Hi all. This is a new house rule that we have adopted in our campaign. Mainly, we noticed that the current ruling in jousting lances and rebatted weapons (if you crit, you do real damage on the opponent) leads to skilled characters leaving a host of badly wounded contestants in their wake. This is not so bad for melee weapons, but the lance damage goes up a lot with better horses in Late Periods (all the more so due to our other house rule adding 1d6 to all lance charge damages). This leads to the unfortunate result of the RTKs sending their opponents to heal for the rest of the year with Major Wounds too often (in our opinion) for what is supposed to be a friendly match. So, we decided to change things around like this:

Jousting Lances / Rebatted weapons: If you Fumble, you take real damage (you zigged when you should have zagged) from the opponent's hit, if he lands a blow. You are automatically unhorsed.

Result: This keeps the risk acceptable (5% chance of real damage) even when facing named worthies, the same chance that it is with the official rule for skills 20 and below. There is about 1% chance (when facing an equal) of a Major Wound per jousting round per contestant, which sounds about right for a friendly match. This still means dozens of badly injured NPC knights per (bigger) tournament, but not 'everyone jousting Lancelot'.

Seems reasonable to me.

I'm curious though as to why you feel a need to add a +1d6 Lance damage charge bonus to the game; do you think the lance too weak?

Yes, that was the reason. When the second generation came to play (525 onwards, we started 503 with 4th Ed), people tended to have reinforced chain armor and chivalric bonus, for 21 points of armor with a shield. This blocks 6d6 over 50% of the time, even if they do get hit. Also, most PKs maximised their damage in chargen to 6d6. So, since we wished lances to still be the preferred option and actually do something, we decided to add 1d6 to all lance charge damages. As the powerlevel is relatively low and the better horses so expensive, no one has yet had anything better than an Andalusian (loot from the Roman War, mainly). Adding that 1d6 does skew the odds for a Major Wound and a Knockdown, I admit. But since the lance charge is usually over after the first round of combat anyway, it is not a HUGE deal.

;)
So you are making a special house role in Jousting
because you have a special house rule for additional damage?
:)

I will say this again: if you tinker with the rules at the start of the campaign, there will be consequences later on when armor and horses change.

But I approve of everyone's tinkering! It is you game. Fun is the object.

;)
So you are making a special house role in Jousting
because you have a special house rule for additional damage?
:)


Yes and no. While the additional 1d6 makes Major Wounds more common, the by-the-book results are already bad for Round Table Knights who already have better horses.

Let me give you an example. Lets say that the knight in question has Lance 24, which is not unreasonable for an RTK. Lets say that he has a Destrier (8d6 by the book). Lets furthermore say that he is inspired by his Amor, also quite common in literature, for +10 to his Lance = skill 34. This means he criticals 75% of the time, so he causes real damage. On average, he does 28 points of damage. This is enough to cause a major wound in the average knight, if the knight is unable to get a shield. Not a problem for most other RTKs, but a big problem for the people with lower skills. Furthermore, the chance of a higher damage is not insignificant. 32 points (enough to cause a major wound for CON 14, reinforced chain + shield) is about 24% of the time, and 34 points (CON 14, partial plate + shield) is 13% of the time.

Things become even worse once there is access to Frisian Destriers (9d6) and Shire horses (10d6), as an additional 1d6 is 3.5 points of average damage, but the armor increases only by 2 per step. Not to mention that many poorer knights are unable to keep up with the equipment improvement. In short, someone like Lancelot, Tristan or Lamorak will be sending young knights back to sick bed for the rest of the year with major wounds, in what was supposed to be a sporting event.

I don't have a problem with a Major Wound or even death being a possibility. Historically, stuff happened. What I have a problem with is the way that 'accidents' become more common the more skilled you are! Switching it around from a critical by an opponent to a fumble by yourself takes care of that critical inflation, while still keeping things interesting. And the bonus for a critical is automatic unhorsing of the opponent for us, so someone like Lancelot is still knocking people of fthe saddle willynilly, but not maiming them as well.

Hmm, but what about 20+ skills? Then you no longer fumble which means you can't get "hit" by the opponent. So two RTK could really never harm each other in a friendly game.


Then I'd also argue the reverse for "passionate" knights - they should be bound to be more likely to hurt their opponents 'for real'.

Our houserule is that if you crit you can chose to miss or do the damage. ie all those times you see the opponent expose a weak spot but you hesitate because they might get hurt. If the player choses to 'miss' they get an appropriate check, like merciful. Normally they don't get a bad check but if the opponent is outmatched in horse vs armor they do get cruel checks for selecting to do damage.
If they use a passion they don't get to chose, they always do damage, with the specific exception of chivalrous knights who may still select to miss.


How about a modification for you;
"Sitting loose in the saddle", if hit - no check - you always fall off, but if you are crit hit they do a max of 6d6 'real' damage when using a jousting lance. That should fix your issues. All who face lancelot would select to sit 'loose' and will get hurt but not killed. Same thing if you meet someone that you clearly see is passionate, etc.

Hi all. This is a new house rule that we have adopted in our campaign. Mainly, we noticed that the current ruling in jousting lances and rebatted weapons (if you crit, you do real damage on the opponent) leads to skilled characters leaving a host of badly wounded contestants in their wake.

Why6 is this a problem?

But if it is, I think you missed a rule
Knights may always "pull their punches" and do 1/2 normal damage
which is what Lance & company do in tournaments

Why6 is this a problem?

But if it is, I think you missed a rule
Knights may always "pull their punches" and do 1/2 normal damage
which is what Lance & company do in tournaments


Because we feel that getting badly injured in a tournament should be a fluke, rather than a near certainty.

You are right, I indeed did miss that rule as it applies to here. Probably because I assumed that you'll need to declare an intention to pull your punches before you roll to hit (and if so, Lance et co are seriously handicapping themselves versus other knights, and would be better served riding lesser horses, like normal chargers). This would indeed solve the dilemma, although it would make bad injuries next to impossible. So thanks, but I think we will stick to our own house rule.

Hmm, but what about 20+ skills? Then you no longer fumble which means you can't get "hit" by the opponent. So two RTK could really never harm each other in a friendly game.


Ah yes. We are also using a house rule about fumbles, and skill 20+ are not immune to them. So while someone with Skill 25 would fumble less often than someone with skill 10, they still MIGHT get their lumps. (A possible fumble is a natural 20 or a natural 1 if your skill is 20+. Roll skill-10. If successful, it counts only as a failure.)

You make interesting suggestions, but one problem I see with your first suggestion is that RTKs would start LOSING tournaments quite rapidly, as they would forgo those critical strikes. (I do like the trait chack possibility there, though.) As for the second suggestion, it would work. The results, at a glance, would seem similar to our house rule, in general. However, I think we will stick with ours, as it does have an advantage of more variations in results.

So thanks, but I think we will stick to our own house rule.

Good! Let us its long term results :)

A final note on these killer knights at tournaments.

When they are younger and proving themselves they attend tournaments along with everyone else.
However, after it is clear that they will win, they attend tournaments as witnesses, judges, sponsors and so on.
It is the courtly thing to do, like letting new knights do things first if they wish.
But it must really irk Lancelot and Tristram or something, because they do keep going out in disguise.

I will, Greg, although I don't expect it will cause much of a stir... After all, mathematically*, it works to roughly halving the 'real-hits' at skills 20 and less (due to our fumble house rules) and making them much more uncommon when facing high level opponents (who are still mostly out of the PKs' league in our campaign). But yeah, it will prevent future PKs from getting the same reputation as Sir Maddock 'Oops-I-Killed-Someone-Again-With-A-Practice-Sword' of Shambrook. :P

* = Since our house rule demand a fumble from one, and a HIT from the opponent, two newbie knights with skills 10 have a (5% * 50% = 2.5%) of getting real damage each. Using by the book rules, each of them has a 5% chance of critting, and hence causing real damage, so a reduction by a half. With higher skills, the hits become more frequent, but the fumbles go down due to our house rule (reroll skill-10, if a success, the 'fumble' was only a failure), which works out to that 2.5% chance at skill 20 vs skill 20 again.

Perosnally I don't mind the idea of expert knights leaving badly injured opponents in their wake. It's why most players should have 2 or more active characters at a time...
Bear in mind, that by the time those knights have destriers, their opponents will be having 12 or 14 point armour: + shield, so they shouldn't be taking major wounds on average hits.

Regarding your +1d6 damage for lance charges: I was tempted by this on occasion, but consider:
If you use a lance, against someone who does not have a lance, you get +5 to your lance skill. (if the target is on foot, it becomes +10/-5 - yikes!). So, a player knight with a sword could have 6d6 damage), and the person charging which with a lance could also be doing 6d6 damage - but that lance charge is much, much moire dangerous because the chance of a critical is significant increased (for those with skill 15+ anyway).

Thus, lance does not need extra damage.

Thus, lance does not need extra damage.


I hear what you are saying, Darren, but the issue isn't so much what the PK on foot would do, but what he would do on horseback. Imagine this, if you will... A PK with Sword 20, Lance 15 (or for that matter, 15 and 10, a very common configuration for a starting knight). Both doing 6d6. Now, which option would be better for a First Charge? I argue that Sword is, because you are rolling against 20 and will always get a shield. (Granted, proper danger analysis would require knowledge of enemy's Lance skill... Someone with Lance 20 is becoming quite deadly due to the increased criticals from +5, and you'd be better off contesting it with a Lance yourself, too.)

Thus, lance does not need extra damage.


I hear what you are saying, Darren, but the issue isn't so much what the PK on foot would do, but what he would do on horseback. Imagine this, if you will... A PK with Sword 20, Lance 15 (or for that matter, 15 and 10, a very common configuration for a starting knight). Both doing 6d6. Now, which option would be better for a First Charge? I argue that Sword is, because you are rolling against 20 and will always get a shield. (Granted, proper danger analysis would require knowledge of enemy's Lance skill... Someone with Lance 20 is becoming quite deadly due to the increased criticals from +5, and you'd be better off contesting it with a Lance yourself, too.)


Yes,m you cant really compare without also taking enemy into account.
You are a knight with a little experience, say, 17 sword and lance 15 (by the way, i've found with the 5.0/5.1 edition, it's pretty common now for knights to start with sword and lance at 15 - but even when they don't they get there within a couple of years).

Say your opponent is a young knight (sword 15, lance 13), and he's using lance.
You decide to attack with your lance: your skill is 15, vs an enemy with 13.
Or you attack with sword: your skill is 17, vs an enemy with skill now bumped to 18.

Let's say you are up against a more experienced knight, with sword 20 and lance 15.
if you use that sword, your enemy's lance skill is bumped to 20. If the knight has higher than 15 lance skill, you could be in serious trouble.

If you completely wet behind your ears, and have sword 15 and lance 10, it can be worthwhile using sword instead of lance. You have to hope that your opponent isn't an expert; either way, you aren't rolling to win here, you are hopping to get your shield to survive the first charge, and then carry on fighting.

But as soon as you improve your lance skill, you are better off using that. And if the GM mixes enemy skills up a bit (using knights that don't have 20 sword and 15 lance, but, say, 17 in each), you are in real trouble if you use sword. And you are in massive trouble if the knight is a jouster rather than a swordsman, and switches those skills around (sword 15, lance 20). (I do that kind of thing from time to time.)

Also, bear in mind, the +1d6 thing is to make the chargers you get early in the campaign do more damage than very very strong knights. But bear two things in mind:
* Knights with 6d6 damage are not common. Chargers do more damage than most knights.
* Chargers are the earliest military horses, and are weak. Destriers are the true warhorses. By the time of the conquest era, Andalusians are appearing, and from then on, for the rest of the campaign, warhourses will be doing more damage than that 6d6 you need to use the +1d6 for.

It's not a problem really that early warhorses don't do impressive base damage. At the start of the campaign, knights are little more than soldiers who ride - the lance is useful, but it's not overwhelming. Later in the campaign, as knights become more like knights, the horses are much more powerful and players will tend to focus more on developing their lance skill. This is yet another of those Pendragon things that show changes as time goes on.

Yes, I do realize all that, Darren, and in the second crop of knights, 15/15 has indeed become more usual than the earlier 15/10. Whether the increase in lance damage contributed to the chargen decision, or if it was simply combat minmaxing due to the many small (continental) wars (Kay pressing his claim for Normandy in a 100 Years War analog, the de Ganis knights in Gascony adding their share) playing an important role in our campaign, I don't know. Even with less wars, but more tournaments, I expect Lance to continue to be a useful investment. Whereas if the knights are mostly hacking it out with swords in adventures, I would expect to see more Sword-oriented builds.

I disagree about the horses a bit, although this is of course heavily campaign dependent. In our campaign, better horses tend to be too expensive for ordinary knights, and are almost exclusively used by their betters. Hence, 6d6 (7d6) Charger is still the mainstay of knightly combat, and occasionally we even see 'poor chargers' doing 1d6 less at half the price for poor knights and sergeants. There are a couple of Andalusians out and about, but those have been gained as loot/reward/dowry rather than been bought, and sooner or later that 1d20 horse survival will kill them off.

Armor, by contrast, is relatively cheaper (that is, it is cheaper to upgrade from Norman Chain to Reinforced or even Partial Plate than from a Charger to an Andalusian, let alone a Destrier) and doesn't die off, although we do use armor damage house rules, occasionally needing money in repairs if it has gotten banged up in adventures/tournaments/war. (Last session, a PK took a 36 point hit from a two-handed warhammer, didn't get the shield up in time and suffering a major wound lowering his APP. So we decided it was a hit crumpling his visor and smashing his nose in the bargain. Time to pay for the repairs...)

So if in our campaign everyone would be riding around with Andalusians and Destriers, then no, we wouldn't need to upgrade the Lance damage, because it already would be high enough for our taste. But such is not the case, nor I expect it to change any time soon, due to the prices of horses.

I disagree about the horses a bit, although this is of course heavily campaign dependent. In our campaign, better horses tend to be too expensive for ordinary knights, and are almost exclusively used by their betters.


I appreciate a lot of this is campaign specific. But if you are the GM, you can easily change that. If you think horses need +1d6 damage, you can simply make the better quality horses available more easily. The published material makes this fairly easy: In the book of knights & ladies (I think), there's a sidebar about what it costs to be knighted. It shows the different equipment knights must be given, when they are knighted, at each different period. You do reach a point where newly knighted knights have Destriers, for instance.

So, your players may be running around with Chargers and Andalusians, but later, if you have access to that, they should be encountering weaker skilled people with better equipment that, in the natural course of things, they can defeat and take their horses. Even if their opponents have weaker andalusians, get a few of those and you'll be able to afford a destrier.

That's the way I do it, anyway.

I appreciate a lot of this is campaign specific. But if you are the GM, you can easily change that. If you think horses need +1d6 damage, you can simply make the better quality horses available more easily.


Yes, I could, but I'd be introducing another factor: money. If I keep prices the same, but making Andalusians more easily available, some of my PKs will be quite tempted to sell their new-won Andalusians and invest the money in their manors. After all, that avoids the risk of the Andalusian dying in Winter. The higher value of the Andalusian makes that, IMHO, more likely than a lower-value Charger.

On the other hand, if I let the prices drop, then I end up with a reasonably priced 'the usual horse' that does 7d6 and just happens to be called an Andalusian instead of a Charger.

*shrugs* Maybe I will poke my players and take a vote on what we shall do about this.

I appreciate a lot of this is campaign specific. But if you are the GM, you can easily change that. If you think horses need +1d6 damage, you can simply make the better quality horses available more easily.


Yes, I could, but I'd be introducing another factor: money. If I keep prices the same, but making Andalusians more easily available, some of my PKs will be quite tempted to sell their new-won Andalusians and invest the money in their manors.


Players are exceptional. Most npc knights wont be able to afford those andalusians (they dont have disposable income) unless the players sell them at rock bottom prices. Players can generally buy stuff - selling it can be a different matter entirely.

Yes, I could, but I'd be introducing another factor: money. If I keep prices the same, but making Andalusians more easily available, some of my PKs will be quite tempted to sell their new-won Andalusians and invest the money in their manors.


officially, selling anything into "the market" nets 1/2 of the price you will pay for the same item

Players are exceptional. Most npc knights wont be able to afford those andalusians (they dont have disposable income) unless the players sell them at rock bottom prices. Players can generally buy stuff - selling it can be a different matter entirely.


We follow the rule of thumb of half-price mentioned by Greg in the previous post. Naturally, they should first find someone willing to buy one, but since there IS a horse market and they live rather close to Camelot, where many richer knights congregate, I usually don't think they will have problems selling an Andalusian off at half-price. Given that you'd pay the same price for an ordinary Charger in Sarum (at full price). L10 in our campaign is already a significant amount of money.

Also, another thing I don't think I emphasized enough... I WANT the NPKs - not just the PKs - to have a 7d6 lance charge as well to keep the PKs aware that getting hit with a lance is a very bad thing. This means that if I were to go with your suggestion, then to achieve this goal, I would have to ensure that pretty much all the NPKs would be mounted on Andalusians as well. So I would, in effect, double the loot value of defeated enemies and I am quite reluctant to do that. I would rather just up the horse damage and keep the economics the same.