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Or more accurately a non-Lovecratian POV. To Lovecraft a glimspe of Chewie probably would cost SAN. I suspect that as far as Lovecraft was cocerned seeing Deep Ones would cause SAN loss becuase they are something that humans would inimically find unnatural. The circumstances might conuse the cuase somewhat but probably not the effect. People would probably get a bad vibe and feel that "something was wrong with those people over there" but not know quite what. Similar to how the not quite turned Deep Ones and other offspring of Mythos beings tend to be unnerving. SAN loss here might be more gradual at first but I think that, from Lovecraft's view, the fact that these creatures exist in front of us is enough. Now another question is "Should such things cause SAN loss?". I suspect that realistically not-or else mankind will go postal if we ever do encounter some sort of extraterrestrial intelligence.I think that if Deep Ones did exist and mankind found out about them we'd quickly learn to overcome any shock and "deal" with them. Just how we deal with them and what options we had is another matter. But I think if we are going to stay true to the Mythos as Lovecraft presented it, then the universe is just far stranger than we can handle, and whenever we get a peek at it's underpinnings it exposes our "reality: as a sham. So I think the SAN loss is less becuase of the Deep Ones themselves, but that seeing them peels off the lid we have nailed down over all the subconscious stuff we deep down know to be true. Like how we probably all hear Cthulhu dreaming but that most of us can subconsciously ignore it. The weird thing is that SAN in CoC, from a clinical perspective isn't SAN at all but more of a mass delusion humanity uses to avoid a reality that we cannot cope with. The mad cultists are more sane, since they at least acknowledge the reality of things, while the so called sane people are in denial.

Oh, okay, thanks. I was on google trying to find out who she was.

The Book of Sires names Madoc's mother as Rhoswen. Doe anyone have an information on who she is and where she is from?

I think you're right about the stating age being 21 mostly because that was the default for knights and Pendragon is so knight-centric. 16 is probably a better starting age for ladies, but they would probably end up a bit over skilled compare to males. I was thinking that maybe we could do something like what was done with player squires in the Book of Entourage, namely: 4) Start the ladies at 14, with Chirurgery, Courtesy, Dancing. First Aid, Flirting, Industry, Intrigue, and Stewardship starting at 5. Then give them 2 extra points of training each Winter Phase.

But there is no precedent for such a thing. Yes, except he wouldn't get it. People accused of treason typically have an angry king out for vengeance wanting to nail their hide to the wall ASAP. And it think this whole adventure has to be something treasonous to keep the Count from being able to sweep it under the rug. Basically if it is something bad enough for the king to take seriously then he will do so right away -unless something else pops up that demands his attention. Now the adventure also works if the Count is convicted and sentenced to death, and then the PKS prove his innocence. But again the whole thing is very tricky. If the PKs do not succeed, or even if they do, but fail to get back to court in time it could end badly.

True, but then if you have an accuser you don't need a witness. That's the tricky bit with medeival courts vs. modern ones. Today we rely upon things like evidence, witnesses and such. Back then it was more a matter of status of the people involved. You really have to catch someone red-handed, and then in a situation that hurts a higher up, in order for witnesses to matter. So I think that for this to really work, the guy who was murdered would have to be some sort of royal official or such, killed along the King's road, so that the crime is more than "just" muderder but would also count as treason against the King. That way the King has a vested interest to step in and see the guilty party punished. But then you sort of need to leave some sort of area of doubt so justice doesn't run over the Count before the PKs can prove his innocence. People accused to treason do not usually get a 40 day grace period. But Merlin might be able to help here. If he tells Uther/Arthur to delay the execution to some particular day and that gives the PKs time to act. If this happened before Merlin running off with baby Arthur it would even help to explain why the Count goes to bat for them when Uther puts them on trial. But, it is a great idea. It is just one where the GM has to be very careful in how they set it up, and/or put in an escape plan (like Balin or Lancelot showing up at court at the last moment with some knight he defeated bearing Salisbury's shield) to prevent the death of the count should things go badly. Or be willing to deal with the fallout.

Most of the one's I've seen, such as Restormel, are more that just a curtain wall, but essentially two walls with a building sandwiched in between, encircling a courtyard.. Basically a round tower built around a courtyard. Yes, I expect so. If not, it shouldn't be too hard to adapt something. So basically a M&B where the shell keep replaces the Palisade and Keep, but has some sort of gatehouse built in. Since KAP reduces defenses down to DV, it's not too hard to take something and fiddle with DVs until it looks right.

It's not the major reason but it was a major reason. There was also the fact the shields ususally stopped more damage with a parry,; were harder to destroy; were easier to parry with, initially; and that two handed weapons were usually more appealing that two one-handed weapons- lower SR, greater damage, faster/easier to improve.

That's why they stole Roman catapults with the cattle When the Romans left Britain the Picts had no choice but to break open holes in the wall for the cattle. Or maybe the breeches were from problems gauging the range?

The Picts major advantages are that the mostly attack from ambush and can blend into the terrain. They can be formidable enough, since they don't fight like knights. But as far as the double feint goes, apparently it was removed partial because of it being used to nerf PKS by Picts, and by unarmored knights with the unarmored bonus, and fighting defensively, in a very munchkin manner, they never really should have worked for long. Mostly due to the terrain. Had the Picts lieved in Salsibury Plain the ROmans would have conquered them, or driven them off. Wallin the Picts off semmed to mostly work, since it limited where theycould attack. THe Irish and Scotti eventually took them out, but they were migrating into the area, unlike the Romans who mostly wanted resroces and glory from Brtian, not the actual territory.

Yah, by RAW no round keeps until he Romance Period, but if I have my history right, Shell keeps were really an extion of the Motte & Baiely, so they might make more sense as thier own entry. Yeah, I think that's the sensible solution. In my own campaaign one of the PKs has an old Roman villain near his manor and we ran an adventure where he found an engineer to do work fixing the curtian wall and such. I had the engineer change double the unkeept from Book of Entourage (£4 total) and the player was glad tobe able to pay it. He knew it was highway robbery, but it was the only way he was going to get the villa repaired. He had awhole list of projects for the enginner too, but they guy was an old Roman and died a half dozne years later. Works for me. But there really isn't a shell keep in KAP, unless we want to consider the shell keep to be a round tower (DV7). Mayber we should add the shell keep as an upgrade for the M&B? Assume that the new Book of Castles hasn't already done so.

Yup. Or unless you knew it was going to be an indoor fight. Doubly so if you were playing in a low magic setting. Plus shields usually stopped more damage than weapons, and could take more damage before losing AP.

I kinda think they did, as RQ 3 introduced both the missile hit location tables and the shield coverage rules. So it must of gotten tested somehow. Generally we found missile weapons be be a major threat in RQ. Impales were/still are nasty.

That's odd since RQ3 missle weapons were sodeadly. No having a shield tended to leave you wide open to speedart and multimissile.

Well olf Superwolrd was generic, or setting neutral. I don't thing CoC would be that great of a fit for a typical superhero campaign, but it could certainly be an optimal setting. It wouldn't be hard to adapt it to a CoC setting, as both game systems were BRP based. Adapting to CoC7 rules would be a bit trickier, but not impossible. Liewise if someone wanted to use the MArvel/DC approach and just port over some Mythos stuff to a regular campaign the existing starts are about 90% compatible already. So assuming a new Superworld is still BRP based, crossing over stuff would be easy.

Round yes, stone ,no. We have to wait for the Book of Castles to see when those come out and at what cost. I guess we can assume that the Countess could get some engineers to do the masonry. THe problem is with the keep. Sarum historically, is a Shell Keep, basically a form of round tower, but those don't come until a little later in the campaign., so anything above a M&B would probably deviate from the round form- at least in 496.

Wel,l the ability to build round fortifications was an improvement and came later, so perhaps it is a square at this point in time. Makes sense. For the most part this is stuff that the players probably won't worry too much about.

Yeah Username has it right. Building is done mostly in the summer and the serfs are too busy with planting and harvesting to do a lot of work in the Spring or Fall, and it's too difficult to do much during the winter. In general the idea was that a landholder could only do a certain amount of work per year before needing outside help (which was/is more expensive as you have to actually pay outsider laborers). That used to be set at around the holding normal income, but that was awhile back in the Book of the Manor. I think what Greg was doing in the GPC was basing the wall on the income of the city, as per BoM. So the city of Sarum might have produced £25 or so, and thus it would take four years to build a £100 wall, or one building season/year to build one wall (£25) or enclose the castle at £20. This might not match up exactly with the newer rules in the Book of the Estate (or the ones in the forthcoming Book of Castles), but it's probably still in the right ballpark. Another thing that is somewhat different is that the DV 7 stone walls usually can't be built during the anarchy due to the lack of skilled engineers during that time (it was a Roman technology that was lost for part of the middle ages). . This coincides with the era of wooden castles. But you could just assume that the Countess has connections and access to skilled personnel that player knight lack.

Yes that DEX+STR thing is going to impact things. I'm not htat fondof it becuase SIZ and mass should be in the damage equation. Maybe (SIZ+DEX+STR)/9? That way DEX could help, but not negate SIZ entirely. But that's the point. Against someone in heavy armor it is harder to find a weak spot, thus the penalty is higher. For instance, leather has a -5 DEX modfier, so doing the double feint would mean a -3 to skill. But if the character wins he could bypass half his own DEX in protection, which is almost certinaly more than the 4 points the leather provides. Conversely if up against someone in Full Plate (16 protection, DEX -10), the character will be fighting at -5, and half DEX will probably only reduce the protection by 5-6 points. So the character will probably need a crtical for full effect. What I mean by "Not much skill needed to bypass light armor" above was that if a character has a significant skill advantage against a lightly armored opponent, such as a PK vs. a bandit, he might want to take the -3 and go for the double feint to bypass the bandits armor. It's almost a freebie. Yes, but the problem in gamew terms was that the PIcts, having nothing to lose and being "one shot" NPCs would go for the double feint becuase they have nothing to lose. So all it did was up the mortality rate for PKs. You can get the same thing by having every Saxon pull the uncontrolled attack. Sure most of them will drop before they can attack, but they were probably going down anyway. THe few who do get an attack off will probably drop a PK. If you take the DEX peanlty out of the double feint, which I did and always have you don't have that problem. Reasltically, a feint is skill based, and if skill is unmodief feint shouldn't be. No it doesn't, although based on Greg comments, it was supposed to. In truth, one handed sword and shield is better than any other weapon in the game, and two handed weapons are not worth the loss of a shield.The greataxe can be something of a problem, but swords break axes on ties, so the fight still favors the swordman at high skill levels. Especially when you consider the axeman doesn't get any benefits for a partial success, and can't soak the same damage that the sowrdsman can. The game already favors sword and shield to an unrealistic degree. The sword breaks non-swords on a tie, and the shield provides extra protection on a partial success, which is usually enough to soak the hit. Sword doesn't need more help. Not exactly. You have to factor in for skill. A shield becomes more likely to protect as skill goes up. A knight with a 15 sword skill isn't going to get that shield 25% of the time. Likewise very high skill radically increases the chances of a critical hit, which in turn doubles the damage and solves the plate armor problem. In play, that guy with Sword & Shield in Plate is probably going to be taken down by another guy in plate with sword & shield, rather than a guy with a two handed weapon, since it's much better to work on getting Sword 22 than to get Sword 11, Greataxe 11. Most PKs typically get Sword to 20 while fairly young and then devote some glory bonuses to improve their crit chance. In most cases, it's not effective to work on sword and a two handed weapon, and it's better to be very good (21+) with sword than to be good (16-20) with a two handed weapon. You win more often, take less damage, and critical more often. Again, not exactly, since you are ignore both the likelihood that the shield comes into play and the likelihood of a critical hit. No. For this to be true the knight with the shield would need to have a skill of 20 and the guy opposing him the same or less. Also, neither would get any sort of bonus, such as inspiration , religion damage bonus or anything else. In play this is going to come down to a crtical hit. And if you put one of those guys with a two handed weapon, he probably losses since he can't take the same amount of damage and all those nicks will get through and add up. Yes, that's sort of a trusim in the game, except that 6K glory is probably on the low side. Glory tends to breed more glory. By the second or third generation the PKs can be coming into the game with over 2K, and with one of regions or chivalry (much harder to get now) bonuses getting a 250 per year becomes quite possible. Skill 25+ Sword skill is also not only possible but usually preferable to almost anything else the PK can do with their glory. In my current campaign, all but one one the current PKs have a skill over 20 in their primary weapon. One PK is young ans just hasn't gotten sword to 20 yet, another one wields an magical unbreakable spear and so uses spear expertise, and the Saxon uses a Greataxe but still laments the loss of a shield. In my last campaign we had a PK who got his sword skill of to 35. He was old and only did 3d6 damage, but crticalled most of the time. His biggest worries were getting outnumbered and uncontrolled attacks. Two handed weapons just meant (soon to be) unarmed opponents.

It's a nice idea, but I think you need someone more important than a squire to accuse the count herein order to make it stick. I doubt Arthur would consider a charge against one of the peers of the realm based entirely upon the arms recognized by a squire. Now if someone else (perhaps a knight with a grudge against the Count, perhaps from Levcomagus?) were to back up the accusation it might stick. But otherwise I think they just tell the squire to mind his place. It is still a good seed for an adventure though. The PKS would go out to try and clear the Counts name and would need to come across some sort of lead to Hermin, perhaps still misidentified as Count Salisbury and need to track him (or his shield) down.

Well what I was working on worked something like this (I'm going from memory): I got rid of the second roll and just combined it into the fighting roll. The character doing a double feint gets a modifier equal to half the armor DEX modifier of his opponent (better armor means fewer gaps to exploit). If the character wins he can by pass a number of points of armor equal to half his DEX on a success, or his full DEX on a critical. My reasoning for doing it this way are: Gets rid of an extra roll. Especially since those who have a high DEX would have been inclined to double feint a lot, if not all the time (especially at DEX 20+). This factors in for the type of armor worn and how easy it is to fine gaps and expoit it. Thus it;s easy to pull off on an opponent in padding with a helmet than against a guy in full Gothic plate. It also keeps characters from doing it all the time, since it will reduce thier chances of winning. It also means that someone will be less likely to pull this off against a opponent unless they are better than the opponent or have some sort of advantage. This keeps this maneuver from being an easy cheap shot for Bandits and Picts (unless they gang up on a knight, Badits and Picts do that). Note that it doesn't factor in for armor worn, reason being that armor worn doesn't affect the ability to fight with the weapon so it should affect this. This keeps DEX a factor as well since a high DEX will be needed to bypass a lot of armor. Note also that no much DEX or skill will be required to bypass a little armor, so any knight might find this maneuver useful when facing lightly armored peasants and such. It's not a bad take. I don't think it really address the reason why the maneuver was removed, namely that ti was too easy for lightly armored NPC Picts and bandits to use it to cheap shot armored PKs. Or for PKS to shun armor, and combine it with the old +5 unarmored rule. But as with all the combat tactics, the double feint is problematic, although, IMO the uncontrolled attack is the most problematic.

Thanks. I gave it a quick going over and it is interesting. I don't think I agree with some of it, but it is interesting.

Exactly. I can see how it happens, because in the standard campaign it all takes place 20-35 years before the campaign starts and is just something that players roll during the background history., and probably didn't pay a lot of attention to. But the whole thing is something the characters would be aware of. Cerdic's posturings in the anarchy would be like Hitler's son running for chancellor of Germany in the 1960s. Not to mention that their liege lord was murdered by the Saxons. Then the liege lord's son and heir (Roderick) get poisoned by Saxons (at least that's the belief, in no small part due to Long Knives) at St. Albans. So all this stuff would be going through the character's heads.

The HRB is similar with Votigern telling Constans bodyguards that they deserve to be treated better and that if he were king they would be rewarded appropriately. So some of the guard decide to kill COnstans and make Votigern king. He wards them with a quick execution - probably to prevent them for telling anyone why they did it.

He is fingered in the HRB and most other sources. The book of SIRES even points the finger at him, but the general problem was that there was no proof that he masterminded it. But since Aurlius and Uther believed it and voewed revenge on him for it, it is pretty much considered to be the true story. They do now. He did have supporters and appeared to have friends with his Saxons, but he was something of a tyrant, and favored his Saxon inlaws too much. Long Knives is what really sealed him as a villan, even though he appeared to be duped along with everyone else. His Cmyric sons did. THey were not happy with his throwing over thier mother (the sister ofthe old High King) to marry Rowena, HEngest's daughter. But even during the rebellion the sons were focused on driving out the Saxons rather than fighting thier father. I think the thing that Greg is showing is that there is no "right" answer in the situation. In many RPGs then tends to be a way to resolve everything that will work out ofr the best. In this situation, as often is the case in Pendragon (and life) every solution has a downside and causes complications. The players would probably like to send send all the Saxons packing, but lack the might to do so. So they are probably going to half to ally with someone they'd rather not, and hope they can live it the consequences. The Bullith War adventure in Savage Mountains is similar. The player in charge has multiple groups to try and deal with, and there is no way to please them all, so he has to decide who to befriend and who to war against. Yup, and whatever choice they make will come back to haunt them later, to some extent. Or maybe, even come back to help them later. Someone who allied with Cerdic back before Arthur might receive a warmer welcome in the later periods than someone who opposed him.