Morien

I allow splitting, but the secondary roll is purely for defensive purposes only. You may block one blow with your shield while skewering the other guy with your lance, but no skewering both of them on a charge.

Like Tizun Thane already said, most of the actions where DEX is used are actions that the PKs will avoid like plague, since the -10 to DEX from armor ensures that they will fail. This leaves the avoiding knockdown as the main use for the DEX, but here is the kicker: SIZ is better than DEX for that, too. And most of us know that, so if one is doing the point-buy method (the standard in KAP 5.2), a more typical PK is SIZ 18, DEX 9 than SIZ 9 and DEX 18. ONLY looking at knockdown, we have these odds: Damage less than 9: Neither knight suffers knockdown. Damage 9-17: DEX 18 knight has to roll and has 10% chance of being knocked down. SIZ 18 does not have to roll, so 0% chance of being knocked down. Advantage: SIZ 18. Damage 18-35: DEX 18 automatically knocked down, since this is double or more his SIZ 9. SIZ 18 gets to roll his DEX 9 and has 55% chance of falling, which is better than 100% chance of falling. Advantage: SIZ 18. Damage 36 or more: Both automatically knocked down. As you can see, there is NO damage range in this scenario where DEX 18 is a better build for knockdown than SIZ 18. If we widen the comparison, SIZ gives HP and DMG, too, both of which are invaluable in combat. Indeed, if the two have, say, STR 11, SIZ 18 has DMG 5d6, which gives about 50% chance of an automatic knockdown on SIZ 9 guy (rendering his DEX 18 useless), while SIZ 9 guy has a puny 3d6 damage, which only has 0.5% chance of even triggering a knockdown roll. Even if the STR is raised to 12 and hence 4d6 damage for SIZ 9, this only gives a 15.9% chance of triggering a knockdown roll on SIZ 18 guy, making that DEX 9 come to play only one sixth of the time. What does DEX bring to the party? The use in climbing, sneaking and such, which have already been noted being something that the PKs avoid like plague anyway, and even DEX 18 guy would have 60% chance of failing in armor. No thanks. There is the movement speed, but given the divisor of 10 and rounding, it is very easy for a SIZ 18 guy to just get enough STR to make his Move 2.5 -> rounds to 3 (STR 15 in this scenario, leaving DEX 18 SIZ 9 guy at Move 3.3 = 3, and DMG 4d6, both suboptimal builds). And this gives SIZ 18 6d6 damage, too, knocking SIZ 9 flat on his back automatically about 80% of the time. This is why many of us feel that DEX needs some kind of a boost to make it a more worthwhile investment. For example, making physical skills have starting values of DEX/2 in the character generation means that if you invest in DEX in beginning, you will need to invest less in skill points later on, meaning those saved yearly trainings can go towards boosting your STR or CON instead. And hence make DEX less useless.

Yes. I was speaking more generally, as in what I would do in any campaign situation. Since your PKs can muster, IIRC, 11 knights on their own (4 PKs + 7 HHKs), I would be tempted to lower the number of knights the liege provides to 10-13 or so. I normally assume that there are enough young/mercenary knights looking for a lifelong job security that hiring them is not a huge problem. Furthermore, it is possible that the liege has an extra HHK after gifting a manor, so he might have a candidate for the PK, too. It is next to impossible for a PK to afford £20 or so per household knight to equip them from scratch, so I don't even try to impose it on them. Although it definitely would be a money sink!

I'd say in Render since otherwise it is a bit too tough for the PKs to come up with the silver. As for how much its should be, I did give my suggestion in that old forum post you said you read? Generally, though, I think 2 lots is about the way to go (2 lots = £2 per £10 manor). This way, they can afford a single tribute easily enough, but paying two tributes the same year will start to hurt. Totally up to you how simple you and your players wish to make it. We have been doing both: most of the manors are handled as individuals, but one estate is a conglomeration of 5 manors, handled as a single unit. If all the manors are clumped together, it is easier to justify treating them as a single unit. It gets a bit more difficult to justify all of them getting raided by Wessex if you have one manor near the Wessex border and other manors tucked away west of Sarum. This ought to only happen if the Saxons are strong enough to actually force the defenders to stay within the walls of the castles. No worries, happy to help.

Nope. Read the p. 89 again, the right hand column, up top: "Each knight is assigned five household knights..." They also get £25 each for mercenaries and fortifications. However, I would keep the total numbers constant, since otherwise the mission becomes even easier with the number of the PKs. Like if you have just two PKs, they have to do this with 10 HHKs and £50, whereas 6 PKs, in addition of having 6 PKs, get 30 HHKs and £150. That doesn't seem fair. Instead, I would just give them in total 20 household knights and £100, dividing them evenly between the PKs (3 PKs = 7 knights each, 4 PKs = 5 HHKs each, 5 PKs = 4 HHKs each, 6 PKs = 3 HHKs each...). EDIT: Of course, if your PKs already have a host of HHKs of their own, and money to burn, then I would lower the liege's contribution even more! Lets see you spend those libra, gentlemen! This of course makes it more worthy to hand out gift manors afterwards, if they win, since it is more of their own success rather than just riding on the liege's benevolence.

Yep, it is per manor. This caused much bitching and crying by the PKs during the Anarchy. Also, do take into account that you are supposed to bring a knight PER MANOR to the muster as well. So if a PK has 4 manors, he'd better have 3 household knights, too (and 2 footmen per knight). As per BotE/W economy rules, you are only pocketing 10% of the money (which comes to £1 per manor*) to use in your own projects, not the full £6 manors in GPC. And if you go by the strict rules, this is in food, which is good only for a year. Then it is gone, unless you trade it in for treasure at 2:1 exchange rate. The PKs do get a boost to their Standard of Living too, though: SoL = £5 + 10% of the income, so a 4 manor (average £10 per manor) knight would have Standard of Living £5+£4 = £9, which is good enough for Rich. (Then again, I am personally against the standard of living modifiers in childbirth and child survival, so it is just extra Glory and a minor courtly bonus for us.) So it is much harder to get very wealthy, especially during Anarchy, even with multiple manors. It is not free money. * If you are using the £6 manors, then 1 household knight = £4 expense, and 2 footmen = £1 expense, meaning that you are left with £6-£5 = £1 extra money per year. BotE/W is a bit more generous than this, but if you have been using £6 manors, this is an easy way to explain where the rest of the money goes.

Greg made the distinction between KINGDOM of Cornwall (its own kingdom) and DUCHY of Cornwall (part of Logres) already back in GPC (p. 25-26). The map in p. 35 makes this absolutely clear, as does the text on the same page: "It is noted before the battle that some of Uther’s vas- sals did not show up for the muster. Among them, the most prominent absent lord is Duke Gorlois of Cornwall." Among them, i.e. Uther's vassals, the most prominent absent lord is Duke Gorlois of Cornwall. Ergo, Gorlois is Uther's vassal. There has never been any confusion about this in GPC, for example, Gorlois' 485 write-up in Gamemaster's Characters: "Lord: King Uther". Book of the Warlord and Book of Uther are even more explicit about Duke Gorlois being a vassal of the King of Logres. Also, BotW has this to say about Gorlois' dominion on the Cornish peninsula: "He has taken much of the Cornwall peninsula from King Idres and guards against incursions from the Irish." That is why we put that into SIRES, since it was already stated in BotW. And it nicely helps to explain why Idres is so eager to reclaim it, during Anarchy.

Only problem with that is that it again makes DEX nigh useless as far as weapon skills are concerned. Pretty much all PKs start with a melee weapon skill at 15, so unless your DEX is over 16, your skill default is better than your DEX/2 default. I'd be more inclined to go for a straight DEX default, max = best weapon skill, in that case. So if you have DEX 20 and Sword 20, congratulations, you have 20 in all melee weapons. Most knights with DEX 10 would just have a default of 10 in all other weapons. Or to make it a bit more balanced, maybe the average of DEX and Weapon Skill and then -5? So the God of Dex above would have (20+20)/2-5 = 15, and a normal new knight would have (10+15)/2-5 = 8. A barely qualified newbie would have (10+10)/2-5 = 5, and an older veteran knight would have (10+20)/2-5 = 10.

Oh, excellent! No worries, then. Carry on! Assuming these are first generation PKs, they will be croaking soon from aging rolls and the like.

As I said, it is your game, and GM it any way you like. That being said, in my campaign Roderick doesn't have spare manors to hand out in droves. After all, the chances are that if the PKs do something whilst they are in their 20s (most of Uther Period), then there are probably dozens of knights in their 30s who are doing even better. It needs to be really exceptional for the PKs to merit a manor, like saving Roderick's life or something like that. Capturing Octa or killing Gorlois might be worth a reward from Uther, but not from Roderick. In our campaign, I rewarded the PKs with a manor each (two for the one who landed the killing blow) for killing Gorlois, but the lands were in Tintagel County and got lost when Cornwall conquered that county. Another nice trick is to give the PKs GIFT manors, rather than GRANT manors. Gift manors are held only by the original recipient during his lifetime. When he dies, they revert back to the liege; they are not inherited. This means that the PK pretty much has to earn every manor twice: first to get it gifted, and then to turn it into an inheritable grant. Yeah, I hate giving heiresses on a random roll. Sure, they can woo the heiress all they like, but unless they do something major for the liege lord (who is likely her guardian and hence decides who she will marry, the heiress herself gets little say), a marriage isn't going to happen. Heiresses are one of the main ways for the liege lord to reward a full service from a loyal, heroic household knight, which also means that the other household knights will strive to prove themselves loyal and heroic to win such a price. So it needs to be something exceptional on the part of the PK. Just doing well on the battlefield in general is not enough. Right of conquest, in the middle of the magical forest, and no loss to the countess. This I approve. Of course, since it is isolated from the rest of the Salisbury, all sorts of things can happen there and it will take until the PK returns to check up on things before he finds out what has happened... Fair enough, assuming that these were one each. But these could have been gifts (see above). Yep, again this was no loss to Ellen, although technically, this would make Ellen a vassal of Ulfius. The manor is still part of Ulfius' grant from Uther, you see. Ulfius doesn't OWN the land, he is just a vassal of the king in charge of the land. It is a bit strange that Ulfius would hand a manor over rather than just the knight's head, especially given that Ulfius was happy enough to let Blains of Levcomagus feud with Roderick over a decade... But maybe Ulfius really needed Salisbury's help with something, especially if he was getting pressure from the Angles and Essex? So yeah, other than the original battlefield manors and the random heiress, the rest of them sounded reasonable enough. But do note that they can come with strings/complications attached, such as Medbourne getting attacked by some bandits/monsters/faerie in the Forest Sauvage. Also, I hope you have been clear that the Saxon tribute is PER manor, not per PK? That is something that really made my players groan with dismay during the Anarchy.

May have 10 knights under him. Estates do not come in a single size. And technically, a £100 estate holder will have 9 knights under him, with himself being the 10th, if we are nitpicking.

There is also the point that if Ulfius (Silchester) is getting involved, he will expect to have a major say who the widow of Rydychan will marry. Chances are that his candidate won't be a PK whom he barely knows. The widow of Rydychan might get her own say in things, but she would be an idiot to antagonize Ulfius and Silchester in such a situation.

Too much for me, but hey, it is your game. As long as you and your players are happy, that is all that matters. Let me guess... you let the PKs marry the heiresses from the Salisbury write-up? (Greg downgraded their landholdings in a forum post, since there wasn't simply enough manors for those massive estates to be reasonable. Even 1-manor heiresses would be very rare, like one per generation, under normal circumstances.)

It is explicitly from the King of LOGRES. I might give like 50 for one of the secondary kingdoms (Gorre, Lothian, Malahaut, Greater Gomeret, Escavalon... Cornwall+Brittany might be 75). Not for any petty kings of the Pennines and Cambria. Gorlois is the Duke of Cornwall, which is part of Logres. Thus, Gorlois is Uther's vassal, and definitely so after their reconciliation in 489.

I think we had some long talks about the list of promotion-worthy events in the old forum... In short, sure, if you take down Gorlois, Uther might reward you with an estate, but he wouldn't give an estate to each of 6 PKs who participated in the fighting. Same should apply for the other promotion events, too. Then there are some events listed which are too vague or part of default campaign proceedings. What does it mean, 'save someone from Forest Sauvage'? Why would anyone care if you save some random knight or another PK? Why should this be worthy of an estate? Keeping Saxons out of Salisbury or Defending Sarum/Camelot against King Mark are both events that normally happen during the campaign, and I am not going to be chucking an estate per PK for them to just be along for the ride. Instead, they should earn it, more along the lines of what criteria are set in the beginning of that sidebar. In the case of the Countess of Rydychan, I could see her marrying the biggest hero amongst the PKs if he is unmarried. However, note that she is middle-aged and past childbearing age, so it is not as if the PK's line would all become counts. (Also, the whole Countess thing is based on the earlier regional nobles, not the more scattered landholdings of BotW, where the number of counts is down to 2-3, so she would be 'just' a Baroness.) However, she would be unlikely to afford handing out numerous estates; even one is a bit borderline if going by BotW but OK if you are going with GPC. In our campaign, Countess Ellen sent the PKs and 20 or so other knights to help under the command of one of the PKs. They managed some victories and in one tense ambush, one of the PKs remained standing against 5 enemy knights and took them down single-handedly! So when the time came to give out rewards, Countess Ellen got a few manors as thanks for her help, the leading PK got a manor for his generalship, and the hero PK got a manor, too. So taken all together, they got about an estate's worth. But I do recognize that I am stingier GM than some others when it comes to land. 1 new manor per generation is about where it is at.

Not really. It is a simple question, does this modify your skill because it affects your skill, or is it a circumstantial, situational bonus due to the enemy doing something or being positioned some way? So if you get impassioned, that is clearly affecting your own skill. Modify it before dividing. Mounted vs. unmounted clearly depends on the enemy, too. Modifier applies after dividing. Example: I am on a horse and fighting against a knight and a footman. My skill is 20. If I were to apply the mounted vs. unmounted bonus before dividing, I could attack the opposing knight with skill 24 and have 1 against the footman. In which case, I have actually benefited from being attacked by the footman in comparison to the enemy knight! This makes no sense whatsoever. However, when the modifier is applied after, I can have 19 against the knight and 1+5 against the footman, so the footman is clearly hampering me in my fight against the knight if I pay him any attention, which is how it should be.

Actually, rereading the description, I realize that the above is another one of our houserules that we have been using like forever. RAW, both get +10 to skill and then resolve the combat normally. So there would be wiggle room to say that you choose the tactic first and then split your skill. Indeed, rereading the combat section makes it clear that Uncontrolled Attack MUST be directed at a single opponent, and the Defensive modifies the Combat skill of the defender. So I guess that the Tactic should indeed come first before splitting, as Luca suggested and how we have been playing it until now. There is no issue if facing multiple opponents and doing Defensive: you get your skill bonus and then split your skill, and the Uncontrolled Attack is resolved normally with +10 to that attacker's skill. I could see an argument from the reading of the UA that the defender knows that an UA is coming and can decide their actions afterwards. We have not done that in our game: you won't know the tactic your enemy is using until it is time to roll the dice, but neither does your enemy know yours. We also lowered the bonus to +5 to discourage the use of UA, but giving the knowledge to the defender and the option to do an attack before the UA might be strong enough to ensure that UA is not that overpowered.

Found it in Greg's website under "Errata for King Arthur Pendragon, 5th ed.": "Page 117, Unburdened I’ve been asked about this so many times, wherein players attempt to exploit it beyond its intention, that I suggest just eliminating the entire 2-paragraph section. There is no bonus for going without armor. If the GM must do something, then give a penalty to wear armor if not trained for it."

I am 100% sure that this is an editing mistake and should not exist in KAP 5.x. I would need to go and check Greg's comments and errata, but I am absolutely sure that he stated it numerous times that it should no longer be a thing, since it encouraged knights to strip out of their armor, which is stupid given the source material. As for the other modifiers, here is a simple rule: Does it modify your skill, regardless who or how many you are fighting with? In that case, apply it BEFORE splitting. Passion & Magic Weapon bonuses would go here. Fatigue should go here, if it is a simple -5 to your skill: you are fatigued, no matter who you are attacking. Does it depend on who you are attacking, their weapon or position or actions? If so, apply it AFTER splitting. Lance vs. Non-lance, Mounted vs. unmounted, etc, would go here. Most reflexive modifiers should go here. Cover goes here, since the attacker's skill is not reduced if they are not attacking someone who is in cover. Yes, this does mean that it is a stupid idea to split your skill to attack two people in cover. The only outlier in my mind is the Tactics, since I have been applying them prior to splitting, but they get a bit strange if the opponents are choosing cancelling tactics as well. By the above outline, they should be applied after splitting, depending what the individual opponents do. That way, they would be consistent: You choose Defensive and then split the skill, getting +10 vs. each opponent. If one of the opponents chooses Uncontrolled Attack, it cancels the Defensive bonus against him and only him. So vs. the other opponent, you get the +10 still. I think I might shift to applying them after, since it makes much more sense.

... and 100 Glory for being a direct vassal of the King. For a total of 1900 + Inherited Glory.

Manors can be technically of any size, or you can have a collection of manors. Estate is more of a legal term in a way, since the estate becomes legally a singe, indivisible entity, even if it is not contiguous geographically. So you could start with 4 manors, each £10 or so, and then the King (or the liege of all of those manors) decides that you should get a higher title and those 4 separate manors now constitute a new Estate called "Fourmanors", worth £40. Nothing else changes. £50 estate was a simplification in the Book of the Estate, although Greg did also use £100 for the bannerets, more of that below. Honours can be as low as £100. So there is a bit of overlap between higher estates and lowest honours. The difference is that honours are held 'by barony', i.e. they grant the title of a Baron. Estates do not, they are held 'by knight-service', meaning that the holder is still a knight, not a baron, even if they have vassals of their own. Usually one, but it is possible to have multiple ones, even a dozen, although that surely would be very very rare. "Vassal of a vassal". So holding land from an estate holder or another knight would also qualify, although usually only Barons and higher are wealthy enough to have vavasours. Wrong. You have to have an estate from the King to be a banneret, a mere 1-manor knight would not be a banneret. Usually these are larger estates (£100 or so) given as a gift for significant battlefield heroics. It seems also to be possible to be an estate holder who is a direct vassal of the king but who is not a banneret (lacking the personal promotion due to battlefield heroics). Depends a bit how cute you want to get with the titles. ... which he holds by Barony. It would be technically possible to have a nobleman who has significant holdings, but none which confer the title of a Baron. However, these cases would be rare as it would be a bit of a slap on the face of the noble in question not to get elevated to a Baronial rank if his landholdings are that extensive. Yep. All Barons (in Logres) are direct vassals of the King of Logres, of course, and hence get the extra Glory for that, too. It is also possible for mere knights to be direct vassals of the King, rather than vavasours, in which case they'd get extra Glory, too. Estate holding vavasours, but yes. Although given how much rarer vassals are now, I am very much not convinced that there would be any vavasour estate holders left in Salisbury. Greg explicitly retconned Lady Adwen's banneretcy out of existence with his Heiresses Revised forum post. But it is your campaign, do as you like. Yep! You get the Glory for the skipped rungs on the title ladder. This is explicitly stated in Warlord p. 5, with an example of a Vassal Knight becoming a Baron gaining 400 Glory.

Book of the Estates scales down to £10 single manor level, it even has an example £10 manor. So you don't have to give the Player-knights estates in order to use the Book of the Estate. Possibly a VERY bad idea, more of this below. Yes, the manors can be gathered into a single estate if everyone agrees. I am not sure why the PK would wish to do this, though? He has way more flexibility when the manors are individual manors. I guess if some of the manors are just gifts (non-inheritable), then gathering them into a granted (inheritable) estate would be a good thing for him, but otherwise, I don't see the point. However, singling a single player out that you just want to give his character an estate out of the blue is a VERY BAD IDEA and smacks of favoritism ("Why his PK gets an estate and my character didn't?"). Like I said in the beginning, you don't have to have estate-sized holdings in order to use the Book of the Estate. I think none. They are rare, much rarer than the overly generous NPC landholdings in KAP 5.2 gave to understand. However, if you really really wish to, you could turn the bannerets of West Lavington and Lady Adwen's inheritance into two estates. However, be aware that Greg downgraded Adwen's landholdings in a forum post, and that is a good indication to me that bannerets should not exist as vassals of the Count of Salisbury: there are simply not enough vassal manors. I think I have mentioned often enough that I think giving an estate to a PK who already holds multiple manors is: 1) a bad idea, and 2) unnecessary. Some hundreds are small, down to a single manor. (Example: "Pool Hundredal Manor: £13.1+£0.4; Jagent, Pool H.; £13.1 food render, and hundred court (£0.4)." The manor IS the Hundred and vice versa.) Some are individual estates (for simplicity, Book of the Estate's example estates are like this, but this is very much just a simplification, not the norm). Most are collections of manors, each of which are possibly owned by different barons/knights, and there might even be (parts of) an estate mixed in. But estates are rare to begin with. Since you have the Book of the Warlord, it has some examples of Manors and Hundreds when generating a random Barony. You can see how complicated this gets. For example, Bordermark Manor: "Bordermark: £12; Salisbury, Hillfort H.; £12 food render. £24 is held by Ludshall [sic] Castle (Sheriff), £18 by Count Salisbury, £12 by Ramstown Manor." So this is saying that Hillfort Hundred is divided thusly: Bordermark Manor: £12 (owner: whoever this random barony is for) Likely 2-3 unnamed manors: £24 (owner: Llud's Hall Castle, i.e. whoever the King appoints as the Sheriff of Salisbury and Gentian counties.) Likely 2 unnamed manors: £18 (owner: Count Salisbury) Ramstown Manor: £12 (owner: Whoever is the lord of Ramstown Manor) Of course, the above is contradicted by Count of Salisbury's holdings later on in the book (and earlier) where it is said that he holds Hillfort Hundred worth £61.2...

Surely she would have a valet of some sort, at least, to look after her horse(s)? Even if she is a shieldmaiden and not a knight, surely she would prefer to ride rather than walk? As for the weirs and fisheries, one big thing to note for riverside manors/estates... Some of these weirs may have already been built and are part of the assized rent (see example estates). Also, does her manor straddle the river, or does she only own land on one bank? This limits the number of weirs, too. In the end, though, it is not a huge issue. If she builds, say, 3 weirs and a fishery, that is about £25 spent over 4 years for an income of £3 per year. So, she has about recovered her money in 8 years after finishing to build, which means in about 12 years. Sure, she gets nice little income after that if she survives that long, but after she croaks, the estate will be reassessed at the new value. No biggie. If she builds 8 weirs and 3 fisheries and a riding and route, that is £110 investment (good luck affording it), and at least 12 years of building. Sure, the income is nice, £8 per year, but it will be about over another 12 years before she sees a profit. This is already a generation, so it is debatable if she actually realizes a profit before dying and the manor going to her heirs. So it is more of a self-correcting 'problem'. As far as I am concerned, it is much less unbalancing when PKs spend their money on investments, than if they are suddenly raising a huge mercenary army.

True. Although I do remember one campaign I played back in the day, where the GM had expected a much more combat-optimized group, rather than our collection of misfits, scholars and bards. Needless to say, we developed a signature tactic, mostly involving running away, waving our hands and screaming 'run away, run away!'. Sure, we managed to usually come back later on and attrition the enemy to death, but we certainly didn't feel like big damn heroes. I am not sure if the GM had recalibrated the campaign for us and simply overestimated our abilities, or if he just ran the thing as it was. As for my GMing style in Pendragon... I don't usually send the PKs off on an adventure that I'd expect them to wipe out on. On the other hand, if the PKs insist on going after a dragon, I am not going to nerf the dragon so that they can win. Then of course there are adventures where trying is the whole point and no one expects to succeed. The Circlet of Gold is one of these types, and Grail Quest is full of these kinds of 'you are not the chosen one' situations, which are -almost- impossible for a PK, save for amazing luck at rolling dice.

Which is kinda funny since there is a huge difference between a tomb-raiding (lots of trap) or a city-centric (lots of locks and climbing and thieving opportunities) adventure and a wilderness-centric one for a rogue, and vice versa for a ranger. Not all D&D adventures are equally optimized for all character classes.