Q: Squires in Book of the Entourage

[Sir Mad Munkee]

I'm working on a character sheet layout that includes BoE changes (among others), and I was wondering how you handle squires and knightly skills...

BoE page 13 says:

Quote

Knightly Skills: These are skills that knights know, and every squire learns them from his knight. The Knightly Skills are: Awareness, Courtesy, First Aid, Hunting, Battle, Horsemanship, Lance and Sword. They start at (Age-11) + Modifier from the squire’s background. It is enough to keep track of just one value for all of them.

So all of their knightly skills would start at 3, since they start at age 14. So how do you handle advancement? A successful roll of under 15 raises all 8 skills, or do you break them out and roll individually? I guess they're squires, and that kind of granular detail isn't worth it, but I have had players take over their squire as a second character...

[Atgxtg]

By the book those skills just automatically go up a point a year until they reach 15 (per the rules on page 10), although that wouldn't be until they were 26 years old, and they probably would have moved on by then. But that's for non player "follower" squires.

If a player takes over a squire as a new characters then switch to the Player character squire rules (Page 16) for their advancement from then on. Functionally the two methods are about the same. The Follower squires get to improve 8 skills 1 point each, and player character squires would get 5 points plus training and practice. {layer squires come out about a 1 1/2 points ahead each year, not to mention any skill checks they get, but they also have other skills they will want to develop, and player characters tend to be a cut above the norm. A player will probably focus on Sword, Horsemanship and such, and will raise those over a couple of years, but it shouldn't be a problem.

 

 

 

 

[Sir Mad Munkee]

Yeah, I meant taking over a squire of age, and making him your new knight character. I was just thinking a player doing that would have a significant advantage over a normal chargen player. A 21 year old squire would have at least 15, probably more, in those 8 skills, whereas a chargen starts with all of them between 2 and 10, before point allocation. Even with point allocation, there's no way a chargen player could get 15+ in all 8 of those very useful skills.

Come to think of it, doesn't even an 20 year old NPC squire with, say, 19 in all of those skills (good annual rolls) have a good chance of kicking a starting PK's mail-clad arse?

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Sir Mad Munkee said:

Yeah, I meant taking over a squire of age, and making him your new knight character. I was just thinking a player doing that would have a significant advantage over a normal chargen player. A 21 year old squire would have at least 15, probably more, in those 8 skills, whereas a chargen starts with all of them between 2 and 10, before point allocation. Even with point allocation, there's no way a chargen player could get 15+ in all 8 of those very useful skills.

A 21 year old squire shouldn't have 1`5 in all those skills.  They will also start at Age-11. Statically they will do slightly better than non player squires with the annual training and some improvement rolls, but not enough to get all those skills at 15. 

1 hour ago, Sir Mad Munkee said:

Come to think of it, doesn't even an 20 year old NPC squire with, say, 19 in all of those skills (good annual rolls) have a good chance of kicking a starting PK's mail-clad arse?

Yes, if you ever get a 20 year old NPC squire with all those skills at 19, that would make them better than the average knight!  But that shouldn't happen. A 20 year old NPC squire should have those skills at 9, not 19 (Age -11). His "squire" skill could be anywhere from 15 to 20 but probably would be about a 16 or 17. 

 

According the page 10 of the Book of the Entourage once someone hits a 15 skill they only have a 1/6 chance of going up, and a 1/20 chance once the reach 20 skill. So even a 30 year old NPC squire won't have a 19 in all those skills. 

[Sir Mad Munkee]

God's teeth! How embarrassing. 😬 You are of course completely right, and I was of course mathing super wrong. As he enters his 21st year, our squire would have those skills at 10. So his Hunting would be substantially better than a normal beginning PK, but most skills would be bang on where they should be. Silly me.

[Atgxtg]

9 hours ago, Sir Mad Munkee said:

God's teeth! How embarrassing. 😬 You are of course completely right, and I was of course mathing super wrong. As he enters his 21st year, our squire would have those skills at 10. So his Hunting would be substantially better than a normal beginning PK, but most skills would be bang on where they should be. Silly me.

Don't feel bad, we all do that kinda stuff. Way back in KAP1 I once used (STR+SIZ)/6 for a creatures damage instead of (STR+SIZ)/10, and later had to correct it. Recently, I had printed out BotE 1.1 instead of 1.3 and messed up quite a few things. Fortunately, nothing that the players knew about.