Morien

58 minutes ago, Mugen said:

In order to avoid confusion : from the previews I read, it seems values above 20 are written 20(X) in 6th edition. If you ever read 23 in older KAP material, it's exactly the same as 20(3) in 6th edition.

Yes. Sword Tournament: "If the Statistic value is written as 20 (+x), add the value of (+x) to the die roll to determine its final result."

Personally, I liked the old rule (calculate the modified skill value, then add any excess over 20 to your roll), since it it was clearer when it came to the modifiers. I mean, if you read that above bit from the Adventure of the Sword Tournament, and go strictly by RAW, not knowing how it is supposed to work, then 18+5 = 23 is equivalent of 20, since it is not "written" as 20 (+3). Same thing when it comes to negative modifiers: 20 (+3) - 5, is this now 15 (+3)? No, obviously we know it is supposed to be 18, nothing added, but the potential for confusion is there.

16 hours ago, Balin said:

Longtime ttrpg player/GM, and I'm looking to get into Pendragon 6th edition when it releases later this year. I played Pendragon for one session back in what I think was 3rd edition? (1997) and fell in love with it, but never had the time to really dive into it.

Also, welcome to the forum and hope you like it here and the game!

Here are a couple of threads that you might find useful.

The first one has some advice, but also talks about the published books and how I rank them in usability:

This other thread is what I threw together as a cheap 'starter' for KAP, if someone wished to take it for a spin and see if their group liked it:

13 hours ago, Balin said:

First, I see a lot of extra material, like Book of the Manor, Great Pendragon Campaign, Book of Uther, etc. Once 6th edition drops, will those books still be usable, or should I expect/wait for new, updated versions of those sources to drop? Can I buy them now or will I just be buying them again over the next few years? I'd love to start picking some of these up, but not if they're going to be obsolete soon.

This thread has compiled some information about what will be in the pipeline:

My guess is that most of them would be very useful until the same information comes out in new releases. So usable, but will be replaced eventually. Looking at the PDF compilation in the above link...

GPC, BoU, BotW:
Well, we know that the 6e starts with the Sword Tournament (or close enough), so while you are of course free to start earlier and play through Uther and Anarchy, the gist of the game seems to be Boy King and onwards.
There will be three Phase/Period books, expanding on GPC: Boy King + Conquest, Romance + Tournament, Grail + Twilight. And three prequels, covering from Vortigern to Anarchy. Anyway, the point is that these should cover GPC and then some. (When they come out, that is. It is not as if you can just snap your fingers and get them right now.)
Custom & Law Book seems to cover most of the realm and baronial stuff, so a lot of BoU and BotW will be less useful, especially with their Uther Period focus. I would also imagine that the Book of Castles will detail most of the castles, taking that away from BotW.

BotE:
The GM's book is supposed to: "Manorial system is the same as the system from The Book of the Estate." Obviously the GM's book can't treat the topic with the same level as a dedicated book, but whether it will be a quick summary a la BotW's appendix, or if it will include improvements, who knows? In the latter case, BotE would be much lighter in crunch (save for building your own estate and the example estates), IMHO, but in the former, yeah, if base-building is your thing, BotE is probably useful for you still. If you just want to know what your standard of living is and how many knights and soldiers you have, probably not so useful.

BotEnt:
I am not seeing anything in that pdf about entourage members, in which case, this might be useful. Still, they could be in the GM's book (in particular, I am thinking about the marriage tables, which I think are a nice addition that BotEnt brings, and I am hoping they'd be in the GM Book as they are superior IMHO to the KAP 5.2 ones), so you could buy that first and see what's in there, and then decide.

BofK&L:
This looks like it will be superseded by Knights and Ladies Adventurous.

Regional books:
Looks like these will be superseded by new editions (the question is when, though). So if you need them in your campaign now, it might be worth paying for the convenience. I think most of these are less than $10 as a pdf, so they are quite good value for money, and then you can splurge for the dead tree version when the new shiny ones come out.

13 hours ago, Balin said:

Second, from perusing other threads in this forum, I get the impression that Chaosium doesn't do Pre-orders, is this correct? Should I just be asking my FLGS to reserve me a copy whenever the starter set drops?

Alas, I don't know.

13 hours ago, Balin said:

I came across the concept of the +/- bonuses, but my question is, are these added to the Skils/Traits totals, or to the rolls themselves?

All bonuses/penalties are applied to the values themselves, not to the roll.

Only exception is when your modified skill (or trait or passion, albeit it is rarer) is higher than 20. Then the excess is added on your roll. So skill 23 would roll 1d20+3 and if the roll result is 20 or over, it us a critical.

Now if your skill is already 20+, then the positive mods end up adding to the roll, but only via the above rule.

Skill 15+5 = 20. Roll 1d20.

Skill 20+5 = 25. Roll 1d20+5.

Skill 23-5 = 18. Roll 1d20 (vs skill 18).

BotW pp. 102-103 has Arthur's Assize of Arms, year 515. It is almost word for word copy of Henry II's Assize of Arms (1181). However, there are some differences in there. These differences may be deliberate, but I think it is possible to bring them into agreement easily enough.

First things first. Aubergel historically is clearly the same as haubergeon. Both refer to a light hauberk, essentially the chainmail shirt with short sleeves and reaching the hips common in Viking Era. So it should be an 8-point armor.

Instead, I would elevate a gambeson to be 'padding on padding' + a metal helm, for a total of 2+2+2 = 6 points of armor, the old hard leather.

Thus:

Knights: hauberks (10 pts)
Freemen > £6: hauberks (10 pts)
Freemen > £3: aubergels/haubergeons (8 pts)
Freemen* and burghers: gambesons (6 pts)

* other difference was that BotW has the other freemen with aubergels, while the historical version lists them alongside burghers with gambesons.

AFAIK, this is the latest official word (in other words, they'll let us know when they are ready):

6 hours ago, SilverSeraph said:

The pdfs you get with these titles are in color.  It doesn't seem like it would be an extensive thing to give the POD title an option to have it printed in color for those who want it despite a new edition coming soon.  The existence of a new edition may even spur curiosity in new customers to buy the older books.

Just a wild guess, as I have no information, but it could be a logistics thing? Maybe it is easier to have someone printing in B&W than in color. If there are other KAP titles that offer printing in color, then so much for that guess.

On 9/8/2022 at 7:44 PM, SaxBasilisk said:

494, p. 62 - "Nimue is present to tend to the king. She keeps the knights from announcing the news about the Saxons to the king." - BoU has Nineve performing this action. Given that the GPC characters file has Nimue born in 483, this is probably a deliberate change.

I can confirm, it was.

Might not be exactly what you were looking for, but hopefully helpful:

https://greathall.chaosium.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-2839.html

And yes, I know you are one of the original commentators on that thread, but in case you didn't bookmark it or something. 🙂 And it is another Forum ago.

It doesn't ring a bell. But to take a quick stab at it...

Wikipedia: "Hesiod and Apollo Dorus gave similar descriptions: a three-headed creature with a lion in front, a fire-breathing goat in the middle, and a serpent in the rear."

So...
Stat it as a Lion (or a super-lion) as the first stab, and then add an extra fire-breathing attack similar to a dragon (aimed at whoever it wishes), and then cap it off with an additional venomous snakebite attack (high skill, low-ish damage but enough to potentially penetrate period armor but probably not armor+shield, but any damage that penetrates may cause venom damage) that cannot attack the same guy as the lion front. Give some extra magical armor, maybe some extra HP and damage, and hey presto, you have one terrifying monster.

15 hours ago, SaxBasilisk said:

I think this will all go wonderfully!

No downsides, happy ending for everyone!

14 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

Anyway, does someone know what are the fortifications of Oxford in KAP ? Or in real life during the middle ages?

Motte-and-bailey, looks like, upgraded to a Stone Castle later on during the Boy King. (BotW, Oxenford)

As for the medieval Oxford and the town itself:

That is probably closer to what the Lordly Domains assumes, in its write-up of the Rydychan Usurpers.

Very Nice! Reminds me of Besancon, actually, with that Oxbow in the river and then the castle blocking the 'stem'. That escarpment in the above is something else, though.

1 hour ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

Cool! Many thanks for the detailed answers. That really helps me to understand the system better.

One more question on the skill values, though. I understand your intention, but from my experience in other systems players need the possibility of failure to feel involvement and excitement about the obstacle and the adventure in general. If a character tries to dance or sing and fails, the audience would be disappointed and think less of them (same like failing in combat would have negative repercussions like losing your horse and the tournament). Is there any other way to handle low value skills?

I generally use the carrot, not the stick. Otherwise, you would have knights who have spent their whole lives in a courtly setting putting their foot into their mouth like two-thirds of the time. That is not fun nor particular realistic. It is more fun when the failure means that no one cares since you are not doing anything special, and success means that you do gain some attention and positive reinforcement.

Now, if we move past the courtly setting... or even in the courtly setting... you can have stakes by requiring a success to do something. Like if you are trying to impress a lady with your dancing skills, you will have to succeed in order to do that. But the failure is still the same as not asking her for a dance at all. A failure in Awareness might mean that you miss the ambush until the arrows fly, or a failure in the Hunting means you fail to find the tracks of the beast, and spend additional time looking for them. So failures do matter, when it is important. You could even be talking to a particularly prickly nobleman who will take offense unless you succeed in Courtesy, and if you refuse to roll and stay mute, he gets upset: "So you don't even think I am worthy of your breath, sir! I demand satisfaction, sirrah!" Of course, if it is a group of PKs that try to deal with him, it would make sense to put the most silver-tongued of them (highest Courtesy) forward.

So yeah, you can definitely have consequences for failing. But the consequences of a failure should not be worse than refusing to roll in the first place, or you will get exactly what you were originally talking about, the Players not wanting to try their low skills since the smart choice is not to roll. That leads to a rather boring game, IMHO.

Imagine Combat Skills, for instance. If someone is swinging a sword at you, will you try to use your Spear 6 to defend yourself, or are you just standing there and taking it? (Not the best possible argument, as there are ways to use DEX to dodge, etc, but you see my point, right?)

1 hour ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

As a sidenote, I got the impression that although the adventure takes place in the 6th century, many things only existed 500 or even 1000 years later (like jousting, heraldry and the equipment). Is that generally the case in Pendragon or particular in this adventure?

It is generally the case of KAP. It is not trying to be 'strictly historical' take on the Post-Roman / Migration Era Britain, but more faithful to the stories that the Medieval (and Post-Medieval) authors wrote about King Arthur and his KNIGHTS of the Round Table. They basically took their own Medieval world and transported it back to the days of King Arthur, filled with castles, tournaments, chivalrous knights on war horses and wearing full armor, and beautiful damsels to rescue from dragons and villains. So it is very much romanticized view of King Arthur in that sense.

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

I want to run my first Pendragon game tomorrow, using The Adventure of the Sword Tournament and its Quick Start rules. However, I have a few questions I hope somebody here can answer.

- How do shields work? It says that the shield value is applied on partial successes. But where can I find that value? Or do they not need values and I am getting it wrong?

They add 6 to the armor value. This is the '+6' on the armor row of the pregens and knightly opponents. (I agree that it would have been better to be explicit about this in the actual rules. Or at least in the equipment where the armor and the shield are mentioned. Oh well.)

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- Is it correct, that shields never break against swords only against axes?

Correct, although if you want to make it more dramatic, you could have them breaking on a critical hit, too. Especially if the opponent is taking a major wound anyway and will be out of combat. Cinematic license. 🙂

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- Some of the player character skills seem rather low (5 or 6), which means that chances of failure are far greater than chances of success and players should refrain from using them not to make things worse. (Unless of course boosted by a Passion roll.) Is that correct?

My rule of thumb is that a failure = as if you never rolled in the first place. So you might as well roll and hope for the best, as I encourage my players to do. Only a fumble will make it worse.

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- The Gorre knights do half damage and the rebated swords do half damage. Does that mean the Gorre knights with rebated swords do a quarter of the normal damage? If so, how do they knock down opponents?

The halving/quartering of the damage happens AFTER Knockdown is calculated and resolved. (Yeah... that should have been mentioned somewhere in the Adventure, but I couldn't find any mention. It is in KAP 5.2 rulebook, though, for what's it worth.)
Example: I have base damage 4d6. I hit you with a rebatted weapon and I am witholding my blow for half a damage, too, for a total of one quarter of the damage. I roll the damage normally, 4d6, and get 16. Since your size is 15, this triggers a Knockdown test on your DEX. However, the actual damage I am doing is 16/4 = 4 points, easily absorbed by your armor. You might still get damage from being knocked off your horse, though, and falling to the ground.

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- If a character is knocked off the horse during the tournement, the horse will be claimed by the victorious opponent and the character is captured. Does that also mean they will not reach St. Pauls cathedral in time, because the next scene starts immediately after the "battle" and there is no time to fetch and prepare a new horse?

I would not want to keep the PKs away from this event in the off-chance that they were captured. Instead, I would rule that they and their horse were being escorted to the capture area at the time by their captor, who himself is of course curious to see what is going on, and tells the PK to follow. So the PK can jump on their own horse (still saddled and everything), and hasten to the St. Paul's with their captor.

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

I am not sure if I get the Passion rolls right, but cannot ask a concrete question at this time.

Ask away, Bridgekeeper, I am not afraid!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/94690

https://www.chaosium.com/book-of-the-estate-pdf/

Nice analysis.

We have a set of household rules (from back in 5.0) that are a bit more involved, but they dovetail closer to what happens in Entourage. I think The last two years we just deduct one of the Miscellaneous Picks (so roughly equivalent to the Yearly Training that they'd get as knights). Also, we tend to 'round up' the year in chargen but since the Misc Point = Yearly Training, they don't get that at the end of the year. Anyway, that works pretty decently: the young PK starts off with a slight mechanical disadvantage (i.e. younger and poorer skills than a default 21-year old), but thanks to getting experience checks and glory earlier, he would be better than the equivalent age knight who starts his career only at 21.

But I can definitely see the point of just handwaving that and allowing PKs to be knighted early with full chargen, especially if the reason for the early knighting is that the Player lost their previous character. After all, I am very much in favor of not raining on someone's parade and making it as easy as possible to do dynastic play. And let's face it, in most games I have seen, it is pretty rare for a PK to be taken out by Aging rolls rather than violently by a monster/enemy critical.

Pretty much what SaxBasilisk said. If a Player presses for it, and plans for it, sure I let them kill their foe. But Consequences are a thing and Gawaine would be coming after them and any male Kin with a blood feud. 

Also, just how villainous Agravaine and Mordred are in public? Agravaine is aggravating, but so is Kay, too. 

3 hours ago, mj6373 said:

Well, it wasn't about whipping the peasants being a Just action. Rather, per p. 109 of the GPC, Gorboduc's foreman is whipping serfs, and when the players roll Just, the game says the treatment is harsh, but *not* unjust (aka, by the GPC's standards, that treatment alone shouldn't be considered sufficient reason for a highly-Just knight to intervene). Sorry for the confusion.

Oh, I see. Well, given that the very next sentence is offering choices of attacking or talking to the lord, it is certainly not enough to stop the PKs from intervening if they want. Also, they have the prophetic dream and Merlin's words to spur them on, too.

(As a sidenote, I disagree with the whipping of serfs being simply 'harsh' even in the Dark Ages*. Slaves, sure, whip away, but serfs have some rights. Free men even more so. If a serf mouths you (a knight) off, sure, punch or kick the cur, but if your foremen take to the fields and start whipping people willy-nilly, you will get either a general flight or a peasant revolt in a hurry.
* I suspect that this is a reflection of some of the older material in GPC being written before Greg got really serious about researching Medieval society, and/or wanting to go hard on the Brutality of the society in pre-Arthurian era. Gorboduc the Devil appears already in The Boy King, published in 1997. There is also a difference in the Pre-Arthur periods in Boy King and GPC, where it is supposed to be more Dark Ages, and the Book of Uther, which is basically a Norman English early 1100s society.)

IMHO and YPWV and all that...

Whipping peasants without a good reason is Arbitrary, not Just. They are not slaves. They do have right and obligations, and even in Uther's time, there are law courts, county courts, sheriffs... The difference is that in Uther Period, many knights are Arbitrary. In Arthur's reign, they are Just and hence beatings/whippings only happen when there is an actual crime that merits it. And yes, I would imagine that Arthur is revising some laws to make them less whip-happy. Also, Merciful is another Chivalric trait, so even within the laws, the knights under Arthur might be looking for reasons to downgrade the punishment or at least go for the lower end of the sentencing, etc, whereas in Uther's time, I'd expect most knights to be closer to the Cruel side of things despite Christianity's traits.

That being said, I think that there would still be a two-tiered view on things, with crimes against commoners being judged less harshly than those against fellow nobility or clergy, even during Arthur's times.

On the phone so a short response... 

Short version: Yes, you are right. 

Longer version:

Building the Abbey is just building the structure. You need to endow the land to support it. However, once you have done so and assuming it is a BC Abbey, then yes, you get the Advowson to it.

So for a cost of 54L to build and 15L endowment would give you that nice Abbey with 6L coming back at you and you having the Advowson. 

If you buy the Advowson, then you pay that 300L but I would argue that the Abbey effectively becomes yours at that point as you can appoint the abbot etc. I'd have to take a look that this isn't too open for abuse... But on the first blush it seems OK. Sure, you get an almost 60L Abbey by paying 180L (min 9L * 20), which would make it a bit cheaper but as the GM I can always hike the NPC endowment up a bit. Worth thinking about. 

It depends how the grant was worded. If it was granted to Alain and his descendants (I.e heirs of his body), and he dies without children, it returns to the grantor.

His siblings are not his descendants. But if it was the ancestral Manor which Alain inherited, then yes siblings would be heirs to it. 

If the Manor was granted to Alain, then it reverts back to the liege. 

If it belonged to Alain's father, then yes, male branch would be preferred, but Bronwyn and her husband would be in an excellent position to argue otherwise, if Celyn's son is young and without strong backers of his own (primarily Celyn's wife and her family). 

1 hour ago, ArkSvid said:

"we have to get the Grail because it would be hilarious to rub it in the Christians' faces that it was the Pagans who completed the quest."

Good luck completing the Quest if that is your motivation. 🙂

Greg's advice is in GPC, p. 168 - 169.

As for what happened in our first campaign, the PKs went after the Grail/Cauldron in order to stop the Wasteland, rather than from any religious motive per se. They gave up when it got too difficult, and hence were back in Salisbury for events that happened there.

Question is: Is the Grail Quest for you(r players)?