Morien

To be honest, normally neither as the squires play such a background-only role usually. Frankly, I am happy if the Players even remember to update the squire's age. It became a bit of a running joke in our group when one of them realized that she had had the same squire for about 20 years: "Um... Edgar, how old did you say you are?" "Nineteen, Ma'am." "Really? I thought last year..." "... I would have been eighteen, Ma'am. Stands to reason when you think about it." "Right, right..." The in-game explanation was that poor Edgar didn't have the wherewithal to become a knight, so he continued being a squire. His knight finally sponsored him during the Roman War with some looted horses and armor, since there were openings (battlefield casualties) in the household knights of her liege.

The foot soldiers ought to have Loyalty (Lord), as they are part of the mesnie. And it would make perfect sense for the poor soldiers to start with a low Loyalty (Lord) (due to the lack of experience in the service) and not improve (due to the low upkeep).

Oh, I agree with that: a group of squires makes things simple since then you can tailor the adventure to fit the squires specifically. It is simply a different situation when everyone else is playing a knight and one player is playing a squire. The squire will simply have much less impact on what the knights are doing. Atgxtg's & Baba's point of making the Player-squire squire for another PK is a good one, since that way there is some Player-Player interaction and RP there, and the GM can give the squire something to do as well, especially if the adventure calls for something like sneaking around in the stables or such. But if the adventure is a Battle or slaying the Dragon, then the Player-squire is going to be much more sidelined.

Meaning they will become Average Spearmen and hence cost £0.5 in upkeep. You can't cheat the game like that. Poor Infantry is explicitly: "These soldiers are quickly-raised, green, and unarmored." Sure, if you bring 10 armored (if a bit green) footmen instead of 2 average footmen, of course the Count likes it. But it is going to cost you. I would give a discount on those armor, though. Kinda like the legionnaire arrangement: you get your kit upfront, but then pay it from your salary after the fact. It ought to be. Otherwise one can go around saying that a 14-yr squire on a rouncy is equivalent to a knight in plate armor on a destrier. After all, both of them are mounted soldiers, right? As you can see, I am not far off from that. Basically, the thing is that as long as they QUALIFY as Poor Infantry, they are cheap, but when they gain the experience and the equipment to be equivalent to the Average Infantry, they ought to get the same upkeep. Kinda like you can't just take an esquire, put him in armor and say that he now takes one of your SD knight slots while still paying him £1 upkeep. It is really the point that they also lack 4 points of armor and are green troops, meaning they will have a lower morale, too. In KV terms, they have half the KV of an average foot soldier.

Feel free to drop it, honestly. I am more than happy to handwave that as part of the Landholding Glory, too. It is just 10% of the Landholding Glory, after all. Although to be honest, I went the the other way in our campaign and now give Glory for higher upkeep, but not for just hoarding money and not spending it as a nobleman should. Passive ownership of land should not give Glory, IMHO. It is being seen to be wealthy that is worth Glory: "Did you see Sir So-and-So in his new silk cape? That must have cost him a fortune!" Since I give +£1 SoL per £10 land and 10 Glory per extra +£1 SoL spent, this actually comes down exactly to £X land = X Glory, same as before. A lot of things were not updated in 5.2. It was primarily a layout upgrade, and a lot of actual rule changes were explicitly deferred to KAP 6. Trust me, I bitched a lot about the childbirth and child survival not getting fixed... *grumble mumble* It is. Using 3x Upkeep would work much better, and even that is somewhat high given how little slack the knight has in his finances.

Because you need to feed two extra men. At some point, it stops being efficient, and you get a mob instead of an army. I am sure Book of the Castle will get more into the logistics of it all. The other thing is that it is more of a matter of someone bring in just TWO poor foots oldiers vs. two average ones. That is what really gets the Liege upset. Finally, we can debate whether poor foot soldiers would actually count as 'professionals', or at least as efficient as the the average foot soldiers. Quality ought to matter some, too. I would have no problems saying that: poor x0.5, average or squire x1, armored/veteran x2, knight x4 for the minimum manpower calculation. Which would mean that in the 1 vassal + 2 HHK + 3 squires + 6 foot soldiers (1 armored + 5 average) = 22 'average-equivalent men'. Even if the knight would just be equal to the armored veteran, this would still be 16 average-equivalent. This would also get rid of the issue of spamming poor foot soldiers.

Correct, only the extra people give extra glory. The court and servants who are part of the estate's normal budget are already accounted for in the landholding Glory. I think I was clear that the £1 = 10 Glory is the house rule we are using. We found that no one was spending money if all it gave was a measly 1 Glory per £1. 1 Glory is next to nothing. Now, at 10 Glory per £1, it is starting to become something that MIGHT tempt some players, especially if they are close to a Glory Bonus Point. However, the RAW in BotE (p. 48) is £1 = 2 Glory. This was also partially so that there was some point in just spending the money rather than hiring a large entourage, where there really wasn't if both gave the same amount of Glory. Now, it needs to be pointed out that the rules in BotE differ from KAP 5.2 also in that there doesn't seem to be a soft cap anymore. Spend £100, gain 200 Glory. At 2 Glory per £1, this is hardly a problem. Even at 10 Glory per £1, I would be tempted to let it stand.

No. You should follow BotW and BotE. What I was just idly musing was if the KAP 5.2 values can be explained if you add the extra squires in and assume that they are part of the standard of living, as they are in KAP 5.2. But it is much cleaner to keep the extra squires out of it. That is the decision Greg came to when we were doing BotW and revising BotE & BoEnt.

I didn't stop to think about that before, nor am I sure if this was planned, BUT... £9 + £1 extra squire = £10 £12 + £2 extra squires = £14 (almost £15, we can assume that the squires are getting nicer livery and all that for the extra £1...)

First of all, I think those numbers are wrong and it should be £9 and £12, but never mind that for now. The issue is that it should be +1 Glory past the £6 ordinary, since as you pointed out, otherwise you do not gain any Glory for spending more. And it would make no sense that you'd gain 4 Glory for spending £14 and none for spending £15. In our house rules, we dropped the other benefits of high Standard of Living and just gave 10 Glory per £1 extra (above £6) spent. As said above, I would give the guy extra 17 Glory (£1.7 Conspicuous Consumption), but if going by above rules, giving him an extra 1 Glory would be the least you could do. I would give 50 Glory, the rules ought to give 5 Glory. Correct and Correct. Now, the GM as the liege could instead allow a marriage, and take charge of supporting the wife, but the way this is intended is that the officer gets better food by sharing the high table with his liege, finer clothing as Christmas gifts (as the Lord maintains his household knights), and so forth. So it ought to be non-transferable. It is not cash in hand. I think I have already made my feelings known on how I think the Glory should be calculated, even in absence of my own house rules. Nothing, but having extra squires is good in Battles and generally helping with any extra horses and whatnot. In addition to the social links, of course. Nah. They simply don't benefit from having a second squire. Rather than penalize them, I would give them extra +1 Glory per squire as per the rules in Book of the Entourage about extra followers. I also might give the PK some grief if they have plenty of horses and just one squire. You could easily lower the Pay Bonus by £1 and give Sir Elad an extra squire instead. Makes perfect sense to me that an officer might need an extra squire to do some running around and delivering messages. That is something that Greg added to Warlord, to encourage the spending rather than the hoarding. It was on oversight to not include it to ESTATE when we revised it. Mea culpa. That being said, I don't use that 2:1 rule in our campaign and it works just fine. The PKs are mainly making their fortunes out of loot anyway, so it is just one less hassle for me to worry about, and makes it easier for the NPCs to afford dowries and such.

I'd probably do something simpler, such as have the Temp damage be automatic if the raid has not been stopped (fighting outside the walls). But rather than reading it damage to 3 investments, it would be just -3 Lots to their income. Also, as much as you accused me of double-dipping earlier, it is exactly what is going on here: not only does Ravaging have a much higher 'skill', but it also starts off deeper in the hole. Finally, if you are presenting the damage increasing as you go down, the defender's wins should adjust the table UP, i.e. to the lighter consequences. I was thinking something relatively simple like: Raid Critical vs. Fumble: 1d3+3 investments destroyed Raid Critical vs. Failure: 1d3 investments destroyed Raid Critical vs. Partial Success: 1 investment destroyed Raid Success vs. Partial Success: 1 investment damaged, 50% original price to repare. If Defender wins/ties: no permanent damage. If Defender Critical/Success vs. Raid Failure/Fumble: Raiders routed as they try to attack the manor itself, Temporary damage (loot) recovered.

From that point, yes. However: 1) It is not you but the liege lord (the GM) who writes up the SD in the Grant. 2) Most manors are not fortified, anyway. 3) It takes 5 professionals to defend a manor enclosure. Knight, squire and 3 footmen. With 12 (3 knights & squires, 6 footmen) you have enough to defend a motte-and-bailey castle, anyway, so it hardly matters. 4) Another household knight is a potentially interesting NPC. 7 foot soldiers are just part of the background of commoners.

Correct. He would not get a higher title unless the king gives him one. By RAW, himself, 1 hhk and 6+7=13 footmen. Personally, I turn £7 into another hhk so it would be himself, 2 hhk and 6 footmen, instead. But up to you. Yes, he would stay just a vassal knight albeit a wealthy one.

Well, the whole Estate is already treated as a single unit in BotE, so simply scaling it would be the easiest. That is how the investments work, too, as well as the manpower needed to raid the Estate. So the same force that manages to Ravage a single Manor would probably be just a Raid on a big Estate. The Estate probably has better DV, an actual castle in its core, so the Raiders are more likely to bounce off, too.

Looks like a pretty good place to start refining it from. It would probably be easiest just to do a matrix resolution, and as long as the defender gets at least a partial success (unless opposed by a critical), the damage is limited out outside the fortifications. Basically, I see a critical pushing the defender's result one down, so with crit-fail would be equivalent to success-fumble. And a crit-fumble should leave the estate almost in ruins.

BotE, p. 7: "An estate is like an honour but smaller, ranging in income from £30 to £150 per year. Income supports additional knights as well as a proper lifestyle. A landholder can have any number of parcels or manors he has collected, but it is still not an estate. The ancient origins of many estates are long-lost, but recognized. Only the king can create a new estate and he alone has the power to dissolve one — and even then only if the estate comes back into his possession." So £30+ manor is still a manor, although I could see an argument that it would actually be an ancient Estate. As for the upper limit, I thought I had seen some indication where an estate holder should start getting insulted if he is not made into a Baron, but I can't find it. It is not £100, though, since there is explicitly overlap between minor barons and richest estate holders / bannerets. The £150 upper limit from the p. 7 quotation above might be a good limit for that.

It would probably have to be 2xLots damaged. Otherwise the roll chance is rather minor. Whether the DV ought to be doubled as well can be debated. I have seen the PKs manage something like DV 10 easily enough with a moat, and I don't think this should necessarily be Ravage-proof, yet. But yes, the 'skills' as 2*Lot vs. DV opposed resolution could work.

Only if the skills are less than 20. If you are simply rolling 1d20+raid vs 1d20+DV, then the 'skills' are implicitly 20+raid and 20+DV, is what I was getting at.

Well, you can see that in my suggestion, you do have two 1d20 rolls still: original 1d20+raid-DV for the 'skill', and then the 'skill' roll. So it does give a bit of a bellcurve. But sure, one could go back to just rolling 1d20+raid vs. 1d20+DV, but the problem here is that you pretty much have only two results: win or partial success. Well, you'd get criticals, too, admittedly, if DV or the raid is high enough. So three results and a critted tie to make it four. Maybe if the 'skills' would be 10+raid mod vs. 10+DV, then there would be more chances of failures and failure-failures, too (and fumbles), in addition to all of the above. That might work.

Assuming you CAN capture it and sell it for at least a fraction of its value. If you are a bandit, there is no way that you will get anything even close to its true value. Most likely, even trying will earn you a noose as a horse thief and a murdered. Assuming that you can even manage the ill-tempered brute and avoid pursuit, too. Horsemanship not being one of your main skills... Similarly, if you are a Saxon, there might not be a good horsemarket for chargers. Sure, the big bosses might like one, but if your choices are between dying (since you are overmatched by the knight on horseback) or possibly surviving and looting a dead knight's armor and not getting his horse since you killed it first, it is a rather easy choice. Given that many Cymri have high Hate Saxons anyway, survival is at best an iffy proposition. Better to win the fight. Actually it's going to be super-easy, barely an inconvenience. (Sorry, just had to use that catch-phrase. ) The horseman is limited in the angles he can attack from, so just have your shield up, bend your knees, and lop the legs off the horse (assuming that the horse has stopped in the melee). Of course, this is easier in theory than practice, but a very good reason why the cavalry HATED getting immobilized amidst infantry and tried to avoid that like plague. Now, in actual Pendragon, it depends if you are giving the -5 penalty if the Saxon is attacking the same-level horse or not. By RAW, I think -5 applies, so then it doesn't matter skillwise which one you attack first. Then it becomes an issue of damage, assuming that you do land a hit. You need to hit the horse with something like 17 points + the knight's shield if he manages to interpose it (but you might get the axe bonus vs. shield, in which case about 20 points does it). Those are not great odds, admittedly, but still about 30% (assuming 20-pt threshold). And if you manage to do it, it is the knight down for sure. If you hit the knight, he won't get badly hurt on any reasonable roll, but usually anything past 16 or so will trigger a knockdown roll. Alas, by RAW, the solution for that knockdown roll is a Horsemanship roll, which most knights will have around 15. So that is 25% chance of failing knockdown, and maybe 70% for the original damage roll being 16+, giving a total chance of about 17.5%, or roughly half the chance that it is to cripple the horse. If you DON'T give the -5 for hitting the horse, then the Saxon's chances of winning the original roll improve, as well as his chance of getting his own shield in the way. At that point, purely from survival perspective, hitting the horse becomes the Smart Thing To Do for the beleaguered footman. Heck, even the PKs have started chopping horses' legs when they have been knocked from the saddle by enemy knights in battle! Better to win and get SOME of the loot than to lose and be captured or killed, seems to be the intent.

Only if he gets 800+ Glory from Inherited Glory. Which is not impossible for 2nd Gen characters, admittedly. But that would bring him just to 17 (800+1200 from becoming a vassal knight = 2 GBP). Or did you mean that you'd run the Intro and give them an additional Winter Phase at the end, allowing them to boost Sword to 16 or 17, if they managed to get lucky in an experience roll? And then +1 from knighting? OK, I can see that, although that is quite rare in our campaign. Perhaps because my players tend to focus on the damage at first and then start boosting their CON to avoid Major Wounds. As well as a 31-yr old with Sword 22 or so? Not to mention 5 more points in stats (close to +1d6 in damage) or other skills? Besides, now you are comparing a character straight out of the chargen with a character after their first adventure & Winter Phase. So that is one more stat or skill for the 31-yr old, and if they are close enough, perhaps even a Glory Bonus Point to get their Sword to 23. Look, there is simply no way that you can say that the 21-yr is better at holding up his end than a 31-yr old knight. At least the 31-yr old will have a chance to shine rather than always be the newbie. Besides, the chances are that some of the other PKs will drop during those ten years, meaning that the 'new-old-PK' will very possibly be the last man standing amongst a pool of kids. At least that tends to happen in our campaign, that not all PKs die at the same time, which means that usually each player gets a chance to be the 'old grizzled veteran wrangling the young'uns'. Agreed partially. Some caveats: 1. It can be interesting/useful for the brother/uncle to advance his own career, and hence boost the whole family line. After all, if he manages to earn a manor of his own, it is one more manor & vassal knight in the family. 2. If the brother/uncle is also the guardian of the heir, he can oversee the land, and hence he can probably marry and support his own family as well. More family members is nice. Furthermore, his adventures CAN impact favorably on the heir, if he puts some thought to finding a possible bride for the maturing heir. For instance, if he himself is already married and his own son is still a toddler, it might make perfect sense to try and set up his nephew (the main heir) with an heiress he rescued. Should such an opportunity arise, of course. In any case, burning some of his own influence can see his nephews and nieces marrying better than they would if neglected, and also ensures that the nephew will remember it when it is the uncle's own children in need for some family influence. Also, there is more to the world than just the heir, or rather, the rest of the world influences the heir's future, too. This is especially the case during Anarchy. 3. Disagreed, as previously stated. He is only sub-par compared to his (near) age-peers who have been actively adventuring, not in comparison to newbie knights. He can very well end up as the oldest and strongest knight in the group. 4. Nothing much to be done about this, unless it happens that the whole group is shifting to younger characters more or less simultaneously. Our biggest age spread was a few game years ago from 21 to 50 or so (PK finally retired due to DEX dropping to 3). Now it is more like 25 - 45, and the oldest character is about to retire so that she can enjoy her retirement rather than die in some godforsaken place as the age and wounds both old and new are starting to creep up on her. Of course, if the whole group manages to achieve some goal as getting into the Round Table, and all of them have heirs ready to be played, then it could be a smart idea to shift to those heirs en-masse. Now, the Pendragon campaigns do vary a lot, so YPWV and all that. In our current campaign, the PKs were dropping often enough that many of them went through all three starting brothers before the 2nd generation stepped up. Due to some politics, one player even ignored his main heir and played the two younger sons, before switching to the niece of his starting PK, leaving the main heir to be an NPC. Another player is also in his nephew, and actually a non-heir nephew, because he chose to do that. With our Glory Bonus Point rules & players' priorities, the skills have not really gotten out of hand, meaning that the cap of 20 has not been a problem, either. Of course, ideally one would play the character until the heir is ready to be knighted and then have the decency to die heroically. But that very seldom happens, at least in my experience. The only time we had a clean sweep was in the old campaign where I deliberately orchestrated a TPK at the Badon Hill as the campaign was going on a hiatus anyway, and I figured that was a nicely dramatic ending for the PKs' careers, and make it easier to skip forward in time to the adult heirs when the campaign would get resurrected. Even then, I had to employ some trickery with Faerie timewarp shenanigans to get everyone up to adulthood at about the same time. And there can be a huge scatter in childbirth successes, too. In our current campaign, for instance, one PK was VERY unlucky with the childbirth rolls, while another was very lucky, resulting in the first getting his first surviving child (a daughter) in 501, when the second PK's eldest son was already a squire!

Second stringers compared to an actively played PK OF THEIR OWN AGE. It is not a wonder that a knight who has been actively adventuring for 10 years is superior to one who has spent those 10 years in garrison service. However, if you are the only 30-year old knight in a party of freshly knighted 21-yr olds, you are still much much more capable than they are. Sure, they will eventually catch up when your age starts catching up with your in your 40s, but they are unlikely to catch up with you before you have already changed to your own primary heir. Honest question: if you had your choice between playing a 21-yr fresh knight from No-Name Family for 10 years and then switch to your main heir (who comes of age) or playing a 31-yr old uncle of your main heir for 10 years and then switch, which one would you and your players choose to play? Which one would be more of an asset to the group? Assume, for argument's sake, that the other PKs in the party would be 2x21, 26, and 31, all having been adventuring from 21 onwards.

Well, not as great as a played PK is likely to be, but this is due to the fact that the 30-yr old has not shared the same dangers and adventures. But that doesn't mean that they are bench warmers. For instance, if there is a 30-yr old brother, then the main was probably in his mid-30s. Chances are that the 30-yr old is still at least comparable in age to the other PKs, much more so than a new 14-yr old or even 21-yr old. Secondly, sure, he will not reach the rarified air that a PK who has been adventuring every year since he was 21, but then again, he is SUPPOSED to keep the bench warm for the primary heir, who is probably in early teens by this point. So say, 10 years or so. In those 10 years, this 30-yr old will be a much more capable character than a new 21-yr old knight would be. As for Glory & high skills, there is a simple solution for that too: 1) Give the new 30-yr PK all the Annual Glory that he would be entitled to from 21-yr onwards. 2) Give the new 30-yr PK a chance to earn Battle Glory for all the famous battles that have happened during the time he has been knighted: 1d6*battle size Glory*victory modifier. 3) Give the new 30-yr PK any general 'witnessed an event' Glory that the general public would probably have attended to, like Arthur's coronation or wedding. Add the above to the Knighting Glory and Inherited Glory, and the new character will almost definitely have 2 Glory Bonus Points earned, if not 3. Now, hang onto those GBP until the rest of the chargen is done. In other words, let the Player use Yearly Trainings boost the skill to 20, and then allow him to use those 'saved' GBPs to boost his skill above 20, if that is what he wants. Sure, he is probably still lagging a bit in skills and traits in general, but at least his main skills and attributes ought to be good enough. Campaigns do vary a lot, though. In our campaign, it is not rare for the PKs to suffer major wounds every few years, so they kinda 'pay' for their experience checks by needing to use the Yearly Training to boost their lowered attributes instead. We also use GBPs as fate points, so we don't see a huge Skill increase past 20 via GBP, either. The highest Weapon skill is 22, despite the knight being past 10k in Glory. Just to add, another solution would be to give the player 3 Yearly trainings per year, but limit them thusly: 1st 5 points to spend on skills up to 15, AND 2nd 1 point in trait or passion, AND 3rd 1 point in attribute or skill past 15. This would roughly mimic what we are seeing in the PK experience checks & Yearly Training. But then you'd run to the problem that you mentioned: that a player might get a BETTER character by benching the primary heir for a while. Sure, he'd miss out on the adventuring Glory, but on the other hand, he wouldn't take Major Wounds nor get squished by a giant when you are 22.

I couldn't find it in the book, so I went looking the old Nocturnal Forums... Greg said the following in a thread where hitting a horse was being discussed: "Just remember that even if he strikes the knight's horse, the knight's combat win would protect the horse. He does not have to specify he is protecting his horse." If the defending knight doesn't have to split his skill, then it makes no sense that the attacker would have to, either. Earlier in the same thread Darren Hill stated: "In normal melee, the attacker just says whether he wants to hit the rider or the horse. The rider rolls his attack normally, and if the attacker wins, he hits the one he chose as target." Greg did not comment on that, so given his actually answer supporting this same method, I think it is in a reasonably good footing. Most importantly, it works in game. In another thread, a Boar is attacking the horse of a horseman, who in turn is attacking the boar, and the question was if this is a single opposed roll or two unopposed rolls, as neither the knight nor the boar is actually defending against the other. Greg's answer was: "I would just make this an opposed roll of the knight with his weapon versus the boar where a win by the boar = he disembowels the horse". I think that is the definitive answer. If it works for a boar, it ought to work for a man attacking the horse rather than the rider, too.

IIRC, that is the way it works by RAW. In our game, we use a house rule that if you are attacking the horse instead of the rider, you do not suffer the -5 penalty if you are on foot. The horseman still gets the +5 to attack you.