Morien

Just because a certain construction style existed in the real Middle Ages, does not mean that the people living in KAP Britain would constantly demolish their buildings to build something in the 'current style'. Just look at how many Romanesque churches still exist! (And Pantheon was built/commissioned by Hadrian, a thousand years prior to the Gothic Cathedrals.) While many castles would see upgrades to make them more defensible (mainly from wooden construction to stone), The White Tower is still a rectangular keep. It was never rebuilt, because there was no need to. Likewise, I wouldn't expect the expensive and still good enough square towers to get demolished to make room for round ones, but the newer castles might see a new style. Or old castles might get new baileys/walls added for more defense in depth. But when it comes to churches, once the cathedral-craze starts, I would expect to see a lot of construction to build new cathedrals. The old churches would stay in use, and I would expect that most of the cathedrals would be built between Badon and the Yellow Pestilence. But like said, it would be the churchmen building churches rather than the commoners tearing their homes down.

No, you have to flip it around a bit. The Cymri, especially after Badon, are the Normans. It is not an exact fit (outside the reconquered Saxon settlements, the peasants are Cymri as well), but the point is that the knightly, Norman architecture is Cymric architecture in this world. You wouldn't build a Saxon Meadhall with horsehead gables, but you would build a great hall in the Norman style.

As Atgxtg already said... Since KAP is basically borrowing its aesthetics (knights in armor, castles) from the Middle Ages, explicitly so when it comes to clothing fashion in GPC, I'd just steal the Norman architecture whole hog. Bring in those fancy Gothic Cathedrals!

Dunno, adrenaline is pretty powerful stuff. Also, some of the hit point damage can be construed to be shock and later blood loss (hence why you get hit points back quickly with First Aid). Also, people have been known to continue fighting even when mortally wounded, until finally their mortality catches up with them. It would be interesting to hear from people who have used this rule from Paladin, how it has worked in their games. Personally, I am worried that: 1. It would cause a 'death spiral': whichever combatant is hit first will get the penalty and hence will more likely to get hit again, losing the combat. Which admittedly can be realistic, but not necessarily all that heroic. 2. It would mean more bookkeeping for me as the GM. Now it is enough for me to know if any of the X number of opponents are already unconscious. With this rule, I'd have to track two other limits and apply modifiers on their skills because of it. 3. It would make the PKs seem less heroic. I could also see using a watered down version of that rule, and just apply -5 at HP/2. That might work, and HP/2 is already used as a threshold between Healthy and Unhealthy (if you needed Chirurgery), so that would make sense to me. Anyway, if someone has used the rule of penalties due to current HPs from Paladin, I would be interested in hearing if my conjectures are close to the reality!

Probably the way I would GM it, as well. Paladin has also some rules about 'wagering' Honor: Taking an oath to do something (or not do something) and gaining Honor thereby if you fulfill your oath.

Actually, an even easier fix would be to drop the whole Chaste/Lustful roll. This way, (Roman) Christians get the advantage of Temperate, Pagans get the Energetic, and minmax British Christians get both. Also, if it is not just enough to fail in Temperate and Energetic, but you have to succeed in Indulgent and Lazy as well, then even traits at 10/10, the probability of negotiating these challenges successfully would change from 1/4 ( 1/2*1/2 ) to more than 1/2 ( 3/4*3/4 = 9/16 ). Even better, rather than making the Failure = Out of Story, make it into a delay: It counts as one extra failure in the Horsemanship rolls. Thus, if you are a good enough rider (which you probably are), you can make up for at least one lapse of judgement. This would also give the Horsemanship roll more of a role, since currently you need to fail in all three in order to be late.

Not quite, it is just the Lustful that is causing issues. Energetic is actually helpful. It is just that Christians get both Chaste and Temperate, which are beneficial. One easy fix: Allow the Pagan to switch Lustful to Spiritual, as he wants to be part of the Pagan blessing of Epona. That would make it less biased against Pagans.

If you already have Pendragon and not Paladin, then I would go with Pendragon. As you say, the core system works well enough. Paladin does offer some neat things, and it is much more faithfully Christian in its outlook, which makes it more suitable for more historical Middle Ages, including patron saints and all that. On the other hand, as you said already, it is also somewhat tied to Charlemagne. Which is great if you are playing Charlemagne, somewhat less if you are not. In short, I think it is probably as easy to hack Pendragon to your liking, and since you already have it, might just as well use it. Given that the Pendragon base is basically a medieval society backprojected through time with a veneer of Migration Era Britain on top, you can pretty much use it almost straight out of the box. I would pretty much just use the Cymric template for everything and not worry about cultural differences: the upper classes in the Middle Ages had more in common with one another than with their own peasants. But it sounds that you want to add some regional differences, in which case, go right ahead! You probably know your own local history much better anyway, and you can tweak things to your liking.

I was going to mention the Castle of Tears, but I think it is a bit too hard a fight for starting knights. Better if they get seasoned a bit at first, get their skills up. The titular adventure of The Spectre King itself is way too hard for two new knights. Heck, the Spectre King is liable to hack his way through even a larger group of veteran knights. He is a very deadly foe. The other adventures in The Spectre King are very nice, too, I agree.

Well, even with Horsemanship 10, you require 3 failures to miss the event. So the chance of that is 1 in 8. It is those Trait rolls that are much more dangerous as written, and I would change them so that not just a failure would disqualify the PKs from continuing, but they'd need to succeed in the opposite trait, too. Otherwise, it will be totally up to them to decide. And of course, I'd allow a successful PK to use their traits to try and cajole the failed one to continue, too. I want them to actually play the adventure, after all. But yeah, if I were GMing for two novice players, I would be hand-holding the character generation and ensure that they have reasonable stats and skills. In fact, I probably would add like 10 yearly trainings as extra onto their characters, just because there are only two of them. Give them stronger characters in the beginning so that they can cover more skills between the two of them, etc. Number of enemies is easy to scale with the group size, so that is not a big problem.

MLF is in Blood & Lust, the Ghost Knight is in the Spectre King.

I'd say that the Grey Knight is a bit too much for two novice players. The Adventure of the White Horse (from 3e/4e) is a very good intro adventure. The Adventure of the Ghost Knight is a relatively good one as well, as long as you give the Wyrm some NPKs to snack on rather than being able to munch the PKs straight away. Morgan Le Fey's Challenge can be a good one to run on relatively new players, too.

Having a Motte & Bailey castle should be a major undertaking to assault. And probably fail quite miserably unless you have plenty of siege equipment & assault gear (ladders, rams, arrows...) to overcome its DV. However, note one HUGE difference between the two systems: In Estate, if the attacker WINS, the castle is taken. In GPC, the defender has to fumble and the attacker needs to succeed, OR the attacker needs to critical and the defender needs to not roll a critical. Thus, there is a huge penalty that is 'hidden' from the casual look, as it is just in the results table. There is also the fact that Estate actually gives modifiers for having more and/or better troops, too. Since the defender can retreat to an inner fortification, this could be taken to mean that you should not sum the defensive rings together, but fight against each separately. Thus, you might take the Bailey easily enough, but the Motte itself would be a problem. That is probably the way I would GM it, personally. The GPC system means that you need to basically to first overwhelm the DV of the castle with the siege equipment (SE), and then have enough SE left over boost your skill, hopefully, to 39 to be sure that you will take the castle. By contrast, the Estate System says that you need to have enough SE (including AG in this case) to counter the DV, and after that, you can probably trust your skill and outnumbering the defender to take you the rest of the way to victory. Ironically, the Estate system makes taking castles easier, and you can even overwhelm poorly fortified and manned manors with numbers and ad hoc siege equipment. Which is how it should be. If all you have is a DV 1 manor, it should be bad news if 100 Saxons show up, rather than them having a 10% chance of success (a Saxon crit or a defender fumble). By contrast, it still remains almost impossible to just overwhelm an actual castle with numbers, which, again, is how it should be.

I find that the Romance Period is probably the best detailed period of Pendragon, thanks to KAP 4e and most of the 3e-4e regional and adventure books being set in that period, too. There is a host of long-form adventures that work great for Romance and Tournament periods.

I don't think that is a good idea. If an hafted weapon breaks, what you are left holding is a short, light stick. Now, I could see a great spear or a halberd breaking giving you a quarterstaff that could still be useful, or a Great Axe/Mace/Hammer giving you a poor club, but if all a club and a quarterstaff are their own weapon skills, then you should use the new weapon skill, surely. That being said, I am a proponent of Weapon defaults being significantly higher than 0, so I could see half a skill using that new weapon (club -1d6 damage, quarterstaff (2H) the basic damage). Probably still better than going for your fists, but you probably would want to go for your sword in the majority of the cases. Which pretty much was the whole reason for having a sword in the first place, as your backup when your primary weapon (usually a spear or a polearm) broke/rendered otherwise unusable like the enemy getting past the pike or you dropping the weapon.

As for broken weapons, I go "broken = unusable". Time to switch weapons, and all knights carry at least a dagger with them as a last chance. Granted, I allow Defensive rearming to be done using the highest 1H weapon skill. Since you are focusing on your shieldwork, it makes sense to me that it is your best shield use, regardless which weapon you are trying to draw. YPMV.

Depends. In 4e, both great swords and swords are swords and thus unbreakable. However, in KAP 5.2, Great Swords break all other weapons save other great swords. Since this robs normal swords their unbreakable status, I dislike it and stick with 4e. Besides, I am not sure that it is not simply an editing error, given that it is the only place where swords are breakable. (I could swear I remember a discussion with Greg where the Great sword entry was supposed to read 'except other Swords and Great Swords', but I couldn't find it on the Nocturnal Forum archive on a quick search.) EDIT: I found it in the errata thread: https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-1743.html " The italicised text should be '...unless it is a sword or a great sword as well.' " Alas, the link to the original thread is no longer valid, so it will take me a bit more time to track it down. EDIT2: Found it: https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-1474.html So spake Greg: "FIRST: I would, and in fact thought I had, corrected the rule that Greatswords break swords It ought to say that a sword, whether one- or two-handed does NOT break on a tie"

It means an experience check.

Battle of Soissons, which leads to the conquest of Soissons and to the flight of Syagrius, happens in 486. The conceit is that Syagrius, after losing this battle, flees to Britain, instead of fleeing to the Visigoths and being returned to be executed by the Franks (as happened in real history). Thus, he should not arrive to Britain until Autumn-ish 486, showing up in the Christmas Court. Uther doesn't hand him over to the Franks who lack a fleet to threaten Uther with, so Syagrius survives longer than historically. This is why Syagrius shouldn't show up in Spring 486, since the campaigning season hasn't started yet and he is still the King of Soissons at this time, readying his army to face the Franks.

Malory had this to say, getting ready for Guinevere's rescue: "Then Sir Bors called unto him Sir Lionel, Sir Ector de Maris, Sir Blamore de Ganis, Sir Bleoberis de Ganis, Sir Gahalantine, Sir Galihodin, Sir Galihud, Sir Menadeuke, Sir Villiers the Valiant, Sir Hebes le Renoumes, Sir Lavaine, Sir Urre of Hungary, Sir Nerounes, Sir Plenorius. These two knights Sir Launcelot made, and the one he won upon a bridge, and therefore they would never be against him. And Harry le Fise du Lake, and Sir Selises of the Dolorous Tower, and Sir Melias de Lile, and Sir Bellangere le Beuse, that was Sir Alisander’s son Le Orphelin, because his mother Alice le Beale Pellerin and she was kin unto Sir Launcelot, and he held with him. So there came Sir Palomides and Sir Safere, his brother, to hold with Sir Launcelot, and Sir Clegis of Sadok, and Sir Dinas, Sir Clarius of Cleremont. So these two-and-twenty knights drew them together, and by then they were armed on horseback, and promised Sir Launcelot to do what he would. Then there fell to them, what of North Wales and of Cornwall, for Sir Lamorak’s sake and for Sir Tristram’s sake, to the number of a fourscore knights." Naturally, there would later be others, too, I'd imagine, in the battle of Dolorous Garde. Or from other sources, but Malory was the easiest for me to grab.

Yeah, once you go down far enough into negatives, there is little that can help. But I figured it was a useful reminder not just for you but anyone else reading this Forum, as new players drift in every now and again. In our house rules, criticals cause only +4d6, regardless of base damage. This makes surviving them somewhat easier, while still keeping them dangerous enough to usually cause Major Wounds. And it lessens the already very very useful 6d6 base damage, as you do 'only' 10d6 on a critical instead of 12d6, and the weapon damage bonuses don't multiply, either. Arguably, the shield/chain bonuses should not multiply anyway: you can't take more than 6 points out of a shield, for instance, so it would make little sense that you do more damage to a guy holding a shield than a guy who is not (if you are using the changed Axe rule from GPC where you just roll 1d6 for the shield protection instead of extra damage, this is a non-issue for Axes, but might still apply for Maces). Of course we have the 'half-critical' rule in place, too, where there is a confirmation roll on the weapon skill: unopposed, failure means it is just a half-crit causing +2d6.

Just to make sure that you and your players are aware of this little detail: In KAP, death doesn't happen at 0, nor even at negative hit points. You are just 'Dying' at that point. First Aid (one try per wound, successful or not) can bring you back to positive hit points: I have seen some amazing recoveries in my time thanks to lucky rolling. Healing potions (if one has any) or magic (usually of Faerie type which might carry a hefty obligation with it) can bring the poor knight back to positive hit points and hence save them. If he is still at 0 or negative hit points at stroke of midnight, then he dies during the rest of the night, past any help. Granted, usually magic is not available, so if the PK is still at 0 or below after First Aid, we let him get on with his last words and die afterwards, unless it is important for him to struggle on until midnight. Even Mortal Blows don't automatically kill the character, although a coup de grace can. A head chopped off is pretty instantly fatal, but that takes some doing if the knight is in armor... The way I do it is that I prepare my own lists of what I think make sense or sound interesting. Then I let the Battle rolls of the PK unit leader guide what kinds of opponents they meet. Nor am I afraid to throw a champion + lesser knights against the PKs, if the skill levels of the PKs are widely distributed. No reason why all the NPCs would have the exact same skill level, and it would make sense that the most skilled enemy would seek his counterpart for the glory and the challenge. Granted, I do not do this all the time, since it is nice to give the Players some badass moments of cutting through the average knights with ease using their Sword 25... But if they reach that level, they are probably known to the enemies as well, and that might mean that they get specifically targeted by enemy heroes, too.

BoA is one of my least favorite books. I find many of its entries very poorly thought out; the skill & damage levels are way too high for some unit types. That being said, one thing that might give your PKs more of a fighting chance is to remember that Great Spears only cancel the +5 vs. non-Lance bonus a knight gets and the -5 unmounted malus that the footman gets; the horseman still gets the +5 to his own skill for being mounted against a footman. Also, other melee weapons do suffer from the -5 malus. So a bunch of skill 15 PKs charging a bunch of Skill 20 berserkers with great axes should still be much in the PKs favor: 15+5 mounted +5 lance=25, vs. 20-5 on foot = 15.

Plenty of more rough-and -ready tribal kings around, both in Ireland, as well as in Cambria and in the North (Tribal Picts, especially). Leinster is amongst the most feudal and 'civilized' kingdoms in Ireland.

Yep. Ruler: Gunnhild, Queen of the East I had a vague recollection that the queen had been mentioned, but since I was sure that Nohaut was ruled by a Saxon queen/lady ( Ruler: Ethfrida, Lady of Nohaut ), I figured I must have conflated the two.