so the force of the blow is going to be concentrated over a smaller area.

Except that it still does as much damage on thrust/impale as thrust as a spear, which is highly unlikely, as the force of the attack would be spread out over a wider area. A Greatsword would be much less likely to penetrate armor or puncture internal organs on a thrust than a spear. Not unless it is some form of Estoc or Rapier, but in that case it shouldn't do 2D8 two-handed.

Yup. At least partially. The only "points" (sorry for the pun) that I think we can kinda support with facts is if a greatsword should do more damage on an impale than a spear, if it could. While I think I could make a strong case as to why is shouldn't, it ultimately doesn't matter since we are discussing somebody's house rules. Right now we really don't even know what a Gloranthan "Greatsword" actually is. It could be similar to the Zweilhander, or the Flamberge, or the Claymore, but it could also be something completely different that is as similar to an Earth greatsword as ga-metal is to copper. Maybe once Swords of Central Genertela is out we can make supported assumptions?

I think that idea was brought over from Pendragon, where one adventure per year is the norm. The idea behind it is that it gives the game a more epic feel, as players can see their characters age and how things change with the passage of time. It allows you to play out the whole campaign timeline - the life of King Arthur, in a couple of years rather than in decades. "Downtime" in Pendragon is referred to as the Winter Phase, representing that time of year where most people would stay at home ans wait for the good weather. A secondary effect of this approach is that is gives characters a slower and more realistic progression in abilities. It will take a few years for someone to master a weapon, as opposed to time it would take to complete a few adventures. As for Glorantha, the principle is the same, but a lot of stuff is happening during the years of the Lunar Invasion and rise of Argath so it uses a "faster" progression. But the idea is that players can see things happen as they rise to greatness, rather than going from zero to hero within in a year. I think the idea is to emphasis the world events that happen as the characters advance rather than before and after they advance. What can happen in RQ3 is that a group that has a lot of short adventures could conceivable master various skills in the course of a single year's adventure. This would have a great effect on how the players view the events of the world and the NPCs, who generally aren't progressing that fast.

Yes, but we don't know (as of yet) if those are the types of Greatswords in Glorantha. Do we? The Gloanthan Greatsword could just be a long two hganded weapon not designed for thrusting. Where do broadswords stand in the current rules? THey couldn't impale in RQ2 but could in RQ3. Your choice, but I think the physic are against you. penetrating power for a thrust is about the same for all three weapons, but concentrated on a smaller area with the spear and shortsword. It's the same reason why people generally can't push their finger through a sheet of paper, but can easily drive a pin or knife right though it. Part of how armor works is by spreading out the force of the impact over a larger area. Yes it does, and if I had to get cut by a weapon it would be high on my list. But I said stabbed, and when it comes to stabbing, spears are among the best. I disagree. It wouldn't stick in as deep or do as much damage, if and when impales. When cutting or chopping, however, it's a different story.

Spare is an understatement. Probably closer to nil. Real world bronze swords tended to be on the sort side. A bronze greatsword probably wouldn't hold up well in combat. Warriors had to straighten thier short swords after a battle, and the longer heavier blades would would be even more liable to bending. Sure, but those are from the High Middle Ages, and would be pretty out of period for Glorantha, wouldn't they? And even those latter swords with pointed tips wouldn't have been more effective than a spear or shortsword as a thrusting weapon. Sure, but that's why spears and similar weapons dominated the bronze age. If you can keep them at range, why bother with the weight (and expense!) of a bronze greatsword?

No, noit at all. It just that the "follower" wives only get a handful of skills. Okay, as long as they get something to default to. KPA is rather unkind to someone without a skill. Although, with the revision in the siege rules, DV actually can help out a lot now. Even someone with no Siege skill now has a pretty good chance to do so if they got a few points of DV left over. Yeah, I think we're getting there. it's not that I want all wives to be good at Siege warfare. I just want to give them a default value of some sort to fall back on. If a PK wants to pick Siege as one of the three Improvable skills, I'd be okay with it, but otherwise "follower" wife is going with a 5. BTW, nitpicking aside , I actually think BotE is a big improvement. For the most part it makes the NP followers fun. They are reasonably competent and useful, but not so useful as to be too useful. And the shortform keep the bookeeping simple.

Ah, I was doing up Estate record for the two PKs who have gotten landed in my campaign and noticed that there is a listing for Siege skill under the wife stats on the Estate Record. So I figured it should start at something, and is was one of the recommended lady skills in previous editions of the Book of Entourage, so I though the omission was an oversight. I just wanted to be sure they get some default skill, even if they aren't improving it. I think what I'll do in my campaign is in the early Periods (Uther/Anarchy/Boy King/Conquest) wives get Siege instead of Fashion, and in the latter Periods (Romance/Tournament/Grail Quest/Twilight Periods) wives get Fashion instead of Siege. K&L does swap the starting values around for those two skills, at that time. That would only divert from BotE 1.3 for the first of the campaign, and go with the darkier, gritter tone of the early years.

Yes, and with Pendragon eseentially beging the same "campaign", characters, setting, timeline, and key events, that variation is very important, especially when running the game another time around. I've run several campaigns and they all varied from each other.

Dear Moderators, I was wondering if, now that Chaosium has Pendragon/Prince Valiant again, could we please have a Pendragon/Prince Valiant category in the downloads section?

That's probably because this site wasn't a KAP place until recently. I'm sure the moderators would add a KAP section if we brought it to their attention. I know Triff certainly would.

Morien, this site not only allows for attachments, but it has a download section. So you could put stuff in there.

Not really. The vast majority of them had blunt tips. Like styopa noted, it's theoretically possible to impale with a greatsword, but it would be pretty rare. A dinosaur tripping and falling on top of a character wielding a greatsword would be a likely case for it, but not so good for the one wielding the sword.

Lordly Domains, pp. 113-114 for boar stats. But be warned that the boar stats are quite a bit tougher in Lordly Domains.

Yes, it would be bizarre, but I could see it be justified as the skilled attacker taking up so much of your attention or overwhelming your defenses to the point where the second guy gets an easier attack. Now, I'm not saying that it should be interpreted that way, only that it could.

I just noticed that Siege is not listed among the skills available to wives in the Book of Entourage 1.3. Surely that's an oversight. and it should be included in the list of skills that start at 5, right?

Okay. I wasn't sure. I could see the argument for either case.

No, but are you sure Alice's attack skill doesn't reduce your chance to defend against Bob?

Or just drop the first paragraph and amend the second to something along the lines of: If one or more combatants have combat skills of greaterthan 100%, the combat skills of each is reducedby the amount the highest skill is above 100%.Thus, if a Sword Lord of Humakt with a 150%broadsword skill fights a Wind Lord with a 130%medium shield skill, the Sword Lord attacks at100% and the Wind Lord parries at 80%. This also handles what happens when three or more character have combat skills over 100%

As far I know they cooked over the central Hearth. It was a pretty basic design. The house was built around the fireplace. Yeah part of the difficulty is that people don't bother to keep record on things that "everybody knows". Today, we don't do things the same way and so we don't know what everybody knew back then.

LOL! Exactly. It's much like the differences in complexity between something like Elric! and RQ3. Some people will prefer general hit points and armor, others would rather have hit locations and pieces of armor. Some like 10% crticals, other like 5% and 20% chance of specials. And that's all okay. YGMV. It is how some flame wars appear to be justified but others viewed as a waste of time that amuses me, since there is no consensus. If we avoid topics because someone else might consider them not worth it, then nobody will even post anything.

So it goes up a little faster to ofset the smaller increment, interesting. I worked up the formula for RQ3. At one time I had a little Tandy handheld that was programmed in BASIC to calculate all the modifiers and derived stats. It was impressive (to us) in the 80s. Maybe not, but then I never learned the "Eurmal Weighs the Dice" heroquest. ElfQuest, of all things, had a good solution for that. Since none of the elves wore much armor, they got a luck roll to get protection from pendants and other bits of jewelry,. I though something like POW roll could handle that stuff nicely without getting very fiddly. If one wanted to they could adjust the POW multiplier to reflect body part coverage.