Chivalry Bonus 96 or 80?

[YwainDigsLions]

I just bought the Book of Records - Knights to make character creation a bit faster. But whereas the 5.2 rulebook says you need the 6 Chivalry Traits to equal 80 or higher to get the bonus, the BoR says 96. Should I go with the core book, since it came out later? 

[Morien]

Normally, that would be the way to go. However, I think the Book of Records has been updated with the Word of Greg... Greg posted on the old Nocturnal Forum and specifically said that the Chivalry bonus should have been 96 all along. It was a mistake in calculating the points, IIRC. All religious bonuses required 5 traits at 16+ = 80+. But Chivalric bonus has SIX traits, not five. So 6 * 16 = 96.

[creativehum]

Greg wanted being a Chivalrous Knight to be A Big Deal. 

With the numbers set as they are in the various editions of King Arthur Pendragon a knight can probably become Chivalrous at values of 13 or 14 in some of the Traits. For some folks that doesn't feel right.

Ultimately it is switch for how you want your game to play -- easier or harder to become Chivalrous. The rules say one thing, a supplement says another thing, and a single post from Greg years ago  says he wanted to change the rules but never did.

Pick what works best for you.

[Atgxtg]

On 8/24/2019 at 6:06 PM, YwainDigsLions said:

I just bought the Book of Records - Knights to make character creation a bit faster. But whereas the 5.2 rulebook says you need the 6 Chivalry Traits to equal 80 or higher to get the bonus, the BoR says 96. Should I go with the core book, since it came out later? 

From what I've read 96 is the current threshold. According to Greg the 80 was an error based on the idea of five traits x16 =80 instead of the six chivalrous traits (6x16=96). Greg stated that he didn't notice the error until after 5th edition. 

Now one thing that I will point out is that it tends to be much easier for most player knights to get the chivalry total up to 80 in KAP5 than it was in previous editions, especially if you are using the Knights & Ladies supplement for character creation. Most Knights from Logres rolled up with K&L can get 80 points during character generation. So if you are running in 5th edition (including  5.1 and 5.2) you probably should go with the 96. 

 

13 hours ago, creativehum said:

Greg wanted being a Chivalrous Knight to be A Big Deal. 

With the numbers set as they are in the various editions of King Arthur Pendragon a knight can probably become Chivalrous at values of 13 or 14 in some of the Traits. For some folks that doesn't feel right.

According to Greg it was a math error based on the idea of there being five chivalrous traits  when there are actually six.  I think the thing is that in KAP5 or later it is easy  for most PKs to get a total of 80 points during character creation, while it has required a bit of work and/or luck before. 

13 hours ago, creativehum said:

Ultimately it is switch for how you want your game to play -- easier or harder to become Chivalrous. The rules say one thing, a supplement says another thing, and a single post from Greg years ago  says he wanted to change the rules but never did.

It was more than a single post, it was an entire thread, and he  talked about making the bonus more of a matter of degree. I think the reason why they used 96 in the PDF was that it was an official change, but the full revision hasn't been published in anything yet. 

[creativehum]

For anyone who wants to read the thread it is here.

nothing was really resolved on the matter. But as Atgxtg states ther is a list of reasons why it was 80 and why Greg wanted it to be 96.

All sorts of things are discussed in the threat: the fact that Pagan Knights will have a harder time of becoming Chivalrous at 96; that the orginal bonus for being Chivalrous in KAP 1sst ed was simply Glory with no magical bonus (thus making Chivalry more important starting with KAP3; that Greg was thinking about all sorts of ideas for Chivalry, how to attain the bonus, what the bonus meant, but none of those were sorted out;  that the random creation of early editions (as Atgxtg pointed out) made it harder to gain Chivalry out of the gate than the point buy systems of later editions; that using BoKL made it even easier to get it than KAP 5.x (and not everyone uses -- or should use -- BoKL, so it gets kind of complicated using it as a standard).

In other words, changing the method of Chivalry bonus has several implications for anyone's game, and those implications weren't settled. 

You can grab a bunch of ideas and thoughts floated in the thread. And after that, as I said above, every GM will have to make their own decisions.

Edited August 26, 2019 by creativehum

[SirUkpyr]

While I agreed with Greg's basic idea that being recognized as "Chivalrous" should be more difficult than reaching the *80 threshold in 6 traits* - I did not think it should require all of the traits to be *at* 16, especially as we have chivalric knights who were pagan in canon.

I set the threshold at 90 points amongst all 6 traits, and it seems to have worked out fairly well.

[creativehum]

1 hour ago, SirUkpyr said:

While I agreed with Greg's basic idea that being recognized as "Chivalrous" should be more difficult than reaching the *80 threshold in 6 traits* - I did not think it should require all of the traits to be *at* 16, especially as we have chivalric knights who were pagan in canon.

I set the threshold at 90 points amongst all 6 traits, and it seems to have worked out fairly well.

Good to hear!

I wasn't sure how it would play. But with your success I'll run it this way when I get a chance to run the game.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, SirUkpyr said:

While I agreed with Greg's basic idea that being recognized as "Chivalrous" should be more difficult than reaching the *80 threshold in 6 traits* - I did not think it should require all of the traits to be *at* 16, especially as we have chivalric knights who were pagan in canon.

You don't need all 16s to get a 96, just the total. Of course 96 does set the bar rather high.

3 hours ago, SirUkpyr said:

I set the threshold at 90 points amongst all 6 traits, and it seems to have worked out fairly well.

90 should work out. It makes it obtainable while still requiring an effort.  I honestly think 80 wan't a problem until KAP5 with British Christianity and the Logres trait bonuses from Knights & Ladies. 

 

From what a read, it looks like Greg wanted to have multiple thresholds for the bonuses, with lesser bonuses and glory awards, as opposed to the all or nothing nature of things now. It could have been interesting if it were something like:

80+ = +1 Armor of Honor, 25 Glory/year

88+ = +2 Armor of Honor, 50 Glory/year

96+ = +3 Armor of Honor, 100 Glory/year

I don't know how far along he got with this or if they have his notes, but it looks interesting. I guess the religious bonuses were going to be be "tiered" as well.