Alterations to Core Rules from Supplements

[creativehum]

The Book of Records bumps the Trait total need for the Chivalry Bonus to 96.

I recently read that the Book of the Estate alters the child survival rolls from the first 14 years of a child's life to the first seven. (A big change!)

Is there any compilation of rules adjustments to the core rules anywhere? Or at least an index of such rules so people who wanted to find certain adjustments/improvements could know what thought had been put into the game since the last printing of the core rules?

I'm not talking about whole new sets of rules that replace other rules. So, of course Book of the Estate replaces the economics of the core rules, and Book of Battle has a whole new battle system. I'm talking about tweaks the rules as could be found and used in the core rules that improve them in some way or reflect later thought in design for the core rules.

The key for me is keeping the game as simple as possible, focusing on the adventures. Getting too deep into history or estate management isn't my thing. But if a consensus has built about how to improve the core game experience (better survival rates for children seems to be a thing everyone talks about) then I am interested in that.

Thanks!

Edited September 21, 2019 by creativehum

[Atgxtg]

Knights & Ladies gives chargen rules for characters of other cultures and lands, and also modifies the standard characters. Each culture now has a skill, passion, or trait that is unique to that culture. It also gives stats for some new weapons and horses (although the horse stats exist in earlier supplements). It also adds several more religions to the game.

Estate and Warlord give glory awards for obtaining various ranks of nobility. 

Estate and Warlord also give information on playing officers.

Estate also differentiate Loyalty between Homage (his primary Liege Lord) and Fealty (and other Lord that he might owe Loyalty to), but that only comes up in cases where a knight gets holdings from multiple lords.

 

Entourage gives chargen rules for generating squire characters, instead of knights, and they differ from similar rules presented in Knight & Ladies. 

the economics system in Estate doesn't really replace the economics system in the core rules, it replaces the one given in Manor. In a nutshell the one from Estate just means that a knight gets £1 in discretionary funds to spend each year. 

Feasts gives rules for running a feast, and adds cards with various events on them. 

Sires gives a detailed timeline for knights grandfathers going back to 439, and adds the Heritage Passion. This is a strong attachment to a knight's holding and can become a factor during those times where PKs lose thier estate to invades or are forced into exile. 

Edited September 21, 2019 by Atgxtg

[creativehum]

I just realized, perhaps, a better way to ask what I'm looking for.

If there were to be a KAP 6th edtion, what rules/adjustments would be incorporated into the 6th edition that alter the game in the most minimal way? That is, what is tweaked or altered already in the core rules, rather than wholesale added?

Requiring Child Survival rolls only for the first 7 years (rather than 14) is a tweak to existing rules. It is not a new set of rules added.

 

Atgxtg, thank you for your reply.

[Morien]

16 minutes ago, creativehum said:

Requiring Child Survival rolls only for the first 7 years (rather than 14) is a tweak to existing rules. It is not a new set of rules added.

That is my suggested tweak to fix the brutal 20% survival rate in current KAP 5.2 rules.

It is actually NOT what BotEstate is doing, which rolling family survival for each NPC in the family, regardless of age. It replaces the Child Survival, as it also covers children. What BotEstate does do is to bring the survival rate of children to about 70%, which is pretty much what my above tweak does, too.

So same end result (as far as kids are concerned), but a different execution.

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, creativehum said:

I just realized, perhaps, a better way to ask what I'm looking for.

If there were to be a KAP 6th edtion, what rules/adjustments would be incorporated into the 6th edition that alter the game in the most minimal way? That is, what is tweaked or altered already in the core rules, rather than wholesale added?

Oh, in that case I'd say:

Character generation from Knights & Ladies.  KAP4 had rules for random chargen and knights from other lands and cultures. They wouldn't need to be the full random rules either, but just allowing the standard method for knights from the standard non-Cmric cultures (Roman, Picts, Saxons, and Irish).

The basic economic model from Estate, since it is very basic, requires no additional rolls and shows how many servants and warriors a typical knight has. For the mos tpart it means 1 librium to spend a year. 

DV values for fortification from Estate. They are similar to the ones in the GPC, but give you stuff that scale down to knights, such as fortified manor houses.

 

Longbow and other new weapon stats.

Update armor to the newer standards, which means going back to 6 point leather and the addtion of the gambeson (4 points, worn under other armors and included in thier values), and the haubergeon (a short mail coat worth 8 points).

The new family survival tables from Estate. 

Squire and Wife rules, and the revised marriage table from Entourage. The marriage and survival tables are real improvements as they they stop the "black widower" approach where

wives die in childbirth every decade,  and PKs keep remarrying, picking up more and more manors. 

 

I think the above is the stuff that is easy to implement without actually changing much. Most of it would mean swapping out a table or two or altering a paragraph or adding a couple of things. The expanded chargen would be the only stuff that would take up significant space, but even that wouldn't add more than a couple of pages per culture, like in KAP 4.

 

Uther is mostly background info for the GM, as is Warlord. Armies is just pages of NPC stats (of dubious quality).

 

 

The only books that really change the rules are Battle (which has a new battle system), Manor (which has a new economic system that is highly problematic), and Knights & Ladies (which adds a lot to chargen). Most of the other stuff is just minor tweaks that can be incorporated the game easily enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, creativehum said:

Atgxtg, thank you for your reply.

You're welcome. Most of the stuff in the supplements can be incorporated into the core rules easily enough. That's why some of us has stated that we's like to see the rules revised to be internally consistent. One economic system instead of four, that sort of thing. 

[YwainDigsLions]

If you're not married and have no children yet, should you also be getting an extra £2 that is usually spent on upkeep for them?

[Morien]

2 hours ago, YwainDigsLions said:

If you're not married and have no children yet, should you also be getting an extra £2 that is usually spent on upkeep for them?

No, since you need a Steward to oversee the manor (that takes the wife's £1).

If you are childless, too, then yes, you save the £1 normally spent on kids. Or you could be a typical medieval nobleman and use that to support your commoner leman and bastards...

[Morien]

BoK&L, p. 117: "Clothing that is worn all the time always loses one half its value each year. Although part of the annual upkeep of a knight and his family of any rank includes repairs, etc., to maintain clothes appropriate to their rank, it does not cover the cost for repairing fancier clothing."

So it gets rid of this rule (KAP 5.2, p. 130): "For all grades of maintenance, reduce the character’s best suit of clothing to half its previous value." IF the best suit is appropriate to his rank. (My rule of thumb is that Poor = £0.5 clothing, Ordinary = £1 clothing, Rich = £2 clothing, Superlative = £4 clothing. Barons and such might have even higher than this.)