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Vassals of Count Roderick


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Hi, all! Building out a first-time Pendragon campaign as the GM (it's a one-to-one, if that matters) and feeling a little stuck trying to conceptualize my PK's peer group. 5.2 is pretty specific that the Earl can call on 75 knights, but I'm struggling with the breakdown - it seems unlikely all 75 are his household knights, but possible? If they aren't, wouldn't his bannerets have some say in their deployment?

Anyway, can anyone who either has more supplements or more experience with the lore than I do give me an idea of the following:

How many bannerets, roughly, answer to Count Roderick in 485?  If they command 8 to 12 knights each, do those count against the 75? That seems to take up a big proportion. 

How many vassal knights does he have? The twenty starting manors, more or less, or...?

How many household knights? 

I'm sure this is a common thread, but a little searching hasn't turned up an exact match (the thread on manors was instructive, though). Help is much appreciated!

 

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Okay, here is roughly how things work.

  1. A liege lord has to keep around 80% of his manors in order to keep all the glory and status associated with his title. So if a Early has 75 knights, then 60 of them would be "household knights" (more of that later) and the remaining 15 would be landed knights with their own manors. That 15 is sort of the upper limit to landed knights. At any given time he might have fewer landed knights, due to knights dying without a male heir.
  2. Now back to those household knights. All 60 are not following the Count/Earl around all the time. For both logistical reasons (mouths to feed) and for security, these knights will often be assigned duties away from the Earl such as border patrol, garrisoning a fort or castle, or even overseeing one of the many manors that  comprise the Earl's personal holding.
  3. With only 15 or so manors to "give away" it is unlikely that Count Roderick would have any bannerets, as just one would gobble up the majority of the available manors that could be used to reward loyal household knights. It comes down to if it is better for the Liege to make one knight extremely happy or a dozen knights very happy. Plus a bannerte knight (or estate holder in latter books) would be one of the most powerful men in the county, and thus the Count would need to be esecpially sure of his loyalty.
  4. If there were any banneretts in the county, then their knights would be counted as part of the army. Basically that's the whole point of having vassal knights-they are part of your army.

Note also that depending on the book, and what Peroid you are in the number of manors and knights has changed somewhat, but usually falls between 75-150. Some of this was due to some rethinking spawned by better economic models in latter supplements, and the rest due to the population increasing over time, leading to more serfs available to work more land.

That's a quick overview of this. Basically, just being a landed knight is a big deal, and being able to pass a manor down to a son is an even bigger deal. The landed knight is essentially set for life-as long as his liege lord is still around. Which is/was the whole point.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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Thank you! That's really helpful, and clarifies some things for me. The extent to which being a landed knight is huge was pretty clear in the book, but the proportions were less so. And yeah, that the bannerets' vassals would also serve Roderick was clear enough, but I was wrestling with the chain of command.

A couple of follow ups.

1) Is Salisbury meant to be a comparatively small county then, or are bannerets/estate holders meant to be comparatively rare, or is it more that Earls are unlikely to be served by them compared to more powerful nobles?

2) So 60+ household knights aren't unusual for an Earl? A particularly well-landed and armed nobleman might make it into the triple digits of household knights?

 

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1. Estate holders are rare like Atgxtg illustrated, and they are almost always direct vassals of the King rather than of an intermediate noble.

2. In Book of the Warlord, Count Salisbury has additional lands outside of Salisbury, too, roughly doubling his available knights. But yes, 100+ knights us rare with only a few great nobles managing it. 

As for the number of knights if you are using just KAP 5.2, I would not be too upset about having 75 household knights and about 25 vassal manors (the 20 available for PKs and a few left over for heiresses).

Heiresses by the way are not intended for freshly knighted young lads but as rewards after years of great heroics and proving yourself to the Earl. Greg also scaled back their lands given how much more rare multimanor knights are. See my advice thread in this forum and links there but roughly one manor each is plenty, and maybe the biggest prize with two.

Edited by Morien
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20 minutes ago, IlluminatedSeraph said:

Thank you! That's really helpful, and clarifies some things for me. The extent to which being a landed knight is huge was pretty clear in the book, but the proportions were less so. And yeah, that the bannerets' vassals would also serve Roderick was clear enough, but I was wrestling with the chain of command.

A couple of follow ups.

1) Is Salisbury meant to be a comparatively small county then, or are bannerets/estate holders meant to be comparatively rare, or is it more that Earls are unlikely to be served by them compared to more powerful nobles?

No, it's actually a bit larger than the norm. Salisbury is actually on par with some Dukes and even King Cadwy, becuase Salsubry is a fertile plain. Roderick has about 14 eschilles (units) of knights under his command which vary from around 5-10 knights each over the course of the campaign.

The way it works out is that each manor in a holding produces about £10 for the knight holding it (it produces more to feed the peasants, pay taxes run the courts and so on) is expected to support one knight and two footmen for the liege lords army (plus a third footman for the king, but we don't need to worry about him). 

 

In Uther's time the entire army of Logres is around 2600 knight, and if I recall correctly, that's about a third  of the knights in Britain.

20 minutes ago, IlluminatedSeraph said:

2) So 60+ household knights aren't unusual for an Earl? A particularly well-landed and armed nobleman might make it into the triple digits of household knights?

Yes, because 80% of the knights are going to be "household" knights. It might be worth mentioning that a good portion of these are probably younger sons of vassal knights, especially second sons. 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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3 hours ago, IlluminatedSeraph said:

Thank you both so much!

Happy to help. :)

Now one thing I ought to warn you about is that GPC predates Book of the Warlord by quite a lot. So GPC has a lot more counts, each ruling a county, which is also what the original Salisbury write-up tended to assume. This actually makes Salisbury comparable to many of the other territorial counts, and smaller than some (such as Silchester, which is ruled by a Duke).

In Book of the Warlord, Greg decided to go with the more historical take of Norman England, where there were a lot more barons whose lands were more scattered around the Kingdom. King William the Conqueror did this to make it harder for his vassals to rebel, drawing from his own experiences as the Duke of Normandy and his own rebellions against the King of France! So suddenly, instead of having like 20 counts & dukes of about 100 knights per head ruling each individual county, you have almost 60 barons of about 30 knights per head, of whom half a dozen are Great Nobles (counts and dukes) of about 100 knights per head, all with lands scattered across Logres. Case in point, Count Salisbury having about 75 knights in Salisbury and same again from his lands in different counties. And his lands are atypically concentrated for a Great Noble!

So, anyway, the conclusion is that if you are not going to get Book of the Warlord or Book of Uther, then it is much easier to just go with the territorial nobles route in GPC and not worry about it.

Edited by Morien
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Since I'm at the design stage right now, which of those two models (more counts and dukes or the fewer barons with fewer knights) so you think make for more interesting and powerful storytelling opportunities while moving through the full Arthurian legend? I can see the immediate effect of making my PK a bigger player in the second model, but beyond that, I'd value your experience. 

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Personally, I prefer the GPC model of territorially concentrated, regional/county nobility. Granted, it doesn't matter much, since they are not really acting like independent entities for most of the campaign, save during Anarchy, and that is easily explained away with the breakdown of central authority (no king). However, it is the style that most of the adventures have been written, from GPC and before (3e and 4e regional and adventure books), so it is simply easier for the players and the GM to grasp who is doing what and so forth. It also allows more estate holders/bannerets and the like, since now the landholdings of the nobility are large enough that they can afford some of those by themselves. It is simply 'less messy' to GM.

Just as an example, it is much easier to understand the events in GPC, Lindsey and especially Cornwall being in semi-rebellion in the beginning, if they are regional powers. It is much harder to explain it (although possible, via his Ducal title) if a good chunk of Gorlois' land is in the rest of Logres, as shown in Book of the Warlord, and he is practically only the Sheriff of Tintagel in Cornwall. Similarly, a lot of the land in Cornwall ought to be held by barons who have lands also elsewhere in Logres and would lose those lands if they side against Uther. Simply, Excalibur's Peace makes MUCH more sense if you have Gorlois being the pre-eminent noble in the Duchy of Cornwall, leading an army composed of barons and knights who look up to him as their natural liege lord, rather than to the distant king of Logres who is more distracted with the Saxons than dealing with the threat of the Irish raids on Cornwall.

Also, one would think that Earl/Count Roderick in GPC would be much more interested in what is going on in Caerwent and Caercolun with Essex, since he has holdings there as well as in the neighboring counties. But no, in GPC, this is treated more as a sideshow, something happening 'over there', while Roderick's vassals (the PKs) do something else. This is of course explained by the fact that when GPC was written, Roderick did not have any lands there.

There is also a point that if there are no regional nobles, then the county identity from BoKL makes little sense. Why would you feel a kinship with other knights from the same county as you, when you probably belong to a dozen or so different baronies? Why would that county give you all similar views on life? However, if you are all vassals of the Count of X, then it makes sense that there would be that kind of regional pride and character.

As for the scale of the PK compared to the nobility, that is of course up to the GM and the group how large a scale they want. Many campaigns do not have even PK estate holders, while some have the PKs as Counts after the Battle of Badon. Whatever floats your boat. Nothing prevents the GM from establishing new baronies, either, if they want to reward PKs but not quite on the level of granting them a county each, although personally I feel that an estate is plenty already. But if the PKs are basic 1-manor vassal knights, it doesn't matter so much if the nobles are in general 30 manors or 100 manors: they are not going to outmuscle the barons/counts by themselves anyway.

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6 hours ago, IlluminatedSeraph said:

Since I'm at the design stage right now, which of those two models (more counts and dukes or the fewer barons with fewer knights) so you think make for more interesting and powerful storytelling opportunities while moving through the full Arthurian legend? I can see the immediate effect of making my PK a bigger player in the second model, but beyond that, I'd value your experience. 

The RTK knights drive the narrative, and most of them are not kings, great nobles, etc. By having too many great nobles, it distracts from them. In theory, the RTK is an equal brotherhood under the king and quite possibly a counterbalance to the magnates.

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7 hours ago, IlluminatedSeraph said:

Since I'm at the design stage right now, which of those two models (more counts and dukes or the fewer barons with fewer knights) so you think make for more interesting and powerful storytelling opportunities while moving through the full Arthurian legend? I can see the immediate effect of making my PK a bigger player in the second model, but beyond that, I'd value your experience. 

LOL! I think I prefer the Book of the Warlord/Estate version, but IMO it doesn't really matter much, since that is all "above" the player characters, especially early on. Double so since (**spoiler**) all the nobles are going to die soon anyway.

As GM you mostly get to decide how much the player knights get to rub elbows with anyone other than Count Roderick. So the political breakdown is only as important ans you want to make it. As vassal knights, they mostly have to go along with the Count. Later, as they get more experienced they might start to know stuff and be asked to give consul to the count of various matters, but new players will probably be kept busy figuring out the "roll high, but not too high" game mechanic. 

I'd advise that early on you should focus on the relationship with the Count. Especially if you and you players are new to Pendragon. Most players don't really understand how everything their knights have comes from their liege lords. I've got players who've played for years, and even they were not really aware of how it really worked, and were surprised by the problems they encounter when they fled into exile to avoid a king's wrath. 

 

 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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2 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

The RTK knights drive the narrative, and most of them are not kings, great nobles, etc. By having too many great nobles, it distracts from them. In theory, the RTK is an equal brotherhood under the king and quite possibly a counterbalance to the magnates.

Yep. Of course, some of the RTKs also are or become kings or great nobles. Such as King Uriens of Gorre or Duke Hervis of Anglia. I think Bleoberis ends up with Essex and Blanmore with Lambor. Did Tor snatch up Kent at some point? And Gareth gets Lancaster. And I think Galegantis ends up with Clarence later on, too.

But yeah, the campaign is more fun, IMHO, when the important NPKs are the famous RTKs, rather than 50 or so Barons you have never even heard about...

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23 hours ago, Morien said:

Personally, I prefer the GPC model of territorially concentrated, regional/county nobility. Granted, it doesn't matter much, since they are not really acting like independent entities for most of the campaign, save during Anarchy, and that is easily explained away with the breakdown of central authority (no king)

Oh yeah, it's much more understandable for the players. I dislike the Warlord overview, because it's useless to me (and this tangled word does not survive the Anarchy, so why bother?)

In my game, I always suppose Salisbury have a few bannerets of his own (Devizes, Du Plain, etc.), some minor vassals (like the players) and the rest in bachelor knights.

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29 minutes ago, Tizun Thane said:

this tangled word does not survive the Anarchy

Arthur restores the rightful heirs and lands. I forget if it was by the end of Boy King or post-Badon. I am sure that it is mentioned in BotW.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that county fiefs are much easier to GM and for the players to understand, like you said 

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