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

[Morien]

31 minutes ago, creativehum said:

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.

No, it was already in 3rd ed (p. 128, Passion Results Table): "Immediately go up one point in the Passion. An experience check is gained as well."

Totally agreed that it was unbalanced as hell and one of the things we patched quickly in our house rules before it got out of hand.

 

[weasel fierce]

The more I think about it, the more the "-5 per extra opponent" is sitting well with me. 
It does help avoid the entire "Which bonuses apply after the split" question which while solvable can occasionally be a bear because nobody likes to keep track of that stuff.

Very excited to try it out next week.

[Baba]

So that means...

If I’m a knight on horseback facing three footmen.

And I choose to ignore the third, to better beat down the two others.

Against no. 1: I’ll get -5 (two opponents) and +5 (height), so no modifier. He will get -5 for height.

Against no. 2 it will be the same.

No. 3 will get an unoposed attack against me, but seemingly still at -5 for height?

I could choose to try defeating alle three at once, but then I would get an extra -5 on alle the rolls.

[weasel fierce]

That's how I read it yeah. 
 

[Morien]

2 hours ago, Baba said:

So that means...

Yep, that is my reading as well.

[Zarkov]

The multiple attackers rule is currently my favourite thing in that Quickstart. I'm not yet sure about the passion rules and some other things, but that rule feels right.

[weasel fierce]

We had a chance to try the new outnumbering rule last night and I think everyone agreed it was both easier and faster.

The "4D6 crit" was employed as well and was likewise agreed to be an improvement.

[Tizun Thane]

14 hours ago, weasel fierce said:

The "4D6 crit" was employed as well and was likewise agreed to be an improvement.

Just for the record. I am against it. When you double the damages, big monsters and the like (a berserker by example) are really scary. They can kill you in one shot. Players know that and act accordingly.

With the +4d6 rule, if you have a good armour, especially in the latter phases, you feel secured. It's really hard to hurt you. The "double damage" rule mitigate this feeling.

 

[Vortimer]

That may very well be true.  But, there are many stories where two knights go at it for hours on end.  I see those battles being lost by being nickeled and dimed to death, rather than one lucky blow. 

[Morien]

2 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

Just for the record. I am against it. When you double the damages, big monsters and the like (a berserker by example) are really scary. They can kill you in one shot. Players know that and act accordingly.

When you have Giants doing 12d6 on a normal hit (average 42 hp, a guaranteed MW for most people) and 16d6 on a critical (average 56 hit points, RIP), the players still dread getting criticalled against. The old 24d6 is pretty much impossible to survive, and due to the Giant usually either missing (losing the opposed roll) or criticaled (smash), it meant that either the PKs survived unscathed, or one or more of them were turned into pink mist.

A berserker should not be able to regularly one-shot a knight in plate armor to death. If they critical and get very lucky with the damage dice, maybe then. A berserker already does 8d6 or more damage against knights. 12d6+ on a critical, and getting a bit lucky with the damage dice or the PK fails to get the shield, and even with a better armor, death is a possibility. It just isn't a (near) certainty, as it would be with 16d6+1d6 axe.

The issue with berserkers and giants being one-hit-kill monsters is that there is nothing that the Player can do about it, save for have his character run away. And unless I, as the GM, want to have a 5% chance per roll of killing a PK off, that limits how I can use those monsters. I don't want to kill a PK each time they meet a giant (since the fight usually takes several rounds and the Giant is dividing its attacks, meaning several rolls per round), so under the old rules, I pretty much couldn't use Giants as opponents at all.

We have been using 4d6 critical as a houserule for years now, and the Players are still dreading facing Giants and berserkers. The threat is still there. It is just more manageable rather than gamestopping with the constant PK deaths.

[Voord 99]

The new multiple opponents rule affects giants in an interesting way.  Well, semi-interesting.  

Assuming that their larger size allows four knights to attack at once, at least for the Standard Giant - and I’d rule that way - you can get a giant’s attacks down by -15, to 0.  That’s boring, so I’d probably have to have the poor giant concentrate on one opponent.   

Who presumably would fight defensively while their comrades made unopposed attacks - this is where it would matter with the new initiative rules that you probably have a DEX higher than 5.  And so get criticals a lot of the time, and tie the giant’s 1 in 20 criticals.  So less than 5% chance of the giant getting critical damage - about 2.5% for the kind of knight who has any business taking on a giant.

I’d be OK with double-damage criticals here, since, well, it’s a giant.  It should seem like it can squash a knight with a single blow without too much effort.  I wouldn’t force the encounter on players, but they can choose to take the risk and fight with the conscious goal of minimizing that risk.

Not so OK with Saxon berserkers, though, where I find Morien’s points rather convincing.  There’s something about the elegance of double damage as a mechanic that I just like, but there’s a real problem there.

I wonder if I might play around with capping criticals at 12d6 for normal opponents (not monsters, people with supernatural strength, etc.), and see how that works.  I’m a bit reluctant to take away the 10d6/12d6 from player knights, but I am less concerned about hampering the rare normal knight who gets their damage up to 7d6, presumably with focused use of Glory points.

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Voord 99

[Morien]

Admittedly one of the reasons for us to switch to flat criticals was to diminish the advantage of high damage dealers, including PKs. 6d6 is already a huge advantage in normal combat. Allowing them to hit 12d6 vs. 8d6 or 10d6 that normal people hit is just encouraging the Players to minmax the strength higher. But when it is a difference of 9d6 or 10d6, the minmax benefit is slightly lessened.

[weasel fierce]

A guy with 6D6 damage does 22 on average. Which means a knight with 16 armor is going to get hurt a bit and needs to roll for knock down. 

At 10D6 (+4D6) he is doing about 36 damage, so the knight is taking a major wound, likely to hit unconsciousness and is likely to be auto-knocked down.

Throwing 2 more dice of damage on top of that isn't really making the situation any more interesting in my opinion. Your mileage may vary. 

[Tizun Thane]

On 10/31/2020 at 4:32 AM, weasel fierce said:

A guy with 6D6 damage does 22 on average. Which means a knight with 16 armor is going to get hurt a bit and needs to roll for knock down. 

Yeah, and a guy with partial plate armor, armor of courtesy and his shield have 14+3+6=23 points of protection to protect himself. The partial armor is so effective, that I don't want to implement plate armor in my game.

I know many people play during Uther's reign today, but the norman chainmail is supposed to be a little weak.

[Vortimer]

But without that armor of courtesy, means the guy with 6D6 will, on the average, cause damage every successful hit. So it does matter.

[Morien]

17 minutes ago, Hzark10 said:

But without that armor of courtesy, means the guy with 6D6 will, on the average, cause damage every successful hit. So it does matter.

Yes. Hiking the Chivalric Bonus to 96 points rather than 80 makes a big difference in the armor levels.

Also, have the NPKs switch to Warhammers (pollaxes) for +1d6 two-handed and +1d6 vs. Plate when the armor technology gets far enough. 5d6+1d6+1d6 = 7d6 starts hurting, let alone 8d6. Add +4d6 critical on top of that and Major Wounds will show up to wreck a PK's day.

[Baba]

I’m curious about the armor values in 6th ed.

In our campaign, we houseruled them a bit lower.

[weasel fierce]

11 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

Yeah, and a guy with partial plate armor, armor of courtesy and his shield have 14+3+6=23 points of protection to protect himself. The partial armor is so effective, that I don't want to implement plate armor in my game.

I know many people play during Uther's reign today, but the norman chainmail is supposed to be a little weak.

This is true and fair, but it's also what should happen. 

Once the heavy armor shows up, characters should be switching to great swords / halberds on foot and hammers on horse. 

[Baba]

1 hour ago, weasel fierce said:

This is true and fair, but it's also what should happen. 

Once the heavy armor shows up, characters should be switching to great swords / halberds on foot and hammers on horse. 

Perhaps, but... in Malory, all the knights seem to be smiting each other with swords if on foot, or with spears if on horseback. And use shields. That’s my impression, anyway, even though I haven’t counted weapon occurences.

In this case I think I would rather look for inspiration in the stories than in actual historical warfare - and then it doesn’t feel quite right to see the onehanded sword demoted to a fallback weapon.

Edited November 2, 2020 by Baba

[tenchi2a]

I reserve all opinions of the new Edition till full release.

To many times in the past a error or misinterpretation of QS rules can lead to to many arguments about rules that don't exist or are just badly worded.

[Greyblade]

1 hour ago, tenchi2a said:

I reserve all opinions of the new Edition till full release.

To many times in the past a error or misinterpretation of QS rules can lead to to many arguments about rules that don't exist or are just badly worded.

Indeed, the full rulebook will answer all the questions regarding the new edition.

Now, I can't wait to hold it in my hands

[Scotty]

I'd like to hear from those who have played in or run the game - how did it go?

[Greyblade]

13 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I'd like to hear from those who have played in or run the game - how did it go?

Used the new passion system last night, it went really well, one of my players said it gave him more motivation to use passions, because the risk of messing up with lower passions is mitigated 

[MOB]

Thanks to a fan translation, over on our itch-io site Greg Stafford's 'The Adventure of the Great Hunt' KAP6 Preview is now also available in Russian! #МыЕсмыВсехНасъ

https://chaosium.itch.io/the-adventure-of-the-great-hunt

Edited November 3, 2020 by MOB

[mandrill_one]

3 hours ago, MOB said:

Thanks to a fan translation, over on our itch-io site Greg Stafford's 'The Adventure of the Great Hunt' KAP6 Preview is now also available in Russian! #МыЕсмыВсехНасъ

https://chaosium.itch.io/the-adventure-of-the-great-hunt

Are you interested in translations to other languages? I'd love to try my hand at translating the quickstart & preview to Italian. Although, no Italian edition of KAP exists right now...