Morien

I take it that we are talking about the Advanced Character Generation of 4th edition here, when it comes to qualifying, since the first characters automatically do qualify (2 NC skills at 10 included at chargen). But I think I see where the power creep was introduced... When I compare the 4th and 5th edition first characters, they seem identical in attributes, traits and passions, BUT we see a shift to THREE non-combat skills at 10 (instead of two), AND those 4 misc points that are functionally equivalent to 4 yearly trainings. Thus, the 5th edition character has about 5 years' headstart on the 4th edition first character, unless I missed something. The starting skill values look pretty similar between the editions, for the First Characters. With 4th edition Advanced Character Generation (which we used back in the day), it becomes a bit more complicated, as you start at 15 and get a a pool of skill points (depending on the Father''s Class, 30 for a vassal knight) and then 6 yearly trainings until you qualify for knighthood. Attributes: 60, if using Designated method. Traits: Lots of choices (including potentially +6 points after the fact), but let's go with similar to the First Characters. Passions: Again, different options, but for ease of comparison, let's use the First Characters again, since the random method gives you much worse (in some; vassal knight dad gives a Loyalty Average of 17, but Honor average of only 11...) and Designated Method can be abused at will. Skills: This is the main difference that I can see. First of all, the cultural starting values are much poorer than for the First Knights character sheet, so some of the points got hidden there. In order to get First Aid (10), Battle (3), Horsemanship (4), Sword (7), and Lance (2) to 10 each, a Cymric male needs to spend 18 points of his 30 points (if a vassal knight). The remaining 12 is just enough to push Awareness (5) and Courtesy (3) to 10 each, too, in order to qualify for knighthood (at the age of 15). Granted, pretty much any Family Characteristic would save you at least 5 points, likely 7 points. 6 yearly trainings to bring the character from 15 to 21: Assuming that these are all spent on skill increases, it would give 21 points (6d6 average) to spend on skills, which would make up for the 10 points the First Knight gets, and cover the one skill at 15 if we don't want to mix the Family Characteristic into this. The First Knight also has Dagger (5) and Spear (6) at higher value than the Cultural one (3 and 2, respectively), so those would account for another 6 points. Roughly comparable, in other words. However, I rarely saw the players bothering with NC skills or raising their Dagger and Spear skills. Instead, the Family Characteristic took care of the second NC, leaving them with Sword 15 and 6 yearly trainings to spend on attributes, Lance and Horsemanship. Assuming roughly average rolling and a suitable FC, they could start with Sword 15, Lance 15, Horsemanship 15, and 4 more yearly trainings in statistics. Sure, they only had two other NC skills than First Aid at 10+, but that was enough to qualify them for knighthood, so it was not an issue. Admittedly, the 5th edition has those 4 picks (roughly equivalent to the 4 remaining yearly trainings above) and the 10 extra skill points are enough to start with Lance and Horsemanship at 15, too, assuming the 15 skill goes to Sword. In addition, they get two more NC skills for free at 10, before adding the Family Characteristic. So they still come ahead in 5th edition, admittedly. But thanks to those two extra Non-Combat Skills, they feel more rounded, even if they are as combat optimized. I usually advised the PKs in 5th edition to put the 15 skill into their Family Characteristic skill, especially if it was Awareness, Hunting or Horsemanship, in order to get those skills to 20 (a big bonus!), so it usually meant not having both Lance and Horsemanship at 15 from the start, without sacrificing one of the misc picks. But yes, 5th edition is more generous, it just was more generous in the non-combat skills, making the characters feel more rounded. What's the problem there? They are functionally equivalent to Yearly trainings that 4th edition already had. If you hate them so much, you can mandate that they all need to be used for skills, and hence have 20 skill points to play with. Or is it the +5 to skill that you object? Easy thing to houserule. Glad you like them. I was referring more to the Peoples' chapter. The omission of the random rolls was a bit strange, but then again, they were not on the First Characters in 4th edition, either. So that is probably the reason why they were missing in 5th edition.

It is what we are using in our Pendragon campaign right now, too. Given that we usually have at least one session of extended Spring court with 6+ skill rolls, the difference of APP does give a small edge in Glory, too. It is not huge, but it helps a bit, and I could easily see a Lady character who is more APP & court-oriented getting closer to 100 Glory per year from that session alone, making her a bit more competitive with the Knight characters. Granted, we do use my homebrew rules for feasts, which also give opportunities to roll APP+(Glory/1000), and if you crit that, then you get have a special opportunity (suggested by the player), which has been used, amongst other things, to: 1.) Get a lover to finance a dovecote at the lady's manor. 2.) Gather a couple of young knights to join up as free* mercenaries for a campaign. (* that is, joined just for the looting opportunity) 3.) Get a position in a king's bodyguards by leveraging a prior relationship with the prince. 4.) Find a widow looking to get rid of her late husband's new armor at a hefty discount. 5.) Find a suitable* wife. (* better than the norm) 6.) Build up favor with the liege. Given that Ladies tend to have a higher APP, it probably would compensate a bit the lower expected Glory. However, the introduction of +1 per £1 of jewelry would totally derail the mechanic, which is why it will not be showing up in our campaign. (However, special gifts of decorated scabbards or belts and such from the liege tend to be good for a small bonus at his own court, due to this obvious sign of favor.)

It would be quite easy if one is using an excel sheet and even with pen and paper, it is not that difficult to scribble the (APP+skill)/2 next to the skill value. However, I would see an issue that this makes it almost impossible to have courtly skills that you can have higher than normal crit chance. It is already very difficult to raise skills above 20, and this would just stymie any character with APP less than 20 completely. I admit that the +(APP/2) flat bonus suffers from the opposite fault, that it might be too 'easy' to get a critical, but since that tends to require that you have high APP and base skill 15+, I see that as a lesser problem. For instance, even if your APP is 20 (+5), which is pretty major commitment, you still need to get your skills up to 16 before you start critting more often. A more reasonable APP 16 requires raising courtly skills to 18. Granted, if you allow permanent APP bonuses from jewelry to up APP, then things change dramatically. Also, if you count Glory bonuses in, then you will reach VERY high skill values very quickly. One reason why I hate those Glory Skill modifiers is that I think they come in way too quickly (already +1 at 1000 Glory which everyone has at least, and most knights have +2 or even +3) and they quickly swamp the actual skill. In our first campaign, no one cared to spend points on courtly skills, since they relied on their Glory to give such whopping bonuses. So I'd be happy to see Glory's influence lowered and APP's influence increased instead. Even making it Glory/2000 would help some, although I would be happy to even scale it by the location, against perceived 'norm': In Camelot, you really need Glory 8000+ to start shining, whereas having Glory 8000+ would probably mark you as one of the most glorious men in your home county.

So as far as the gameplay is concerned, he can have Orate 15 same as anyone else, and roll 1d20 vs. his skill level to succeed? So he would actually succeed about 75% of the time? Or is the player embracing the concept and not raising his Orate from its starting value (of 3, IIRC)?

Ah, so you apply a modifier to the Orate roll based on the distinctive features or just say that he fails unless he rolls a critical?

Because DEX was clearly the least useful of the three, and since CON usually got the +3 bonus from Cymric, on top. Also, the ordinary knight was 14/10/14/14/10, so clearly SIZ, STR and CON (slightly) are favored over DEX & APP even amongst the NPCs. In short, those values were chosen so that the statistics generated would not be too much out of line compared to what the Players did with the point distribution model, where the most common build was: SIZ 16, DEX 10, STR 14, CON 10 and then using the 4 misc picks to +2 SIZ, +1 STR and +1 CON = 18/10/15/11+3. The Option 1 gives an average of 52 stat points compared to 50 of the point distribution method, but at the cost of diminished minmaxing opportunities. The average stats (before misc picks & cultural bonus) are 15.5/10.5/13.5/12.5, meaning that it is still possible to push the character to 6d6 damage if they so choose. Even at minimum rolls (13/8/11/10 = total 42), it would still be possible to make the damage 5d6 (which is pretty much our minimum for a combat effective character, as 4d6 simply doesn't cut it vs. chain+shield of other knights), although I admit I would be very tempted to offer a mulligan on those rolls. The one thing I really like about 5th edition of chargen is that it forces the PKs to develop some of their non-combat skills, making for more rounded characters. It is also relatively fast and easy, as you don't have to calculate so many skill points. That being said, 4th edition was a much more complete package, and I was somewhat disappointed with 5th edition initially, when I realized that I would need to buy another book to have the same kind of options as 4th edition had with the basic book. I'll also fully agree with you about the British Christianity, and in our campaigns, we used only Roman Christianity.

In our Middle-earth campaign, the above is roughly what I did: most of the courtly & people skills started out with the value of APP/2. In addition, any skill glory gained from them was equal to APP rather than flat 10 Glory. It worked out just fine. While the original plan was to have later raises of APP affect the skill, this proved to be a bit too much of a hassle to keep track, and we ditched that part. Instead, what your APP was at adulthood (20, in that campaign) gave you the skill base and after that, the effect of stats on skills was ignored. For weapon skills, we used a flat default of 10. The reasoning was that some of the combat training would default over, and that this would make it easier for knights to pick up new weapons rather than waste yearly trainings bringing skills to at least potentially usable levels. However, I could very easily see starting them out as 5+DEX/2, instead. I would not use Move rate, since I think STR is already useful enough, as it contributes to healing, move and most importantly, damage. But 5+DEX/2 would give DEX a bit more oomph, even if it would be only at chargen. Finally, we used skillpoint pools rather than '1 skill at 15, 3 skills at 10', which would have sidestepped the raised starting values completely. Hence, someone who was going to specialize playing a courtier had an incentive to start with high APP and then patch up his combat prowess later.

I did some checking, and I think this is absolutely the correct reading of it. I went back to 3rd Edition, and there the wording is totally unambiguous (p. 55): "Statistics are done as usual, with 60 points distributed. If you wish, these may be identical to the original statistics of the father." Since father started with the same 60 points originally, it is clear that this is not an alternative option, but merely a guideline on how to distribute those 60 points, like Atgxtg said. I am ever so glad for having been wrong.

I would not allow the characters to exceed the cultural maximum by their random rolls alone. It takes Glory. That being said, I find K&L way way too random, like you note. In our campaign, we use these three options instead (choose one option; APP is always rolled 2d6+4, but you can use points in 2 & 3 to increase it if you want at 1 point to +2 APP, and that is also why the starting points in 2. are 50 instead of 60): 1. SIZ 1d6+12, DEX 1d6+7, STR 1d6+10, CON 1d6+9 2. Distribute 50 points. 3. Distribute 43+2d6 points. Afterwards, add cultural bonus and then continue with character generation. It has worked pretty well so far.

I don't use this option in my campaigns, since I find it potentially very unbalancing. Not to mention being an additional twist of the knife with those players whose dynasties died in the middle. That being said, here are my responses: B. When he died (or when Henry is chargened and begins the play, if Thomas is still alive). Same thing with Traits and Passions. No one is keeping track of the starting attributes. (I assume you mean SIZ, not Body.) Yes. Nothing in the rules implies otherwise. Mind you, Henry should not have all the same skills & miscellaneous picks as a 21-year old knight, since he has 3 years less training. One option would be to use ENTOURAGE's Squires as Player characters -rules. Neither. As stated in 1., the attributes would be based on Henry's attributes at death. Without Henry's cultural modifiers (whichever they are), but with half-fae cultural modifiers. In other words, the base attributes could be inherited.

This is the table I was talking about. Guidelines for the GM what the roll should be if you want to become, say, Castellan. What is the target number for different offices that I need to roll, probably 1d6+modifiers (1d20 is way too random), in order to get appointed to that office? And this can of course be expanded to also include an influence roll to ease the previous occupant to pasture... Pretty insignificant, thanks to that 10%. Even at 10k BASE Glory, the excess Glory is only 5k, which translates to 500 extra Inherited Glory for the Son. If the Son has APP 15 too, then it is 750 Glory, but remember, he PAID for that Glory multiplier with stat points. It is not a free lunch. You have a tendency of ignoring the fact that all of the above takes effort to gain (save for the 80+ Chivalric, which is pretty automatic if a Player wants it...). In short, you probably had to spend yearly trainings or Glory Points to get the Traits to 16+ to qualify for the Religious Bonus. Hence, you fall behind. Even if we assume that both characters would go for the as large passive glory as possible (as an aside, I really, really dislike passive Glory that accrues from sitting on your ass at home...), you ignore what the APP 10 character would have gained in the same time. In the four years, the APP 10 would be at 1600 Glory, the APP 15 at 2400 Glory, gained from passive Glory in the above example. This is a difference of mere 800 Glory, compared to the difference of 1d6 in damage and 1 in Healing. And those points have to come from SOMEWHERE. That is the point I have been trying to make! I set out very simple criteria: 1. Both used the same number of stat points in the Chargen, one with STR 15, the other with APP 15. 2. I assumed that the skill & trait progression would be similar, to simplify things. This means that the yearly training and experience rolls can be discounted. (Although I did point out that if you deviate from this, the APP 15 has an edge, as Glory Points are more versatile.) 3. This leaves only Glory Points that can be used to catch up to STR 15 and 6d6. So, how much Glory does it take to get 5k extra glory at +50%? The answer, 10k. I guess I should have been even more explicit. This is what the characters would look at 10k BASE Glory (assuming that any MWs and Aging have been dealt with): A: SIZ 18, DEX 10, STR 15, CON 10+3, APP 10, DMG 6d6, HP 32, Move 3, Healing 3, Glory 10k B: SIZ 18, DEX 10, STR 15, CON 10+3, APP 15, DMG 6d6, HP 32, Move 3, Healing 3, Glory 15k Now clearly B is winning the Glory Game, and is equal physically to A. That is the whole point of his character concept! In order to achieve that, he is not minmaxed for the fighting from the get-go, but he will surpass his fellow on the long run. He is BETTER at 10k Base Glory. But he is WORSE at the beginning. It is mages and fighters from AD&D. One starts as a paper tissue with one weak spell and ends up twisting Reality to suit his whims. One starts big and brawny and swinging a big sword... and arguably ends up exactly the same, in proportion. Tabloids point to yes. Pretty people get more press. Granted, pretty & famous people get even more press, but adding a Glory multiplier based on your Glory is a very bad idea. The handwavey explanation behind the APP multiplier is that everyone is more keen on talking about Sir Adonis and his glorious deeds, again and again. That is where the multiplier comes in. Sir Pigface... eh, yeah, he killed some lizard or another, but let's talk more about Sir Adonis, he is so dreamy. EDIT: Also, just to clarify, I am not arguing for this to become the new APP rule. I am simply discussing it, since it would be a very simple implementation, without any additional rules for APP, since its effect would be included to the Glory.

I am talking about BASE Glory, before the multiplier. And yes, the PKs in our campaign do get significant Glory from the heroics that they do themselves. If 5 PKs meet equal number of knights, and one of them cuts down three while the other four manage two, then the glory awards will reflect this: 3 vs. 0.5. 6d6 is very significant edge against other knights, as you will cause much more damage through armor+shield than with 5d6. And other knights is where you get a lot of your Glory. Granted, we are still using the KAP4 style Glory awards, which are more generous than the usual KAP5.2 ones, about x2 (depends on the Glory of the opponent). I am not claiming that A would win 50% more Total Glory or even 50% of the duels. But even if he only wins 20% more total Glory, this means that he will be at 12k, not 10k, when B hits 10k+5k=15k. Then the difference is only 3 points in Glory Bonus Points, not 5. Hence we are underestimating A's Glory total. The point is that we are being generous in assuming that B gains as much glory from fighting as A, despite being objectively the poorer fighter of the two. And I repeat again: The idea was to examine WHAT IS THE VALUE OF APP 15 VS STR 15, if APP gives a Glory multiplier of +10% per point above 10. The simplest way to test that is to see how long it would take APP 15 to gather enough Glory to buy his STR up to 15, and assuming everything else stays the same. The idea was not to test what would be the best possible build, since that is a MUCH more difficult task. You are seriously saying that in 4 years, B would have gained enough extra Glory to make up for lacking 5 stat points? I thought was a generous GM, but I would be very surprised if they gained more than 2k Glory in 4 years, meaning that B would be, at best, around 5k (2k+1k knighting + inherited etc multiplied by 1.5), meaning 2 extra Glory Bonus Points. Those 2 points would be enough, in your opinion, to make up for the missing 1d6 in damage and 1 point in Healing? Even if they continue at that very rapid pace, 500 Base Glory per year, It would still take a total of about 18 years for them to hit 10k Base Glory, or around the age of 40. This is very much towards the end of the active adventuring career. We have currently ONE PK who has survived to mid-40s, and he is complaining about his creaking joints (DEX 5) and that he is going to retire any day now... Even if the break-even point would be sooner, it would be OK. Lets say it happens around 6k Base Glory, about 10 years at 500 Glory gain, with 3 extra Glory Points for B. This is at 31. So for the first ten years, the STR guy has an advantage. For the next ten years, the APP guy has an advantage. Then it is time to start thinking of switching to the heirs. And if the APP guy dies at 28? Well, then his whole career he was worse off, and might actually have died because he would have needed that extra 1d6 damage to hit that Saxon into UNC...

That is kinda my point. The handicap lasts through most of the PK's career. Sure, once you hit 10k Base Glory, the APP 15 guy gets even with damage/skill, and then has that extra bonus to Glory to enjoy, but this assumes 2 things: 1.) That the two knights would have gained Base Glory at the same rate, which is likely not true due to Sir Smasher being a better fighter and hence gaining more Glory from defeating the foes. 2.) That most of the game would happen past the 10k mark, which is untrue in my experience. As for APP 20 guy, let him! This means that he will spend most of the game with crap other stats, and will struggle to win fights and likely suffers more Major Wounds due to low CON. The trade-off is that your character will be worse in the beginning but then catch up and surpass his fellows in the late game, IF he survives that long. If you look at them at the beginning of their careers, this is obvious (assumption: Cymric +3 CON, 60 points and 3 raises to stats, Base Glory 1200): A: SIZ 18, DEX 10, STR 15, CON 10+3, APP 10, DMG 6d6, HP 32, Move 3, Healing 3, Glory 1200 B: SIZ 18, DEX 10, STR 10, CON 10+3, APP 15, DMG 5d6, HP 32, Move 2, Healing 2, Glory 1800 The difference in skills is moot, since we can assume in this simple comparison that they have exact same skills that increase at the exact same rate. The point is to compare STATS, after all, to see if APP measures up. And it is clear that here, B is clearly the inferior of the two in a fight and survivability. Granted, Move and Heal don't come to play nearly as often as they should, but Healing 3 is a huge improvement when it comes to recovering from Chirurgery Needed, compared to 2. This, at least, B can catch up to quickly enough by increasing his STR (or CON) by one ASAP. Knight B does have a small additional advantage that he gets a bigger Glory skill modifier, but that was kinda baked in to Greg's suggestion as well (higher APP assumed to be the leader, etc other social benefits). He also benefits from the fact that once he hits Skill 20, he can use Yearly Training for his stats (until he is 35) and Glory for his main skill, something that Knight A cannot do. However, A can use the Yearly training somewhere else, and thus gain an advantage in a higher skill or stat (CON!) elsewhere, partially compensating for this. Also, that wouldn't kick in until B reaches Skill 20, which takes some time, too. We also ignore in this approach the likely assumption that A would gain more Glory from duels and other individual fights, where he would win more frequently than B, and likely get less Major Wounds, too, due to knocking the enemies and wounding them more frequently, making for shorter fights. By 10k base Glory, we can definitely say that B has caught up with those extra 5 Glory bonus points, and is a better character: he has more Glory and will continue getting more Glory, and possibly has a higher main weapon skill, too. However, as I keep saying, 10k base Glory is not even a middle game glory in our campaign. It is more like the end of career Glory, before the stats start plummeting and the characters' luck finally runs out as they are asked to do more and more heroic things. If we take out the Boy King & Conquest with their scripted Glory-heavy Battles, the characters struggle to break 10k, IMHO.This means that for most of the play, the B has a handicap compared to A. You might disagree how big that handicap is, but it is there. Whether the actual break-even point is more like 8k is up for debate, but even this is rarely reached in our campaign within a decade. Again, it is about accepting a handicap at first, in order to become stronger in the endgame.

My pref: (APP-11)/2, normal rounding rules. So (10-11)/2 = -1/2 = 0. 12-13 = +1, 14-15 = +2, 16-17 = +3, 18-19=+4, 20-21=+5... And maybe cap it at +10 (APP 30). Well, you would need 10 000 Base Glory to gain extra 5 Glory Bonus Points (5000 Glory) to make up for it. In short, by the probable end of the PK's career, you have just broken even. I don't see that excessive, given that you have been working with a handicap (-1d6) to reach that 10k, in comparison to your combat-optimized fellow. Meaning that you are more likely to lose fights, with possibly fatal or major wound consequences. At +1% per extra point of APP, you'd need to reach 20k to see ONE extra Glory Bonus Point at APP 15. This is such an insignificant gain that it would not be worth even calculating. In particular since getting to 20k tends to be a pipedream for most of the PKs, in my experience. YPMV.

Yes, that is what I was suggesting although the 'final roll' in this case is not a skill roll, but a roll to achieve a goal, to get something from the liege, whether it is a position or a suitable wife. In short, there would need to be a 'Favors from the liege' table, where you could try to cash in your modifiers or make a roll, spending gathered modifiers, to achieve whatever goal you are aiming for. Although it should be set up so that if you are aiming for, say a currently vacant position of a marshal and fail to get it, it doesn't mean that you lost the modifiers. The Liege still likes you, but had another guy in mind for the position (actually, this roll should be an opposed roll, with Intrigue used to hurt the other's chances over the years, the rival thing I mentioned). However, in the marriage table, you take your chances and marry who the Liege has in mind, since in his mind, he has made the perfect choice for you, and to say no means that you insult his judgement. As for the rest of your post, I have little to add, save for: Let's not. I don't think it is needed, if they are getting big bonuses to skills anyway, and secondly, making up special rules for such clear outliers is not really useful for making APP useful in 10 - 20 range.

Just as a quick aside... In the old Nocturnal Forums, someone (alas, I forget who) posted a suggestion of using APP as a Glory modifier: x (APP/10). So someone with APP 15 would get +50% Glory for everything. At the time, I thought this was a bit excessive and a hassle for the book-keeping, but if you are doing pen and paper, you probably are doing the Glory Totals at the end of the year anyway, so it is just one multiplication. And in excel sheets you can code it in, if you really want to. Is it excessive, though? Not necessarily. 5 points in APP is almost +1d6 in Damage, which is a pretty significant combat edge, or Sword 20 instead of 15 (ditto). Sir Prettyboy gets an easypass thanks to his good looks, since all the ladies and even other knights like to gossip about him, whereas Sir Hitonface struggles to get his glorious deeds widely talked about, hence lower Glory.

Yeah, that seems fair. Yep, I could get behind that idea. This way, it doesn't ratchet out of control by getting several Amors. Also, I think you can't get more than one Lover's Solo Glory, too, so there is precedent. I feel it should be more. Successful tasks in the Lover's Solo reduce RF by 1. Surely 1000 Glory is way more than that. I'd be tempted to put it as low as 1 per 100 Glory, which, let's face it, is already about half of taking down a Giant single-handed. That is pretty impressive in my book. Then again, I think the whole RF & Task system needs an overhaul, too, but that is again a separate discussion... As said, I dislike this 'magic aura effect', so I wouldn't have it at all. If I did, I would push it to APP 30, since it is clear that it happens only in very, very special cases. (As an aside, maybe Guinever's dropping APP is why suddenly knights started whispering about her and Lancelot, while previously everyone was smitten by her 'aura'...) Only at really high values and only for the women, though. I think Greg's latest thinking on introducing social skill bonuses is the way to go, although I disagree with the way the bonus is calculated. Like you pointed out yourself, it leaves the vast majority of APP scores without any bonus, unless you get it to 16+. This by itself is not enough. We would need some more rules on making the social skills actually matter more. Book of Feasts is a good first step towards that, but there needs to be opportunities for the Courtier characters not only to gain significant Glory (a few points of Glory is not significant, and APP crit is as common for APP 5 as it is for APP 19...), but actually manage to influence things. As a quick example, using Courtesy to polish the Count's fundament and Intrigue to dig up dirt on the rivals to trip them up, so that you end up with the Heiress*/Officership after some years of patient work (while also doing heroics, obviously). One easy-ish way would be to bring back the yearly Courtesy roll while hunting for a random wife, but give -1 on a Fail (not enough smooch on the comital patoot; thy ardor has cooled, Sir Knight), which would ensure that you really want high-ish Courtesy to play this game. Allow this modifier to add to the Deeds modifier in ENTOURAGE, up to a max of +10. In short, the Count's Favorites would get a very nice leg-up on the marriage market, either for themselves or for their eldest sons (this is not considered nearly often enough!). Similar rolls could be used when applying for Officership. Once the bonus has been used, it goes away, and you need to start building it up again. Wives could help in this, too, and suddenly, a courtier wife becomes a much more desirable concept rather than always choosing the stay-at-home Stewardship Wife. And finally, for the women, rules on how you actually use the Fine Amour to get the knights to do your bidding, and Glory gain therein, too. Something that is being discussed in this thread.

Yep. I do not penalize PKs for Flirting, even if they fail, as long as the husband is not famously jealous, the lady or the husband are not already established to be hostile towards the PK. Now if they Fumble, then they did something that caused an offence, but even that is usually dealt with an apology and a Modest roll or a duel to first blood, not a feud.

This is what I am warning you against. This means that someone with a rather modest investment (for a Lady) in APP and followers and jewelry can go around Camelot and pick up smitten RTKs and Barons. After all, if all it takes is a smile (even if it requires a skill success, whatever skill it might be), why wouldn't you collect as many smitten knights as you could? I mean, Guinever does it even without trying, so why shouldn't you? Sure, not every knight would get affected to the same extent, but the odds are good that enough of them would be. Having a baron or two with Amor towards you would give you hell of a lot of power. Of course, as a GM in whose campaign a Player Lady became Agravaine's lover, it is not so much that I object the Player Ladies using their brains and beauty to get ahead and influence their menfolk. It is the fact that this power under discussion would allow them to enthrall dozens of famous knights & barons just by rolling some dice, rather than just one. After all, Guinever's beauty doesn't have any limit on the number of knights that may fall in love with her. Eventually, the Player Lady would roll a critical and wham, potential eager suitor/patsy. Next, please! I should also mention that I don't use this power of Guinever nor Lancelot in my campaigns. Instead, the PKs can choose to get affected, if they want to generate an Amor for the High Queen. They don't have to roll to resist. There is no supernatural aura. Yeah, there are some issues with that cap, and furthermore, it is pretty much unnecessary as long as you get rid of all the Battle Glory multipliers, in particular when it comes to extended melee in BoB2. You also get Glory for the Leap after the Knighting Ceremony which stacks up. I would have no problem with each individual dragon being a single instance with that 1000 cap, in your Lancelot example. The Marriage Glory rule (equal glory, capped at 1000) has pissed me off since I started playing KAP, since like Khanwulf pointed out, it means any knight would do. Also, it means that widows are suddenly as much worth in Glory as Guinever herself, which feels very wrong to me. So I came up with my own 'marriage glory formula'. But this is a different discussion altogether, I feel. Oh, I do like this idea. Surely the wife should get some reflected Glory. I also like your earlier idea that the Amor-Inspired Knight should choose how much Glory he dedicates to his Lady, thus diminishing the Glory he gains from it. Although I guess I would be fine with a similar rule as above for the True Lover. We hear a lot about the knights Lancelot sends back to Guinever, but I'd assume that Guinever would not be getting tons of Glory for all the hundreds of young knights doing things 'in her name'. All the more reason, IMHO, to limit the Amor Passion only for a reciprocal relationship, and have the one-sided ones be something else, like Covet for the lustful sorts and Pine for the more chaste but unrequited ones.

Just to add a note of caution here... If I have been following the discussion correctly, this roll would be done with all the APP bonuses, too, from hairdressers, fashionistas, clothing and jewelry, right? That means it would be very easy (compared to getting a skill that high) to get APP well over 20, even to or over 30. This means that the Player Lady would have a very likely chance to be able to hammer most of the NPKs she meets with the "Guinever effect". Having a bunch of Barons and RTKs with Amor towards you is a very powerful thing, and one that I would hesitate to hand over for a player to use indiscriminately. Sure, you can place some limits on the victims, such as many of the RTKs might have Amors of their own that they would try to stay loyal to, but still. The above being said, I would very much support the ladies' ability to play the Courtly Amour game after Guinever introduces it. I would be quite happy to give a beautiful player lady the ability to marshal some knights smitten by her, and I would even give her some Glory for their actions, although I think Greg's suggested 50%* might be a bit too much, IF it covers all knights smitten by her. If it is just ONE knight, then it would be OK. I'd even let the player play the smitten knight on the quest, so that the player can participate in the fights (or the quest in general, if the Lady stays home), if the player wants to. Or I might just grant some Glory based on Romance rolls and APP, to cover stuff happening 'off-screen'. * From here: http://www.gspendragon.com/ladyglory.html , which really should be in the main book, too.

I'd be tempted to give the new convert a check in all of his new Religious Traits, if he is sincere about the conversion. Or maybe just give him a chance to roll all of those traits and grant a check on a success? The 'conversion for marital gain' would not qualify as a sincere conversion in my book, though.

Off the top of my head: Because during the jousting, you are actually performing right in front of your lady love? You have time in between to rest your gaze on her lovely visage, contemplating your love for her, uninterrupted by the chaos of battle, and hence able to keep yourself 'in the moment'. Whereas a Battle is chaotic, highly stressful and variable environment. Your Liege/whoever is likely not right there to witness everything, although your PK pals likely are. Enemies come and go. Your heart is pumping and it is actually heck of a lot more of actual work than jousting is. You can't maintain the same level of exertion. If you compare the time you actually spend in a joust breaking lances in a day compared to how much you are swinging your sword in a Battle round, it is probably pretty comparable. Now if we are talking about Grand Melee, then it becomes a different ballgame again.

Note that I was suggesting APP+Glory/1000. It becomes much easier to have APP in high 20s in this method, and hence easy to upgrade with jewelry, even if they are capped at +10 (if they are?). Granted, as I have said, I don't own the book so I am not sure how the jewelry works over long term. But if you can reuse it for the same bonus, it becomes very easy and convenient way to store your treasure in this way and get high bonus out of it. I am all for knights having some bling, but it might become a bit too easy to buy your way up. Although I agree with you that from the sound of it, it might be more fun to NOT critical, since then you get to play with the cards.

I am not seeing why the APP roll would be a problem? Are the high-Glory individuals allowed to hang onto their cards, or do they just get more choice what to play? In any case, I don't see why APP roll couldn't be considered in there, too. It could be even tweaked so that you will have to succeed in APP to even get to draw the extra cards. If you are an APP 5 troll, you can be famous as all heck but people could still avoid you socially... Giving APP some teeth. I do agree with you that APP is currently a dump stat in RAW. Which is why we: 1.) Roll APP randomly, while the rest of the stats are distributed. You can raise APP with your stat points, but get no points back if you wish to lower it. This is to keep it from being used as a dump stat, since before this was done, APP 8 was the norm for new knights... 2.) Base all courtly skill Glory rewards on APP, rather than flat 10. (Granted, I would still rather have a knight with STR 20 and APP 10 than the other way around, but it helps a bit.) 3.) Have APP play a role in our own Feast rules, as stated before in this thread.

I actually have less of a problem with Amor being used in jousting. First of all, jousting usually gives less Glory, and like you say, it is very genre-appropriate for the knight to be impassioned to impress his lady love. I fully agree that with the harsh penalties for failing and especially fumbling the Passion, one shouldn't use it unless one has to. My players usually are very leery about rolling their Passions unless they are 14+. Those 2:1 odds of success seem to be the tipping point.