Dealing with Manors

[YwainDigsLions]

I don't think my prospective players are all that interested in manor maintenance, so I want to keep it simple. I plan to use the Winter Phase chart from GPC and giving PKs the following income (per manor):

Impoverished £2, Poor £5, Ordinary £10, Rich £13, Superlative £15, Spectacular £20

My question is: How much of that income should be deducted for family upkeep? Is that already considered in the roll? Does it depend on if the knight is married and how many kids they have? Should I stay with simplicity and just say it's pure profit?

[Tizun Thane]

• 6 £ for a normal upkeep, including close family (wife and children)
• 9 £ for a rich upkeep
• 12 £ and beyond

If you want to keep it simple, don't bother with harvest at all. Actually, the rules included in Book of Estate are very simple.

[Morien]

1 hour ago, YwainDigsLions said:

Should I stay with simplicity and just say it's pure profit?

Absolutely not. As Tizun Thane said, don't bother with harvest at all. The rules in BotE give you £1 per £10 (average manor) per year that you can spend as you wish. The rest goes to supporting the family and the retainers and the servants.

If you ARE doing harvest, I highly recommend keeping it simple. £1d6-3 per manor works well enough, and I'd even allow Stewardship successes to add £1 to that. If you get less than £0, then the family drops to Poor, unless you can make up the lack with loot or hoarded treasure. This keeps the land producing some (usually), but not so much as to make loot immaterial.

[Atgxtg]

The simple method is the one given the the Book of the Estate. What it boils down to is atypical manor produces £10 in income but expenses eat up £9, leaving the knight with £1 in discretionary funds each year. The reason why it costs 9 is because estate factors in for the servants at the manor and such. There is a detailed breakdown, but all you really need to know is that the knight ends up with £1.

If you want a knight to have more that £1/year extra income then you could assume he had an improvement or two and might make £11, £12 or £13 per year, for a surplus of £2, £3 or £4 per year, respectively. After than a Knight generally needs a special source of income or another manor. 

For a simple random method, you could roll  £2d6+3 for the harvest,  instead of the flat  £10,  with Stewardship adding another  £ and then subtract  £9 for expenses.

Note that rich, superlative etc does not mean that the knight has extra money, but that he generally has less, since he is spending extra on his upkeep to live a better lifestyle. This kinda means that rich and superlative knights have multiple manors or some additional source of income, such as an officer's position. So if a PK wants to live as a rich knight he is spending another  £3 to do so, not earning another £3. 

 

 

 

 

 

[YwainDigsLions]

 

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

 

Note that rich, superlative etc does not mean that the knight has extra money, but that he generally has less, since he is spending extra on his upkeep to live a better lifestyle. This kinda means that rich and superlative knights have multiple manors or some additional source of income, such as an officer's position. So if a PK wants to live as a rich knight he is spending another  £3 to do so, not earning another £3. 

 

Does that reflect itself in new clothes, or just in the bonuses they get to childbirth tables and the like?

Also, what should a PK's caretaker's Stewardship skill be set at?

Edited August 29, 2019 by YwainDigsLions

[Atgxtg]

50 minutes ago, YwainDigsLions said:

Does that reflect itself in new clothes, or just in the bonuses they get to childbirth tables and the like?

Yes and no. A PK does get a new set of clothes each year, but the income spent to live as a rich or superlative knight is just cost of living expenses, and doesn't come with any noteworthy tangible possession. If a PK wants new clothes or jewelry or a fancy pavilion he has to buy them separatly. 

 

50 minutes ago, YwainDigsLions said:

Also, what should a PK's caretaker's Stewardship skill be set at?

Depends on who does it and how experienced they are. Typically the wife does this, but sometimes there is a steward, especially if a knight has multiple holdings. 

Generally a young Steward starts off with a skill of 2d6 and an older, experienced one with 2d6+5. As this would the the character key skill it would go up 1 point a year until it reached 15 (the 1 in 6 chance until 20 per Book of the Entrounage).  So a new steward probably isn't that good at first but should improve quickly. 

 

But if your players aren't into land at all, you could just skip it all and give them the 1 per year.

 

 

[YwainDigsLions]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

A PK does get a new set of clothes each year...If a PK wants new clothes...he has to buy them separatly.

You seem to be saying 2 different things here.

[Morien]

By RAW (KAP 5.2, p.130), the best set of the PK's clothing is halved in value.

PERSONALLY, I use that rule ONLY if a PK has gone out of their way to buy especially fancy stuff and not having the Grade of Maintenance to back it up. In short, if the PK has Ordinary maintenance, then he is able to replace/repair his £1 clothing, no questions asked.

By RAW, higher grade of maintenance gives bonuses to childbirth and child survival.

PERSONALLY, I toss those modifiers out. The peasants seem to be breeding just fine. And if you use the Family Survival from ESTATE, that is already calibrated with historical data, so it works without the modifiers. However, if you are using KAP 5.2 p. 131, then by all means, give everyone at least +1 and for god's sake, stop rolling at 7 years old. 10% chance of death for 15 years = 20.6% survival rate, 1 in 5. Add the huge childbirth mortality for the mother, and you can forget about having the heiress you spent most of the campaign pursuing giving you any heirs. (Can you guess what my number 1 & 2 pet peeves with KAP 5.2 are?)

So how do I PERSONALLY deal with grade of maintenance? Easy, it is just conspicuous consumption, full stop. Worth Glory, nothing else.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Morien

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, YwainDigsLions said:

You seem to be saying 2 different things here.

Yes I do. 

Let me try that again.

1. Each year a knight gets a new set of clothes for free. These new clothes are fit for his station but not especially fancy or expensive. 
2. A knights old clothes are reduced in value by half each year due to a combination of going out of style and wear and tear. 
3. Living as a rich or superlative knight does not include extra sets of clothing or significantly better clothing than that for a typical knight, jewelry or other fancy gear.
4. If a knight wants something better than the default, he must dip into his own funds.

So for example if a knight was living as a superlative knight, he'd get the various modifiers for survival and childbirth, as well as a few extra points of glory each year per conscious consumption, but he wouldn't be able to spend that libra on a set of silk clothing, a new charger, or a gold ring. They would be separate purchases.  Basically the knight is eating better and buying more expensive and better gear, but it is spread out over the year.

In modern day terms it would be like eating at expensive restaurants, staying at better resorts, being able to afford better heathcare and so forth. A person could by a designer suit, a Ferrari, or a Rolex watch, but they wouldn't affect his and his families health and standard of living. 

 

Edited August 30, 2019 by Atgxtg

[fulk]

13 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

1. living as a rich or superlative knight does not include extra sets of clothing or significantly better clothing than that for a typical knight, jewelry or other fancy gear.

 

I would be inclined to disagree.  Clothing is just part of your annual budget.  If you live at a Superlative level, you have Superlative clothing, which is replaced every year that you can maintain that level of spending. Display is important and clothing is a primary form of display.

One could obviously limit this effect to degradable items.  So an ermine-lined cloak is part of your Superlative clothing budget, but a gold ring, which would retain value, is not.  Alternatively, a gold ring could be part of the Superlative budget but go out of style over time also losing value, even though it's gold.  Depends on how much tracking of small stuff you want to do. 

We could argue about whether or not simple knights are allowed to wear superlative clothing.  There were certainly various sumptuary laws and traditions about who could wear what.  So perhaps your simple vassal knight isn't allow to wear an ermine-lined cloak.  Then I suppose one could limit the value of clothing actually worn.  

I'm not a huge fan of minor book-keeping, so I prefer to let most that the small stuff just fall in the annual budget and assume that the knight has the same value of clothes each year that his spending is the same.

 

 

 

[Atgxtg]

5 minutes ago, fulk said:

I would be inclined to disagree.  Clothing is just part of your annual budget.  If you live at a Superlative level, you have Superlative clothing, which is replaced every year that you can maintain that level of spending. Display is important and clothing is a primary form of display.

Yes, but ti wouldn't be fancy enough to give the additional bonuses that clothing worth £1 or more would give during a feast.

5 minutes ago, fulk said:

I'm not a huge fan of minor book-keeping, so I prefer to let most that the small stuff just fall in the annual budget and assume that the knight has the same value of clothes each year that his spending is the same.

Me too. As far as the day to day stuff goes, it's easier just to handle it in abstract. My point here was to show that a knight who is living at the superlative level can't use the libra devoted to doing so to purchase anything that gives a significant, measurable bonus.

[Morien]

28 minutes ago, fulk said:

I'm not a huge fan of minor book-keeping, so I prefer to let most that the small stuff just fall in the annual budget and assume that the knight has the same value of clothes each year that his spending is the same.

 

19 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Me too. As far as the day to day stuff goes, it's easier just to handle it in abstract. My point here was to show that a knight who is living at the superlative level can't use the libra devoted to doing so to purchase anything that gives a significant, measurable bonus.

Me three.

As for the measurable bonus... depends. As I stated above, I would much rather just have the standard of living (above ordinary) as conspicuous consumption rather than give any child or horse related bonuses. That being said, I would be totally happy giving an APP bonus or a Courtly skill bonus if you are dressed well. One thing I have been thinking off and on is limiting the Glory Skill Bonus by the extra £1 you pay for your standard of living. So if you are living as a Rich knight, you'd get +3 to +5 if you have the Glory to back it up. If you are dressed like a scruffy mercenary knight, no bonus for you!

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Morien said:

One thing I have been thinking off and on is limiting the Glory Skill Bonus by the extra £1 you pay for your standard of living. So if you are living as a Rich knight, you'd get +3 to +5 if you have the Glory to back it up. If you are dressed like a scruffy mercenary knight, no bonus for you!

We've considered making the price cumulative. So a +1 only costs £1 but a +2 cost £2 more and so on.  The idea is that it would get expensive. But we'd also make clothing and Jewely separate modifiers- that would make clothing worth the investment.

I also recall chatting with Khanwulf about the idea of scaling the modifiers  with glory somehow, but would need to hunt for the thread. The idea was that a 1 libra dress that wows the local knights out in Cambria probably won't be that impressive in London or Camelot. I think we were using your idea for the marriage table in Book of Entourage as the inspiration. So a knight with 10,000 glory would need to spend £11 to get another +1 and so on.

 

Another possiblity for those who want to simplify would be to just link the APP bouns to the standard of living. 

Just some thoughts, nothing really worked out. 

Edited August 30, 2019 by Atgxtg