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That sounds much better. It's also more in line with how Chasoium approached things in the past, where you probably got a customized sheet for the leaders and major NPCs, but the rank and file threats were generic. In PV the generic Saxon warrior didn't have to be constantly upgraded to remain a threat. I think it actually helps with a story driven style of play, too, as every obstacle or challenge doesn't have to be greater than the last. A experienced hero might actually get a head cold, instead of being forced into getting double pneumonia, because of escalation.

It might matter, but it might not be "pretty important". A task should have to be difficult in order to have consequences. No. Why would they have any more problems taking them out quietly, etc. later in the campaign then at the beginning? There are degrees on importance. In most cases just attacking the guard could have repercussion that would be important as far as the PCs go, but not necessarily important as far as the story/adventure goes. That is where we disagree. PCs shouldn't always be up against more dramatic challenges, because it's anti-dramatic. If the bad guys are always rated relative to the PCs then they are on a treadmill and it becomes a bore. It all becomes predictable. The PCs will probably even know what the difficulty will be for something before they even attempt it. Character advancement become pointless. Everyone should just bank their points. And then there is the silliness of it all. If you are only rolling for important things and rate the challenges relative the the PCs and contacting upping the abilities of those challenges to scale to the PCs, then as the PCs get better they have to constantly run up against more and more powerful opponents and obstacles. So then the GM has to constantly come up with even more powerful menaces.

Yeah. It's what I like about games like RuneQuest and Pendragon. The average town guard, knight, Viking warrior, etc. has roughly the same stats no matter what the PCs are like. As the players advance in ability, they get better against the mean. Which makes sense and is one of the reason why people bother to improve -especially in competitive activities. I understand that some things should be a challenge to the PCs with stats to match, but if everything is rated relative to the PCs then you might aw well not bother with ability improvement at all. It's like how in D&D the characters go up a level, get more hit points, bonuses to attacks and saves, are able to improve their armor class and defense, but then have to face monster with more hit dice, better attack bonuses, and higher armor classes. So nothing really changes.

Yeah. It's a problem I have with HQ2. By rating resistances relative to PC ratings the game eliminates any inceptive for PCs to advance. For example if an opponent is going to be rated at 1 master level above or below a PC, then it doesn't matter what the PCs ability score actually is.So what's the point of improving a character's ratings? A steadily increase resistance penalizes PCs for not raising a particular rating. And since there are a lot more things the PCs would want to and and should raise than they are able to you wind up with situations where the suffer simply because their campaign has gone on longer. For example a PC climbs a tree at the start of the campaign has to deal with resistance of 13, but it he attempts to climb the same tree later in the campaign the resistance could be 15, 20 or higher! I think a absolute scale of ability (like in RQ or PeEndragon) works better for day to day challengers and resistances rated relative to PCs should be reserved for the more important storylines.

No maybe about it. It would be more worthwhile. But that probably swings the pendulum too far in the other direction. Removing special chances for 1 MP. Plus, once again, the net effect would probably be to get the opponent to switch weapons.

It didn't in RQ2. I dn't know about RQG. It's a pretty poor spell to begin with, and would be a waste of MP it if it did. Worse case scenario, the opponent wastes a few SR changing weapons, and to force that, you have to spend a lot of MPs that would habe been better used on some other spell. Protection, perhaps?

Exactly, but I guess Greg got enough feedback for it to be changed. I think what the potential problem is that someone getting their sword skill to 20 (which doesn't take too long if you make an effort, 3-4 year), then going unarmored, from horseback, and ending up with a 30 skill vs a footman's -5. Put Glory towards sword until you hit 24, and it's automatic critical time. But, from where I'm sitting, it has a lot of vulnerabilities. If the Knight get's double teamed he's in trouble. And all those pesky arrows and javelins that armored PKs can usually shrug off become lethal. So if the PKs want to live dangerously I'd say let 'em. I only had PKs go unarmored three times in all the Pendragon games I've ran, never by choice. Most my PKs value thier armor (and the skins underneath) more than a +5. I think the same people who did this were also the ones who would fight defensively all the time. The two options combined would have been deadly in the old days.

Sorry, apparently it was supposed to be dropped, but wasn't. There a thread over at Nocturnal on it. Perosnally I've never had a problem with the rule, but some people have ran players who try to exploit it. I would think that such a tactic would eventually backfire though.

Yeh, it's still a nice picture though. The box is probably the most "mainstream" King Arthur, and it's a nice piece of art. It's certainly a nice piece of art. IMO 5.1-5.2 are slightly "flawed" inside by setting it in the Uther Period. Arthur doesn't "appear" in the books. Technically, they aren't King Arthur Pendragon. but King Uther Pendragon. I get why they did that. Starting halfway through Arthur's reign, as in KAP3-5 probably give most newcomers the experience they are expecting, but does so at the expense of most of the timeline and campaign, and forces anybody who likes the game and wants to run the full campaign to start over . Doubly so once they get the get the GPC. Ironically, if it weren't for the one adventure/year time flow it probably wouldn't be an issue. It's a Catch-22. Not much they could do about it either. Ultimately I think it just means that the more you put into Pendragon the more you can get out of it.

I think we had a character or two with it back in the 80s. We were using the previous experience rules from the appendix and some players decided to give it a try. But it wasn't considered worth it. For the same amount pf POW you could put up a point of Protection, which worked against everything. Even if you put a lot of points into Dullblade the opponent can just use a Countermagic it on it, or changed weapons. The only time the spell was useful was when it could be used to prevent the opponent from putting a better spell on their weapon that was incompatible with it.

Beah the triot boar cover is a beauty. I was surprised by it, too. It's not something from Mallory, nor something most people would be aware of or associate with Arthur.

Yeah, pretty much. There might be a case where it doesn't make sense to apply them to each attack but I haven't thought of one yet.

Paladin does a lot of things differently, and is written by a different author, so it's hard to judge. Overall I think I prefer KAP but then I'm more familiar with Aurthur than Charlemagne. The whole shreeddding armoron "6"es thing seems like too much to me-most knights will come out of a battle with no armor at all, but I guess it fits the source material. Yeah, Greg would adjust things when he felt it was necessary. The Unarmored Bonus got dropped in KAP5.1 or 5.2 because, apparently, quite a few player were trying to exploit it. I guess the same sort of thing happened with the double feint, which lead to it's removal. I suppose if someone had a high DEX before they could have gone around unarmored, with +5, and use the double feint to try and bypass their opponent's armor fairly regularly. I never saw either rule get abused, but I guess others did.

It has, is a tangential way. In the Rambling Runequestion box it mentions that a caster doesn't have to overcome the POW of someone to cast a spell on his weapon, but does have to overcome toe POW of any spirit bound into that weapon. I believe that was something we were wondering about. AndI didn't remember the bit about breaking the spell up across multiple weapons.

I read about it on the Nocturnal forum. It's not really a big change. IMO, "a rose by any other name..." Still, I get the point. You can wind up with characters who have the Religious bonus, and would be considered Saints, but who might not be Pious! Sounds like a lake of faith! So I guess Spiritual sounds better. I can sort of see someone who has the religious bonus but spends most of their time tending to the poor and sick rather than at mass. Say a Friar Tuck type. Good fellow, but a bit on the Worldy side.

BTW, I think the reason why they didn't cancel out originally was because most people who know Bladesharp know more than 1 point, and players would rather not lock up INT on multiple points of Dullblade,. Especially with Countermagic being more useful and more prevalent.

The seems the logical solution. I'm starting to think so. As I noted earlier, none of the situational modifiers split.

That new. In previous versions of RQ casting one prevented the other.

Oh, another change in 5.2 is that Pious has been replaced with Spiritual.

LOL! That's probably exactly what the spell was meant to do, back when Ray and Steve created the RQ Battle Magic rules. I was thinking more in game.

It does? It used to be that having one of those spells prevented the other.

LOL! Yeah, but is Bladesharp in RQ now tied to the Death Rune? In RQ2-3 it was't really spelled out as such. Just something that certain cults would favor/have. HQ bypassed battle magic and just made it an aspect of a cult/rune. If the reasoning that it's some sort of death magic, I'm fine with it being attack only. But, you'd think there'd be a a sprint magic spell out there that increases parry. Even (some) Humakti can use shields.

Yeah, I can go along with that. It just makes a sword more "swordly".But then why doesn't it help with a weapon parry?

You have a point. The high ground/mounted modifier doesn't get split. Nor, to think of it, the penalty for fighting in darkness. I don't think someone's chance to hit should improve for spitting attacks against people who are above him on a dark stairwell. Why then, should the reverse be split? You're beginning to win me over. But do we know why bladesharp gives a bonus to skill anyway? Is it just the edge, or is there something else going on?

We never split damage mods in the past die we? I would think that would be the same regardless of the skill mod, because the weapon would be just as sharp (or dull ) for both attacks.