What method do you use for starting weapon skill levels?

Over in the All Out Berserk Sequencing (http://www.gspendragon.com/roundtable/index.php?topic=932.0) thread, there's a discussion about using DEX for weapon base levels.
I thought It would be nice to have a thread for discussing different house rules.

Here are the methods I prefer:

Half Cost Till 10
Basically, for every point put on a weapon, it increases by 2 points, until it reaches 10.
Typically, this means a new skill can be gotten to level 15 fairly quickly, 1 year to get it to or close to 10, and another to get it to or close to 15.
It also does not negate the culture starting skills - saxons with a starting score in axe, romans with dagger, etc. These skills are improved quicker.

I have considered halving the cost up to 15, instead of 10. Weapon skills are nearly always used unopposed, so low skill levels are really bad to have especially when you're facing skilled knights. Still undecided on this.

Prime Skill -5, max 10
Basically, if you have any weapon skill at 15 or more, you have all weapon skills at 10. (Though they must be raised independently from then on.)
If your highest weapon skill is less than 15, other weapons are at -5.
This gives levels of skill that are worth using in an emergency, or when there is little actual danger like tournaments, but still a risky level to use in a serious fight. And it still takes a year or two to develop to worthwhile, contest-winning levels.

Any thoughts? What methods do you use?

I really like the "Prime Skill -5, Max 10". Great idea!

Learning one weapon teaches you basics -- distance, timing, body mechanics, not freaking out when weapons are incoming, etc. -- that are transferable but which by themselves do not give you mastery in a new weapons form. Having seen others pick up new weapons to play with at SCA practices, I'd say a skilled fighter's hitting skill-10 immediately or after a few bouts is about right ("Hey, that spear move is just like fencing's beat-disengage-thrust!").

I would just add that *Melee* weapon default = Prime *Melee* weapon skill -5, max 10. Bows don't transfer as well.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. My reasoning is much the same as yours.



I would just add that *Melee* weapon default = Prime *Melee* weapon skill -5, max 10. Bows don't transfer as well.

Good catch.

Half Cost Till 10


This is what we do in our campaigns. We did tinker with various default skills, but this seems to work. Like you say, a couple of years is a reasonable wait time to get a skill in Flail (like one player char did). That is his main weapon now. Another player char started with Hammer at 15 in chargen. One old char learned crossbow.

So it seems to be cheap enough for people to do, but not as easy as to have everyone doing it on a whim.

I like the WS -5. Nice simple solution. Seems reasonable to expect that most knights would be 'proficient' (10) with the whole array or weapons within their culture.

NT

Instead of fixed starting values per culture for all Skills, we roll 1d6, 2d6 or even 2d6+3 to give these. (This reflects the fact that different people have different talents.) For us, sword is 2d6+3 and most other melee weapons are 2d6. Statistically, Sword will come up as the best weapon at CharGen, but every now and again a player will find himself with "unusual" starting values like Sword 7 and Mace 11, which will lead to players developping other weapons than Sword as their main melee skill. It also assures most players to have reasonable stats in some secondary weapons and skills. It always struck me as odd that Uther (dagger 5) would have a tough fight against a servant (dagger 6).

In the same line of thought, I've been thinking about giving an extra free check to any one general skill, courteous skill and weapon skill per year during the Winter phase, with only scores which were not yet checked or trained being elegible. Thus, players are given the chance to raise secondary skills a bit (for free), without hampering the development of the skills they choose to specialize in.

My new favourite is one I met in a convention game recently

Spear - covers all pointy thrusty things and thus fighting in a shieldwall with your comrades be it with Pike, Spear or Gladius
Sword - covers bashing people over the head and thus all man-to-man fighting

I know that the plethora of weapon skills is PD is justified by helping to define the mace-chap or the flail-chap but I don't feel the need for that granularity



For a planned andat*-inspired PenDragon game I am planning to take this further

Bow - all ranged weapons
Dagger - covers all dirty assassiny weapons like daggers and garottes
Horsemanship - also covers use of the Lance, as before fighters on horseback use lowest of Horsemanship and Sword skill
Poet - all magickal and spiritual combat
Sailing - anyone afloat uses lowest of Sailing and Sword skill


I may even swipe Greg's mooted '40 points amongst loyalties' rule (and a similar rule in OpenQuest) and make players split 60 points amongst all of their Combat Skills


* if that means nothing do yourself a favour and look up and read there are some wonderfully Arturian and Fae ideas

For a planned andat*-inspired PenDragon game I am planning to take this further

* if that means nothing do yourself a favour and look up and read there are some wonderfully Arturian and Fae ideas


You'll have to give a bit more help there. a google search on "andat" doesn't turn up anything remotely arthurian.

You'll have to give a bit more help there. a google search on "andat" doesn't turn up anything remotely arthurian.


Look more closelier

Daniel Abraham's 'Long Price Quartet' are certainly not great literature and at first glance look to be fairly generic pay the mortgage fiction (certainly the quotes chosen would not have attracted me to read, but the joy of public libraries is the chance to grab stuff at random and see). However: the Andat themselves are abstract thoughts bound and made flesh and make splendid models for powerful, capricious fae; and the relationships between Lords, Kings, lovers and armsmen (despite being set in an Eastern milieu) seem wonderfully Arthurian. In fact if From Scythia to Camelot has anything to it then this is not accidental.

What method do you use for starting weapon skill levels?

Prime Skill -5, max 10
Basically, if you have any weapon skill at 15 or more, you have all weapon skills at 10. (Though they must be raised independently from then on.)

Any thoughts? What methods do you use?


I think in principle this would work well, and if I were GMing Pendragon again I'd strongly consider using a similar rule - though once again I'd tend to be a bit more conservative and have:

Prime Skill/2, max 10 or even Prime Skill/3, max 10

If you combine prime skill -10 with your 5pts per year winter's phase it seems to me overly generous to the player knights.

I'd probably go with Prime Skill/3, max 10, and the 4pts a year winter phase option if I were to use these house rules - bearing in mind that the values are applied to all other melee weapon skills - so in total that's still quite generous. Still enough to give the players a head start in developing their secondary weapons to reflect their general combat experience without letting them become too adept too quickly.

How about Prime Skill -10, max 10?

Part of the problem with this kind of mechanic though (as for Dex and Int based skills in GURPs), is that players will probably tend to initially focus exclusively on one main combat skill. It's possible to enter play with a 20 year old squire with a 20 sword skill and, with this rule, 10 in every other weapon.

That might, however, be right for your style of campaign if you want your players to start out well above average compared to the standard Pendragon character.

I like the general idea, but think the values would need to be adjusted for balance.

Prime Skill/4, max 5? :o

Another aspect is it doesn't yet differentiate between widely differing combat styles

Would greatsword 20 for instance, allow a knight to have a lance of 10 without putting any training points into it, or grapple, or javelin?

That would probably mean dividing weapons into their respective categories, as Runequest 2/3 did, and saying that a high skill in each category raises the starting value of all other weapons in that category.

Grapple and Brawl
Great Weapon
Lance and Spear
Weapon and Shield
Thrown Weapons
Missile Weapons

Which might be starting to get a bit bogged down in minutiae for Pendragon. A bit too much book-keeping.

And brings us back to your other suggestion of Half cost 'till 10

Maybe for Pendragon this would probably work better.

I just rate all other weapons at what seems to be the default for uncommon skills, if someone really wants to develop a particular one. "Okay, you now have Mace/Axe/Flail/whatever at 2. You can raise it just like any other skill below 15."

How about Prime Skill -10, max 10?

Part of the problem with this kind of mechanic though (as for Dex and Int based skills in GURPs), is that players will probably tend to initially focus exclusively on one main combat skill. It's possible to enter play with a 20 year old squire with a 20 sword skill and, with this rule, 10 in every other weapon.

New characters at age 21 may not start with any skill above 15, except their family characteristic. So this isn't a problem.



Another aspect is it doesn't yet differentiate between widely differing combat styles

Would greatsword 20 for instance, allow a knight to have a lance of 10 without putting any training points into it, or grapple, or javelin?

I personally apply the rule ONLY to the melee skills:
Sword, axe, dagger, flail, spear, etc., and the 2h versions

Horsemanship, Lance, Battle, etc., are each independent skills and get no benefit.
Bows and crossbows are treated as a single skill for convenience and simplicity.
Javelin is its own skill.
Grapple no longer exists, according to the errata.
So, there is only one rule, applying to all the melee weapons only.


And brings us back to your other suggestion of Half cost 'till 10

Maybe for Pendragon this would probably work better.

It does work well, I have used this one for a long time. I haven't actually used the "-5 max 10" rule, but I might the next time I start a campaign.

I guess you have to follow your gaming instinct on that and see if it works out the next time you get a group together.

Did you intend the rule to apply for just player knights, all knights, all warrior types, or all characters?

Other options...

Allowing the players to start at age 21 with their prime skill already at 15 and the other melee skills at 10?

Prime skill -5, max 15?
Prime skill -10, max 15?
Prime skill/2, max 15?
Prime skill/3, no max?

15 would make a natural capping point as it's the level that knights have to start focusing.

I'm still undecided which one I'd use. Prime skill/2, max 15 perhaps...

I guess you have to follow your gaming instinct on that and see if it works out the next time you get a group together.

Did you intend the rule to apply for just player knights, all knights, all warrior types, or all characters?

Other options...

Allowing the players to start at age 21 with their prime skill already at 15 and the other melee skills at 10?

That's exactly what I intended with the Prime Skill -5, max 10 rule. It's a rare player-knight starts without a combat skill at 15, the 5.1 edition of character design makes sure of that.
I intended it to apply to all humans. It only matters for PCs, and NPCs you take the trouble to stat up completely. For NPCs, it is not very relevant unless your designing them the same way as PCs (and there's no need to do that - just give them the stats they need to have). If you don't have this rule, you can still introduce an NPC with a second weapon at 10 or 15 or whatever - many published npcs of this sort exist.
With this rule, you can have, say, the disarmed saxon grab a fallen knight's sword and fight with it at skill 8 (Axe 13 -5), so that's new - but for the most part, it makes no difference for NPCs.

I just rate all other weapons at what seems to be the default for uncommon skills, if someone really wants to develop a particular one. "Okay, you now have Mace/Axe/Flail/whatever at 2. You can raise it just like any other skill below 15."


That's a good option for those who want to keep close to the main rulebook UT. My GM used a rule like that back in the days of 1st edition I think. Can't remember for sure. He may even have let us start with a d6.

With this rule, you can have, say, the disarmed saxon grab a fallen knight's sword and fight with it at skill 8 (Axe 13 -5)


I've got a clearer picture now of why you've settled on the -5, max 10. It could work very well, methinks.