About squires

[Hzark10]

To counter that partially, I only gave 1/10 Glory of a normal knight, but yes, the skill set is almost always higher.

[Baba]

25 minutes ago, Morien said:

As any new 21-yr old PK would. My point is, if you had two Players, one starting to play with a 14 yr old squire with full 21-yr training right up front will be clearly much more powerful than the Player who waited until the heir was 21-yr old before starting play. Hence, the squire-starter will have much better chance to reach higher Glory and skills, thus being more likely to get to the Round Table, too.

The full Annual Glory is probably more than enough to counter any increases in inherited glory (which is just 10% of the father's glory).

I agree. I don’t see it as a problem though. One 21 year old has seen seven years of adventures, the other one has had a more normal squire life.

(Also, all of this is theory. In practise, the character in question was junior for most of his life, even after everyone had changed to second generation. In the end, though, he became the most glorious character of our campaign, so far, partly because of the points you raise.)

[Atgxtg]

21 hours ago, Morien said:

The skill cap on previous experience being 15 after the character is older than 21 years is idiotic.

I wasn't reffering to 15 chargen, but more the 20 skillcap during play and. lack of skill checks and adventure glory for those extra years. A PK written up at age 30 is destined to be a bench warmer.

I've been thinking of rasing the 20 limit up a point at age 30, age 40, etc. to try and allow for the extra improvment rolls the character would have had during all that time.

 

 

21 hours ago, Morien said:

We do not use that in our campaign, and instead the older characters get the ordinary Winter Phase Training and Practice choice.

Which still has to 20 skill cap limit. Thus bringing in a "younger brother": at age 30 or 40 results in a character with 20 in his primary skills, plus glory bonuses.

[Atgxtg]

7 hours ago, Morien said:

As any new 21-yr old PK would. My point is, if you had two Players, one starting to play with a 14 yr old squire with full 21-yr training right up front will be clearly much more powerful than the Player who waited until the heir was 21-yr old before starting play. Hence, the squire-starter will have much better chance to reach higher Glory and skills, thus being more likely to get to the Round Table, too.

The full Annual Glory is probably more than enough to counter any increases in inherited glory (which is just 10% of the father's glory).

Yes, we've been seeing that squires who start at 14 and develop via Book of Entourage tend to be much more powerful that those who start at 21. Mostly for the same reason why older starting characters tend to lag behind- extra improvement rolls and chances to get skills above 20. Pretty much every PK squire ends up with  21+ in their primary weapon, as they will work on getting it to 20 before being knighted and dump glory bonuses into it. 

[The Wanderer]

Maybe just giving them less points for skills it gets fixed (?)

[Atgxtg]

14 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

Maybe just giving them less points for skills it gets fixed (?)

I doubt it. It's a classic confict between game design requirments and player pexpectations.

From the Game Design aspect, we generally don't want new characters, even experienced once to be the equal of heroes who players have built up over time with experience rolls and glory. That would cheapen the game and minimize the accomplishments. A good part of what makes a Round Table Knight special is that not everybody will qualify. It takes skill and/or luck (usually both) for a character to do so, and a PK that does so is very rewarding to the player.

On the other hand a player just lost a good character and is replacing it with a character who has to be inferior by design. Now with a young PK this isn't so bad, as they have potential and time to one day catch up with or even surpass the knight they just lost. But with older replacing characters that's not the case. The lower skills and glory that such characters get, combined with their higher starting age really comes off as a lost opportunity, and a character who will almost always be inferior to the knight they just lost. THe character fells like, and is just a place holder. 

Thre only real soultion I see to that would be to somehow allow for the character to get skill checks and glory for the years over age 21, in order to give them some chance of catching up with the knight they lost. Perhaps something as simple as the NPC improvement rules from the Book of Entourage? That might  do it and be simple and fast enough for chargen. It would oden the door to the replacement PK coming in with, say Sword 25. Yes the actual chances of that would be pretty slim, but players just need to know that there is a chance for the new PK to be great - he doesn't actually have to be.

[Morien]

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

A PK written up at age 30 is destined to be a bench warmer.

Well, not as great as a played PK is likely to be, but this is due to the fact that the 30-yr old has not shared the same dangers and adventures. But that doesn't mean that they are bench warmers.

For instance, if there is a 30-yr old brother, then the main was probably in his mid-30s. Chances are that the 30-yr old is still at least comparable in age to the other PKs, much more so than a new 14-yr old or even 21-yr old. Secondly, sure, he will not reach the rarified air that a PK who has been adventuring every year since he was 21, but then again, he is SUPPOSED to keep the bench warm for the primary heir, who is probably in early teens by this point. So say, 10 years or so. In those 10 years, this 30-yr old will be a much more capable character than a new 21-yr old knight would be.

As for Glory & high skills, there is a simple solution for that too:

1) Give the new 30-yr PK all the Annual Glory that he would be entitled to from 21-yr onwards.

2) Give the new 30-yr PK a chance to earn Battle Glory for all the famous battles that have happened during the time he has been knighted: 1d6*battle size Glory*victory modifier.

3) Give the new 30-yr PK any general 'witnessed an event' Glory that the general public would probably have attended to, like Arthur's coronation or wedding.

Add the above to the Knighting Glory and Inherited Glory, and the new character will almost definitely have 2 Glory Bonus Points earned, if not 3.

Now, hang onto those GBP until the rest of the chargen is done. In other words, let the Player use Yearly Trainings boost the skill to 20, and then allow him to use those 'saved' GBPs to boost his skill above 20, if that is what he wants. Sure, he is probably still lagging a bit in skills and traits in general, but at least his main skills and attributes ought to be good enough.

Campaigns do vary a lot, though. In our campaign, it is not rare for the PKs to suffer major wounds every few years, so they kinda 'pay' for their experience checks by needing to use the Yearly Training to boost their lowered attributes instead. We also use GBPs as fate points, so we don't see a huge Skill increase past 20 via GBP, either. The highest Weapon skill is 22, despite the knight being past 10k in Glory.

 

Just to add, another solution would be to give the player 3 Yearly trainings per year, but limit them thusly: 1st 5 points to spend on skills up to 15, AND 2nd 1 point in trait or passion, AND 3rd 1 point in attribute or skill past 15. This would roughly mimic what we are seeing in the PK experience checks & Yearly Training. But then you'd run to the problem that you mentioned: that a player might get a BETTER character by benching the primary heir for a while. Sure, he'd miss out on the adventuring Glory, but on the other hand, he wouldn't take Major Wounds nor get squished by a giant when you are 22.

[Atgxtg]

1 minute ago, Morien said:

Well, not as great as a played PK is likely to be, but this is due to the fact that the 30-yr old has not shared the same dangers and adventures.

Yes exactly.

1 minute ago, Morien said:

But that doesn't mean that they are bench warmers.

Actually it does. 

 I give "backup/replacement" PKs Glroy from 1, 2 and 3, and they are still second stringers. 

The problem is that the relative lack of adventures, and associated chances for improvement and glory results in these characters lagging behind actively played PKs. So much so that most of my players dislike their backup characters, as they view them as competing with their main PKs for glory. With the rate time passes in the game, the older the replacement character the more limited they are both in chargen and in future chances for improvement.  A new PK coming in at age 25 isn't too badly off, one coming in at age 35 is nearly hamstrung, as most of his active years for adventuring have been lost. 

 

[Morien]

1 minute ago, Atgxtg said:

 I give "backup/replacement" PKs Glroy from 1, 2 and 3, and they are still second stringers. 

Second stringers compared to an actively played PK OF THEIR OWN AGE. It is not a wonder that a knight who has been actively adventuring for 10 years is superior to one who has spent those 10 years in garrison service. However, if you are the only 30-year old knight in a party of freshly knighted 21-yr olds, you are still much much more capable than they are. Sure, they will eventually catch up when your age starts catching up with your in your 40s, but they are unlikely to catch up with you before you have already changed to your own primary heir.

Honest question: if you had your choice between playing a 21-yr fresh knight from No-Name Family for 10 years and then switch to your main heir (who comes of age) or playing a 31-yr old uncle of your main heir for 10 years and then switch, which one would you and your players choose to play? Which one would be more of an asset to the group? Assume, for argument's sake, that the other PKs in the party would be 2x21, 26, and 31, all having been adventuring from 21 onwards.

[Atgxtg]

15 minutes ago, Morien said:

Second stringers compared to an actively played PK OF THEIR OWN AGE. It is not a wonder that a knight who has been actively adventuring for 10 years is superior to one who has spent those 10 years in garrison service.

Yes, but that's the problem. Nobody wants to play a "supporting character" in an RPG. But the risk of playing hero means that  a PK can die an an inopportune time and have to bring in an older character destined to be a benchwarmer while waiting for the true heir to mature.

15 minutes ago, Morien said:

However, if you are the only 30-year old knight in a party of freshly knighted 21-yr olds, you are still much much more capable than they are. Sure, they will eventually catch up when your age starts catching up with your in your 40s, but they are unlikely to catch up with you before you have already changed to your own primary heir.

Yes, but how often does that happen? In a typical campaign the majority of the PKs are the same age only at the beginning. With each generation new characters are born at different times and filter into the game at different rates. So I rarely see a new 30 year old coming into a group of newly knighted 21 year olds. More like the 30 year old is coming into a group of experienced knights who are already on the aging table. 

15 minutes ago, Morien said:

Honest question: if you had your choice between playing a 21-yr fresh knight from No-Name Family for 10 years and then switch to your main heir (who comes of age) or playing a 31-yr old uncle of your main heir for 10 years and then switch, which one would you and your players choose to play? Which one would be more of an asset to the group? Assume, for argument's sake, that the other PKs in the party would be 2x21, 26, and 31, all having been adventuring from 21 onwards.

Oh, I'd take the 21 year old. In KAP5+ the 21 year old will be good enough in combat (17-18) at the start to hold up his end, and can turn into an interesting character, while the 31 year old is at or near his peak and will soon go into decline.The thing in, in a typical group, the player has to play this replacement character for 2-3 months until he heir is ready, and then still be a support character for another month or two as they improve and the other PKs decline. That's three to four months of mediocrity, and limited vestment for the player.  It tends to make the intermediate character a "placeholder" and the game much less enjoyable for the player. 

IMO the problems are:

1. The new character is a throwaway character, who is only being played because the heir isn't ready
2. The new characters accomplishments generally won't reflect upon the heir, and so do not matter (no glory, no additional treasure, etc.)
3. He is also restricted to a supporting role due to missing out of experience rolls and glory that the active character got
4. The heir will likewise be similar restricted to a supporting roll for a time, due to his inexperience. 

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think there should be a way to make the placeholder characters more important, and significant to the players.

 

[The Wanderer]

16 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

Maybe just giving them less points for skills it gets fixed (?)

I meant the experience points each winter phase, not at chargen.

[Baba]

What we have done:

1. For characters older than 21, we make them as a normal 21 year old, and then for every extra year they get:

• Annual training
• Annual glory
• 50 extra glory

You won’t get a sword skill of 25 that way, but we’ve never had a PK with a skill of 25 anyway. They will still feel a bit lackluster compared to PK’s that have actually been played, though.

 

2. Still, from a story point of view (and also because of the lacluster thing) we like the thought of playing the character from his youth. So for our third generation, everyone switched aproximately at the same time. One father PK was lost through play. One ward/uncle PK, the GM put in an otherwise unreasonably dangerous situation, and he was killed. And the last ward/uncle PK, he withdrew to the woods as a hermit. So for the third generation, everyone started with fresh-faced soon-to-be-knighted squires ready to win their spurs.

[Atgxtg]

37 minutes ago, Baba said:

but we’ve never had a PK with a skill of 25 anyway.

Really? It's pretty easy in KAP5. Most of my players quickly get their main weapon skill (usually sword) to 20 ASAP, and then dump glory bonuses into it. With the natural escalation of glory that comes as times goes on, and the awards for getting landed and married skills at 25 are relatively easy to obtain, especially as it tends to be the best use of the glory bonus points. At least until the aging table starts knocking the stats down. 

I've fond thatsuch high skill ratings have become more and more common with each campaign, as the players learn how things work and what works best. 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Atgxtg

[Morien]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

In KAP5+ the 21 year old will be good enough in combat (17-18) at the start

Only if he gets 800+ Glory from Inherited Glory. Which is not impossible for 2nd Gen characters, admittedly. But that would bring him just to 17 (800+1200 from becoming a vassal knight = 2 GBP). Or did you mean that you'd run the Intro and give them an additional Winter Phase at the end, allowing them to boost Sword to 16 or 17, if they managed to get lucky in an experience roll? And then +1 from knighting? OK, I can see that, although that is quite rare in our campaign. Perhaps because my players tend to focus on the damage at first and then start boosting their CON to avoid Major Wounds.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

to hold up his end

As well as a 31-yr old with Sword 22 or so? Not to mention 5 more points in stats (close to +1d6 in damage) or other skills? Besides, now you are comparing a character straight out of the chargen with a character after their first adventure & Winter Phase. So that is one more stat or skill for the 31-yr old, and if they are close enough, perhaps even a Glory Bonus Point to get their Sword to 23.

Look, there is simply no way that you can say that the 21-yr is better at holding up his end than a 31-yr old knight. At least the 31-yr old will have a chance to shine rather than always be the newbie. Besides, the chances are that some of the other PKs will drop during those ten years, meaning that the 'new-old-PK' will very possibly be the last man standing amongst a pool of kids. At least that tends to happen in our campaign, that not all PKs die at the same time, which means that usually each player gets a chance to be the 'old grizzled veteran wrangling the young'uns'. 

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

IMO the problems are:

1. The new character is a throwaway character, who is only being played because the heir isn't ready
2. The new characters accomplishments generally won't reflect upon the heir, and so do not matter (no glory, no additional treasure, etc.)
3. He is also restricted to a supporting role due to missing out of experience rolls and glory that the active character got
4. The heir will likewise be similar restricted to a supporting roll for a time, due to his inexperience.

Agreed partially. Some caveats:

1. It can be interesting/useful for the brother/uncle to advance his own career, and hence boost the whole family line. After all, if he manages to earn a manor of his own, it is one more manor & vassal knight in the family.

2. If the brother/uncle is also the guardian of the heir, he can oversee the land, and hence he can probably marry and support his own family as well. More family members is nice. Furthermore, his adventures CAN impact favorably on the heir, if he puts some thought to finding a possible bride for the maturing heir. For instance, if he himself is already married and his own son is still a toddler, it might make perfect sense to try and set up his nephew (the main heir) with an heiress he rescued. Should such an opportunity arise, of course. In any case, burning some of his own influence can see his nephews and nieces marrying better than they would if neglected, and also ensures that the nephew will remember it when it is the uncle's own children in need for some family influence. Also, there is more to the world than just the heir, or rather, the rest of the world influences the heir's future, too. This is especially the case during Anarchy.

3. Disagreed, as previously stated. He is only sub-par compared to his (near) age-peers who have been actively adventuring, not in comparison to newbie knights. He can very well end up as the oldest and strongest knight in the group.

4. Nothing much to be done about this, unless it happens that the whole group is shifting to younger characters more or less simultaneously. Our biggest age spread was a few game years ago from 21 to 50 or so (PK finally retired due to DEX dropping to 3). Now it is more like 25 - 45, and the oldest character is about to retire so that she can enjoy her retirement rather than die in some godforsaken place as the age and wounds both old and new are starting to creep up on her. Of course, if the whole group manages to achieve some goal as getting into the Round Table, and all of them have heirs ready to be played, then it could be a smart idea to shift to those heirs en-masse.

 

Now, the Pendragon campaigns do vary a lot, so YPWV and all that. In our current campaign, the PKs were dropping often enough that many of them went through all three starting brothers before the 2nd generation stepped up. Due to some politics, one player even ignored his main heir and played the two younger sons, before switching to the niece of his starting PK, leaving the main heir to be an NPC. Another player is also in his nephew, and actually a non-heir nephew, because he chose to do that. With our Glory Bonus Point rules & players' priorities, the skills have not really gotten out of hand, meaning that the cap of 20 has not been a problem, either.

Of course, ideally one would play the character until the heir is ready to be knighted and then have the decency to die heroically. But that very seldom happens, at least in my experience. The only time we had a clean sweep was in the old campaign where I deliberately orchestrated a TPK at the Badon Hill as the campaign was going on a hiatus anyway, and I figured that was a nicely dramatic ending for the PKs' careers, and make it easier to skip forward in time to the adult heirs when the campaign would get resurrected. Even then, I had to employ some trickery with Faerie timewarp shenanigans to get everyone up to adulthood at about the same time. And there can be a huge scatter in childbirth successes, too. In our current campaign, for instance, one PK was VERY unlucky with the childbirth rolls, while another was very lucky, resulting in the first getting his first surviving child (a daughter) in 501, when the second PK's eldest son was already a squire!

[Username]

On 4/9/2020 at 5:14 PM, Morien said:

The issue is that the squires really shouldn't be fighting unless absolutely necessary. Their job is to hand a new lance to their knight, etc, not try to gather glory on their own.

I agree with everything you say here in general, but if someone plays a squire, which is what I was talking about, I'm not going to make them do nothing. That's not cool or fun. Same for court situations. The scale just needs to be different. The squires need to be giving speeches to other squires.

[Morien]

7 hours ago, Username said:

I agree with everything you say here in general, but if someone plays a squire, which is what I was talking about, I'm not going to make them do nothing. That's not cool or fun. Same for court situations. The scale just needs to be different. The squires need to be giving speeches to other squires.

Oh, I agree with that: a group of squires makes things simple since then you can tailor the adventure to fit the squires specifically. It is simply a different situation when everyone else is playing a knight and one player is playing a squire. The squire will simply have much less impact on what the knights are doing. Atgxtg's & Baba's point of making the Player-squire squire for another PK is a good one, since that way there is some Player-Player interaction and RP there, and the GM can give the squire something to do as well, especially if the adventure calls for something like sneaking around in the stables or such. But if the adventure is a Battle or slaying the Dragon, then the Player-squire is going to be much more sidelined.

[Luca Cherstich]

As a curiosity regarding normal NPC squires (not PC squire): what will most people use?

The Squire rules in KAP core rules (Age, couple of skills)?

Or those in Entourage (more skills, Squire skill separated from Age and often, therefore, lower than in the basic system)?

 

[Morien]

To be honest, normally neither as the squires play such a background-only role usually. Frankly, I am happy if the Players even remember to update the squire's age. It became a bit of a running joke in our group when one of them realized that she had had the same squire for about 20 years:

"Um... Edgar, how old did you say you are?"

"Nineteen, Ma'am."

"Really? I thought last year..."

"... I would have been eighteen, Ma'am. Stands to reason when you think about it."

"Right, right..."

The in-game explanation was that poor Edgar didn't have the wherewithal to become a knight, so he continued being a squire. His knight finally sponsored him during the Roman War with some looted horses and armor, since there were openings (battlefield casualties) in the household knights of her liege.

[The Wanderer]

9 hours ago, Morien said:

To be honest, normally neither as the squires play such a background-only role usually. Frankly, I am happy if the Players even remember to update the squire's age.

So you don't update the stats of the squire, wife, entourage, etc? To be honest, for me it is the most tiring thing of the winter phase!

[fulk]

I agree. I typically forget. 

I think it really depends on how you play the game.  Part of the point of BoEntourage is to micro manage these characters, instead of just assume everyone is doing their job, but I tend to forget.

If  you are mostly adventuring and not in the minutia of running your estate, for example, wives and squires don't really matter much.  You can have an anonymous squire roll (15) and don't worry much about what your wife (or husband) is doing.  It might matter in your game whether your wife insults a visiting lord (fails her Courtesy roll) or you might just run everything though the PK. 

[Morien]

33 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

So you don't update the stats of the squire, wife, entourage, etc? To be honest, for me it is the most tiring thing of the winter phase!

The Players update their wives & stewards, since we keep track of Stewardship. But as far as Squires and the rest of the entourage, we don't really bother. If we need to roll Squire skill, I pretty much assume that it is 15, or nudged upwards to 16 by the age of 20. Good enough for us.

[Luca Cherstich]

1 hour ago, The Wanderer said:

So you don't update the stats of the squire, wife, entourage, etc? To be honest, for me it is the most tiring thing of the winter phase!

How many skills do you give per Squires?

BoE p.13 shows a "Squire Sheet" with many skills but, in reality, the other column seems to imply the use of One Single value for ALL the "Knightly Skills" of the Squire (which is frankly more respondant to the Skill Sheet on page 43 which has only a couple of entries for skills).

Edited April 14, 2020 by Luca Cherstich

[Baba]

1 hour ago, The Wanderer said:

So you don't update the stats of the squire, wife, entourage, etc? To be honest, for me it is the most tiring thing of the winter phase!

We don’t even GIVE most of them stats, unless we actually need to make a roll for them.

Exception: We have a standard stat blocks for all wives that improve two times as they age, and some of the wives get an exceptional skill, but it never improves - it’s just good from the start. Two wives have been involved enough to get individual (unchanging) statblocks.

Most other people get nothing, unless a particular stat is an important part of their concept.

We do like to keep track of the weapon skill and lance skill of important npc’s, though. But not squires - they probably change to much to bother.

[Morien]

2 hours ago, Luca Cherstich said:

BoE p.13 shows a "Squire Sheet" with many skills but, in reality, the other column seems to imply the use of One Single value for ALL the "Knightly Skills" of the Squire (which is frankly more respondant to the Skill Sheet on page 43 which has only a couple of entries for skills).

It is enough to just keep track of one value, and not even that, since you can just calculate it from age each time: Age-11 for most squires (sons of knights) and Age-12 for esquires' sons.

It only becomes an issue if the squire is exceptionally talented, or learns faster than the default rules of Entourage (+1 per year until skill 15), or is over 26 years old (since 26-11 = 15, after which the improvement becomes more random).

Edited April 14, 2020 by Morien

[Username]

We actually run abbreviated stats for a boatload of people. The Entourage of some people is full with assistants with one or two stats. We use the age for squires. Just so we can see if they capture a horse in battle mostly and so we know if they can be made knights. A good number of my players have spent their money setting up squires as knights. We've even gone as far as to give whole stat blocks to certain important characters (specifically 2-3 wives). 

 

To keep things fast though, we do the +1 to skill to 15 for entourage and default wives and then roll over after. For the abbreviated characters. The knights they have never really change. And the squires we really only update the age. Quite a few backup knights have forgotten about their squire, but that hardly matters. This is up to the player though. About half of the players do a full load out, but the other half only track wives (or stewards) and squires. There's a significant advantage and usually more story from a having your own supporting cast, but there's more work. Though some people like it. I know I do when I play.