Questions from the New Guy

[Balin]

Longtime ttrpg player/GM, and I'm looking to get into Pendragon 6th edition when it releases later this year. I played Pendragon for one session back in what I think was 3rd edition? (1997) and fell in love with it, but never had the time to really dive into it.

Hearing that a 6th edition was about to drop, I decided now was the time. But I have a few question, that I'm hoping this is the right place to ask.

First, I see a lot of extra material, like Book of the Manor, Great Pendragon Campaign, Book of Uther, etc. Once 6th edition drops, will those books still be usable, or should I expect/wait for new, updated versions of those sources to drop? Can I buy them now or will I just be buying them again over the next few years? I'd love to start picking some of these up, but not if they're going to be obsolete soon.

Second, from perusing other threads in this forum, I get the impression that Chaosium doesn't do Pre-orders, is this correct? Should I just be asking my FLGS to reserve me a copy whenever the starter set drops?

Third, and this is a mechanics question, I DL'ed the Tournament of the Sword pdf preview to run for my gaming group to get them (and myself) familiar with the system. I came across the concept of the +/- bonuses, but my question is, are these added to the Skils/Traits totals, or to the rolls themselves? For example, with the +5 from being mounted vs. an opponent on foot, would that be added to the Combat skill before the roll, or to the roll itself? I'm assuming it's added to the skill, because it could almost be a punishment if added to the roll.

I'm sure many of these answers are obvious for the veterans here, so I thanks in advance for your patience.

[Morien]

13 hours ago, Balin said:

I came across the concept of the +/- bonuses, but my question is, are these added to the Skils/Traits totals, or to the rolls themselves?

All bonuses/penalties are applied to the values themselves, not to the roll.

Only exception is when your modified skill (or trait or passion, albeit it is rarer) is higher than 20. Then the excess is added on your roll. So skill 23 would roll 1d20+3 and if the roll result is 20 or over, it us a critical.

Now if your skill is already 20+, then the positive mods end up adding to the roll, but only via the above rule.

Skill 15+5 = 20. Roll 1d20.

Skill 20+5 = 25. Roll 1d20+5.

Skill 23-5 = 18. Roll 1d20 (vs skill 18).

Edited May 16, 2023 by Morien

[Morien]

13 hours ago, Balin said:

First, I see a lot of extra material, like Book of the Manor, Great Pendragon Campaign, Book of Uther, etc. Once 6th edition drops, will those books still be usable, or should I expect/wait for new, updated versions of those sources to drop? Can I buy them now or will I just be buying them again over the next few years? I'd love to start picking some of these up, but not if they're going to be obsolete soon.

This thread has compiled some information about what will be in the pipeline:

My guess is that most of them would be very useful until the same information comes out in new releases. So usable, but will be replaced eventually. Looking at the PDF compilation in the above link...

GPC, BoU, BotW:
Well, we know that the 6e starts with the Sword Tournament (or close enough), so while you are of course free to start earlier and play through Uther and Anarchy, the gist of the game seems to be Boy King and onwards.
There will be three Phase/Period books, expanding on GPC: Boy King + Conquest, Romance + Tournament, Grail + Twilight. And three prequels, covering from Vortigern to Anarchy. Anyway, the point is that these should cover GPC and then some. (When they come out, that is. It is not as if you can just snap your fingers and get them right now.)
Custom & Law Book seems to cover most of the realm and baronial stuff, so a lot of BoU and BotW will be less useful, especially with their Uther Period focus. I would also imagine that the Book of Castles will detail most of the castles, taking that away from BotW.

BotE:
The GM's book is supposed to: "Manorial system is the same as the system from The Book of the Estate." Obviously the GM's book can't treat the topic with the same level as a dedicated book, but whether it will be a quick summary a la BotW's appendix, or if it will include improvements, who knows? In the latter case, BotE would be much lighter in crunch (save for building your own estate and the example estates), IMHO, but in the former, yeah, if base-building is your thing, BotE is probably useful for you still. If you just want to know what your standard of living is and how many knights and soldiers you have, probably not so useful.

BotEnt:
I am not seeing anything in that pdf about entourage members, in which case, this might be useful. Still, they could be in the GM's book (in particular, I am thinking about the marriage tables, which I think are a nice addition that BotEnt brings, and I am hoping they'd be in the GM Book as they are superior IMHO to the KAP 5.2 ones), so you could buy that first and see what's in there, and then decide.

BofK&L:
This looks like it will be superseded by Knights and Ladies Adventurous.

Regional books:
Looks like these will be superseded by new editions (the question is when, though). So if you need them in your campaign now, it might be worth paying for the convenience. I think most of these are less than $10 as a pdf, so they are quite good value for money, and then you can splurge for the dead tree version when the new shiny ones come out.

13 hours ago, Balin said:

Second, from perusing other threads in this forum, I get the impression that Chaosium doesn't do Pre-orders, is this correct? Should I just be asking my FLGS to reserve me a copy whenever the starter set drops?

Alas, I don't know.

[Morien]

16 hours ago, Balin said:

Longtime ttrpg player/GM, and I'm looking to get into Pendragon 6th edition when it releases later this year. I played Pendragon for one session back in what I think was 3rd edition? (1997) and fell in love with it, but never had the time to really dive into it.

Also, welcome to the forum and hope you like it here and the game!

Here are a couple of threads that you might find useful.

The first one has some advice, but also talks about the published books and how I rank them in usability:

This other thread is what I threw together as a cheap 'starter' for KAP, if someone wished to take it for a spin and see if their group liked it:

 

[Balin]

Thank you, Morien! You've been an exemplar of Courtesy and Hospitality. I have a lot of threads to read now!

[Mugen]

21 hours ago, Morien said:

Only exception is when your modified skill (or trait or passion, albeit it is rarer) is higher than 20. Then the excess is added on your roll. So skill 23 would roll 1d20+3 and if the roll result is 20 or over, it us a critical.

In order to avoid confusion : from the previews I read, it seems values above 20 are written 20(X) in 6th edition. If you ever read 23 in older KAP material, it's exactly the same as 20(3) in 6th edition.

[Morien]

58 minutes ago, Mugen said:

In order to avoid confusion : from the previews I read, it seems values above 20 are written 20(X) in 6th edition. If you ever read 23 in older KAP material, it's exactly the same as 20(3) in 6th edition.

Yes. Sword Tournament: "If the Statistic value is written as 20 (+x), add the value of (+x) to the die roll to determine its final result."

Personally, I liked the old rule (calculate the modified skill value, then add any excess over 20 to your roll), since it it was clearer when it came to the modifiers. I mean, if you read that above bit from the Adventure of the Sword Tournament, and go strictly by RAW, not knowing how it is supposed to work, then 18+5 = 23 is equivalent of 20, since it is not "written" as 20 (+3). Same thing when it comes to negative modifiers: 20 (+3) - 5, is this now 15 (+3)? No, obviously we know it is supposed to be 18, nothing added, but the potential for confusion is there.

[Call Me Deacon Blues]

As to which books will be superseded, it also bears mentioning that the Book of Feasts will likely be unnecessary, or at least less necessary, since the feast rules will be in the core book (or possibly GM's book). I would assume they will use a rollable table fro feast events instead of the cards, though, so maybe it would be worth it to pick it up for them.

Book of Sires would still be useful, as far as I'm aware, and it's my favorite Pendragon book out there, so it might still be worth it. Might need to adjust the bonus Passions and things a little bit, to match 6th edition, but otherwise should be fine.

Someone mentioned in the Discord that David Larkins was planning on updating the adventure The Grey Knight, and of course the ones from the GPC are being updated, but otherwise, any older adventures might be useful if you want to run them. There's very little difference between editions, though for the older ones, you might want to buff up any NPCs in it a bit. 

At least the original plan, back when Knights and Ladies Adventurous was going to be published under 5th edition instead of 6th, was to leave an Continental cultures out of it. Some things they've stated implied that might no longer be the case, in an interview Larkins mentioned having a total number of cultures that at least matches the number appearing in BoKaL, and there are a couple 6th edition sample characters with foreign cultures, but I'm not sure. The main difference they said back then was that they were removing any Cultural Skills and replacing them with bonuses to the component skills instead, so for instance, instead of Cymric knights getting Spear Expertise (a combination of Spear, Great Spear, and Lance), they get, like, a +3 bonus to the Spear skill (which now works for all polearms anyway), and the Lance skill has been changed to the Charge skill, which all knight characters get at a high base level from the jump.

[7dot62mm]

I think you got lots of really good answers, above.

But one thing about the various supplements. My understanding is that only the 6th ed Starter Set is due out this year. So whether or not the various supplements will eventually be replaced by something else is not really relevant right now if you intend to play the game this year. Thus, if the older supplements contain stuff you need this year, consider buying them in PDF or something and using them until 6th edition compatible replacements are available a few years from now (if ever).

Most of the material will work perfectly, others not so well. The main things is to watch out for are relative strengths of the NPCs and PCs (most 1st edition Round Table knights have very low stats - i.e. Sword 14, 4d6 damage, 8 points of Armor - and can be easily beaten by 5.2 edition newly-knighted characters with Sword 20 and 6d6 damage) and money/costs which fluctuate between editions.

[Morien]

You can't start with Sword 20 as a 21-year old knight in 5.2. And I forget if the previous exp was also limited to 15. But Sword 15 and 6d6 is enough vs. 1e knights. Part of the reason is that SIZ was just 3d6 so average 10-11. Now even the Average Knight is SIZ 14.

4.5e (Saxons!, some of the Tales of) went actually for more high power, so some NPKs there can have all stats in the mid-to-late teens.

[Call Me Deacon Blues]

Right, pretty sure skills are capped at 15 at creation, barring a couple of exceptions.

And I'd assume the core book will be out soon after the starter set, one of the reasons for the delay was to get the starter set going first and get them both out around the same time. Course, they haven't put an official date yet, but I'd be surprised if we didn't at least have an announcement by Gencon, if not the actual core books present there

[Mugen]

On 6/6/2023 at 7:55 AM, Morien said:

You can't start with Sword 20 as a 21-year old knight in 5.2. And I forget if the previous exp was also limited to 15. But Sword 15 and 6d6 is enough vs. 1e knights. Part of the reason is that SIZ was just 3d6 so average 10-11. Now even the Average Knight is SIZ 14.

You could have Sword 20 in 3rd edition, but it was detrimental to other skills or characteristics. 15 was the maximum for a 15 years old PK, but he could chose to put 1 point each year after that instead of the other options (1 point in a characteristic or 1 point in a trait or passion or 1d6 points to skills below 15).

Was the option to focus on a single skill removed in 5.2 ? That sounds strange to me.

Edit: Ok, I checked my books, and the option to put points in skills above 15 is also not mentioned in the base character creation rules from the core rulebook. It's only present in the full character creation rules from Chivalrous Knights.

I wonder if that option also exists in the complete creation rules from Book of Ladies and Knights for 5e ?

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Mugen

[Morien]

12 minutes ago, Mugen said:

Was the option to focus on a single skill removed in 5.2 ? That sounds strange to me.

In 5.2, all the characters are generated as 21-year olds or older. In both cases, there is a hard cap on 15 (personally, I would allow older characters to break this).

Individual skill choices:
"No Skill or Combat Skill may ever be raised above 15 by this process."

Previous experience (if older than 21):
"Distribute 1d6 points among the character’s Skills. No non-Combat Skills with a starting value of 0 may be augmented, and no Skill may be raised above 15."

[Mugen]

20 minutes ago, Morien said:

In 5.2, all the characters are generated as 21-year olds or older. In both cases, there is a hard cap on 15 (personally, I would allow older characters to break this).

Individual skill choices:
"No Skill or Combat Skill may ever be raised above 15 by this process."

Previous experience (if older than 21):
"Distribute 1d6 points among the character’s Skills. No non-Combat Skills with a starting value of 0 may be augmented, and no Skill may be raised above 15."

Yes, as I mentioned in my Edit, this is the same rule as in the core 3rd edition book. I only used the Chivalrous Knights system, which explains why I didn't remember the simpler one.

I checked the Book of Knights and Ladies, and it doesn't change the creation procedure for characters below 21, but let you use Winter phase rules for older ones. Which, I guess (as I don't own 5.2), include the possibility to raise a single skill to 20, like in 3rd edition.

Note that the option to raise a skill above 15 is in option 2, with personnality traits and passions.

Edited June 8, 2023 by Mugen

[Morien]

39 minutes ago, Mugen said:

Yes, as I mentioned in my Edit, this is the same rule as in the core 3rd edition book. I only used the Chivalrous Knights system, which explains why I didn't remember the simpler one.

I checked the Book of Knights and Ladies, and it doesn't change the creation procedure for characters below 21, but let you use Winter phase rules for older ones. Which, I guess (as I don't own 5.2), include the possibility to raise a single skill to 20, like in 3rd edition.

Note that the option to raise a skill above 15 is in option 2, with personnality traits and passions.

Interestingly, 5.2 has this to say about the Previous Experience:
"Each additional year of age provides a character with any two of the following benefits; you may not choose the same benefit twice for the same year. (Note: These benefits are similar to, but not the same as those gained in the Winter Phase of the game — see Chapter 5.)"

You get two picks, but the opportunity to increase your skill above 15 is NOT included.

And yes, I agree with you that BoK&L does seem to allow for it: "That is, he can perform a solo scenario (See: Pendragon 5th ed., pgs. 199-204) and also get the annual Winter Phase experience (Pendragon, pgs. 106–111)."
Since the Winter Phase allows for the increase of skill up to 20 as one of the picks, I would imagine that they are allowed to do so.
 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Morien

[Mugen]

8 hours ago, Morien said:

Interestingly, 5.2 has this to say about the Previous Experience:
"Each additional year of age provides a character with any two of the following benefits; you may not choose the same benefit twice for the same year. (Note: These benefits are similar to, but not the same as those gained in the Winter Phase of the game — see Chapter 5.)"

You get two picks, but the opportunity to increase your skill above 15 is NOT included.

That's better than having an option to reach 20 in a skill, IMHO.