I was hoping to start up a Pendragon campaign but, before doing so, was thinking of tweaking some of the rules a bit. I last ran a 3 year Pendragon campaign 4 years ago, and had some issues with escalating modifiers (particularly in combat and battle).

The biggest change I'd want to make is to scale down the bonuses and penalties to skill checks. One way of doing this would be to eliminate reflexive modifiers, only giving the character or unit of combatants with the advantage a bonus to skill checks. On top of this all bonuses to skill checks would be halved (rounding fractions down).

Has anyone tried this? How did it work and what effect would it have on the game in the long-term?

I have nowhere near that level of experience with the system, I've only been running it for a few weeks, but I'm enjoying the dramatic scale of the modifiers.

I have played systems where it was possible (sometimes easy) to game the system to get un-hittable, un-damageable characters, or conversely characters that could near-guarantee success in many situations. That can break a game, but if you have crits and fumbles then you can still get surprises. Also the way the crit system scales all the way up to skills in the 30+ range means there's plenty of headroom in the system.

What problems did you have, and did you try any other methods to mitigate them in your previous games?

Simon Hibbs

The biggest issues came out effect of reflexive modifiers on skill rolls (particularly in combat) . The difference of 50% (or more) set up by reflexive modifiers made for insta-win or insta-lose situations far too often.

I think that only giving the character with the advantage the bonus still makes it important for characters to be creative and think tactically... without such extreme modifiers.

In my last campaign I played by the rules, with only minimal tweaks. The only way that I minimized the disparity was by having NPCs think tactically and try to level the playing field in combat.

I must say at certain points the modifiers may result in auto-hits and auto-misses. But I feel that usually happens when the skill is above 20. Then the modifiers seem redundant.

But lately I have seen that my PK usually start to split their skill when dealing with multiple opponents. This gives me as a GM the opportunity to bring in more.

Also a more intelligent opponent that is going to make use of tactics. this also triggers PK to do the same and imho adds to the game.

In conclusion I would not change the modifiers at the moment. I just started a GPC and may change my mind, when the PK become more experienced.

I did however change the ability to increase the skill above 20 with glory. To get a skill 1 point higher you must have glory points equal to the new value minus 20. So to increase a skill from 21 to 22, you need 2 points. this means that high score will be far less frequent and a +5 modifier a welcome addition. As I said I think it will increase the tactical thinking of the PK as well as that of the NPC and thus bring more depth to the game.