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Yes, but I think KAP6 has to come out first. One of the reasons why KAP is muddled is because many ideas are carryovers from earlier editions and have yet to be updated to the current rules.

Yeah, basically one squire with a group of PKs is tough, since the squire is literary a supporting character and will only get to to something interesting if the GM and/or his knight allows for it.Seven weeks of that can become monotonous. A group of squires is another matter, although they have an uphill battle with combat skills. Still if a player wants to play a squire, as GM I'd try to find something for them to do here and there, but they'd still be supporting characters. Or hate the temp character because they are a temp, or because they started too old to really develop. One PK died suddenly in my current game and the player was forced to play their brother until their son was old enough to play. But the brother was over 30 and the cap on skills led to a mediocre character who was just starting to develop when the squire was ready to get knighted..

I think we could use some sort of simple table to handle raid damage, in Book of Estate format, to replace the one from Book of the Manor. Maybe I'll work on something later on tonight? One of the perks of being under lockdown is that there is now more time for little things like that.

I agree. The ultra high starting combat percentages. I think all they ended up doing was to make combat one sided and boring. It was if they were catering to players who didn't expect their characters to be at risk during an adventure (points finger at D20 crowd).

OH, I get the idea behind it. I once wrote up rules for Legionaries for KAP4. I think the problem here is that once you give the Romans something special what do you give everyone else? Chivalry works because it is a core concept to all knights. "Noblis" won't work if it is just a Roman concept. -not unless you run a more Romano-historical King Arthur where the Knights of the Round Table are all Romans. Otherwise you just end up elevating the Roman culture and it's values above all the other cultures -including British Feudalism, which isn't so good for a game about King Arthur and Knighthood. So you got quite the tightrope to walk across.

Sure, if he was hired as a temporary squire. Basically temp squires are just that, temps. They are people who make thie living as squires as they lack the means or ocoonections to become knights. But they are not the typical squire. Not really. The way it was normally done was that a knight squired his son off to a friend, neighbor, ally, or even a enemy that he wanted to mend fences with. An uncle is borderline okay. The general though was that most knights would take it easy upon their own sons or close relatives. It's like what happens when a kid plays on a team coached by his Dad -it's hard to tell if the kid get coached according to his abilities and merits or if Dad favors his son (or even comes down too hard on him). The big concern here is that if a squire gets too easy a time during training he might not be ready when the time comes for him to fight on the battlefield. It's better to let your son take a few extra beatings while a squire than to get killed in his first or second battle. It's also better in play not to have the knight training his own son. Much better to let one of the other PKs do it.

Me either. I could see that eventually turning into several codes/philosophies for each culture. The Celts, Irish and Saxons all had their own warrior cultures with their own set of virtues. That's basically what the religious bonus reflects. Chivalry stood out apart because it is about being a knight. I think if we go down the rabbit hole of various philosophies and codes of ethics we will wind up with dozens of bonuses, and everybody will wind up qualifying for something. Once everybody has some type of special bonus, then the bonuses are no longer special.

I do the oppoiste. My reasoing is that the glory comes from the behavior being considered noble-something that isn't really the case until chilvary takes off. Meanwhile the "Armor of Honor" is a magical effect comes from the approval of a higher power, and thus happens regardless of if the characters gets fame/glory for it.

That depends. Generally speaking, squires serve in a support role to their knight and do not fight much, instead waiting to bring them a spare weapon or horse. But, if you have some PK squire in the group, it's perfectly okay to have the odd bandit or Saxon fight attack them while two or three others gang up on their knight. And, of course if the entire group consists of squires then the adventure will probably involve squires fighting. Yes, but it is a bad thing and cost the knight honor. In general, when a knight takes on a squire he is training that squire to become a knight and letting a squire go before he is 21 is indirectly stating that the squire doesn't have what it takes to be a knight and pretty much kills the squire's chances of advancement. Doing so without good cause is a slap in the face of that squires family and will result in some animosity. Now a PK could take on his nephew as a second squire, and pay the extra £1/year, assuming he can afford it. He might even be able to pass off the old squire to another knight who needs a squire without an negative effects. But just dumping a squire outright for no reason other than he wants to squire his nephew is not going to go over well. Historically, it was frowned upon to take on a close relative as a squire, as people thought that the knight would be too soft on his kinsmen, but that's another issue.

Not really. One big change between SB1 and later edtions is with the power level of sorcerers. In SB1 they are much more powerful in chargen and can do much more, while in later editions they have to work their way up. I discovered this the hard way when playing SB with some people who had the latter editions, and discovering that my socrocer character completely outmatched anything possible in the latter edtions. The rules are basically the same, but SB1 characters started off much more powerful. Personally I disliked Elric! because it made attributes pretty generic and meaningless, and pushed all the player characters into the 100%+ range with their weapon skill(s). SB did have power level and game balance issues, especially SB1, probably due to the influence of Ken St. Andre (his T&T is notorious for one sided conflicts), but I thought it felt both more solid and more like the books than Elric! did. For me, my "go to" version of the system ended up being RQ3. The game system was more robust than either SB1-4 or Elric!, with fewer things to patch, and prting over SB4 magic gave it enough of a Young Kingdoms feel to work.

That's pretty much what I do. If the knight needs cash fast, then the merchant makes a killing. If the knight isn't in a rush, his wife (or steward) can shop around for full market value.

Except that per Raw the knight would just take out a loan and then pay it back over time. But overall the fines are a bit harsh. Frankly most of the taxes and tallages in the game don't fit with the economic system. I don't see how the serfs can afford to pay for the knighting of the eldest son, or wedding of the eldest daughter without starving to death. Frankly I liked how KAP1 did the conversion. 1:1 under normal conversions, 2:1 when in a rush. In my games, if the PKs have time to let their wives work on it, I let then get 1:0:9 if she makes her Stewardship or Industry roll. So if a knight has an extra charger to sell, worth £20, he gets 10 if he sells it ASAP, and £18 if he can afford to let his wife take the time to find the right buyer-although that might take a year or two. What I found interesting, and quoted above was that: (3) "But if the heir of such a person is under age (i.e. 21) and a ward, when he comes of age he shall have his inheritance without Relief or fine". That would essentially eliminate Relief for most heris under typical circumstances.A knight who is over 21 probably has a bit of treasure to pay the relief.

Actually historically it was defined as one years profits. Is highway robery. Historically it was capped at 100 shillings (£5) for a knight, and that was the upper limit, not the standard amount. Even Barons only paid £100. It is a LOT of money. Historically, what happened was that a knight was given some time to get his affairs in order and everyone ingored it for atime. If things went on for a long time the king would temporarily take control of the land until the knight paid up. Note that this wasn't the same as escheating as the land still technically beyonded to the knight, but was just being held until he paid up and swore homage. One problem here for the king is that all those knights who do not pay up would not have sworn homage to him, and thus wouldn't be bound to him by an Homage passion. Now that means this whole Primer Siesin and Relief thing would make all knight direct vassals of the King, which is contrary to what is stated under the Homage Passion. So something has to give. As written yes, but as I noted above that directly contradicts the Homage rules.

I think that's because Pendragon interprets Primer Seisin and Releif using the least forgiving method. Primer Seisin is typically defined as "one year's profits", but Pendragon takes that to be one year's income (£10), and not, say, one year's discretionary funds (£1). That would make a huge difference. Also as far as Relief went: So Knights in Pendragon are paying much more than their historically counterparts.In fact, as as written no one except the King and money lenders would want to own land, as it would take 20+ years just to break even. Everyone would be better off being household knights. I don't see anything that states that relief must be paid in coin. I assume the knight just sends cattle, chickens, eggs, horses, a cart or two of grain, whatever.

Yup. Same with high velocity impacts vs. low velocity impacts. And to make matters even worse the same applies to all forms of damage, and no weapon really inflicts just one type of damage. And then not all damage is the same in effect. a realtively low amount of "damage" to a important location/body part (i.e .25 ACP round through the eye and into the brain) is more likely to disable/kill that a massive amount of damage to a less important location or part (i.e. .600 Nictro Express round through the tip of the left "pinkie"). Ultimately it comes down to trades off between accuracy and ease of play. That's a pretty good idea. Me too. It meant that pretty much every character was fatality vulnerable to some attack or another because they could never cover all the bases. Besides, I think "tagging" idea would also fit in with the idea of vehicle armor stopping attacks it wasn't really designed against, much like in the real world. A tank's armor isn't designed to stop laser beams, but still offers some resistance. I could see exampling the tagging rules to allow for stuff like armor Piecing rounds, or even multiple levels of resistance or vulnerability. Come of think of it, we could probably use the weakness/limitation rules from Superworld as the model for point cost.

I thought that was just here ability to refuse a marriage not guardianship. THat's what I was thinking. I beleive it is more closer to history, too. Pedragon's use of male primogeniture is also very simple but not quite how things worked in the medieval period. Male primogeniture came about at the tale end of the period in order to stop all the infighting and silliness that had dominated succession previously. It was practically a free for all. Yup, plus with the pace of play, it's probably eaiser than introducing a NPK guardian for tree to eight game sessions before the heir takes over. I ususally just assume "mom" runs the manor until the heir matures.

Not really. It's hard to make a direct comparison as the prices in Pendragon reamin fixed while historically they rose and fell over the thousand year period covered. Based on record from the armies at Argincourt and such, the prices in Pendragon are a bit on the low side, but then so is the amount of plunder. Historically, mercenaries needed to make enough not only to support themselves over the campaign, but also for the rest of the year, as well as the eventiable dry spells when peace broke out and they were out of work. But the bulk of that came not from the up-front pay, but from the plunder. Pendragon mostly glosses over this with it's focus on knights, but war was really one of the best ways for a commoner to make his fortune and move up the social ladder. A soldier could sign on as a merc, and ifhe managed to capture someone important he could ransom him off, take his armor and horse, and get paid more next year. IF he captured someone really important (i.e. a knight or noble) he could be set for life. Actually there was. Typically large land holders owed a certain amount of knight service to thier leige lords. So a knight with ten manors was typically oblibated to muster ten knights for his liege lord, and yest he could actually lose his lands if he failed to provde them. Tha'ts not to be take so literally. For instance if something mentions that a knight must maintain 20 horse, it doesn't mean 20 horses but 20 horsemen. No liege lord is going to be happy with a vassal who shows up on the battlefield with a hundred empty suits of armor and no soldiers to wear them.

If the PK is still a squire then he doesn't have to deal with any of the manor or it's income. THat only happens when he is knighted. Now the liege lord would assign someone to run the manor until the PK is old enough, possibly even the widow. Or maybe even marry her off to some knight who can benefit from the extra income for a few years. Yeah. In that case, depending upon how old the widow is, she might not have a guardian. Generally speaking guardians were usually were heiresses, not widows. Typically the widow was independent, except that she would get married off to somebody. But you can really make this as simple or as complicated as you want. The key thing is what character is the player running for the next few sessions?

Yes, technically it would to to the guardian of the widowed mother, but that would most likely be the knight, and my point was that we don't have to over complicate this.

Look at the old Superworld RPG, it did something similar. The manor difference is that in Superworld you bought armor that was specific to a particular type of damage. I'd suggest something like a half or quarter armor rule against different types of armor (that is a battleship with 50 points of kinetic armor is probably going to block some fire or radiations as well).

With the way land works you don't really need to. For the most part the manor generates enough income to cover the expenses and upkeep for everyone and give the knight (and his family) £1 in Discretionary Funds. With two manors the knight would get £2 in DF. That all you really need to know. You don't have to worry about how much Mom gets, how much the stable boy gets and so on. The detailed breakdown is nice to have, and somewhat useful for putting things into context (like how much better off the Steward is compared to the Lacky), but for the most part it can be ignored. IMO, that was kinda the point behind the new economic model- it simplified things considerably. Besides the PK would be more worried about paying off the inheritance tax.

LOL! Well, I wouldn't really wipe out the player characters with a ambush from a bunch of crossbowmen, William Goldman beat me to it with the Princess Bride, but I'd probably tease my players with it for deliberately over complicating things. To be more honest about it, I'd probably tell the player in question that he either gets the bonus against one opponent, or both, or maybe needs to make a horsemanship roll to get it for the second one or some such, on the fly, and see how it goes. It would depnd a lot of the realtive postinging, and if we were using minis or not. Maybe a player raises up some factor I didn't consider, or maybe it doesn't play out as well as I thought it would, or whatever. Sometimes a GM just has to make a spot decsion and go for it. That said, most of us try to prep beforehand to avoid having to decide on the spot.

Good for you. All GMs should work on being a better GM. Otherwise they don't even hold their ground.

I have a bit of a problem with it as well. Mostly because the bonus is tied to the trait values rather than the actual ideals. I once had a game where a PK did something very unchivalric but had high traits. As GM I overuled the traits and removed his bonus for that year. As far as one PK advancing quicker than the others- that's not an issue. Pendragon isn't D&D and the PKS do not have to earn the same amount of glory each year. Its' preferectly okay if one knight has two or even three times more glory than the other PKs. In fact that's one of the good things about the game. If a PK does earn glory faster than the other PKs he earned it for something. Even high trait glory is earned, as the traits often lead to consequences. Two points here: 1) Greg later stated that 80+ was an error based on 16*5=80, instead of 16*6=96, which makes the bonus much harder to qualify for. I'll take Greg at his word there, but I will also point out that the 80+ was much harder to get in previous editions, especially KAP1. 2) Greg did mention in places that Chivalry isn't recognized in the early periods of the game. In my own campaign I allow for the armor or honor, but there is no extra glory or recognition to go along with it. Yes, the book does say that, but only because Greg didn't get to fix that. Most of the text in 5.2 comes from KAP5, which had a lot of errors in it, and was released before the GPC or any of the other KAP5 supplments. So 80+ and all eras were both superseded in latter books. I believe Greg was working on something like that for KAP6. There was also talk of there being some sort of tier system to the bonuses so that rather than be all or nothing there could be greater rewards for those who more strongly represent the ideals. I don't know exactly what Greg had in mind, but most of the existing bonuses could be b roken up into two or three tiers pretty easily. Yes, but, I think we'd be better off seeing if such a system is put in place in KAP6 first. Also we might want to be careful about adding in too many such bonuses, or else will will wind up with bonuses for each culture or philosophical outlook. The game is focused around knights, and knightly ideals should be superior to other concepts in the game.

GPC page 228 Troop Type (100 men) Cost (£/mo.) Loyalty Knights 200 15 Sergeantry 100 12 Armored foot 50 12 Saxon warriors 20 10 Welsh spearmen 15 * British archers 20 12 Italian crossbowmen 25 8 Foot soldiers 10 12 Plunderers 5 * * Loyalty = 1/2 of the £ received this month. There are some other tables with somewhat differernt values in other books from previous edtions (with a slightly differernt ecomomic model) It's mostly implied from the medieval view of land and people. In our modern world people are considered independent of the land, but in the medieval world, most people were tied to the land. So when a knight is given a manor to run and take care of, his duty extends to the people as well as just the manor and fields. This is something of a social contract between the commoners and the ruling nobles. If the commoners have problems they are entitled to seek help from their liege. At least that's the theroy. In actual practice they did but there was little the commoners could to to ensure thie liege held up his end of the bargain. Several reasons, as Morien pointed out. But to expand on those... 1) Generally speaking having a larger army means an advantage in battle and the ability to grab more loot in a raid. Mercenaries are also expendable. If a lord loses a bunch of merc storming the castle walls, well, that just means more plunder for him and his men. On the other hand, if he loses his own men storming the castle walls, he will need to raise more troops and his surviving men will lose trust in him, for the way he threw the lives of those other men away. 2) Another problem with letting retainers go is that they will turn to banditry to maintain themselves, and will tend to bear their previous lord a grudge. This was noted in the (mostly defunct) Book of the Manor., where the manor would be raided by bandits the year when a knight dismisses soldiers. Since most of a knights staff and army are from local families, a knight who casts such people aside is firing the relatives and friends of his remaining staff and army, making him much less popular with them, and possibly lowering their Loyalty (Lord) score. Note that will all the reactions from the staff and peasants type stuff, circumstances do play a factor. If a manor gets pillaged, has bad weather, loses people to plague, etc. then the knight cutting back and letting staff go is more understandable/forgivable by the people. On the other hand, if the knight is successful and rich when he does it, he just looks to be callous and greedy.