Morien

APP + Glory/1000 could be standard, IMHO, and drop the jewelry thing which becomes an easy way to buy a critical. Titles trump this roll automatically. Another use for the APP that came to mind... How about making a straight APP roll each turn, and if successful, allowing the Player draw two cards, discarding one? The pretty people get more social opportunities, etc? This also helps to make Ladies more powerful in Feasts, which would be good, IMHO. I think I would adopt a simple tiered system for triggering the Modest roll. (And while using APP+Glory/1000 for the roll.) Anyone: If seated on the Floor. Anyone with Glory 8000+: If seated Below the Salt. Anyone with Glory 16000+: If not seated Above the Salt. This way, I wouldn't have to worry about anything else than the PK's own Glory. Of course, if I want to give the PKs more chances to show off their Modest, I might slash those threshold Glories to half. Especially since we seldom see anyone with 16000 Glory.

Especially towards the later periods, with the professional longbowmen & crossbowmen. If you can catch them out of position and unprotected by stakes, then hells yes, you go in hard. (And hope it is not an ambush with a hidden ditch...) The infantry gets more disciplined and dangerous especially towards the later periods again. However, it is going to be one or the other. If you have well-disciplined, dangerous infantry that doesn't break on a cavalry charge, that tends to mean shieldwalls with spear, or pikes, bills or halberds, all of which are very bad news to charge into. Hence something you bring your own archers to soften up while you take care of their knights. Like at Battle of Falkirk. If the infantry is rabble and easy to ride down, then they will rout/can be finished off once you have taken care of their knights. In either case, it generally makes more sense to take care of the knights first. Exceptions happen, of course, especially in the real world. In Pendragon, though, it should be primarily about heroes attacking enemy heroes and doing deeds worthy of song, not competing how many terrified peasant levy they manage to butcher, IMHO.

Surely that is for Knights, and the titled nobility would simply vault to the top. It would be a mortal insult to seat a visiting Baron Below the Salt or worse, on the Floor. Also, I would not impose the Modest Roll / Honor Penalty if you are seated below a lower Glory but higher title individual. There is no shame in recognizing and accepting the societal hierarchy. Just like you wouldn't get all huffy that the Archbishop is sitting at a higher place than you are, even if you are a minor Baron in your own right.

Book of Battle explicitly limits it to a single Battle Round or the duration of a single Extended Melee, IIRC. Also, you cannot use any single passion more than once per battle, so you have to save those for when you really need them. Also, some GMs (including me) can be rather stringent on when and what Passion can be triggered. For instance, I no longer allow Loyalty (Lord) / Homage to be used simply to do your duty on the battlefield, but requiring you to be rescuing the lord or some such. In our first campaign, we played it like you seem to do and allowed the passion to last for the whole battle. End result was that every PK yelled 'For the Emperor' eh I mean 'For Arthur!' at the beginning of the battle, put the resulting inspiration to their main weapon skill, and merrily critted their way through most of the Battles during the Boy King Period. Made for a lot of Glory but somewhat boring battles.

I'd be tempted to use -500 Glory, since this would be the bracket where the skill bonus from Glory shifts. I was just going to use the Glory skill bonus, but that runs into problem with 4500 and 4499. Same problem if you go by Glory tiers, 3999 and 4000. Easier to have a flat number, and it saves me some issues as the GM, since I don't have to even get the correct hundred Glory, as long as I am in the ballpark. To be honest, I would be fine with -1000 Glory, too. 1000 is a nice round number. I assumed it was Title first, then APP? So a Countess would always be seated higher than a Lady?

Happy to clarify it for you. Documented accounts = historical accounts? Yes, no doubt that happened, especially if the losing side routed. Then knights do what the cavalry does, and rides down the routers. Battle of Lewes comes to mind, where Prince Edward (future King Edward I) broke the Londoners and chased after them with his wing, which ironically cost the royal army the victory as the rest of the barons' army was able to defeat the remaining royalists. However, given that this is KAP, I would assume that if the two forces are about equal in size, a much higher priority would be placed on knight-on-knight combat, both for Glory and Honor as well as for pragmatic reasons. After all, once the knights leg it, the infantry is leaderless, demoralized, and easy to outflank. Whereas those nasty footmen might actually try to kill your horse from under you and then swarm you rather than worry about capture and ransom.

Yep. One of my players complains that fighting against two standard footmen is worse than facing an enemy knight, assuming that no one is mounted. Because of the need to split the skill and the likely result being is that they get hit without a shield, possibly twice. And just to rub it in, the Glory for two footmen is less than for one knight, too. I do see his point but keep on using masses of footmen anyway, since knights tend to be rare in garrisons, etc. However, in field battles, I generally pit them against other knights. This is another reason I dislike BoA tables somewhat. It is not just a question of how many knights you have on the battlefield in proportion to the infantry, but what are those knights doing? Most of the time, they should be countering the enemy knights, both for Glory (the common riffraff is beneath them) as well as to keep the enemy knights from outflanking/breaking their infantry line. This is one reason why I think the split in KAP 5.2 to Knightly opponents and infantry opponents works reasonably well; you can use the infantry when the PKs deliberately choose to go after infantry, but it makes more sense that they'd spend most of their time fighting knights, or that it is enemy knights who manage to engage them rather than the slow footmen.

This is a mistake in reading how the Gift works. The Gift gives ONLY +1, in return for £(other modifiers). So if the knight has +20 modifier, the Gift needs to be £20 for him to get +1. That's it. You can't buy more than a +1 modifier via the Gift. Of course each GM is free to change that if they want, but this will totally unbalance the table. At the very least, they should require the Gift as a pyramid sum (using the NEW modifier for each time you have bought +1 Gift modifier), or someone who is less favored (say, a fresh PK with 1400 Glory) would be able to buy +20 modifier for £20, where as someone who already has +10 from heroics etc would only get +2 for the same money, which makes no sense at all. There is a reason the Gift was capped at +1 and required to equal the value of other modifiers. As Atgxtg explained, it is very much not that straightforward. You cannot simply compare the result numbers when the dice rolls and the modifiers are different. The possible yearly +1 from Courtesy rolls in KAP5.2 table accumulates pretty quickly, and like Atgxtg said, this impacts fast on the amount of land the PKs can accumulate. It is true that if we look at just the rolls themselves, the average dowry result for KAP 5.2 marriage is £6.9, and for the vassal knight in Entourage £10.33 (actually, a bit less since the automatic +1 from Glory would push one result from 2d6+8 esquire to 1d6+6 eldest vassal, but I was ignoring the modifiers here, including any from Courtesy successes). This due to several factors: 1.) It was decided that the 'default' wife for a vassal knight (himself likely the eldest son of a vassal knight) ought to be the eldest daughter of a vassal knight, rather than a younger daughter of a vassal knight. Makes sense when you think about it. 2.) The Dowry for the eldest daughter was set to about the value of the land, i.e. £10 for a single manor knight rather than the earlier £6 manor. This changed the dowry from 1d6+3 to 1d6+6, resulting in a shift of £6 as far as the default wife's dowry was concerned. 3.) At the time, Greg said that household knights almost never marry, so naturally, there wouldn't be any daughters of the household knights running around, either. However, do note that if the Knight already has a male heir, he should roll on the column one step to the left, i.e. a Vassal knight should roll as a Household knight and so forth*. Hence, for 2nd and subsequent marriages, assuming that there are heirs, the Vassal Knight's average dowry for the subsequent wives is likely to be just £3.5 or so (the younger daughter of a vassal knight), although it is likely that they would have gained some more Glory & other bonuses by then (which is also true for KAP 5.2 table with its heiress possibilities). But if you take that at face value, then the average of two marriages is about the same as it was in KAP 5.2. * (ERRATA: Alas, rereading the Book of the Entourage, I see that this is hinted at, but not fully explained: the heir situation was originally in the column titles, IIRC. So this: "and consult the appropriate column, determined by the knight’s rank and pre-existing male heirs." should read as "and consult the appropriate column, determined by the knight’s rank and pre-existing male heirs (lower rank by one).")

Yep, that Urban Roman Infantry is no line infantry, but the general's bodyguard. They are way too badass to be a generic unit. I am pretty much categorically against generic units having skills higher than 20. Gladius should count as a sword. There is no way in hell that Romans would have sent their men into war with -1d6 handicap. Replica Gladii are wide and and hence very good choppers, and quick thrusters, too thanks to the short length. You get poked with one of those and it will do serious damage. (That being said, the whole lorica segmentata, gladii & scutum legionnaires of Trajan being a thing in 6th century Ostrogothic Italy or 5th-6th century POST-ROMAN Britain irk me the hell off. I know it shouldn't bother me when the setting is so rife with Medieval anachronisms, but that is kinda the point: the Continent with Franks and Ostrogoths looks like it follows the real history pretty well; just look at BoK&L history write-ups. Those lorica segmentata legionnaires stick out like a sore thumb for me.) As for making the footmen more dangerous, here is my favorite trick: denser formation. Each time you attack infantry, it is 2:1. Now, if these guys are green (skill 10), no biggie since it is 10-5=5 each vs. 16/2+5=13 for the knight. Besides, they are likely only 4d6 damage anyway. But then they run into Skill 16, dmg 5d6 veterans, and it is a totally different ballgame with two skill 11, 5d6 attacks coming against their split skill of 13/13. And if they run into an elite skill 20, 6d6 damage unit, then things are suddenly going very poorly for the PKs, especially if you add in some javelins beforehand. Javelins, by the way, should do -1d6 IMHO. This would make javelins actually usable weapons. It makes little sense that a 3d6 weakling using a bow does 3d6, but only 1d6 with a javelin toss.

Sorry, I missed your previous post before replying. My preference would be the Period-dependent armor & horse, in which case you can get away with just one 1-20 table & the period armor & horse. Average is one armor/horse behind the state-of-the-art, Poor is two steps (if possible), Rich has the state-of-the-art. I totally agree with the first sentence, and not at all with the second. The True Century being 5% chance PER ROUND IN ALL ROMAN ARMIES? Way, way too much. See below for more. Rather than that, I would have 20 lead to 'Leader or a special unit' table, and then give small chance of running into some truly elite troops. Although I still think that 25 & 25 is too much unless it is the Emperor's own bodyguards. If you really want to make that troop type more common and stand out, give them Skills 20 & 20 and an applicable Passion (Roma Victrix?) at 20 or something, and allow them to get Impassioned against the PKs. That way, they are still rules-compliant, but a really nasty surprise for the PKs who are used to cutting the footmen down without a sweat.

Again, I am not arguing that the AVERAGE Young Knight would have 6d6. What I am arguing is that 6d6 Cymric Knight is not vanishingly rare. I have repeatedly stated that I think 10% is a reasonable number, with the chances increasing with higher Glory Knights (both from selection pressure - knights with poor stats tend to have harder time to gain glory - and from extra Glory Bonus Points that they can spend on raising SIZ & STR). K&L SIZ 3d6+4, STR 3d6+1 results in: 6.08% at 33+ without any raises. Assuming that the Ordinary Knight hasn't lost any stats to Aging or Major Wounds, he has trained STR up by +3. If we take that as indicative of a general tendency of ALL knights to train their STR up some as they mature, this gives: 20.58% at 33+ from random rolls and +3 STR from yearly training. Note that this doesn't make any other assumptions that would be VERY common amongst the PKs: if you are already at 32, you will definitely want to spend that yearly training to your STR rather than to your Sword. That extra 1d6 is simply so useful. Without going into further demographics on how common each type of knight is on the battlefield and how quickly each subset would reach the 6d6 and whether 3d6 young knights would even exist or get strongly encouraged to have a clerical career, we can state that as a rule of thumb, you'd probably expect to see something like 10 - 15% of the knights, in total, having 6d6. Hence it is nowhere near as offensive to me as those skill 25 & 25 or 27 & 27 or 39 troop types. Of course, BoA All-Knight Army fumbles the ball additionally by turning this upside down: it is the young knights (low skill) who tend to have 6d6, and then it drops with age/skill to 4d6, rather than being more of a bellcurve. But I think we are in agreement that the All-Knight table was already fatally flawed?

Pretty much in full agreement with Atgxtg's excellent post. Just to bring up a couple of additional comments: Feasts help tremendously, if you allow some skill use and give out Glory for successes. My homebrew Feast system got started primarily to make things more interested to one Lady character (more of that below). Some features (nowadays): 1. Spring court generally has a chance to roll 6 or so skills, successes of which bring APP worth of Glory. 2. A critical APP+(Glory/1000) roll gives a chance to have a 'special encounter'. In short, it is something the PKs can use to get a good marriage, etc. Ladies tend to start with high Glory and also higher courtly skills, in general, than knights, leading to more Glory and chances for special encounters they can use to advance their agenda. Very much agreed. The Lady player mentioned above was enjoying the other, non-adventure RP more, since most Adventurers tended to devolve into 'hit the big monster until it stops moving', and afterwards she could roll First Aid and Chirurgery on those who needed it. She ended up going on adventures to 'keep the idiots alive'. She ended up as a bit of a femme fatale: Agravaine's mistress and the reason why Orkneys turned against Guinever, hence causing the fall of the Round Table. She didn't mean to, mind you. Thanks to being a lady, she survived her youth as the 'tomboyish little sister' to become 'Lady Aunt' to her young nephews, and arguably the most powerful Lady in Salisbury, overseeing not only her own dynasty but that of the other PKs as well.

This is a whole another discussion, whether the average NPK is using the same chargen rules as the PKs, or if the PKs get some extra oomph for being PKs. I have seen it argued both ways. I'd agree that the stat bar for the Young Knight implies that at least they didn't boost their stats with those miscellaneous picks, but it is not evidence that they didn't get those picks at all.

Which was never my argument, as I think I repeated at least three times. No, I agree that 30% - 35% is too much. 7d6 is obviously a typo. The whole All-Knight Army should be overhauled so that it is 1d20 for skills & damages, and then the armor & horse depends on the period & the roll (possibility of coming one - or even two for Twilight - periods behind). As I have repeatedly stated, around 10% (Cymric & Roman) would be reasonable to have damage 6d6, IMHO, plus a famous/leader's bodyguards type of unit. I also agree that BoA shows signs of a lot of typos and/or things that are not well considered. I have already stated my hatred of units of skill 20+ since the beginning, and you managed to find two more units that I'd have a problem with. 5d6 for Picts is at least possible, but yeah, someone must have given +1d6 to Great Spear and it would still require 6d6 for the Picts which is stretching the system somewhat. It is cases like these that soured me to BoA in the first place.

That's my point: the ORDINARY KNIGHT has SIZ 14 and STR 14, not 14.5 and 11.5. So if we assume that knights in general use 2-3 points to SIZ (possible to grow up still in chargen,with miscellaneous picks) & STR (even later, as implied by the young knight write-up), this would give the K&L DMG value of (3d6+4+3d6+1+2)/6, which would give my stated 14.46% probability of 6d6 (2 picks/raises in total to STR & SIZ). This is plenty and a far cry from the lowball estimate of2d6+6+3d6 which gives 0.72%. Which, by the way, would require again the ORDINARY KNIGHT to use 4.5 raises to get to 14/14, which in turn would give out what I said before: "(Or perhaps you would prefer SIZ 2d6+6+1 and STR 3d6+3, which would give 9.8% chance for 33+.)" Both of the above assumptions result in 6d6 being in the 10% - 15% range of the Cymric knights, which is why I'd call it uncommon. I NEVER claimed that the AVERAGE Cymric Knight should be 6d6 (although my players' PKs usually are, it is just too useful in a fight). Just that facing a 6d6 Cymric knight should not be that shocking. That is 10 points that need to come AFTER character generation (assuming 21-year old knights) from experience checks, yearly training or Glory points. The chances are that you get maybe a point each in the first 4 years from experience checks, but the other 4+4 points then need to come from yearly training or Glory. By contrast, even taking your full average rolls as the starting point (which I am not arguing for; the 6d6 is uncommon, not the average!), they still would require only 7 points, which is 1 point less than getting two skills to 20. Thus, even at the average rolls, a PK could push his character to 6d6 quicker than two skills to 20. And this is ignoring those 4 miscellaneous picks in Chargen that can be used to increase stats, but not skills past 15. If they do that, then they only need 3 points, which is quite easy. And just to make it absolutely crystal clear, I am NOT arguing that the AVERAGE Cymric Knight would have 6d6 damage or Sword and Lance at 20! Nor am I even making a claim that there would be more knights with 6d6 than Sword and Lance at 20. All I have been saying is that having 6d6 damage is not terribly uncommon, and by far more common than having those skills at 25, which is where this side track started from. Although, IMHO, getting 6d6 is even quicker to do for a PK than getting both skills at 20, assuming average rolls and a will to do so. I would also agree that the PKs get more Glory than the Average knights. But that was not the question here. If we start adding Glory to the Stat discussion, too, then it becomes even easier to reach 6d6 for more famous knights. No, my typo. I did use the correct numbers when calculating the probabilities, though. Those numbers are not based on a formula, but simply two for -loops: the inner loop doing 20 rolls of 1d20 and calculating how many 20s I got, and an outer loop of 1 million repeats of those 20 rolls. I then simply calculate how many 'increases' I got and calculate the percentage. It is what you would get by doing it by hand, but it is much quicker to computerize it. The mathematical formula agrees with those numbers, too: 1 success: 37.74% 2 successes: 18.97% Your mistake was (at least in the first formulation you used) that you used the chance of 1+ successes (that is, one OR MORE, i.e. all but the 0 successes outcome) to cover only the 1 success outcome. I am not sure how you calculated the rest. But you already agreed that was in error, so probably not worth pursuing it. If you use the mathematical formula to get 0 successes, it becomes: 20!/20!*0.95^20 = 0.95^20 (and this is certainly correct!) = 35.85%, which is close enough my brute force approach.

This tends to be what happens in our games. I use my own wife generator to get an idea what kind of personality the wife candidates have, and then go with that. Flirting rolls and other courtship establishes the initial relationship level, and subsequent happenings can change this. For instance, one PK sister made it pretty plain that she wasn't interested in the suitor (another PK), but the PKs decided to have the marriage go ahead anyway. Needless to say, a rather unhappy, tragic marriage. Another PK sister wasn't too thrilled about the new husband, but lo and behold, a family event happened to turn her head. A third one was threatened by her sister (a female knight) to marry her pal, or get thee into a nunnery. Thankfully, the new husband proved to be a softy, spoiling the new wife with gifts, so she ended up quite happy in the end. So far, none of them have gone as far as to knife or poison their husbands in their sleep... If you really want to make the wives interesting, this is the way to do it. However, you need to be sure that the players are onboard with it, too, and put aside some more time for the RP.

Yeah, my math was off, shows what happens when you don't think it through. Thanks for checking. That being said, I think yours is off, too. 1-(0.95^20) = 64% is the chance of 1 or more successful raises. But after that, the chance goes down by a lot. I did a quick dice roller automation and ran it through 1 million times, for these percentages of increases (assuming 20 experience rolls): 0 35.8855 1 37.7065 2 18.8551 3 5.9712 4 1.3244 5 0.2251 6+ 0.0322 So you get about 0.2% chance of one skill increasing by 5, and for two independent skills it would be 0.2% * 0.2% = 4e-6 or 4-in-a-million. (Just to check that the roller isn't doing anything stupid... The mathematical formula would be: n!/(k!(n-k)!)*(1-p)^(n-k)*p^k where n = number of tries, k = number of successes, p is the probability of a success, and n! = 1*2*...*n. So for 5 success out of 20 tries, we should get 20!/(5!*15!)*(0.95)^15*(0.05)^5 = 0.22446%) You get of course a much better chance if you assume that there are 2 Glory Bonus Points being used, so that you need only 4 increases in each. In this case, you have about 1.3% *1.3% = 169 in a million. Given that I seriously doubt that every legionnaire in the whole Empire (especially given how piss-poor shape the WRE is by 520s) would have +2000 Glory since their 25th birthday, and remember, that 25th year cutoff was for the true fanatics anyway, I seriously doubt you would find even an eschille of these guys, let alone a centuria. If you get ALL the badasses in the ERE and WRE together, then sure, you could perhaps field a dreamteam of guys with two skills at 25 (with at least 4000 extra Glory), but these would be named heroes, not random mooks. And finally, this analysis hinged on the fact that they would reach skill 20 in both at the age of 25, and would have 20 more years to train. Which means they have taken already 10 years of Aging, too, which is liable to knock off 1d6 from their damage as well... 1.54% is the chance of EXACTLY 33 on 4d6+12, or 21 on 4d6. The chance of 33+ is 2.7%. But sure, let's take 4th edition and 2d6+6 and 3d6. This does give us 0.72% with 33+. Even without anything else, this is much higher than the 0.225% for a single skill at 25, let alone two. But since I have NEVER seen a PK who hasn't spent at least some points into increasing their stats, and the write-ups for young and ordinary knights implies this is very much the case, I think we are low-balling here quite a lot. In fact, if you take the Ordinary Knight as the mean value (SIZ 14, STR 14, implying 2d6+7 in both), this means that the chance of 33+ on 4d6+14 is the number we should be looking at: 9.72%. (Or perhaps you would prefer SIZ 2d6+6+1 and STR 3d6+3, which would give 9.8% chance for 33+.) Or we can take even the Book of Knights and Ladies, which has SIZ 3d6+4 and STR 3d6+1, BEFORE adding the 4 miscellaneous picks that my players usually put to SIZ & STR: 6.08% at minimum (your 2.49% assumed EXACTLY 33 again), or 27.94% at maximum (all 4 picks in SIZ & STR) or 14.46% (2 picks in STR & SIZ). None of the above considerations require any trickery with the experience checks and in fact require less yearly trainings & Glory points than getting the two skills to 20 in the first place! Thus, a 6d6 Cymric Knight might be a uncommon opponent, but not something that would be exceedingly rare. 5% - 10% seems quite reasonable, and higher when you get into more glorious knights.

Not necessarily. Lots of people converted to Christianity without actually fully grasping what the religion was supposed to be about. There is the story about Clovis, who after being told of the crucifixion, "Ah if I and my Franks had been there, we surely would have avenged him!" or words to that order. Not a very Christian sentiment, but he was instrumental for getting the Franks to convert to Catholicism. Also, there were a lot of 'convert or else' type of mass conversions. So I'd allow the knight to convert, even if he might be struggling with the idea of Modest and Chaste... (Assuming here that it is a Pagan -> Christian.) Assuming that this is in Salisbury and it is a Pagan -> Christian conversion, it is very likely that his peasants, liege and most of the entourage are already Christian, and would likely welcome such conversion. As for the Family, depends. Presumably the (already dead?) parents and siblings would be Pagan? They might not be happy about it, but chances are high that any random wife would be a Christian already, and no doubt happier about the conversion. Now the other way around, Christian -> Pagan, might be more socially frowned upon, although this is up to you as the GM. I would be tempted to add some conflict with the village priest as well as the peasantry, although probably not anything too major. He might make new Pagan contacts, but some of the Christian ones might distance themselves from him, too.

It is a bit harder when the Dad is a played PK with Famous Chaste... Again, a bit harder when you don't have any available brothers left. The PK who just died was the youngest brother who joined the group exactly as outlined in above, when the eldest died at the run-up to Badon Hill. The middle brother ended up on the other side of the Cornwall-Salisbury divide to ensure that no matter which side won, there would be someone to inherit the family lands. I'll let David answer the first one, but if you are getting ready to start your campaign now, it is probably not worth waiting. As for the second question, generally when the topic shifts (like it has now), it would be better to start a new thread. After all, people would not be looking for Book of Salisbury discussion in a thread that is supposedly about squiring and family.

That occasionally happens, but only once you have already gotten hammered by a Major Wound (likely a critical to begin with) or are in close to 0 hit points, which tends to require bigger wounds and usually more than one at the same time. I'd say that the death by Chirurgery Fumble/Fail is much rarer in our campaigns than the death by the lack of hit points. A PK was hovering just there a couple of sessions ago, survived, but unfortunately got one-shotted with a critical, high-rolling lance hit... I did mention this in my 3rd recommendation about making sure that there is a healer nearby. The knights in the stories usually manage to find a hermit or a lady to look after them easily enough, after all. I have to admit that while the possibility of a PK death needs to be there to make the risks actual risks, it can be very annoying dynastically to have a PK die without heirs. I am almost tempted to require that the new characters would start as 25-year olds, already married with a couple of sons already to carry on their legacy, and a couple of younger brothers as spares, too, rather than as 21-year old unmarried knights. Having the family line cut has a big impact on the enjoyment and the continuation of the game, I find. The player of the above PK didn't have an easy spare to slot into as it was already the third brother, so we ended up having him play the stepfather of his previous character's nephew and niece (so the children of the elder, already dead brother). Granted, this was partly due to the campaign issues, as he would have had a couple of spares in Salisbury, but the rest of the group is in Cornwall after having been exiled from Salisbury, so bringing a Salisbury knight into the mix didn't sound like a good idea...

I don't really disagree with most of what you are saying, Atgxtg, although I do take some exception to Sword & Javelin 25 being realistically achievable even by elite, non-knight units. Even with Glory this is a big ask, requiring 10 000+ Glory, and keep in mind that the recommended RTK limit is 8000. Arthur had trouble filling the Round Table in 514, since he didn't find enough qualified candidates in 514, if I recall correctly. I did some calculations on expected skill levels of NPKs and posted them on Nocturnal Forum, but obviously I don't have easy access to it now to quote it. It depends a lot on assumptions you make on yearly training, but the gist of it was that most knights ought to have their main weapon skill (usually Sword) at 15 within a couple of years of their knighting if not already at knighting. It is simply too central to their role and so easy to raise. Then it becomes much slower, but it still occasionally ticks up. As a rough estimate, I think I adopted something like this: Age: Skill 21: 15 25: 16 30: 17 35: 18 40: 19 45: 20 65: 21 (PKs typically, in my experience, increase their main weapon skill slightly more rapidly, although usually it takes at least a decade for them to reach 20. But that depends a lot how they are using their Glory Bonus Points.) Anyway, the point is that even if you are FANATICAL at improving your Weapon Skills, it still takes on average 4 years per skill to get it to 20. Granted, you can get lucky with your experience skill rolls and shave an additional a year off (or two, if VERY lucky), but even with those assumptions, you are at the very least 25 when you plateau at 20. After that, it is either Glory or Experience. Assuming you'd stay in the legions until you are 45, so additional 20 years, and to get 5 experience increases in each skill... This is roughly 1/20 to the power of four per skill or 1 in 160 000. So you might find ONE legionnaire with ONE skill at 25 from experience checks alone. To find one with BOTH skills at 25 would be 1/160 000th squared or one in 25.6 billion. And remember that those calculations presuppose that every legionnaire would have skill 20 in both weapons at the age of 25, which is a pretty high ask, IMHO... So yes, having Short Sword 22 and Javelin 22 would be MUCH less offensive. And these guys should be the general's bodyguard type of unit, composed of the evocati. As for equites, I am thinking more of a Late Roman palatini or comitatenses, rather than the Republican Rich Kids. Cataphractii were usually elite cavalry, so at the very least equivalent to veteran knights (skills 18-20), IMHO. (In GPC, they are a bit too elite with their Lance 27, though, although their Horsemanship should be better than 14.) I actually have less of an issue with DMG 6d6 than Skill 22-25: DMG 6d6 just requires a big, strong guy whereas Skill 22+ takes hell of a lot of time and practice. If SIZ and STR are 2d6+6, then the chance of SIZ+STR >= 33 is 2.7%. And this is assuming that there is no additional STR training, unlike what at least our PKs are doing to get that sweet sweet 6d6... Heavy Javelins doing +3 Sword damage is too much, though. Allowing it to do Sword damage would be quite enough, IMHO. Also, Sons of Lleu with their Sword 39???

I finally found the old post I made in the Nocturnal Forum. Most of it was already mentioned in previous posts here, but here it is nevertheless: Lethality of Pendragon: When it is and when it isn't Morien 02-17-2015, 06:10 PM I think this topic has been broached before, but I couldn't find a thread with a quick search that would address this particular point. In another thread, a poster mentioned that Pendragon's system is lethal. And I admit, it is, but only up to a point. And it very much depends on your assumptions. In the campaigns I have GMed, the PK death has been a relatively rare occurrence, by and large. It is also pretty clear to see the trends what have lead to those deaths. So I will try to talk about the lethality of Pendragon system based on those GMing experiences, and invite others to post their experiences and comments. First of all, something to underline a lot: in Pendragon, unless hit by so massive amounts of damage at once that the GM simply declares that you got turned into pink mist, you are not dead as soon as you reach 0 hit points. You are simply DYING. And you have, by the rules, time still sundown or something like that to get to a healer or more likely, your friends to get a healer to you. Secondly, you can perform first aid on each and every wound you have suffered in that particular fight, which hasn't already had first aid tried on it. Yes, this does mean that a good healer (particularly first aid), is a life-saver, something that my players have noticed and in one group, even budget for (shared 'combat healer' with good horsemanship to keep up, very high First Aid and a high-ish Chirurgery for those times that they are stuck in the middle of a forest somewhere). In the other group, they have a healer lady player character, who is even better than a hireling. Thirdly, there is the unconscious buffer, HP/4. So any hit that is able to kill you will have to pretty much cause at least that much damage, since otherwise, you'd not be up fighting anymore but already unconscious. (Oh, I should add, that we use a house rule that you do not take 1d6 of damage when falling from horseback, if you are already unconscious. This doesn't skew the results too much though, since the PKs all have Armor of Honor (3 pts), and usually do not either take damage or have whatever minor damage first aided afterwards.) These all three points lead to the situation where you are unlikely to get 'nibbled to death' by many small wounds, since all of those wounds get first aid and you are unlikely to hit minus hit points before going unconscious first. Instead, it is the big hits that kill you. In our campaigns, the deaths have been overwhelmingly due to: 1) Enemy rolling a critical when you are already at low hit points, usually when you have gotten into a fight already badly injured from previous combat (thus, those minor wounds have already been first aided and do not provide an additional buffer). 2) Enemy being a monster hitting well above the human norm (8d6+) and/or even rolling a critical. Even then, it usually takes a couple of hits unless it is a critical. 3) Group healer not being present and someone failing their First Aid skill of 10. 4) There was a one case of 'enemy has no mercy' where the fallen PK was pretty much executed by a fiend. Numbers 1 and 3 are something that the player / PK can (try to) control. Points 2 and 4 are fully in GM's hands, and the GM can influence 1 and 3, too. So if you feel that Pendragon is too lethal for you, my advice would be: 1) Encourage players to think about whether or not it is smart to fight on if they are already barely clinging to consciousness, or if they are already at half hit points to even start with. This connects to number 4, below. 2) Use 'normal' opponents. Other knights, bandits, Saxon raiders, and so forth. Their damage is much more forgiving. Note, Saxon Berserkers with Great Axes are starting to be in the monster category... 3) Make sure that the PKs have access to a healer. If they don't have their own one, there could be a manor close-by, with a lady of some healing skill. Or perhaps a beautiful damsel who would make a good Amor for the healed knight... 4) Introduce enemies who are unwilling to just kill the defeated PKs. Knights are worth money in ransom. They might be used as political counters, hostages to get treaties or something else. Enemies that have some measure of honor are also more fun to play with: not every villain needs to be a psychopath. Even many villainous knights in the tales kidnapped and imprisoned good knights rather than killed them (although counter-examples exist, too). 5) The more fights you have in a game-year, the more chances per year you have that a character dies in a fight. It is a tautology, I know, but worth mentioning. A couple of the characters in our campaign have died due to a 'random' duel: one simply got insulted at a party and things escalated from there, while another, a Lustful pagan, spent a few days waiting for another player character in a harbor town by trying to seduce local ladies. After some unfortunate rolling, the husband came barging in with his morning star, catching his wife and the PK in flagrante delecto, and in the ensuing fight, the philandering PK got smashed up without his armor on. With our houserule of the Glory Point (fate) save negating enemy criticals, and with expert healers available to the PKs, it is actually pretty hard to die in our campaigns without hard hitting opponents, like, as it was said, monsters. This is especially true in the later periods, when the plate armors start becoming common, increasing the protection that the PKs enjoy past 20 points. What are your experiences with Pendragon lethality?

Definitely this too. Splitting the skill also means that the PKs will take more more hits without the shield protecting them, meaning bigger, more dangerous wounds. Also, it can mean that they are taking two hits at the same time, without armor, without dropping in between which can get rid of the unconsciousness buffer, too.

Well obviously I agree with the ENTOURAGE stats, and I agree that the Picts should be scrappy 4d6, not 3d6. As for the Roman legionnaires, it would depend a lot what timeframe and even individual legion we are talking about. The veterans of the 10th at the end of Caesar's civil war? Stone cold killers, for sure. The Gambiani that had gone native for years in Egypt? Probably less so. A fresh, green legion raised from scratch (with some veteran centurions and optios) would have quite low skills by comparison. Not to mention that both of the above exceptions would be over 500 years out of date, although Vegetius was a near-contemporary. And Late Roman Army tends to get a worse rep than they deserve; they were not useless by any means. The thing is that in KAP 5.2 rules, there are only two ways of getting skills past 20: very lucky experience skill roll of 20, or Glory Bonus Point. The former is unlikely enough that unless you would deliberately be plucking these guys out of their cohorts for a single superelite unit, it is unlikely to happen. The latter is unlikely for commoners as they would presumably have much lesser chances of Glory. (I forget what is the current ruling on whether commoners even acquire Glory; I seem to recall Greg went back and forth on that idea.) Don't get me started on The Old Riders with their Lance 30, or Fanatical Household Guards with Loyalty (Uther) 30 (this, at least, is possible under the current rules, although I personally find the auto-increase of Passion on a crit to be a huge, unbalancing mistake), or The Last True Century with their Javelin 25 and Sword 25... Whereas equites and Kataphracts have too low skills; these guys should be knight-equivalents. I also have some beef with the knight table, which means that you are overwhelmingly meeting knights in obsolete armor during the later Periods; I don't mind the average armor coming like one period behind the introductory period, but having 30% of the knights dressed in chainmail during Twilight annoys me. And Lorica Segmentata still being a thing and as efficient as reinforced chainmail... (Yes, yes, I know Pendragon is anachronistic.) That being said, I just finished skimming through the army tables in BoA, and apart from the occasional skill 20+ unit, most of them tend to have reasonable skills: most of the infantry is 10-15, and most of the knights are 15-20 (and yes, other professional soldiers, even if commoners, should be able to have skills in this range, too, in particular veteran mercenaries). So I can see some use in having BoA if you already bought BoB, but by itself, not enough of an improvement, IMHO. Also, to loop this back to the Picts, the Battle Enemies table in KAP 5.2 gives most of them 4d6+ damage, interestingly enough.

If you read Le Morte's battle descriptions, this is pretty close to how many of them play out, despite the heroes being against other knights. For instance, at the Battle of Terrabil: "...and King Arthur slew that day twenty knights and maimed forty." The named heroes and kings tend to seek each other out on the battlefield, and so forth.