Grimmshade

Is the 6e line going to be Kickstarter or just released for preorder?

5 hours ago, Morien said:

1. Base skill is capped by Horsemanship. Bonuses and penalties (situational modifiers, passions, magic weapons) are added afterwards.
EDIT: OK, the wording could be better: "No effective Weapon Skill value may be greater than the rider’s Horsemanship Skill value, although all Combat
Modifiers still apply and may boost the limited value above the Horsemanship cap." The problem with using 'effective Weapon Skill value' here is that 'effective skill' in KAP 5.2 means the skill you roll against, AFTER modifiers (see Ambrut's fight example p. 143). I think this question has come up before, though, and it was confirmed that a passion should boost your Weapon skill even above your Horsemanship. Hence why I prefer the wording 'base skill', cap that by Horsemanship, and then add everything else.

2. Knockdown is calculated first and then damage is halved.
EDIT: [The Adventure of the Sword Tournament, p. 6] "the base damage—i.e., the damage dealt before the victim’s armor or other factors reduce it—is compared to their Knockdown value, which is the same as their SIZ Characteristic." Other factors include, IMHO, the rebated weapon damage halving.

3. Armor does not protect against falling damage.
EDIT: I don't think this is explicitly said in the Quickstart, but it is the way it has been in KAP forever. I doubt it has been so dramatically changed and not mentioned.

4. Quickstart is silent on rearming IIRC. You can certainly read rearming as a full action, in which case the opponent gets to roll an unopposed attack. Or use the 5.2 combined action rules. Or even make it a free action. Or maybe allow the knight to defend himself (Ie opposed roll) but not cause any damage if he wins. You'd normally defend with your shield anyway. 

Thanks! Very helpful. 

Another few questions after playing the scenario:

You can use a Passion roll success to increase a skill or trait. If mounted your combat skills are capped to horsemanship. So if I get a passion success the +5 can only be added to the combat skill or horsemanship skill, right? (Which limits the effectiveness of passions in charges.)

Also, is the rebated weapon damage halving done before or after checking knockdown? It's pretty hard to knock down an enemy? The PC's have to roll almost max damage to unseat the NPC's if it's done before.

Does armor protect against the damage from a fall? (in which case nobody in the scenario takes fall damage)

Does it require an entire combat action to pick up a dropped weapon? (and is an attack roll against the unarmed person unopposed?)

The character is already insane for the 1d10 hours, so they can't go insane again. They can only have another Bout of Madness (from any Sanity loss).

8 hours ago, AlHazred said:

THANK YOU! I like Kickstarters, sure, but not everything needs to be a Kickstarter nowadays...

Agreed! It will be pretty sweet to simply preorder instead of wait for a Kickstarter to fulfill. 

Will the Starter Set be available for preorder and PDF once it goes to print?

Can a skill ever go above 20?

Do Attributes/Characteristics increase?

In the quick start it says wooden/dull weapons do half damage. It also says pulling hits does half damage. Is this cumulative? (So 1/4 damage?)

I would play. 

I would have everyone roll attacks and damage at the same time, etc. It's waiting on rolls that really bogs down pbp. 

1 hour ago, Brown said:

Yes it is typical that starting knights have low skills. In previous editions there is a cap on skills at character creation so you are unable to go above 15 at all. Actually compared, to 5.2e, many of the skills for the pre-gens here have higher skills. A lot of the pre-gens have a 5 in many of their low skills while in previous editions 2s or 3s were much more common.

The NPC knights have higher skills because they are likely intended to be more senior knights. King Lot/"The Commander" specifically is a legendary character, so his very high skills reflect that. The bodyguard units are meant to be some of a Lord's best knights - the ones who protect him. The other knights (Lothian and Gorre) have pretty typical combat skills - 17 Sword is quite average for a knight who has been around for more than a few years. Id say in my experience 15-17 is the common combat skill range for 'standard' knight enemies. For the player knights, one tool they have on their side to help them against these better knights are their passions, which can increase their skills to compensate. Otherwise, the 'lethality' of the adventure is minimal since there is only likely to be one round of combat, and using rebated weapons so half damage at most. EDIT: To complicate things more, the high skills of Lot and his bodyguards actually are not that high in practice. For the one tournament round, these characters would be mounted, and therefore their Sword/Charge skills are limited by their horsemanship skill -  a 16! So if lucky players got to fight against them, they would in practice be spared from the scary 20+ skills.

"Success" on the other hand is a bit relative - doing well in the tournament battle itself might be challenging and not all player knights will win their fight, but thats kind of par-for-the-course in Pendragon. The other parts of the adventure are still open for them to experience and tell a story as the adventure isnt written in a way that requires the players to succeed at any one thing for the adventure to move along. Its quite "safe" in that regard.

Regarding the squire skill: good catch! I don't think this adventure actually tells you what the squire skill is haha. In past editions, the squire skill is equal to their age. So a new squire will start at 14, while an older one nearing knighthood would have a 20. Squires can be full player characters, nothing prevents that, but the rules dont give too much support for how they differ from playing knights. A 5.2e supplement "Book of the Entourage" gives more mechanics for playing a squire, but not a whole lot.

Great answers! Thanks man!

It's kind of cool that the battle is supposed to be difficult, and I forgot about Passion boosts, which could help a lot. 

I'll just make Squire skill like 15 for now. 

I can't wait to see more of this game. 

Couple of other questions for veterans of the system.

In the new quick start, it looks like the player knights have very few decent skills. They are well below average in most skills. Is this normal?

The NPC knights in the adventure have fantastic combat skills compared to the PC's, and there are more of them than PC's. Am I not reading it right, or is there little chance for a PC success here?

What is the Squire Skill? Are squires normally full characters?

The system looks amazing, and I'm anxious for the actual books, but it's pretty different than other games I've been playing lately. (I really like the sound of the mass battles! I love how they focus on PC events rather than rolling for the whole clashing armies.)

3 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

It is almost ready to go to the printer.

Does that mean we could have it (or PDF's at least) before 2023?

2 hours ago, Metalzoic said:

Decided to look up the combat rules in previous editions to see if they were more clearly written and was surprised to see that the QS rules are almost a copy of the 5.2 rules which are just as wonky.

From 5.2

Again seemingly saying an opposed roll initiated by another character doesn't count as their Action for the round. Like the QS it also gives an example of a non-opposed opposed roll (instead of an opposed roll) and makes it clear this doesn't count as their Action for the round. 

 

However the rest of the text makes it pretty clear that isn't correct. For example, just "exchanging blows" counts an an Standard Action, just like @Morien explains above.

Then I thought maybe it was referring to this

But that would be an unopposed roll, so wouldn't apply.

 

I'm wondering this rule/paragraph has just been getting slightly altered down through the editions, morphing into this contradictory version?

For example, that same paragraph in 4th edition is explained in a way that makes way more sense. The "opposed role" wording isn't used at all and makes it clear rolls like these are just secondary action that routinely pop as part of the main combat Action.

 

Who do we ask about clearing this paragraph up in the new edition? Hell, they could just put the 4.0 wording in and probably fix it.

This is how I felt about the new edition of Runequest. I had not played anything except 1e. I bought the newest edition and could not make sense of some of the contradictory rules. It felt like all the confusion was caused by copy and paste sections from older editions.

I hope that the new Pendragon doesn't suffer from this. I don't own any previous editions so I can't really comment on that. 

Same! Can't wait to buy it.

5 hours ago, Morien said:

Yeah, that is definitely something that is different in KAP than in most other RPGs. The whole exchange of blows (of each pairing) is handled with a single opposed roll.

Definitely different than we are used to. The whole system is going to be a shock to my players. Single roll combat, movement taking your entire turn, passions, etc. I'm looking forward to it. 

3 hours ago, Morien said:

You are quite welcome.

Just out of curiosity, in what way did you read the rules wrong? Were you assuming, like happens in most RPGs of my experience, that it is 'I hit, then you hit'? So you were running two opposed rolls per round rather than just one?

I think it is always useful to hear from people who are new to the rules, since some of us old hands are already so set in our grooves that we may be blind to some phrasing that for us is obvious, but not so for a new person unfamiliar with KAP. 🙂

I was assuming that like in Call of Cthulhu you attack someone and they fought back and then they attacked you and you fought back. So that each person got an attack and a response in a round.

Holy crap, I read all this totally wrong in the Quick Start. Thanks for the great examples @Morien

Thanks for this list @glassneedles!

I've never played Pendragon, but for some reason I'm suddenly very excited for the 6th edition! I'm even more excited after seeing your list.

Wish we had a release date.

Congrats! Very well deserved!

Chaosium and Free League are making the best RPG material on the market today. (and HPLS the best props)

Thanks @Darius West that is all super helpful! 

2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

I've done my duty!

Me too!

Man, I feel like I'm pretty informed about the RPG community, and yet I don't recognize the majority of games up for awards this year. 

Does anyone know of any good Miskatonic Repository material that contains more vehicles for 7e?

I'm looking for specific 20's and 30's cars, trucks, planes, etc , beyond what is found in the Keeper's and Investigator's books. 

While we're at it, a resource for travel in those time periods would be cool too. 

That does make total sense. I'd allow an attempt to break out as the grappled persons action, and a second attempt if the grappler takes any action against the grappled (to simulate a reversal). I do agree that the grappled probably shouldn't be able to take any other action besides break free or maybe reversal. 

Would they get the usual penalty die?

Here's the interview I was thinking about, but I'm not sure it answers the question:

https://morganhua.blogspot.com/2017/06/call-of-cthulhu-7th-ed-combat-q.html?m=1

It gets even more confusing when looking at monster stats, because they usually have someone rolling opposed Str or Dex to escape a monsters grapple maneuver. 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's not entirely clarified in the rules, but I do remember seeing a large FAQ or interview somewhere about combat they might cover it. 

IIRC, a maneuver can either give a bonus die or a penalty die, so for grappling I usually give a penalty die to the grappled. They basically can't do too much except try to escape or try to harm the grappler, both with the penalty die. When someone attacks them, they can fight back or dodge, but again with the penalty die. This is just how I do it, not necessarily correct. 

My awesome prop kit is on its way to me! 

Now I just have to keep my players from watching this MoN stream game.