Morien

Not necessarily a problem. If the skill choices and picks later on are supposed to reflect the training the squires receive, then someone starting as a newly-minted squire (at 14, since I think it should be 7-14-21) could start with just the default skills, and perhaps with some skill points (the 10 skill points the new knights get at chargen?) to allow minor customization from the start. Then you could just pile on regular winter phase options (so experience checks + 7 yearly trainings) in play. This should result in squires that are roughly comparable to starting knights in 21, although with possibly some more skills and traits from experience checks. Which is, I think, a fair compensation for having paid a 'second-fiddle' character through those years.

Yep. If you are just dealing with a pool of skill points, then it is not an issue. The fixed skill levels, while quicker, do tend to mess things up when dealing with higher starting skills. Even with something like K&L. If you have a character with a skill natively at 9 (whether cultural or stat default), they are less likely to use a 10 for that skill than someone with the same skill at 2. Hence, you might end up with an 'erroneous' result that most X are better than most Y, in a skill that Y are supposedly better than X. The +10 & three at +5, points in excess of 15 added to the 10 skillpoint pool would keep it still relatively quick and easy, while giving full benefit to higher starting skills, whether from defaults or cultural starting skills. Or you might rewind like back to 4th edition and simply give people 35 skill points (which might, actually, be a bit too much especially if the higher defaults, generally 5+ instead of 2 or 3, already in play). I am not too bothered by the higher defaults, though, since skill of 5 is still something you don't want to rely on, but at least it gives the PKs some chances of success... Also, it keeps the 'default result' the same for the skills the knight chooses to focus on: 5+5 = 10 and 5+10 = 15.

I used the above skills, although personally I would add at least Swimming to the DEX Skills, and take Falconry, Gaming and Heraldry out of the APP skills. But be that as it may. I used KAP 5.2 for simplicity, and ignored Family Characteristic and Traits & Passions for now, focusing just on Statistics and Skills. Two miscellaneous points have gone to stat increases, while two have gone to +5 to two skills, leading to a total of 20 skill points added. And yes, I know the CON is low, but those points need to come from somewhere. (Although I could easily have taken the +5 First Aid and used that to get CON 13.) 1. DEX -centric: Awareness 15, Courtesy 10, Orate 10, Intrigue 10, +5 Horsemanship, +5 Sword, +5 Lance, +5 First Aid 2. SIZ & STR centric (i.e. our campaign's typical starting knight now): Awareness 15, Courtesy 10, Orate 10, Intrigue 10, +5 Horsemanship, +5 Sword, +5 Lance, +5 First Aid 3. APP centric: Awareness 15, Faerie Lore 10, Folk Lore 10, Hunting 10, +5 Horsemanship, +5 Sword, +5 Lance, +2 Courtesy, +2 Orate, +1 Intrigue The biggest thing to note is that thanks to the flat 15 and 10 in beginning skill assignments, those with high defaults (DEX & APP) tend to lose out, as their default becomes immaterial, and indeed discourages them from picking their own high default skills. It would be better to change it to +10 (max 15, excess points returned to the pool to be assigned to other skills) and +5 to three non-combat skills. This way, the high APP character could actually pick APP skills to further play to his strengths, rather than pick non-APP skills to maximise the benefit. Similarly with DEX character; especially a new weapon would become an easier pick for the DEX character compared to others, whereas now, anyone with half a brain will use the flat 15 to get their Axe or Mace from 0 to 15 for maximum benefit regardless of DEX, rather than get mere 5 points of benefit by going from Sword 10 to 15.

Atgxtg already addressed the other points, so I will just comment here: You are positing a knight who is an absolute Paragon in DEX. He should have much easier time picking up skills requiring coordination, which is what his high defaults represent. Note that the average German/Saxon is going to have DEX 8 or so, and hence a default of 4. Most Cymric knights would have a default of 5, still much worse than the starting Axe skill of 9 for the German. And like Atgxtg pointed out, if the Axe is going to be a cultural weapon for the German, he is likely to use points on it, whereas a Cymric knight might be putting those points to Spear Expertise or Sword. I do agree that you might not necessarily need starting skill lists as such any more if you use DEX/APP defaults. I see this actually as a very good thing, since I HATE needing to check if the starting skill was 2 or 3... The players can then decide if their character conforms to a cultural stereotype and boosts Axe up, or if they prefer going with some other weapon instead and break the mold. Freedoooom!

If you read the linked thread on the old Nocturnal Forum, the suggestion was: Partial success = Modified DEX worth of Armor IN ADDITION to any shield & armor worn. Whereas normal armor always protected, even if you failed or fumbled. Hence something like a Norman Chain (10 pts, -10 DEX) would be 'neutral' in a Partial Success for anyone with DEX > 9, but would still be superior since it protects even if you fail. However, good luck doing any acrobatics in it... Even something like 4 point armor (-5 DEX) could be worth it, since those 4 points might make a difference between a Major Wound or just a Wound in a failed weapon roll. And a 6 point armor would actually be +1 armor point even on a partial success.

All weapons. Either, as long as you label it clearly as one or the other:

Interesting suggestion, but I think it would make low skills even more lethal for the user, since someone with even skill 10 would be much more likely to slice and dice them, probably doing damage even on a 11+ roll. There is a sorta way around the low skill already that does much of what you are suggesting, and it is the berserk attack, with mutually unopposed attacks with +10 to skill. I mean, if my opponent and I have skill 5, it is very much in my advantage to do Berserk attack at +10. His chance to hit is just 25%, while mine is 75%.

Just to add, GURPS does have a separate shield skill and a dodge value, so the shield & (part of the) foot work are handled separately from your weapon skill. Weapon skill is just using your weapon, whereas in Pendragon, all three are wrapped up into the same skill. Regarding the earlier point about skill levels, in KAP 5.2, a Farmer has Mace 8. I have difficulties justifying that a Knight would be less able to swing a club than a Farmer. Although I do also think that 8 is a bit too high for someone like a random farmer to just pick a club and start swinging, without any combat training at all. Skill levels less than 5 are a good way to get killed. You really need Skill 10 to have a chance in combat, and I think Skill 15 should be relatively common for even newly-minted knights in their chosen weapon(s), and pretty much 15 or more for knights from mid-twenties onwards. Skill of 2-3 is next to useless, although it is obviously better than 0, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Here it is if you didn't already find it: http://kapresources.wpengine.com/Pendragon Forum Archive/index.php/t-3156.html

Yes. I think there was a long-ish thread on Robin Hood variant in the old Nocturnal Forums. If you go to the archive page Scott linked a while back (see below), I think it might be in the Houserules... Anyway, poke around and you will find it.

Could we have this thread pinned to the top of the forum, please? Makes it easier to find.

It is what is in the rules currently, but as you no doubt have noticed, many of us find low weapon skills very displeasing. For instance, as fulk points out, just because you are suddenly holding a mace instead of a sword, that shouldn't mean that you lose all sense of your footwork and especially shieldwork. Also, you won't get the experience roll until the end of the year, in Winter Phase, and a skill of 1 is nigh useless. You really need at least 10 to even consider it an option unless you don't have an other choice (and 15 if you actually expect to win). I would rather fight with Dagger 10 than Axe 1 any day of the week, and probably choose defensive if it is a melee situation and one of the other PKs might come and help later. Just throwing this out there as another possible houserule for weapon & shield combination: Your offensive default is your best weapon & shield -10. But your defense is still calculated on full skill. What does this mean? It means that if your skill is 20 and you pick an unfamiliar weapon, then you will only cause damage if you WIN (i.e. roll higher than the enemy's success) with a roll of 10 or less (with 10 being a critical hit). You'd parry with your full skill, so any roll from 11 to 19 could be a defensive win, as with the defensive maneuver. 20 is a fumble, since it is based on your weapon skill, not your shield skill. That was just from the top of my head and it does suffer from the Primary Skill default problem that I dislike, as well as being more fiddly than fulk's flat -5. But I figured I'd throw it out there if someone finds it interesting and wants to try it out. Oh, speaking of... I don't know if you guys do this, but in our game, if you are unarmed but with a shield and fighting defensively, we allow you to use your highest one-handed weapon skill to represent the shield work. Anyone else do this?

I think that is probably quite common amongst us KAP enthusiasts. Unlike something like D&D, KAP is reasonably well grounded in the real world, in a sense that the society in BoU/BotW is clearly Norman-Angevin one of high middle ages. And as Jeff pointed out, many of the literary sources mirror their contemporary medieval world, too. So by studying history, one will also gain a better understanding how things might work in KAP, too. That being said, there is absolutely no requirement to do any of that, either. One can simply play KAP as a string of knightly adventures and be happy. Whatever floats one's boat. Personally, I prefer the medieval King Arthur with a pinch of magic. The Dark Ages King Arthur is so far removed from chivalry and questing that it is not 'King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table' anymore for me. Not to say that it couldn't be very interesting campaign, just that like Jeff said, it would be almost unrecognisable by the modern players.

As I said above, I dislike that option, since it encourages to specialize even more on a single Weapon and then just default everything from that. After all, when you push Sword from 15 to 16, you get free increase of 1 point in ALL other weapons, whereas if you put your training into single secondary weapon, you only increase it by 1d6+1 or whatever houserule you are using (we ended with flat 5) with no benefit for other weapons. At that point, I would be tempted to just do away with individual weapon skills altogether and just have Melee and Missile and let the Player decide his primary weapon in each. All other weapons are -1, and each time the PK goes up a skill level, he can change his primary weapon. But the DEX/2 or DEX-5 base default works quite nicely.

Not a problem. Having a higher DEX default than a starting skill is not a problem. Obviously the default would be higher than skill 0, that's the whole point. But yes, some of the defaults would be higher than the weapon skills that already have some points in starting skills. DEX 18 with DEX/18 default would cap at 9, so below 10, but yes, DEX-5 would mean that your default is higher than your starting skill in Sword and Lance. Which is fine, in my book. You have earned those higher skills. Also, I would allow training up from the default. If your DEX default is 6, and you spend 4 skill points on it, you end up with Skill 10. A huge hurdle for my players investing points on new weapon skills is that the weapon skills are nigh useless up to 15 or so. There is simply no point using Mace 10 if you have Sword 15. But Mace 15 vs. Sword 16... then you might prefer using a mace against another knight and keep your Sword as a secondary weapon if your mace breaks. As for the change in DEX, easy. The vast majority of the time you would not be increasing DEX much after the beginning anyway, mostly just make up for Major Wounds. But even if you do, you simply use the higher of the skill or the default to roll. And once you have points in the skill, it doesn't go down if DEX drops.Similarly, the skill itself doesn't go up. So if you have Sword 15 and the default increases from 5 to 6, this has no effect on skills that are 6 or more. It does have an effect on Skill 5, because then you'd roll against Default 6, and if you get a check, I would allow rolling as if the skill is 6 to see if it increases to 7. The even simpler option would be to just give the DEX default in the beginning for all weapon skills and ignore DEX changes in the future. But I don't think the above would be too difficult to GM, either.

By RAW, 0.

As tenchi2a said, there are currently no weapon skill defaults in KAP. The knight could pick up the axe and do Uncontrolled attacks which are +10 unopposed, if memory serves, but he would first have to suffer an unopposed attack from the opponent. Better than rolling on 0 skill, though. This does fail a reality test for me. In our games, we adopted flat 10 weapon defaults for the knights, indicating their martial learning and crossover between different weapons, and flat 5 for ladies and everyone else, since swinging a weapon is not rocket science. I would, however, be more inclined to base the default on DEX (either DEX/2 or DEX-5, I am actually veering towards the latter since it gives each DEX point a benefit), to strengthen that statistic some and also since brawling comes out of DEX, too. I have also seen suggestions of using highest Weapon/2 as a default but I dislike that, since it encourages specializing into a single weapon even more. I prefer giving DEX more of a role.

We shall see. I have had quite good experiences with train travel in Wales, although I have also heard horror stories of the UK railways. Thing is, neither one of us wishes to drive on the left-side traffic, since we have no experience in it. This leaves either a train or a bus, and of the two, train seemed much more straightforward. I do expect to do some cursing as we miss a connection or two, but that is part of the charm of travel. I shall report on how it all went once the trip is over!

I was lucky enough to visit it in early 90s. It was a big difference when I went back in late 2000s. Not that it was allowed to go to the stones even in 90s, but the tourist path was even further aback than it was. But hey-ho. It is still iconic, and it will make the missus happy, so...

Little Solsbury Hill. Alas, we won't have time for that. Stonehenge takes precedence. Besides, that is not where the Battle is in GPC.

So the missus is going on a short work trip to Cheltenham, UK (near Gloucester and Birmingham), and I am going along as plus one, a tour guide and a travel organizer. We intend to do a quick whirlwind tour of Southern England, since she has never seen Stonehenge and other such places, having only been to London & Edinburgh before. The itinerary works out as follows: Thu 18th July: Early morning flight to Gatwick, train to see Windsor Castle, then evening train to Cheltenham. Fri 19th: Missus working, I am free most of the day, thinking of going to Gloucester to see the Cathedral and tomb of Edward II, although admittedly I am pretty interested in Worcester and the tomb of King John, too. So might go either way. Sat 20th: Morning train to Bath, see the Roman Baths, then to Salisbury (Cathedral, Stonehenge and Old Sarum). Sun 21st: Continue by train to Arundel Castle, and then onwards to Gatwick. Yes, I know we are missing a lot of stuff (one would have to spend at least a summer touring around and still miss something), but this is all the time we have to spend this time around and those were the places that the missus placed on the top of the list. Anyway, despite the tight schedule, I figured I'd see and ask if there are any local Pendragon enthusiasts who might want to meet for a dinner or something on Friday (Cheltenham) or Saturday (Salisbury)? Or a lunch at Windsor (Thu) or Arundel (Sun)?

Also: I can't believe that I forgot all the fine free stuff that is around, too... The Marriage of Count Roderick: https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/Pendragon/NM14 - Marriage of Count Roderick.pdf The Dragons of Britain #1 - #4: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/121452/The-Dragons-of-Britain-1

I do most of my gaming nowadays online, voice over IP kinda thing. This is due to the fact that the game group is distributed over three countries, so playing face to face is not an option. Otherwise I would prefer ftf play, obviously. I do know that some people use online miniatures/images, pogs or whatever those are called, but I don't really want to be messing with those either. But even when I was GMing face to face, I wasn't using miniatures. Never really did. Then again, we seldom use a hex map or a grid for combat anyway. If the situation is more complicated, a quick sketch map suffices, with arrows showing movement when necessary.

The actual core argument is that Greg wanted to have scattered lands a la Norman system. Whether from desire to stick as close to his historical touchstone of the Norman England as possible or for some other reason I don't know. You mistake my meaning. I am not saying that the Saxons need their passports stamped at a border checkpoint before they can enter Logres. What I am saying is that the lands that are right next to the Saxon Kingdoms are more likely to be raided, since it is easier for Saxons to do so: shorter distance so less chance of detection and less chance of being intercepted as they are returning with their loot, so less risk for them, and less time needed. Also, logistic considerations: you can only carry limited amount of food with you, and once you start to forage, you blow your cover. Might as well raid here and then bug out. It becomes increasingly risky for them to penetrate deeper into Logres, unless it is an actual army, as in 473. So, if we imagine two counties, one at the border (say, Berroc) and the other near the middle of the kingdom (say, Tribruit), it is clear to see that Berroc is more exposed to Saxon raids, and has a higher chance of being raided. Let's imagine that all the land in those counties are given to two barons. Geographically concentrated: one baron holds all of Berroc, the other all of Lambor. End result, Baron of Berroc needs to make do with Berroc's resources, while Baron of Lambor enjoys the easy life. Scattered holdings: Baron of Berroc holds 60% of Berroc and 40% of Lambor, while Baron of Lambor holds 60% of Lambor and 40% of Berroc. Since Lambor is much less exposed, both barons concentrate most of their knights in Berroc, let's say 50% of Lambor knights. End result, Berroc county has now its own knights AND 50% of Lambor's knights protecting it, making it that much harder target for Saxons to raid or to cross, which also makes the lands behind it more secure. Naturally, the above is a simplified example, but illustrates the principle.

Only the War of the Ring is covered in detail in the books, yes, but you do have plenty of nuggets that you can build an interesting campaign around. And, indeed, ICE has put out modules that really help to flesh out the setting even if they are not canon. Kin-strife, for example, gives plenty for the PCs to do from spy thrillers to army action. It would also be pretty fun to have the Gondorian or Rohirrim PCs interact with Thorongil, for example participating in the burning of the ships in Umbar, and have their grandchildren see the Return of the King in Aragorn. There is also the fact that there is simply so much time passing between the start of the Third Age and the end of it that a lot of the records can be lost or forgotten about. The Northern Kingdom definitely knew about hobbits, since the whole Shire was established in 1601 under the King's permission. So that would definitely not be a problem. The Rohirrim had some tales of them, so they may have met some hobbits still along Anduin before the Eorlings migrated to Rohan. And even if tales of hobbits would reach Gondor, they could easily be dismissed or simply ignored as unimportant. Individual hobbits could be curiosities or even thought to be just kids. Once you get closer to the War of the Ring, you of course need to be a bit more careful. But then again, I wouldn't be allowing Hobbit characters (nor Elves and Dwarves) if the campaign is set in Gondor, and so forth. But we are starting to veer off from the topic of the thread. Happy to continue the discussion in another thread, though.