Underage Knights and Inherited Attributes

[Atgxtg]

So to summarize:

• Courtly Skills: Default to APP/2
• Dancing, and Weapon Skills default to DEX/2
• Some skills (Battle, Religion) default to (5).
• A character gets to pick 4 non-combat skills to add 5 to (instead of just raising to 10)
• The starting scores from Battle, Sword, Lance and Horsemanship  covert into and extra 5 points or 1 "pick", each (depending on if you use K&L or not) 
• Special Cultural skills (Spear Expertise, 2H Weapons, etc) that stat at 10 also are assumed to be worth  5 points or a pick.

That looks simple and playable. PK Squires will start off slightly better than before in weapon skills (5 vs a 3) but it's not much of a difference, and that might not be a bads thing. Bringing in a 14 year old squire with a 18 DEX and focusing on weapon skills suddenly starts to look like a viable strategy, with both benefits and drawbacks. 

 

 

 

 

[Khanwulf]

19 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

So to summarize:

• Courtly Skills: Default to APP/2
• Dancing, and Weapon Skills default to DEX/2
• Some skills (Battle, Religion) default to (5).
• A character gets to pick 4 non-combat skills to add 5 to (instead of just raising to 10)
• The starting scores from Battle, Sword, Lance and Horsemanship  covert into and extra 5 points or 1 "pick", each (depending on if you use K&L or not) 
• Special Cultural skills (Spear Expertise, 2H Weapons, etc) that stat at 10 also are assumed to be worth  5 points or a pick.

That looks simple and playable. PK Squires will start off slightly better than before in weapon skills (5 vs a 3) but it's not much of a difference, and that might not be a bads thing. Bringing in a 14 year old squire with a 18 DEX and focusing on weapon skills suddenly starts to look like a viable strategy, with both benefits and drawbacks. 

 

Looks feasible. So stat raises after character creation do not raise skills? I'm fine with that.

Also the pick of one skill to 15 remains? It's likely that more players will decide to raise a secondary skill using that choice, especially if they choose to go with higher DEX, planning on putting the first few years' skill points into weaponry. A viable approach.

--Khanwulf 

[Atgxtg]

16 minutes ago, Khanwulf said:

Looks feasible. So stat raises after character creation do not raise skills? I'm fine with that.

Attribute increases after chargen do increase the  increases do raise the base, but only the base. Otherwise I don't think the attributes would be worth it, as the skill points gained from APP or DEX aren't equal to the benefits of the SIZ and CON lost. It's quality vs. Quality.

For example, Let's say Lady Elaine has APP 20, and Courtesy 10, Intrigue 10, and Romance 10, all due to her high APP> Now a few years go by and she raises Courtesy to 13 and Romance to 16, but intrigue stays the same. She meets and marries the Knight of her dreams gains 1000 glory points, and uses her bonus point to raise her APP to 21. Now, with standard rounding, her default for Courtly skills goes up to 11. This would raise her Intrigue to 11, but would not affect her Courtesy or Romance, as they are already higher than 11. 

Now 30 years go by and time starts to catch up with her and her looks fade a little back down to 20. But all her courtly skills would remain where they were, with her lowest ones at least at 11 as she had gotten them that high, and probably learned a little something over the years.

16 minutes ago, Khanwulf said:

Also the pick of one skill to 15 remains? It's likely that more players will decide to raise a secondary skill using that choice, especially if they choose to go with higher DEX, planning on putting the first few years' skill points into weaponry. A viable approach.

Yeah, but that's what they tend to do now, isn't it? It's a great combo with the family characteristic too. For instance in my current campaign I had a PK who got the "Never Forest a Face" family characteristic who raised Recognize to 15 and ended up with a 25. Another PK got a Greatsword off of a Faerie opponent long before such weapons would normally exist, and when he wrote up his son he used the "raise to 15" rule to bump up greatsword to 15.

What has changed, thanks to Morien, is that the skills that would normally start at 10 in KAP now are considered to have been increased with points (of, if using K&L picks) to get to that value, and those points will affect the new base scores. That means:

• Someone with DEX 16, would have a base of 8 in sword, which with picks/points would be 13 instead of 10. 
• A Roman PK with DEX 20 would, if he spent his points the same way (one for each of the skills at 10) would now have a 15 in Sword, Lance, and Horsemanship, freeing up his other points for something else. That might just make putting the points into DEX instead of SIZ or CON worth it. I think it probably is worth it if the player is going to start as a squire. 

 

[Khanwulf]

Ok so the net result is that raises increase the floor and the assumption is that there is enough skill use to justify holding a skill level even if play does not call for increase. That's fair. I'm being pedantic so it can be written up for individuals not reading threads and avoid provoking "arbitrary checks".

All in all there seems good reason to play a "dex monkey" type now, even without special maneuvers that tend to go with the trope. That and the "face".

[Atgxtg]

7 minutes ago, Khanwulf said:

Ok so the net result is that raises increase the floor and the assumption is that there is enough skill use to justify holding a skill level even if play does not call for increase. That's fair. I'm being pedantic so it can be written up for individuals not reading threads and avoid provoking "arbitrary checks".

Yes, plus I think a point or so in some skill a PK never improves isn't a problem as they probably haven't used it that much anyway. 

7 minutes ago, Khanwulf said:

All in all there seems good reason to play a "dex monkey" type now, even without special maneuvers that tend to go with the trope. That and the "face".

Prince Valiant might help too. In PV DEXTERITY is a skill and is used for all sorts of stunts in combat (trips, throws, called shots). Maybe some of that could be ported over to KAP? I was thinking of trying to revive the double feint with some changes. Basically, a character could half armor up to his DEX, but take a penalty to his combat roll (either a flat -5 or equal to the armor's DEX penalty).

[Khanwulf]

I don't have PV, but see what maneuvers are possible. I have a house one that reduces the number of opponents who can engage. 

Something that removes or reduces shield impact, or that trips--both when fighting defensively, could be handy. Likewise, you idea of trading skill for reduced armor based on the target's armor penalty is interesting. 

But the issue with all of these is that armor dex penalties are stiff and make it unlikely to pass a roll, so one won't be attempted unless knights are unarmored. This counter-intuitive result is what canned the double-feint in KAP. Maybe DEX can be treated as more of point pool, and tradeoffs be tested with a weapons roll if total dex (including armor penalties) is high enough?

[Cornelius]

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Attribute increases after chargen do increase the  increases do raise the base, but only the base. Otherwise I don't think the attributes would be worth it, as the skill points gained from APP or DEX aren't equal to the benefits of the SIZ and CON lost. It's quality vs. Quality.

For example, Let's say Lady Elaine has APP 20, and Courtesy 10, Intrigue 10, and Romance 10, all due to her high APP> Now a few years go by and she raises Courtesy to 13 and Romance to 16, but intrigue stays the same. She meets and marries the Knight of her dreams gains 1000 glory points, and uses her bonus point to raise her APP to 21. Now, with standard rounding, her default for Courtly skills goes up to 11. This would raise her Intrigue to 11, but would not affect her Courtesy or Romance, as they are already higher than 11. 

Now 30 years go by and time starts to catch up with her and her looks fade a little back down to 20. But all her courtly skills would remain where they were, with her lowest ones at least at 11 as she had gotten them that high, and probably learned a little something over the years

Ok. some consequences:

- Training a skill at default by 1 or 2 points is not interesting, as an increase in the STAT is a better option. This is not a big problem as you would probably put all your yearly training into a skill if your want to raise it to some level. This is of course different if you have a default skill at 8 and increase it to 10, for instance.

- Increases gained by Experience checks may become 'lost' when you increase the Attribute linked to the skill. The experience checks is a integral part of the increase in level of the characters for KAP (in other systems you get XP or advancement points to do this). So it feels as if the experience your character has gained gets lost. It somehow feels wrong.

- It will make the increase of an Attribute over a skill, trait or passion even more important until the age of 35. 

[Morien]

3 hours ago, Cornelius said:

Ok. some consequences:

I don't think these are nearly as significant as you think, Cornelius.

1. You need 2 stat points to increase your defaults by 1 (assuming that you are not already at the cusp after chargen, which, let's face it, you shouldn't be). This is about equivalent to 10 skill points (9 if you use 1d6+1 rather than flat 5). Which means you would have to be raising 10 skills by 1 to break even. Which feels a bit far fetched, IMHO, especially since your main skills would already be higher than the default. You are much more likely to focus on, say, 3 skills which means you get 3 points in each, x3 the amount you'd get from stat raises, in the skills you are interested in.

2. Same thing here, the Attribute defaults mainly function at the chargen, giving you higher starting skills and hence more skill points to spare on things you'd like. That is their major impact. Any minor experience lost has been more than made up by the fact that the starting skills are now 2-3 points higher, on average. Again, your main skills are likely 10+ anyway, so if your Play suddenly 'loses' an experience point, it is more than made up by the fact that the other low DEX skills (Dancing, most weapons that you didn't spend points on) went up by 1, too. Something you wouldn't get in the base system.

3. See 1. You still see focus on skill training, but if you want, you will get some benefit from DEX or APP increases, if you want to be more of a generalist.

Edited April 22, 2019 by Morien

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, Cornelius said:

Ok. some consequences:

- Training a skill at default by 1 or 2 points is not interesting, as an increase in the STAT is a better option.

Yes, but you don't ususally increase a skill 1 or 2 points and just leave it. For example let's take a look at a young character who puts 5 points into DEX for a 15. That gives him a 8 in his weapon skills.Now if he was a squire that's a nice boost. 

If he is older, then  But with the points/picks that normally go into Sword, Horsemanship and Lance/Spear Expertise, he had a 13. make it is much easier and faster for him to get those skills up to 15. 

5 hours ago, Cornelius said:

- Increases gained by Experience checks may become 'lost' when you increase the Attribute linked to the skill. The experience checks is a integral part of the increase in level of the characters for KAP (in other systems you get XP or advancement points to do this). So it feels as if the experience your character has gained gets lost. It somehow feels wrong.

Yes but the chances of that happening are practically nil. In order for a character to loose out this way, he would need to raise the attribute faster than he is raising the skill, and that seems unlikely.

5 hours ago, Cornelius said:

- It will make the increase of an Attribute over a skill, trait or passion even more important until the age of 35. 

No, I just think it will spread it out more, but at least it will be a different attribute. As the game stands now, from a strategic standpoint players should raise SIZ when then can and CON and possibly STR when they can't raise SIZ. This rule does't make raise skills less important, it just makes SIZ and CON a little less important. 

But then, I value high skill much more than some other here. I'd rather have a PK with Sword 25 than SIZ 25 or CON 25. 

And there is a easy fix for characters with high SIZ too.

 

[Hzark10]

Regarding SIZ, many of us gamemasters play with the rule that after 21, SIZ does not mean height, but rather, girth.  So, increasing that stat means getting fat, and if continuing, obese. People do not keep growing throughout their lives.

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Hzark10 said:

Regarding SIZ, many of us gamemasters play with the rule that after 21, SIZ does not mean height, but rather, girth.  So, increasing that stat means getting fat, and if continuing, obese.

Okay, but does that make any difference in play? Do they lose APP or anything?

 

2 hours ago, Hzark10 said:

People do not keep growing throughout their lives.

No, although they do keep growing until age 25. At least modern people do.

What I do to keep SIZ in check is consider the horses. Realistically, a horse can carry 30% of it's weight. That's pretty much the pper limit and represents a warhorse for a relative short term. For all day riding the limit is close to 20%. Now if game terms there would be some adjustments for STR (which is appropriated with the 30% rule) but even so that means that a SIZ 18 character really needs a SIZ 30 horse. A SIZ 25 PK (the same SIZ as a small giant, btw) would need a SIZ 37 ish horse, and so would have to find something like a larger charger just to serve as a rouncy.  That right there will force PKS to keep their SIZ within the bounds of what a horse can carry.

 

The math seems to work out to a horse being able to carry a rider of a SIZ equal to or less than it's average damage roll.