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Questions on Quick Start rules and the Adventure of the Sword Tournament


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I want to run my first Pendragon game tomorrow, using The Adventure of the Sword Tournament and its Quick Start rules. However, I have a few questions I hope somebody here can answer.

- How do shields work? It says that the shield value is applied on partial successes. But where can I find that value? Or do they not need values and I am getting it wrong?
- Is it correct, that shields never break against swords only against axes?
- Some of the player character skills seem rather low (5 or 6), which means that chances of failure are far greater than chances of success and players should refrain from using them not to make things worse. (Unless of course boosted by a Passion roll.) Is that correct?
- The Gorre knights do half damage and the rebated swords do half damage. Does that mean the Gorre knights with rebated swords do a quarter of the normal damage? If so, how do they knock down opponents?
- If a character is knocked off the horse during the tournement, the horse will be claimed by the victorious opponent and the character is captured. Does that also mean they will not reach St. Pauls cathedral in time, because the next scene starts immediately after the "battle" and there is no time to fetch and prepare a new horse?

I am not sure if I get the Passion rolls right, but cannot ask a concrete question at this time.

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4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

I want to run my first Pendragon game tomorrow, using The Adventure of the Sword Tournament and its Quick Start rules. However, I have a few questions I hope somebody here can answer.

- How do shields work? It says that the shield value is applied on partial successes. But where can I find that value? Or do they not need values and I am getting it wrong?

They add 6 to the armor value. This is the '+6' on the armor row of the pregens and knightly opponents. (I agree that it would have been better to be explicit about this in the actual rules. Or at least in the equipment where the armor and the shield are mentioned. Oh well.)

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- Is it correct, that shields never break against swords only against axes?

Correct, although if you want to make it more dramatic, you could have them breaking on a critical hit, too. Especially if the opponent is taking a major wound anyway and will be out of combat. Cinematic license. 🙂

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- Some of the player character skills seem rather low (5 or 6), which means that chances of failure are far greater than chances of success and players should refrain from using them not to make things worse. (Unless of course boosted by a Passion roll.) Is that correct?

My rule of thumb is that a failure = as if you never rolled in the first place. So you might as well roll and hope for the best, as I encourage my players to do. Only a fumble will make it worse.

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- The Gorre knights do half damage and the rebated swords do half damage. Does that mean the Gorre knights with rebated swords do a quarter of the normal damage? If so, how do they knock down opponents?

The halving/quartering of the damage happens AFTER Knockdown is calculated and resolved. (Yeah... that should have been mentioned somewhere in the Adventure, but I couldn't find any mention. It is in KAP 5.2 rulebook, though, for what's it worth.)
Example: I have base damage 4d6. I hit you with a rebatted weapon and I am witholding my blow for half a damage, too, for a total of one quarter of the damage. I roll the damage normally, 4d6, and get 16. Since your size is 15, this triggers a Knockdown test on your DEX. However, the actual damage I am doing is 16/4 = 4 points, easily absorbed by your armor. You might still get damage from being knocked off your horse, though, and falling to the ground.

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

- If a character is knocked off the horse during the tournement, the horse will be claimed by the victorious opponent and the character is captured. Does that also mean they will not reach St. Pauls cathedral in time, because the next scene starts immediately after the "battle" and there is no time to fetch and prepare a new horse?

I would not want to keep the PKs away from this event in the off-chance that they were captured. Instead, I would rule that they and their horse were being escorted to the capture area at the time by their captor, who himself is of course curious to see what is going on, and tells the PK to follow. So the PK can jump on their own horse (still saddled and everything), and hasten to the St. Paul's with their captor.

4 hours ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

I am not sure if I get the Passion rolls right, but cannot ask a concrete question at this time.

Ask away, Bridgekeeper, I am not afraid!

Edited by Morien
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Cool! Many thanks for the detailed answers. That really helps me to understand the system better.

Quote

My rule of thumb is that a failure = as if you never rolled in the first place. So you might as well roll and hope for the best, as I encourage my players to do. Only a fumble will make it worse.

One more question on the skill values, though. I understand your intention, but from my experience in other systems players need the possibility of failure to feel involvement and excitement about the obstacle and the adventure in general. If a character tries to dance or sing and fails, the audience would be disappointed and think less of them (same like failing in combat would have negative repercussions like losing your horse and the tournament). Is there any other way to handle low value skills?

 

As a sidenote, I got the impression that although the adventure takes place in the 6th century, many things only existed 500 or even 1000 years later (like jousting, heraldry and the equipment). Is that generally the case in Pendragon or particular in this adventure?

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1 hour ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

Cool! Many thanks for the detailed answers. That really helps me to understand the system better.

One more question on the skill values, though. I understand your intention, but from my experience in other systems players need the possibility of failure to feel involvement and excitement about the obstacle and the adventure in general. If a character tries to dance or sing and fails, the audience would be disappointed and think less of them (same like failing in combat would have negative repercussions like losing your horse and the tournament). Is there any other way to handle low value skills?

I generally use the carrot, not the stick. Otherwise, you would have knights who have spent their whole lives in a courtly setting putting their foot into their mouth like two-thirds of the time. That is not fun nor particular realistic. It is more fun when the failure means that no one cares since you are not doing anything special, and success means that you do gain some attention and positive reinforcement.

Now, if we move past the courtly setting... or even in the courtly setting... you can have stakes by requiring a success to do something. Like if you are trying to impress a lady with your dancing skills, you will have to succeed in order to do that. But the failure is still the same as not asking her for a dance at all. A failure in Awareness might mean that you miss the ambush until the arrows fly, or a failure in the Hunting means you fail to find the tracks of the beast, and spend additional time looking for them. So failures do matter, when it is important. You could even be talking to a particularly prickly nobleman who will take offense unless you succeed in Courtesy, and if you refuse to roll and stay mute, he gets upset: "So you don't even think I am worthy of your breath, sir! I demand satisfaction, sirrah!" Of course, if it is a group of PKs that try to deal with him, it would make sense to put the most silver-tongued of them (highest Courtesy) forward.

So yeah, you can definitely have consequences for failing. But the consequences of a failure should not be worse than refusing to roll in the first place, or you will get exactly what you were originally talking about, the Players not wanting to try their low skills since the smart choice is not to roll. That leads to a rather boring game, IMHO.

Imagine Combat Skills, for instance. If someone is swinging a sword at you, will you try to use your Spear 6 to defend yourself, or are you just standing there and taking it? (Not the best possible argument, as there are ways to use DEX to dodge, etc, but you see my point, right?)

1 hour ago, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

As a sidenote, I got the impression that although the adventure takes place in the 6th century, many things only existed 500 or even 1000 years later (like jousting, heraldry and the equipment). Is that generally the case in Pendragon or particular in this adventure?

It is generally the case of KAP. It is not trying to be 'strictly historical' take on the Post-Roman / Migration Era Britain, but more faithful to the stories that the Medieval (and Post-Medieval) authors wrote about King Arthur and his KNIGHTS of the Round Table. They basically took their own Medieval world and transported it back to the days of King Arthur, filled with castles, tournaments, chivalrous knights on war horses and wearing full armor, and beautiful damsels to rescue from dragons and villains. So it is very much romanticized view of King Arthur in that sense.

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So yeah, you can definitely have consequences for failing. But the consequences of a failure should not be worse than refusing to roll in the first place, or you will get exactly what you were originally talking about, the Players not wanting to try their low skills since the smart choice is not to roll. That leads to a rather boring game, IMHO.

Imagine Combat Skills, for instance. If someone is swinging a sword at you, will you try to use your Spear 6 to defend yourself, or are you just standing there and taking it? (Not the best possible argument, as there are ways to use DEX to dodge, etc, but you see my point, right?)

Many thanks again. I still wonder why some skills are so low in the first place. In other systems 25% chance of success is often the default, when a character has never used that skill before. But I will take your advice and give it a try. After all that's why I am playing Pendragon to try something new (for me at least).

 

Quote

So it is very much romanticized view of King Arthur in that sense.

Interesting. I wonder how my players will like that tomorrow. Looking forward to it. 🙂

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In fact, the Pendragon Campaign is literrally a fast-forward time travel through the middle ages and the different stages of the elaboration of the arthurian myths.

The first chapters, although not historically accurate, are closer to 5th century Britain. The middle chapters are influenced by Chrétien de Troyes and 12th/13th century Europe. The last chapters are darker and gloomy, and look more like the movie Excalibur, with 15th century armors, Thomas Mallory time period.

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On 3/29/2023 at 12:37 PM, Robin "RoM" Mitra said:

Many thanks again. I still wonder why some skills are so low in the first place. In other systems 25% chance of success is often the default, when a character has never used that skill before. But I will take your advice and give it a try. After all that's why I am playing Pendragon to try something new (for me at least).

 

Interesting. I wonder how my players will like that tomorrow. Looking forward to it. 🙂

So, I dunno if the quickstart mentions it, but in general, success at a Courtly skill grants 10 Glory. In most situations, knights aren't really expected to be impressive dancers or super well-mannered, a failure just means you're living up to the (low) expectations people had of you. Whereas a success means that you actually impress people.

There are exceptions to anything, of course, but in general, in this system, success = something good happens, failure = nothing happens, crit = something great happens, and fumble = something bad happens. And if it's an opposed roll (of which many rolls are), there's also the partial success, which = something okay happens (the main example of this is getting to defend yourself with your shield/parry value).

It might seem weird at first that tons of skills are very low... but that makes it all the more sweet when you succeed and get some glory. And, though this is technically a GM thing and not explicitly written into the game, I give out checks for low skills (10 or less) on any success, and checks for high skills only on a crit. I'm not sure if they explain experience checks in the quick start, actually, but it's one of the ways to advance your character.

And, finally, every knight will generally have a few things they specialize in. Every knight should be somewhat good at fighting, and horsemanship, and a couple of things they're all kind of okay at, like hunting and first aid, and then beyond that, you probably only get 1 or 2 skills to be really good, from the start. It's showing this is where the character puts their focus, and the rest are just a default value decided by their culture and their stats (since the default values of Courtly Skills and Combat skills are determined by your APP and DEX, respectively).

I'm curious if you went ahead and played and how that went, feel free to share here, or in the discord

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