The Adventure of the Great Hunt - a Quickstart preview of Greg Stafford's "ultimate edition" for the Pendragon RPG

[Mugen]

1 minute ago, Tizun Thane said:

The initiative rules. Why? The actions are simultaneous.

It's very important when you  can chose Berserk or Defensive tactics, or you have multiple opponents. Those are not in the QS, but they will surely be there in the full rules. I also don't think it's a rules change, as I played it this way.

1 minute ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Does the parry bonus of the sword add to the parry bonus of the shield? If the answer is yes, it's really powerful.

The rules explicitly say its one or the other (which raises a question : why would a shield need a Parry value ?):

If the loser rolled a Partial Success, they may also apply the Shield or Parry protection value of their shield/weapon.

[Morien]

1 hour ago, Tizun Thane said:

• the loser is knocked down. They begin next round on the ground. If mounted, they suffer 1D6 damage from the fall, and drop their weapon and shield. The fallen character drops his shield? What?!

I didn't notice that. I am admittedly not a fan of this. The 1d6 fall damage tends to be punishment enough, without rendering the knight practically helpless the next round. I don't mind that being the fumble result, though.

1 hour ago, Tizun Thane said:

• First Aid may be tried just once per wound, restoring a number of Hit Points equal to the wounded character’s Healing Rate. Interesting, but powerful. I prefer more gritty games.

This is not a huge change, though. Most PKs have Healing Rates 2-3, which is in the 1d3 range. Sure, it is slightly higher on average, but now it gives Healing Rate an actual role within an adventure, rather than being just a measure of how much downtime you need (which is rarely an issue if one sticks to one adventure per year; you have the rest of the year to recover).

1 hour ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Horsemanship Limitation:  The Horsemanship Skill limits the value of all Weapon Skills employed while riding. No effective Weapon Skill value may be greater than the rider’s Horsemanship Skill value. It's a terrible rule. Like really bad. KAP is about playing knights. A horseman. Cheval-ier (horse-man), Caballero (horseman). The rules should favor a man fighting on his horse, not the contrary.

I think it should say that your BASE weapon skill is the lower of your Weapon Skill and Horsemanship. And then you add all the modifiers. So if you have Sword 20 and Horsemanship 15, you'd have Sword 15 when fighting from horseback against a mounted foe and Sword 15+5=20 against a footman (who would take another -5). If you were on foot, you would have Sword 20 yes, but that would be 20-5=15 against a mounted foe (who would get extra +5 to his skill), and 20 vs. the footman (no penalties for him). So clearly, being on horseback would still be a big advantage, even if you had neglected your Horsemanship. Which is a bit on you, since to quote you: "KAP is about playing knights. A horseman. Cheval-ier (horse-man), Caballero (horseman). The rules should favor a man fighting on his horse, not the contrary."

1 hour ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Fighting multiple opponents. The new rules are very gentle for the players. I prefer the old ones.

On the other hand, they now allow a skilled knight to fight multiple opponents rather than being overwhelmed straight away, making more heroic play. And of course, the same rules apply to monstrous opponents who are getting ganged up on by the PKs... So a bit of a double edged sword there.

1 hour ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Does the parry bonus of the sword add to the parry bonus of the shield? If the answer is yes, it's really powerful.

"If the loser rolled a Partial Success, they may also apply the Shield or Parry protection value of their shield/weapon." So the answer is "no".

1 hour ago, Tizun Thane said:

• The Hit points of the monsters have changed ? It's not the old Tai+Con formula, but Tai x2 ?

Seems so. Which is good, in my book. SIZ+CON works for human-sized creatures, since SIZ and CON cover the same range of values. But for bigger/smaller creatures, you end up either scaling the CON to the skies for the big creatures and to the gutter for small creatures, in order to make the HP reasonable, even if this would make no sense given the hardiness/endurance of the creature.

[Morien]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

The rules explicitly say its one or the other (which raises a question : why would a shield need a Parry value ?):

It might be easier to just give Shields a parry value of +6 and simplify the whole thing to: Armor+highest Parry value on a Partial Success. That way, you don't have to mess around with a separate 'Shield' label and shield armor value.

[Tizun Thane]

5 minutes ago, Morien said:

his is not a huge change, though. Most PKs have Healing Rates 2-3, which is in the 1d3 range

The true difference is with a pagan (religious) knight with his +2 to healing rate. Clearly, the pagan bonus was the worst bonus, and with this new rule, it will be the best.

[Morien]

Just now, Tizun Thane said:

The true difference is with a pagan (religious) knight with his +2 to healing rate. Clearly, the pagan bonus was the worst bonus, and with this new rule, it will be the best.

It will definitely be more powerful, yes. On the other hand, it still conflicts with the Chivalric with its Proud, and if the Chivalric limit goes to 96 as Greg said it should in his forum post, then it might force you to choose between Religious or Chivalric if you are a Pagan. A Christian Knight has no such issue, and if British Christianity is still in, they are the minmaxers' dream for both Religious and Chivalric.

Also, it depends a bit how many and how big wounds you get during an adventure. A Christian gets +6 HP, and assuming base HR of 3 (seems to be pretty common in our group, using the old rules, and with HR = CON/5 that Sir Larkins mentioned in the Discord, CON 13 Cymric knight would have HR = 2.6 rounds to 3), this is equivalent to 3 wounds of 5+ hp. What we have noticed is that usually the PKs take several minor wounds, in the 1-3 range, and then a couple of big wounds that end up being the fight deciders, usually in the 7-10 range (no shield) or in the teens (a critical hit). So in a single climactic fight, the Christian will stay upright longer (having a larger HP pool), and even after the first aid, is about in the same remaining HP.

Where the Pagan Bonus really excels is that you bounce back much easier from numerous smaller fights, where you might take a single bigger hit but not go unconscious. And also since in our group we tend to have multiple sessions per year, having extra +2 HR is very useful to becoming 'match fit' for an August tournament after the summer's adventure.

I was trying to figure out if it actually helps you against death, and that is not a clear correlation, since it depends exactly when you dropped and how big the wounds were. For instance, take two knights of 28 base HP and HR or 3. One is an Exemplar Christian (28+6=34 HP), the other an Exemplar Pagan (HR 3+2 = 5). Both take three hits causing 10 hp wounds each, so both drop. The Pagan is at -2, possibly dying, where as the Christian is at 4 hp, no danger of dying. Clearly, despite the Pagan having an edge in First Aid, his situation is worse. Even if all three first aids are successful for both, this results in the Christian being at 13hp and the Pagan at the same 13hp. Now, the Pagan would be back to full hit points in just another 3 weeks (assuming 1 successful Chirurgery roll), whereas the Christian would need another 7 weeks. So clearly when it comes to healing back up, the Pagan would take the prize. But if this happens at the end of the year and the next thing is winter training anyway, then it doesn't matter...

[Voord 99]

2 hours ago, Morien said:

So clearly, being on horseback would still be a big advantage, even if you had neglected your Horsemanship. Which is a bit on you, since to quote you: "KAP is about playing knights. A horseman. Cheval-ier (horse-man), Caballero (horseman). The rules should favor a man fighting on his horse, not the contrary."

I think it’s one of the things I am most likely to adopt, in combination with DEX for unhorsing.  Mechanically, it’s an elegant solution to the problem that (a) you want Horsemanship to have a vital mechanical effect in combat and not just be a skill for special tests when the GM remembers to devise them, but (b) DEX also has a tendency not to matter enough  - which has produced the push-pull between “roll DEX to see if you‘re unhorsed, no, wait, roll Horsemanship, no, let’s roll DEX, actually...”.   This way, both matter.

But it’s also a partial solution to something that has bothered me for a long time, which is that Pendragon doesn’t clearly reflect one of the recurrent things in Malory, which is people differentiating between how good a knight is on horse versus on foot.  To the extent that this is mechanically meaningful in Pendragon , it was in the Horsemanship unhorsed-or-not roll, if you were using that, and in the separate Lance skill, but not really anywhere else.

I’ve been playing around with the idea of separate Melee (Horse) and Melee (Foot) skills.  But using Horsemanship to cap weapons skills gets one a lot of the way there - it definitely is possible with this rule to describe someone as clearly a better knight on foot than they are on horse, although perhaps not vice versa.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Voord 99

[Tizun Thane]

16 minutes ago, Voord 99 said:

I think it’s one of the things I am most likely to adopt, in combination with DEX for unhorsing.  

To each his own. I use the dex roll for unhorsing since forever, and I have plenty of horsemanship rolls as well.

IMO, it is a terrible idea, the only change I will never implement in my game, because it's against the spirit of the game.

[Morien]

12 minutes ago, Tizun Thane said:

IMO, it is a terrible idea, the only change I will never implement in my game, because it's against the spirit of the game.

Not really. All it means that if you want to be a knight, a horseman, you should have a high Horsemanship. And as I showed you earlier, even at Horsemanship 15 (which is pretty much the minimum for any PK, at least by 25 years old, IMHO) and Sword 20 (more like PKs in their late 20s to early 30s), you still benefit from being on horseback. It is just when the gap becomes more than 5 points that you start losing efficiency, but then we get to the second point, below...

Frankly, merge Charge to Horsemanship-capped Spear and use the points you would have put to Charge into Horsemanship, and you'll be fine. It also has the nice effect of stopping overspecialization that sometimes happens, a PK boosting a single weapon skill, usually Sword, to 30+.

37 minutes ago, Voord 99 said:

it definitely is possible with this rule to describe someone as clearly a better knight on foot than they are on horse, although perhaps not vice versa.

Someone with Horsemanship 25 and Sword 25 would be a better knight on a horse than someone with Horsemanship 20 and Sword 30, while it would be reversed on foot. So comparatively, you get this difference: your ranking changes.

[Baba]

56 minutes ago, Morien said:

It also has the nice effect of stopping overspecialization that sometimes happens, a PK boosting a single weapon skill, usually Sword, to 30+.

I was thinking the same thing.

My personal taste: I think the system has the best «feel» with skills between 10-19, and then progressively more off the higher a skill gets. Always failing in skills you «should» be somewhat familiar with feels weird, never failing and critting half the time also feels weird.

At our table we have done two things about that:

We give some small freebee points to skills under 10, both at character generation and later.

And we have lowered the «baseline» values of weapon skills.

Now, the characters don’t push all of their points into weapon skills even though that is the most strategic choice. But neither does npc knights. Young knights will have a 15, experienced knights 18, really good ones 20, and round table knights mostly betwen 21 and 24. Even good old Lancelot is currently at «only» 28. No player knight has ever been higher than 24.

We didn’t need an actual houserule to do this, just an understanding. And to me, the system doesn’t creak as much without those massive skills. This horsemanship rule could pull in the same direction.

The new rules for multiple opponents are also more lenient to knights with lower weapon skills.

[Leingod]

1 hour ago, Morien said:

Someone with Horsemanship 25 and Sword 25 would be a better knight on a horse than someone with Horsemanship 20 and Sword 30, while it would be reversed on foot. So comparatively, you get this difference: your ranking changes.

Which is, I think, a good step towards simulating the way it often worked in Malory, where IIRC it was directly explained at some point that a younger knight will often win afoot while the older knight will often win ahorse, because on foot you can better make up for inexperience with the vigor of youth.

After all, it's not that hard for a relatively young knight to get one particular combat skill (usually Sword) pretty high, so between that and the fact that he's probably in better shape than an older knight, he has the advantage on foot. But on horse, you need to have high values in more than just a single skill, so the older, experienced knight (who thus has more skill points to spread out) is now the one who's probably at a distinct advantage.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Leingod

[creativehum]

@sirlarkins A note about the QS:

I believe this very important sentence from 5.2 (and other editions of the game, written in one form or another) is missing from the text:

In opposed rolls, a failure is always treated as if the player had rolled 0, regardless of the actual number rolled on the die. 

Without that rule, the bullet points about results of Opposed Rolls fall apart and how to adjudicate Opposed Rolls makes no sense.

Edited October 20, 2020 by creativehum

[Atgxtg]

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

First. I love the cover, and the interior art. The adventure itself is fun as hell.

Otherwise, there is a bit too much rule changes to my taste.

• DEX keeps a character upright or horsed. Oh yeah! The horsemanship roll was a mistake.

I think an unopposed Horsemanship roll was the problem, as a knight with Horse 20 only got knocked down when taking 2xSIZ in damage.. If the horsemanship roll had been opposed by the damage roll it would have worked. 

I wonder why the knockdown rule was changed to exceeding SIZ?

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Attempting First Aid on yourself is done with a –10 Skill modifier. Love it. Good compromise.
• the new weapon skills. A good idea.
• The initiative rules. Why? The actions are simultaneous.
• If damage is greater than the sum of the loser’s SIZ and their horse’s SIZ, then the horse is knocked down too! Love it.
• the loser is knocked down. They begin next round on the ground. If mounted, they suffer 1D6 damage from the fall, and drop
  their weapon and shield. The fallen character drops his shield? What?!

Yeah, what?! That is usually strapped on. 

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

• First Aid may be tried just once per wound, restoring a number of Hit Points equal to the wounded character’s Healing Rate. Interesting, but powerful. I prefer more gritty games.

That might not change much, as you still can't get more hit points back from an injury that it caused. In my campaign one player's main characters have the natural healer family characteristic and typically have a character with a score over 20 in First Aid. The player often criticals when treating  2 and 3 point wounds.

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Horsemanship Limitation:  The Horsemanship Skill limits the value of all Weapon Skills employed while riding. No effective
  Weapon Skill value may be greater than the rider’s Horsemanship Skill value. It's a terrible rule. Like really bad. KAP is about playing knights. A horseman. Cheval-ier (horse-man), Caballero (horseman). The rules should favor a man fighting on his horse, not the contrary.

The rules still favor the mounted character. While I think the rule was poorly worded by "capping skill" the important thing to remember is that the +5/-5 reflexive modifier for being mounted still applies, and can bump the skill above the Horsemanship score. 

And a horseman should have a good horsemanship skill. 

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Fighting multiple opponents. The new rules are very gentle for the players. I prefer the old ones.

Me too. I'm not so sure the new rules are more gentle, as a 3 on 1 situation is now  for someone with Sword 10, now means one opponent will get an unopposed attack. I MO the older method of dividing skill was better and simpler. Still the new method is more consistent with how multiple actions are handled.

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

• The armor rules. They look more protective. The old armor rules were protective enough to my taste.

I think the armor rules are the same. Just some of the names used might have changed. THe standard protection for the knights in the adventure is still 12 points with Sir Ector getting 14 points. 

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Does the parry bonus of the sword add to the parry bonus of the shield? If the answer is yes, it's really powerful.

No, per page 6 : "If the loser rolled a Partial Success, they may also apply the Shield
or Parry protection value of their shield/weapon"

9 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

• Lions should be scary monsters, not a joke.
• The Hit points of the monsters have changed ? It's not the old Tai+Con formula, but Tai x2 ?

Good catch, and yeah, that's bad. In fact it is deal breaker bad to me. If hit points become SIZx2, I won't even pick up KAP6.

[Morien]

45 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Good catch, and yeah, that's bad. In fact it is deal breaker bad to me. If hit points become SIZx2, I won't even pick up KAP6.

Just to remind you, we are talking about animal/monster stats here. The human characters clearly still use SIZ+CON.

Why does it break the game for you if a SIZ 5, CON 15 dog has 10 hp instead of 20hp? Or is it the other way around, the SIZ 40 CON 15 Lion having 80hp instead of 55?

The Dragon here has SIZ 80 and CON 50, so a change from 130hp to 160hp. Taking into account unconsciousness (33 vs. 40), this is a shift of 27 points, or roughly +25% before unconsciousness compared to the SIZ+CON dragon hp.

 

[Atgxtg]

10 minutes ago, Morien said:

Just to remind you, we are talking about animal/monster stats here. The human characters clearly still use SIZ+CON.

Yup, I know, and that's part of the problem.

Quote

Why does it break the game for you if a SIZ 5, CON 15 dog has 10 hp instead of 20hp? Or is it the other way around, the SIZ 40 CON 15 Lion having 80hp instead of 55?

1.  If it isn't broken, then don't change it.

2. Because it's another change for change's sake and doesn't improve the game.

3. It requires redoing all the animal and monster stats, for no benefit.

4. It makes animal and creature stats even more different than characters.

5. It makes SIZ even more important that it already is. 

6. RQG is full of similar changes for change's sake that make the game much tougher to GM, as you can no longer fall back on the ways things were done for the past 40+ years. The change in Knockdown is a similar bad move. THe rule has been damage equal to or greater than SIZ in every edition and there was no reason or benefit to changing it to greater than SIZ.

Quote

The Dragon here has SIZ 80 and CON 50, so a change from 130hp to 160hp. Taking into account unconsciousness (33 vs. 40), this is a shift of 27 points, or roughly +25% before unconsciousness compared to the SIZ+CON dragon hp.

Yup, and for no reason or benefit. If a GM needed a dragon with 160 hp they could just have a bigger, hardier dragon. 

Edited October 20, 2020 by Atgxtg

[Mugen]

I'm not really keen on limiting combat skills with Horsemanship, given the focus of the game on elite mounted fighters, even if it makes sense and increases the compatibility with RuneQuest (which is rather poor...).

Concerning multiple opponents fight, it seems to me the biggest change (providing it's not an missing rule in the QS) is that you don't have to focus on one of them, and can deal damage to each of them.

 

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

I'm not really keen on limiting combat skills with Horsemanship, given the focus of the game on elite mounted fighters, even if it makes sense and increases the compatibility with RuneQuest (which is rather poor...).

I dunno. I think elite mounted fighters should know how to ride a horse. I see this more as a lateral move to keep horsemanship skill relevant considering it lost it role is resisting knockdown. 

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

Concerning multiple opponents fight, it seems to me the biggest change (providing it's not an missing rule in the QS) is that you don't have to focus on one of them, and can deal damage to each of them.

 

You always could damage multiple foes., by splitting your skill. The rule listed in KAP5 was one of many typos. KAP5 was terrible edited and altered a bunch of things that Greg had to address later, and was why we got 5.1.

But in KAP5, if you break up you skill between multiple opponents you can damage whichever opponents you manage to beat. The new rule is a bit more consistent with other multiple action penalties, and mostly makes it easier for someone to fight two or three opponents. 

[ethawyn]

I created some resources for running what we have of 6th edition so far. 

• Pendragon 5.2 with 6th Edition Updates Character Sheet (includes sheets for Entourage and Estates from 5E Supplements)
• The Adventure of the Great Hunt Pregen Knights Character Sheets (I created shields but those can of course be replaced with custom ones)
• The Quest of the Red Blade Pregen Knights Character Sheets Converted to 6th Edition Updates 

Note: These are open and editable, but please make copies of them before entering information into them. Thanks. 

 

[Atgxtg]

On 10/20/2020 at 6:19 AM, Morien said:

I didn't notice that. I am admittedly not a fan of this. The 1d6 fall damage tends to be punishment enough, without rendering the knight practically helpless the next round. I don't mind that being the fumble result, though.

Yeah, I can see dropping the weapon, but shields are stapped, and between the getting up peanlty, and two reamring penalties it seems a bit harsh. 

Quote

This is not a huge change, though. Most PKs have Healing Rates 2-3, which is in the 1d3 range. Sure, it is slightly higher on average, but now it gives Healing Rate an actual role within an adventure, rather than being just a measure of how much downtime you need (which is rarely an issue if one sticks to one adventure per year; you have the rest of the year to recover).

It does favor pagans a bit. That +2 Healing Rate from the religious bonus i going to look pretty sweet. IMO it put that bonus solidly in first place- if it wasn't already there.  

 

Quote

I think it should say that your BASE weapon skill is the lower of your Weapon Skill and Horsemanship. And then you add all the modifiers.

Yup. That is the intention, I think, but the wording, especially the use of the term "capped' isn't clear.

Quote

On the other hand, they now allow a skilled knight to fight multiple opponents rather than being overwhelmed straight away, making more heroic play.

More like it allows a skilled knight to cut down multiple less foes pretty easily, or if they fight defensively. I shudder to think what some of the PKs with Sword 30 can do- if not for their 20 Horsemanship.

Overall I think I prefer the current method to the new one. 

Quote

And of course, the same rules apply to monstrous opponents who are getting ganged up on by the PKs... So a bit of a double edged sword there.

Oh, yeah, and that just make it much much worse. Most monster foes have low skills to begin with. The general idea seems to be that the giant will squash you, if it actually wins. But now four or five knights ganging up on a giant means lots of free attacks! I much prefer the idea of letting the giant split his skill and watch the players sweat it out to see if it rolled than one-in-twenty chance of a critical. Giants are going to be more of a yawn now. 

Quote

Seems so. Which is good, in my book. SIZ+CON works for human-sized creatures, since SIZ and CON cover the same range of values. But for bigger/smaller creatures, you end up either scaling the CON to the skies for the big creatures and to the gutter for small creatures, in order to make the HP reasonable, even if this would make no sense given the hardiness/endurance of the creature.

And I still say. Yuck. You don't need to scale up CON to make hit points reasonable, you need to to make major wound reasonable, and still do. It's not like that 120 HP dragon is wimpy. All this change is going to do is increase the hit points of anything that counts. Do chargers really need 68 HP instead of 46? I don't believe they do. From what I've seen so far this is the rule change I like the least, although I'm highly suspect of the new passion rules. 

 

BTW, is it just me or does every PK in the quickstart have hafted weapons at half DEX? And does that mean what I think it does?

Edited October 21, 2020 by Atgxtg

[Morien]

30 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

You don't need to scale up CON to make hit points reasonable, you need to to make major wound reasonable, and still do.

Good point. Healing rate, too.

31 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh, yeah, and that just make it much much worse. Most monster foes have low skills to begin with. The general idea seems to be that the giant will squash you, if it actually wins. But now four or five knights ganging up on a giant means lots of free attacks! I much prefer the idea of letting the giant split his skill and watch the players sweat it out to see if it rolled than one-in-twenty chance of a critical. Giants are going to be more of a yawn now. 

Depends on the monster. As for the Giant, sure, I can see that, especially with the initiative rules. If those do not exist, then the Players still get to sweat who will be under the club, so to speak. I am not sure that it is a bad thing that you don't roll as many times, since frankly, if you roll, say, 5d20 each round, the chance of at least one critical goes way up compared to 2d20. And the old criticals were pink-mist time for the PKs, if they got critted against. Not ideal for the campaign to have one or two PKs be squished each time you go against a giant.
Of course, another solution to this would be to give the Giants a new attack: "Wild Swing: attack each opponent within reach with a skill of 2."
But yeah, I see this more as an initiative rule problem rather than a multiple opponent problem, personally.

[Atgxtg]

24 minutes ago, Morien said:

Good point. Healing rate, too.

Healing Rate? Not so much. Most monsters heal up "off screen". It might matter for horses though.

24 minutes ago, Morien said:

Depends on the monster. As for the Giant, sure, I can see that, especially with the initiative rules. If those do not exist, then the Players still get to sweat who will be under the club, so to speak. I am not sure that it is a bad thing that you don't roll as many times, since frankly, if you roll, say, 5d20 each round, the chance of at least one critical goes way up compared to 2d20. And the old criticals were pink-mist time for the PKs, if they got critted against. Not ideal for the campaign to have one or two PKs be squished each time you go against a giant.

I think it is far more ideal than the "ho-hum a giant" we'll get in the future. I've already noticed that monsters really aren't all that much of a threat in KAP. Sure they do lots of damage if they win, but they a real do. Even critical hits aren't pink-mist time, for PKs in the old rules are ties negated damage. 

 

Now in the new rules tying with a giant is going to be bad news for a PK.

24 minutes ago, Morien said:

Of course, another solution to this would be to give the Giants a new attack: "Wild Swing: attack each opponent within reach with a skill of 2."

But then why reinvent the wheel and use it to replace the once you just removed? It's much easier for those who don't like the -5 per opponent to just use the old rules. 

24 minutes ago, Morien said:

But yeah, I see this more as an initiative rule problem rather than a multiple opponent problem, personally.

I don't. Big monsters tend to get ganged up on in Pendragon, as adventures rarely call for a dragon, and a group of Saxon raiders to fight at the same time. So it becomes the entire group of PKs vs. the monster and that's pretty much the end of the monster.

 

I think the initiative problem has more to do with how fighting defensively counters "all- out attack".  But then, I'm of the opinion that "all- out attack" is broken.

[SaxBasilisk]

One other change to the quickstart Passion rules I noticed that I don't think has been addressed yet: criticals do not automatically increase the invoked Passion by 1.

I think this is welcome, as otherwise PKs with Passions over 20 become ridiculous quite quickly.

[Mugen]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

You always could damage multiple foes., by splitting your skill. The rule listed in KAP5 was one of many typos. KAP5 was terrible edited and altered a bunch of things that Greg had to address later, and was why we got 5.1.

But in KAP5, if you break up you skill between multiple opponents you can damage whichever opponents you manage to beat. The new rule is a bit more consistent with other multiple action penalties, and mostly makes it easier for someone to fight two or three opponents. 

I never read any edition other than the third. I just checked it, and saw no mention of the rule I mentioned earlier... I think this was a very bad understanding from my part of the last sentence of that section, which says multiple attacks aren't allowed to PKs...

Edited October 22, 2020 by Mugen

[MOB]

Reviewer Andrew Logan Montgomery says, about THE ADVENTURE OF THE GREAT HUNT, "This is a terrific Arthurian adventure, and the perfect example of why Pendragon remains one of the best loved and most celebrated games of all time... I suspect that watching us from distant Avalon (or probably, knowing the old shaman, from visions in his Crystal Cave), Greg is grinning."

https://andrewloganmontgomery.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-adventure-of-great-hunt-king-arthur.html

[creativehum]

15 hours ago, SaxBasilisk said:

One other change to the quickstart Passion rules I noticed that I don't think has been addressed yet: criticals do not automatically increase the invoked Passion by 1.

I think this is welcome, as otherwise PKs with Passions over 20 become ridiculous quite quickly.

This has been an itch in my brain since I read it the other day. 

First, we don't know whether or not one gets a check for a critical on a Passion, since the Quickstart does not address checks for rolls except in specific circumstances. (I assume this is because it is a QS, and concerns about tracking long term growth don't need to be in the rules.)

But the reason it stuck with me is that handing out a +1 point for a critical for Passions is nuts. I was completely baffled as to why the game would work this way and why it had never bothered me till now. 

So I went back to KAP 3rd... and found that in that edition, and I presume 4th as well, a critical in a Passion only rewards the knight with a check. This prevents Passions from becoming crazy high, and works with the essential improvement system found in KAP: Anything over 20 is going to be hard to come by, and for the most part will only occur from points gained from Glory.

Why was this changed for 5.x? 🤷‍♂️

[weasel fierce]

The new rules look really tempting overall, definitely going to implement some of them. 
Would anything break if passions just capped at 19 or 20? That seems like it'd avoid a fair amount of issues.