Morien

Some bronze bell sizes and weights from 19th and early 20th century. You can see that 7000lbs is at the upper end of the scale. In short, it would be uncommonly big even in modern era. Not impossible, obviously, but quite big. http://www.towerbells.org/data/BellWeightTables.html Here is a summary of church bell sizes in Venice: http://www.venipedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bells#:~:text=From the graph above%2C it,a standard deviation of 0.106. Most common ones are around diameter 3 feet and the biggest almost exactly 5 feet. Using the tables above, these would be about 900 and 4200 pounds respectively. Using 1/20 to silver conversion, the price is such a bell would be £45 and £210 respectively.

Happy to help. It works very well. Tournaments are still dangerous, but it is an accident (fumble) that causes lethal damage, not the deliberate aim (critical) by the master jouster.

Where do you get those numbers??? Tsar Bell is 20' by 22' and weighs around 450000lbs. If you scale it down by a factor of 4 in linear size to 5' by 5.5', as I imagine you are doing, the volume and hence mass goes down by a cube of 4, so 1/64. -> about 7000lbs, or 7% of your original estimate. Tsar Bell had about 1160 lbs of silver and 160 lbs of gold added. Assuming that this would actually scale with only the surface area (power of two), you'd divide by 16, for about 72 lbs of silver and 10 lbs of gold (total cost of about £270), which would be way too much for an ordinary abbey bell. Tsar Bell was THE Bell of the Russian Empire, so I would actually drop the decoration other than just bronze relief. So, how much for the bronze? Even if it is just the 5% of silver as Atgxtg suggested, this would still be £350! If you look at the cost of building an abbey or a church in ESTATE, this is many times the cost of the building. Using your estimate of about £0.01 per pound of bronze (assuming work is half of the final price and that the pot weighs 5 lbs), then this would be just £70 in bronze, which is still awful lot. Sure, if this is the main abbey of a prosperous order, then I can see it, but similarly, if the loot value is that high, you need to explain why someone had not already looted it? Is the abbey haunted or something? (I think you mentioned that this is not a KAP campaign.) A third estimate for bronze can be made from Byzantine coinage... A follis weighed a bit more than half again that of a gold nomisma, and was 1/288th of a nomisma. Thus, we can see that the conversion of bronze to gold was about 1/450, pretty close to Atgxtg's 1/20th of a 1/20th = 1/400.

I would have serious doubts that the bell would be of solid gold. Gold is way too malleable to make for a good bell. The poor vikings probably came across a brightly burnished bronze bell or one with gold leaf on it, and decided that it must be gold. Still, pretty huge amount of bronze. 47 000 tons of silver would be, roughly, 100 000 pounds in weight = £100 000. If it would be pure gold, then, with the 20:1 ratio, it would be £2 000 000. Insane amount of money in Pendragon.

How so? Like the man said, it was the quick way of getting it down. Besides, less shares to split it into! Win-win!

APP vs. Honor or Chaste, typically. See p. 31, 92, 171 & 421. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction between 171 and 421. I would use the higher of the two. A very honorable but Lustful Lady would be difficult because she knows giving in to her urges will destroy her reputation, whereas a very Chaste but not very honorable noblewoman is simply less interested in carnal pleasures. With a commoner, I wouldn't even bother to roll, unless there is a particular story reason that the PK needs to seduce this exact wench.

Depends on the weight of the bell and if they are just after the metal, or the actual, functioning bronze bell? Is the belfry intact, as in, they can get to the bell? If so, a big enough pulley and strong ropes would seem to be in order. And yes, like David said, some peasants to do the actual work. Basically the best people to do this would be the builders who hoisted the bell up in the first place. If you are just after the metal, you can probably find a way to break it (the support beam if nothing else) and send it crashing down to the floor, and then just pick the pieces.

You want to make the bear truly dangerous? Get rid of the maul, which is a debuff, and instead give the bear a damage that matches its size and strength (25+25, which would be 8d6 with sword). Even just combining the two 3d6 damage rolls into a single 6d6 damage roll would make the bear much more terrifying, and actually a threat to an armored man.

Without your armor and your shield, that is +5d6 as far as average damage is concerned. So 8d6, twice, comparatively. That is risky, that is dangerous, and a much bigger threat than a Skill 5 (10-5 for fight mounted) 4d6 footman is to an armored knight. Currently, they are both worth the same, 10 Glory. We can go to HP calculation, SIZ and all that, and even if you are allowing Lance charges in the depths of the forest, the Bear is still a greater threat than a footman under the same circumstances. Now, if we are saying that yeah, if you are wearing your armor and lance-charging the bear, maybe it isn't as glorious as fighting it in your hunting leathers with a spear on foot, sure, I would agree with that also. Halve the Glory or some such. But if you are with the Chase, your peers watching you as you get off your horse and approach the Bear at bay, and engage it with your hunting spear fearlessly and kill it, surely that is a feat worth celebrating? 10 Glory is 'nah, not worth the risk'. Boar is even worse, since it gives all its damage in one blow. 'Boarhunting' became an euphemism to get rid of characters' stat points via major wounds in our earlier campaign.

You know, I was just thinking about that last night when writing the post. I agree that the Glory for normal animals is rather low. I would still lower the bow-hunting glory since that is basically intended to be economical activity, not glorious activity. Basically, if you are hunting for meat, that is abstracted away as something every knight does every now and again, part of every day stuff, not really worth all that much Glory. But the Chase should definitely bring more Glory than what is in the basic rulebook, IMHO. If you go mano-a-mano with a bear, especially without wearing any armor, just in your hunting leathers, you deserve much more glory than you get from lancing some poor footman with spear 10 while wearing full armor. x10 would be overdoing it a bit, but I could definitely see something like x5. This would make a Bear 50 Glory and a Boar 75 Glory, something worth bragging about if you do it by yourself.

Just in case you were unaware, the rules specify only 10% of the Glory is gained from the encounter, if missile weapons are used. KAP 5.2, p. 142: "There is no penalty to Honor for using missile weapons, but the Glory gained from defeating an opponent or creature using ranged attacks is always 1/10th of normal, regardless of whether melee combat was also part of the victory or not." Personally, I reduce the Glory for everyone involved, not just the shooter, and regardless of the results of the shooting. Just trying to hit but missing still 'sullies' the Glory. The squires ought to be aware of this, so it would be good to point it out to players, when the suggestion is made. Also, if you have a knight from the peanut gallery making the suggestion, make sure to emphasize that it is more of a sneer, implying that they are not good enough to take the bear down like real men, being only squires. That might also be good for a Modest/Proud test to see if their feelings are stung, even though as squires they should keep their mouths shut regardless of the trait roll result. But after they are knighted, might be an opportunity to face the loudmouth again, and a chance for Forgiving/Vengeful if they want to bring up the implied insult.

Yes, what I am arguing is especially the latter context. If the host has organized a chase and one of the participants is taking potshots at the hart with a crossbow or a bow, that surely would be frowned upon. If the knight is by himself and just wants to put some meat on the table, bow-hunting is fine.

There is probably a difference between Hunting for meat and Hunting to show prowess. In the latter case, opting to use a missile weapon would surely be looked at as a sign of cowardice. Gaston of Foix wrote a hunting book, Livre de chasse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livre_de_chasse ) and is quoted in the linked book looking down on Hunting methods that rely on traps or bows, and instead prefers the Chase (par Force): https://books.google.fi/books?id=LLHomhe_fMUC&pg=PA107&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false In the Imber Bear hunt, the squires are the men on the scene and can opt to have their own tactics, but using bows with their low skills and weak bow damage is surely suboptimal to closing with the beast bravely and taking it down. The Glory would only be 10%, even if they have to eventually to close to finish the beast off. Of course, this might not matter much, but I would definitely be giving at least Prudent checks to those who suggest such a 'low risk' approach.

Here are some of my quick answers, from my own GMing perspective. I have not GMed Paladin, though. I would normally apply that limitation to all Loves. However, it is my understanding that Paladin gives Glory only once for Famous passions and not annually as with KAP, which is where that sentence comes from. Thus, it would not be a big deal if you gave it for all of them. Yes, you gain Glory for Hate higher than 16. Again, I would limit it to just one Hate if it is annual, but if it is a one-time reward, I am not going to begrudge the Player mere 16 Glory. The best Hunter rolls, the others follow. Otherwise it becomes an argument. No, it is not. No, IMHO. But you can rule it otherwise. I can see scales flying off a dragon, or the knight aiming his sword at an already open wound in the creature's hide. No. Jousting lances don't normally do (lethal) damage, so the critical effect is to do normal horse (charge) damage. (We have houseruled this so that the lance does +4d6 damage for knockdown purposes on a critical, and on a FUMBLE, you take the OPPONENT's hit as real damage. This is to prevent the high-skill knights murdering newbie knights with their crits.) I think both Grapple and Uncontrolled attack happen 'last' in the strike order (i.e. grapple vs. normal attack means that the normal attack is resolved first), so I would rule them happening simultaneously. In our table, all declarations are secret until resolved, so you would have to declare a grapple before you know what the other guy is doing, anyway. I think that is correct, although the Rout table didn't make that explicit. On the next round, yes. For this round, he has already rolled Battle.

Well if it is something that they have expressed interest in, it might behoove you to cater to their interest... I mean, if they are not keen on resuming the life of a knight, why push them? They can play squires in Battles and whatnot, and it is still possible to play some adventures with them while they are squires. Unfortunately, the Anarchy is not the best time for squire-antics: it is much more fun when they are able to act as go-betweens and messengers between a knight and his adored lady, or have to foil a dastardly plot by their knight's rival to cause the knight to embarrass himself during a tournament or stuff like that, which can happen in the later periods. Squires are also acting as servers during the feasts, and might have an opportunity to try to smooth things over, or prevent other squires from making things worse, etc. I'd talk to the players and find out why they want to play squires, and what is it that they hope to get out of it.

As Arcadiagt5 said, you can easily get the PK squires knighted early, if they are already close to the knighting age. (My usual cut-off is 18 years; one of the current PKs is 19.5 years old, since his previous PK died during the summer.) What you have in mind for this year, the squires saving the lives of their knights, that is plenty enough to state that they have proven their worth and get knighted early. Alternatively, I think there is heavier fighting ahead, and Nanteleod might decide that every knight is needed: why keep these guys as squires when they already have the (minimum) skills and the equipment necessary for knighthood? Step up and fight for your King and Country! Now, if you specifically want to keep them as squires and run squire-centric adventures, that is another kettle of fish.

You can always give them a default skill of 5 and have hilarity ensue as they shoot at trees...

Sounds to me that this guy is the perfect candidate for a Samsonian challenge, such as 'conquer back my dowry and bring me the head of the King of Essex, and then I will consent to the marriage'. Either he succeeds, in which case, he has proven his usefulness, or he dies and doesn't cause any more trouble. Then again, the powerful nobles in my campaign tend to reach rather easily for the 'bigger hammer' approach: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent knight? What unfaithful servants I must have, if they do not avenge their lord's mistreatment..." Cue a string of household knight impassioned by their Loyalty [lord] and a gleam of a reward manor in their eyes. In Arthur's age, things are different, but even there, we have the Orkneys murdering de Gales knights, showing that chivalry sometimes takes the backseat to revenge. Not that I am saying that you should do so, just that in my campaign, it is not healthy to make too many powerful enemies.

KAP 5.2, p. 103: "The Hunting Skill includes the entire variety of tasks performed during the noble sport of the chase, excluding Combat Skills." (Emphasis mine.) So unless they have Crossbow Skill to actually use the crossbows, they are out of luck.

Do you mind if I ask why the player wants to switch to playing a household knight? The thing is, I have found that it tends to be detrimental to switch characters, let alone families, since this tends to cut the dynastic aspect short and also means that all the story threads connecting to the previous PK are somewhat for naught. Also, the Player pretty much has to start building the good will of the NPCs from scratch again. Of course, if the Player is really wanting to do that, sure, but I would be curious as to the reasons. I can understand the love angle, but surely the lady in question has already been married off, if this is like 5+ years after she was introduced in the Marriage of Count Roderick? (Although again, up to the GM on that score, obviously.) Anyway, you could steal a page out of BoSires (or family history) & the Vassal Solos, and just make up some sort of 1d20 table. Given his hatred of Saxons, he presumably would be spending more of his time raiding/defending, and you can model the raid/defense with another 1d20* roll as if it were a battle. That way, you would get some better idea of how did he do in those raids. Or you could just say that thanks to his high Hate, he tends to participate in such things every year and roll the raid separate from any other service he takes. * Actually, since he is a PK, it probably would be better to do it in a way you suggest, and use his own skills. Like roll Battle vs. enemy's Battle of 15 to see how his skirmishing goes, and then roll his weapon skills. See this thread which is for a tournament, but a similar thing could work here: With fumbles increasing the enemy's results by one, so that if he fumbles and enemy succeeds, it counts as a critical hit. Given that Saxons tend to go around with Axes doing 5d6+1d6 vs. shields, this gives him a real chance of getting a major wound or even dying on bad rolling. Of course, I would allow him getting inspired by Hate Saxons for one of the skills, but that brings with it a chance of fumbling the Hate Saxons and driving him mad. I would probably be giving him a check on his Amor for the Lady, if she is still around, since presumably he would pine.

It is an error. One possible source is that Greg did change (or at least think about changing) the Caerwent and Caercolun names around at some point when coming up with his counties, and this was then not fixed when he settled on Caercolun as the southern county and Caerwent as the northern one. In any case, it should be a War in Southern Caercolun, not Caerwent. Essex doesn't expand to Caerwent until Anarchy, and even then, they are beaten back. Caerwent falls to the Angles.

Not much to add to Hzark10's and Atgxtg's answers. As for what qualifies as a higher-ranking lord, I would look at BotW title glory, although I would probably keep bannerets and vassal knights in the same tier still. I.e. Barons outrank knights, Counts & Dukes outrank Barons and Kings outrank everyone else. Even then, I might make an additional compromise to make it just Knights - All Barons (including Counts and Dukes) - Kings. Usually, it is not a problem anyway since the default start is as vassals of Count Roderick, so only the King would outrank him.

Saxons!, p. 10-11 for general description how wergild works and p. 129 for the list of wergilds.

Wayback Machine is your friend. Trust the Machine. https://web.archive.org/web/2019*/gspendragon.com Not all of them work, but this one seems to: https://web.archive.org/web/20190531073353/http://www.gspendragon.com/ The Round Table stuff is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170226155107/http://gspendragon.com/roundtableknights.html

Unless David has issued another statement somewhere else: "The idea is that any feast in which you break out the Feast Deck and the special rules is going to be the feast of the year for the P-Ks. Not necessarily the grandest or largest feast they attend or host, but the most memorable, and therefore the one deserving of Glory. As Morien suggested, I would limit these to one per year. So if your group wants to game the system and take turns hosting, fine. If you have a five-player group, each knight is earning an extra 100 Glory every five years. I also like the suggestion of going out of your way to make things complicated for the host--putting on a feast should be stressful!" In this thread: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/8975-feast-question/ (Just to add quickly that the above thread has a lot of my comments on how I would use Book of Feasts, such as changing the amount of Glory and basically not using it in any tiny PK-organized feasts, unless they are at least on a baronial level and have significant quests.)