Morien

Technically, by the rules, if it is a Sunday and not noon yet (unlikely, given the big battle), he would get natural healing at Sunday noon, equal to the Healing Rate (KAP 5.2, p. 150). However, since I think that is a stupid rule, I simply count days from the wounding itself, and thus in our campaign this would not help, unless the knight in question has a healing rate of at least 7 (unlikely, but technically not impossible). Also, I tend to count the healing from any previous wounds prior to the battle itself, so they would be unlikely to provide a buffer, either, even if they existed. Pretty much everything else has already been said.

By the way, you can easily have similar 'rush to get there' Horsemanship challenges, even if the PKs would know the location beforehand (or, in your case, you might send them to the Westbury Horse just to switch that it is the Uffington one this time around!). After all, the PKs are probably not as plugged into the Pagan calendar. "It is tonight?! Why didn't you tell me earlier!" Or they might know the date, but the liege lord wishes to talk with them NOW, or they are returning from another adventure/court, and the roads are muddy and slowing them down...

I very much think that the Adventure of the White Horse can be transformed into a generational adventure. What is the year in the game itself? During the Anarchy, Saxon raids or perhaps better yet, Saxons wishing to participate in the ceremony might be an interesting twist. During Romance/Tournament you can easily throw some more fantastical Faerie stuff into the mix, too. And yes, I agree that it is a bit odd that the Pagans have a lower chance of participating in the Pagan ceremony than the Christians. But many of the KAP adventures have been written with a Christian bias, which does reflect the source material, admittedly. I assume you have already read the thread (maybe even participated in it?) where we were discussing some alterations for the adventure here in the forum?

Well if you want to be precise about it... Your Assized Rents go down by £X (let's say £5, in this example), as those lands/rents go to the temple/church. However, your Servitium debitum (Army Expense) stays the same (your liege does not need to subsidize your generosity and piety). And it is this difference in the Army Expense that you need to cover from DF or other sources of income. Example: £50 Estate has SD of £27.5. (Assuming it is all demesne, as is usual.) £5 advowson is made -> Estate becomes a £45 estate, but is still responsible for the SD of £27.5. The SD of the current £45 estate is £24.75, so the difference is £2.75. The DF is £4.5, so the remaining DF is £4.5 - £2.75 = £1.75. The other £2.25 is made up from the lowered Family (£5 -> £4.5) & Court Expenses (£12.5 -> £11.25), and DF (£5 -> £4.5). You are right, though, that if the PK wishes to keep his Family & Court Expenses to the £50 estate level, too, then the burden shifts fully to the DF & other sources.

I would not see a balance problem in fixing the Endowment to the same £3, to treat the small temple and the small church as equivalents. While I don't know Greg's reasoning for those, the thinking might be that the christian churches benefit from the tithes, whilst the pagan temple does not. Of course, you could switch them out depending if they are in a predominately pagan or christian area.

Or even require Chivalric Bonus and Honor 16+. In any case, I would threshold it rather than rely on the randomness of 1d20.

That is so. We usually spend one session on the Pentecostal stuff, socializing, dealing with family stuff, and setting up the summer's adventure. Depending on how much time we have, the adventure might already begin in the same session, and then have one full session or even session and a half to wrap up. I am a slow GM. 🙂

Why not? They can still gain Glory for doing well in the early section. It is not like they would run into Lancelot first thing. Or are your PKs so powerful that they eschew anything less than being the champions themselves? I think the best we got was that one of the PKs won a local jousting tournament. The bigger tournaments are nigh unwinnable, thanks to the presence of knights like Gawaine, Lancelot, Tristram and/or Lamorak. We are using a One-Roll-Tournament resolution, which is my own take on the (in my opinion slightly flawed) GPC quick resolution technique. So Pentecostal tournaments won't take all that long to play through, but tend to net between 40 and 100 Glory in general for the PKs. In addition to this, we have our own court events which means that they will accumulate some trait and skill checks, as well as occasional opportunity to network, hunt for spouses, advance their siblings, etc... Sure, most of these could be done at the court of their own liege lords, but then I would have to run two smaller, parallel courts, and given the GPC, it does not seem likely that people would actively avoid the yearly Pentecostal Tournament, which tends to be the biggest one in the land each year. Still, even though they get to attend all these activities in Camelot, they don't actually get to interact with the King and the Queen all that much. One PK managed to get into the Queen's Knights, and spent a year effectively as her household knight, but other than that... YPWV, though.

Well, Camelot is not built until the Conquest Period, and gets barely finished by the time of the Roman War. So not so much before that. 😛 By Romance and especially during Tournament, the Pentecostal Tournament would be an island-wide draw. So unless the PKs are busy with something else, they try to make their way to Pentecost to participate in the festivities and in the tournament. The way that GPC describes the Tournament, you pretty much need a good portion of all the knights of Britain (and some from the Continent) to participate to make up the numbers. So yes, I think there is some evolution of Greg's thinking between 1991 and early/mid-2000s. But I think his main point was valid, that the actual access to the High King would be rather limited. Sure, you can attend the tournament and so forth, but actually to talk with the High King might take some doing. Let alone to become one of his trusted knights.

If you check out the thread I posted (link below) for the end of our (first finishing) campaign, it has some quotes about Camlann in there. I was pretty happy with the way things played out. https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-2829.html I was pretty happy with the final 'Death Ride of Arthur'. Basically, all the surviving PKs getting inspired by the nigh radiant Arthur to charge at Mordred's banner head on. Couple of melee rolls to cut their way to Mordred and his bodyguards, and then fighting until only one PK survived to witness Mordred giving Arthur a mortal wound, while dying on Arthur's blade himself. So that lucky PK got to play Bedevere's part. I was pretty happy about that... although it was a bit cheapened by the fact that the surviving PK was a related-by-marriage French household knight rather than one of the grandsons or something (alas, the player's previous character died in the corridor while trying to arrest Lancelot for treason). But hey, luck of the dice.

If I am reading the explanation correctly, you don't really need to. If you have a bunch of 6 PKs, each with the starting Battle 10, you'd expect three of them to succeed and hence have four Encounters already to select from (original + 3 from successes). Now if you are playing solo or just with 2 players, then you probably would like to get Battle to 15 quickly. But then again, 15 is still on the level of a veteran knight (veteran of battles, that is), and takes just one yearly training. Not to mention that were I trying to GM for just 2 PKs, I would be very inclined to hand some extra training to make them a bit more capable to fill numerous niches normally filled by other PKs.

You missed the context there. The very next sentence of the OP is: "So this set me thinking, given that it is a dice roll modifier rather than a skills modifier." That is what Greg was answering to: the -5 is applied to the skill (or whatever), not to the 1d20 roll. I.e., you are not rolling 1d20-5 vs. your skill/whatever of X, but 1d20 vs. X-5.

The text in the Encumbrance section (KAP 5.0 & KAP 5.1, p. 98; KAP 5.2, p. 119) is a vestigial remnant (same with Table 6-2) of the errataed Unburdened rule. KAP 5.0 had a whole paragraph on it in the Combat Modifiers (p. 117): "UNBURDENED Knights (or other character accustomed to heavy armor, at the Gamemaster’s discretion) not wearing armor and otherwise only lightly encumbered gain a +5 modifier to all weapon rolls in combat. Characters such as peasants, bandits, or Picts, who are not trained to wear armor, do not gain this modifier. Gamemasters should also give knights a +5 modifier to Awareness rolls when they are unarmored, to simulate the increased sensitivity gained when the heavy, confining helmet is removed. Again, characters who do not normally wear heavy armor do not gain this modifier." This text has been removed in KAP 5.1 and KAP 5.2 Combat Modifiers section (p. 117 and p. 140-141, respectively), indicating that it should not be part of the RAW anymore. The vestigial text (and Unburdened in Table 6-2) are just errata that were not corrected. The Table 6-2 in particular was explicitly noted as errata in the old Nocturnal Forum's Errata Section: https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-1972.html Other mentions: https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-1146.html My memory is that Greg was pretty clear on this topic when he was asked about this. There was another forum before this, but alas, I don't think it has been archived.

It can be, especially if you can combine it with a Passion. Sure, if your skill is 15, then you are better off with an armor. However, if your skill is 20+, it might be worth it to hunt for those critical hits. Let's say two skill 20 knights wearing chainmail (10) with shields (6) and swords, doing 5d6 of damage. If they both fight in armor, it is basically 50/50 which one will win. However, if one of them takes off his armor and gets +5, the odds shift. Now it is 20 vs 25. The 25 will crit 30% of the time, and wins the round about 3 out of 4 (I didn't run a full simulation, so this is ball park on 1d20+5-1d20 >= 0, since a draw works for the unarmored one, too). This means that he is even likelier to land a critical hit before the other guy lands a regular one, and a critical (using RAW) does double damage so on average 35 points. This is 19 points past the armor+shield, and almost a certain major wound and automatic knockdown, meaning that the next blow is likely to be a critical as well. In other words, a fight ender. Even if the skill 20 knight lands a hit, the average damage is 17.5, so 11.5 past the shield, likely not a major wound, and only 50/50 or so chance of knocking the skill 25 guy over. In short, your odds are better if you ditch the armor, and that simply does not seem right. (6d6 would make a major wound more likely on the unarmed guy's side, but on the other hand, 26 points past the armor is almost certainly a straight to unconscious hit, too, and a certain knockdown.) Sure, if you are expecting to be in an arrow storm, or fighting whilst outnumbered, you want to have your armor on. But if you are in a duel, any rule that makes it worth while to take off your armor is a bad rule, IMHO. Especially when the reasoning for the rule is that since you have trained to fight in your armor, you are suddenly even better when fighting without it. Off the top of my head, I can't come up any situations in the stories where the knights deliberately stripped their armor off for combat, but I can come up with plenty where they specifically armored up before fighting. Two of the top of my head: Prince Lanceor going after Balin since the was the only one in armor at the time, and Lancelot yanking one knight into the room to steal his armor when confronted by Mordred and Agravaine and their cohorts for adultery. (In Le Morte, Lancelot armors up and then fights in the corridor, not near-naked as in GPC.) What the fighting without armor should do is to tire you less. Most fights seldomly last long enough for this to be an issue, and battles usually allow for breathers. But if someone really wanted to model this, an easy way would be to give fatigue points equal to CON/3* when in heavy armor with an enclosing helmet, CON/2 in heavy armor and CON when in light armor or no armor. Once you cross the threshold, you take -5 penalty due to huffing and puffing. Each round you are not fighting at all restores 2 points, each round Defensive restores 1 point. Something like that. Mind you, that is too fiddly for me, but something like that might work, if you want to get all realistic about the downsides of wearing armor. * Low value chosen for this effect to show up in melee, since they seldom last too many uninterrupted rounds.

Well, if you are hunting on foot, having extra Move and no penalties to DEX (i.e. sneaking up on the animal) would be useful. Presumably, also less fatigue for hiking around the whole day, too. As for a chase, the only rationale I am able to come up with of the top of my head is that wearing an armor is uncomfortable; if you don't expect to need it, you'd rather go without. And it might be socially frowned upon, seen as Cowardly (with a trait check), perhaps even a -1 Honor if it is a repeated faux pas.

Yep. Thanks for this, Voord 99!

The combat skill bonus for being unencumbered was removed by Greg in his errata. And I agree that it should be removed, as it encourages high-skill individuals to strip off their armor, which is very ahistorical and counter to the sources, too. I would be tempted to make the Move bonus +1 for 4 and 6 point armors, but that is just to avoid such a big jump. If staying at +2, I would remove it from the 4 pt armor. If it is enough to give a DEX penalty, you don't get a Move bonus, either, is my reasoning.

Forgiving is not a Chivalric Trait. Neither is Temperate. Chivalric Traits are Energetic, Generous, Just, Merciful, Modest and Valorous.

Uh... where? As far as I can see, the pagans have their own marriage rituals and dishonor is still gained for adultery by the woman. Now if it is during Beltaine with plausible deniability then things might be different. And I would imagine that in a majority Pagan areas the situation of acknowledged bastards is better than in majority Christian Logres. But the KAP norm is that the inheritance works the same between Pagans and Christians in Logres. It is the eldest son of your married wife. If you have more wives or mistresses, they are at best acknowledged bastards and will not be eligible to inherit unless your liege lord is feeling very generous.

Depends on the encounter. Faerie (including enchanted forests) is nice, since you can get away with plenty of geographic shenanigans there. Our Kingdom of the Circle of Gold is somewhere in Arden Forest, and there is a strong implication that it is bigger on the inside. That is to say, you could probably ride around its circumference on the outside in a day, but traveling through the place is more like 3 days. I have condensed it a bit since the original travel time of about a week to travel to the city was a bit too much, IMHO... you can travel pretty much the length of Logres in a week. Listeneisse is another place where normal geographic rules need not apply. Other than those two, though, places exist in our Pendragon world and are geographically consistent. Sure, you can get lost in a forest, but if you suddenly find yourself in another kingdom within a day's ride of Camelot, you can be pretty sure that either someone cast some magical portal spell on you or you slipped into Faerie by mistake.

Pretty strictly. On the other hand, my players have access to 'fast travel' and 'skip cutscene' buttons when it comes to traveling. If I want them to get to the Kingdom of the Circle of Gold quickly so that I can GM the darn adventure, I am not spending time on random encounters of detailing each day of travel. Instead, it is "Two Weeks Later" followed by the start of the adventure. Now if the journey itself is the adventure (such as what I did with Morgan's Wedding), then yeah, I am having encounters along the way for the PKs to deal with. Uther's Shame is pretty much famous from the get-go, since it gets built as the consequence of the duel with Uther. I thought it already has a place set in BoU? Ah, I see it has been left open. However, "Red Tower" is Kenilworth in p. 133, so "Red Tower Bridge" might be something close to it. Maybe a bridge crossing River Avon, just south of Lambor, along Fosse Way. As for Dolorous Garde, it is pinpointed in GPC, I am pretty sure. Yep. map on p. 182.

Which is totally fair since the Christian Cymric/Romano British society of Logres is medieval, not classical/pagan Roman. I was just making the point that the classical Romans were actually pretty good about women's rights, for an ancient culture.

(Principate) Romans were actually relatively decent about women, compared to many other cultures, for example (wealthy) Athenians, who cloistered theirs. Roman women were able to own property, inherit, divorce, sue people and speak on their own behalf, and even be without male guardians. I think it would be very easy to argue that a noblewoman would be better off in the Principate than in the High Middle Ages.

Mysterious Manor might work. Light on battle, heavy on talking to people. (Adjusting to the time and location, of course... No Brus sans Pitie yet.) Birthday Hunt from Dragons of Britain #1, with some adjustments (Robert is too young but maybe some other noteworthy youth in Salisbury?).

Very nice. 🙂 Well, impoverished might be a bit of a stretch, if he can support up to half a dozen knights. That puts him very much in the 1% bracket. 🙂