Wolfpack Six

Yeah, I can see swords being better against unarmored targets. I was thinking more in terms of weight. Would a club weigh as much as a quarterstaff and, thus have the same degree of crushing effectiveness against mail? Maybe having it do the same damage as a mace (one-handed) is the way to go, as you suggest.

No, I don't think it is. The Arthurian setting is anywhere from Dark Ages or even late Roman to late Medieval, at least in terms of the technology that is represented. I don't think I've seen it put anywhere else in literature or in film, though I admit that I probably havent read or seen it all. Still, no dinosaurs, no cars, and no laser guns or space ships. Lots of horses and swords and such. So, I'm gonna go with Dark Ages to Medieval.

Well, I guess that's your point. Me, I'm fine with experimenting with the rules to see if you can make them more realistic, then see what the impact would be in how things play out. I've always enjoyed "What if?" type scenarios. You mean Dark Age-knights didn't wear plate armor? You mean Excalibur and Le Morte d'Arthur aren't real? My whole childhood is ruined... Bullet-proof plate would only be bullet-proof under certain circumstances. It wasn't a perfect solution. For instance, the angle of impact often influences whether or not a bullet will penetrate armor. There's also the fact that plate armor has weak points, typically at joints, that were more vulnerable to penetration. So, if plate armor doesn't always stop bullets in KAP, that doesn't mean that plate armor is not depicted realistically. ...If you don't want to port them back to the core setting. This would seem to be a matter of personal preference. As I understand it, the setting for the RAW is Dark Ages through Late Medieval. (Which would include the Robin Hood and Knights Templar genres, come to think of it.) Tweaking them in an attempt to reflect a little more realism, to me, isn't a bad thing, at least conceptually. How well it would work in practice would probably depend on one's expectations.

Well, I don't. And the reason I don't is because while I like the underlying rules system of KAP, and I understand that they were designed primarily to support the Arthurian genre, I'm not particularly wed to that genre and can see other applications. For example, there's the Charlemagne game which clearly uses the KAP rules as its inspiration. Not the same, exact game, but very similar. I'm sure others have thought or wondered about the same thing. Also, as far as experimenting with more realistic weapons rules goes, I think the GPC does that to an increasing degree as it adds better melee weapons, more effective armor, and ultimately more lethal missile weapons (e.g., longbow & arquebus). The whole GPC itself is a sort of chronicle of the rise and fall of chivalry.

Incidentally, @Username, I think the idea of a glaive/war scythe is pretty neat: if I understand the concept right, it's a weapon designed to be more effective against leather armor, like maces are more effective against mail, hammers are more effective against plate, and axes are more effective against shields. I don't see that idea as rocking the boat at all. I think the only thing I would say is that Glaives are about the same length as Halberds, so perhaps they should get the same +5 bonus versus mounted opponents.

I've seen at least one of those videos. They're pretty good. Makes sense to me, which is why I think that the game ought to simulate reach in some simple, reasonable manner. It doesn't sound like much of a big deal -- my weapon is longer than yours, har har har -- until I hit you before you can hit me and you're out of the fight or dead. Then it's a big deal. So, if I were writing the rules, I think I'd make the special benefit of spears would be the potential for a spear-armed combatant to strike another combatant with a shorter weapon. How to simulate that, to me, without getting too complex (which I admit is often a matter of taste), would be the real question. <snip> Well, maybe I should say that I think the idea of a sword breaking a non-sword on a tie is more believable than a non-sword just spontaneously breaking on a fumble. Anyhow, I agree that swords shouldn't break non-swords all that often, either. Maybe on some combination like the sword-wielder gets a critical and the non-sword-wielder fumbles. Or maybe on a tie, but the sword-wielder also rolls a critical. It's probably a terminology thing with me, but "fumble" shouldn't mean "I break my own weapon"; fumble, to me, means I drop my weapon or hit myself, or I hit something else I wasn't aiming at. I'm perfectly fine with making the game tougher for the players so long as the rules are fair and reasonable. As much as I like the KAP rules and understand that they were written to support a specific genre, I wouldn't necessarily hesitate to change a rule that doesn't make sense to me just because "But if you change the rules, my knight won't get to benefit from them!"

I think clubs definitely belong in the same category as maces, and I understand your rationale to go with the Farmers' club rather than the Giants'. Not sure how I'd do it, myself. Maybe make clubs the same as swords, but not have the same durability. Well, I've also seen reference to a "Great Club", too (in BoA, I think), which following the KAP pattern would be a two-handed club, IMO. I'm thinking a club would be something like a policeman's billy club while a great club would be more like a baseball bat. Anyhow, a quarterstaff would be a two-handed weapon; but I don't know that it would be particularly effective against mail armor. So, maybe give it the two-handed weapon damage bonus, but not the bonus against mail armor. I realize this is delving into house-ruling, etc. The whole point of a spear is reach, IMO. A spear can keep a combatant armed with a shorter weapon out of reach while the spear-armed combatant strikes his opponent. So, I think what I would do is have combatants fighting against spears have to fight defensively until they're successful (representing deflecting the spear point out of the way), then allow them to attack normally. And that's really tied to the durability factor, IMO. A sword is simply more reliable, in-game, RAW. I like the idea of swords breaking other weapons on a tie, but other weapons breaking on a fumble has never made any sense to me. While I can see dropping my weapon on a fumble, or even striking myself in the case of a flail, I find it a pretty big leap of logic trying to get behind the idea that my weapon (e.g., axe or mace) would actually break if I'm a klutz in combat. (I know... Another tangent...)

Username and Morien, thanks to the both of you. Username, where is the Quarterstaff referenced? Is that something you made up?

I suppose I'm one of the players who cares. As far as the question of why composite bows' ranges are low compared to longbows', it's probably because of an oversimplification of the three types of bows. It could also be a perhaps intuitive approach to assigning ranges to the bows: the basic self bows have the lowest because they're the simplest/smallest/lowest draw weight; the composite bows are a little better because they're about the same size as self bows but they're better made (recurve shape & more than one material) and so their draw weight is a little heavier giving them a longer range than self bows; and longbows have the highest because they're larger and have the greatest draw weight. Just my $0.02. I don't see anything necessarily wrong with this gradation. At the same time, I like the idea of rating bows according to draw weight, and tying their ranges and damage potential to that range. I also like the idea of a strength requirement; but I think that begs the question, then, why not have a strength requirement for all weapons -- i.e., including melee weapons?

Hello all, I was going through my KAP sources working on my own weapon summary when I got to thinking about maces and morning stars... Here's a basic summary of the three mace-like weapons that I found: Mace (KAP5.2, p. 110) : +1d6 damage vs. mail armor; 1-handed; breaks on fumble Morning Star (KAP5.2, p. 203) : +1d6 damage vs. all targets, +1d6 damage vs. mail armor; 2-handed; no shield; breaks on fumble Great Mace (BoKL, p. 118): +1d6 damage vs. mail armor; 2-handed; no shield; breaks on fumble The standard mace is pretty straightforward. The benefit is that it hits harder against opponents in mail armor. Plus, it's one-handed, so you can use it with a shield. As far as the morning star and great mace go, the way I see it, there's no point to using a great mace. Both the morning star and great mace are two-handed weapons, so you can't use them with a shield; plus they both do +1d6 vs. opponents in mail armor. But, whereas the morning star gets an additional +1d6 damage vs. all opponents for being two-handed, the great mace does not. So, my first question is: Why bother using a great mace? What is the qualitative difference in game mechanics that would make a great mace an attractive option? A great mace does the same damage as a standard mace, gets the same bonus vs. mail armor, and breaks on a fumble just as the standard mace does... But you can't use a great mace with a shield. Why include the great mace as a weapon? Using the RAW, I wouldn't bother with a great mace and just use a morning star if I wanted a harder-hitting mace-like weapon. * * * * * My second question is probably way easier... Is there a summary of all the weapon types available in KAP? Right now, it looks like you need to look in the KAP 5.2 rulebook, the GPC, and BoKL to see them all. (I think. I don't have all the sources, so maybe there's other weapons in other supplements.) Thanks, WP6

Thanks, Morien.

Greetings, I came across a passing reference, recently, on an errata sheet for the Book of Knights and Ladies that mentions an option of separating helm protection and body protection in terms of Armor Reduction. However, I haven't been able to find the option itself in the source material, either in the BoKL or in the KAP5 rulebook itself. Does anyone know if there is such an option, and where it might be referenced? Thanks, WP6

Thanks. I'll do some digging around in the sources you mentioned. Since this is all based on "pseudo-history", I like to see how it matches up with what the few actual sources have to say when things happened and just see how it all fits together. As much as I enjoy playing the games themselves, I enjoy reading them because I appreciate the creativity that goes into designing them; so I enjoy learning what I can about why the author(s) made the creative decisions that they did.

This is really good. It has a true "power comes at a cost" theme to it. With HP a known quantity, serious damage not something that can be taken lightly, and healing a generally slow process, it seems to me that it would cause a player with a spell-casting character to not just leap into the fray and start blasting away with magic, or even heal another character without weighing the cost. I am totally ripping this off in my homebrew. Thanks again for the idea!

Thanks. Very good insights.

Someone else (cannot recall off the top of my head) mentioned a homebrew system with magic as a skill which costs hit points to use. I dont know all the details, but I thought the idea was brilliant, simple, thematic, and elegant. You could probably extrapolate from the basic concept.

Hello, Been wondering about this for a while. Greg Stafford, in the GPC, has Arthur's final battle happening in the year 565 (GPC, p. 374), yet the Annales Cambriae has it at either 537 or 539, about a quarter of a century later. Did he leave behind any Author's notes or some other source of clues that would explain the discrepancy? He has clearly treated the subject with passionate, painstaking detail so I can't imagine it to have been done inadvertently. Thanks, WP6

Hello, Is it stated anywhere explicitly what the "Courtly" skills are? Aside from "Knightly", "Non-Knightly", and "Knowledge", are there any other defined skill categories? Thanks, WP6

Maybe the thing to do is to use the starting value for Sword, Axe, or Mace, and allow players to use that for all those skills at the beginning of the game (as a sort of default level); but as their characters gain experience using each weapon individually, they will improve separately.

By RAW, 0. The more I think about it, the more I think perhaps using the Berserk rules is a decent option. While you get a +10 modifier (albeit to a zero-level skill), you have to let the enemy attack you first, unopposed; and if he hits, he can damage you, knock you out, or kill you before you got to strike. I suppose that could represent the lack of nuance in fighting with an unfamiliar weapon. If your character survives the encounter, I'd think that would be a noteworthy success (surviving a lethal encounter fighting with an unfamiliar weapon) and he'd get an experience check. Rolling higher than zero gets that character to a "1" in that particular skill; therefore, he's no longer unskilled. Seems like a workable solution.

But what skill would the Uncontrolled (Berserk?) attack be based on?

Hello, Let's say there's a knight who gets into a fight. Doesn't really matter with whom. This knight is a reasonably accomplished swordsman (Sword skill 16), but for some reason he doesn't have his sword with him. There is an axe nearby, but our knight unfortunately has no Axe skill. Can he use the axe as a weapon, even if he doesn't have the Axe skill? Is there a/what is the rule that addresses situations such as these? Thanks, WP6

Hello again, In keeping with the question of other uses for the Pendragon system, does anyone have any experiences, positive or negative, with the Saxons! or the Land of Giants sourcebooks? (I figured that since these sourcebooks were actually designed for Pendragon, this question deserved its own topic. There are other similar sourcebooks; these are just the ones with which I'm familiar.) Anything particular good or bad about them? Do they work well within the system, or do they strain it to the point of breaking? Thanks, WP6

How about more simple, "traditional" dungeon crawl-type adventures in the Pendragon system? Any examples of those?

This is tangential, but the idea of having a magic system where individual spells are used as skills is pretty clever. How did you limit amount of uses per spell?