Normally, if you attack with the lance you use the horse?s damage rating instead of your character?s.

But if your character?s damage rating is greater than the horse?s (e.g. a squire who does 5D6 riding a 4D6 rouncy), which do you use?

Thank you.

I'd go with the higher of the two.

So your horse will enhance your strength should you be weaker, but if you're stronger then the effect of the horse is neglible.

I also allow my charging knights to get the horse bonus when hurling javelins, so horse damage minus 2D6 rather than knight damage minus 2D6 (one of my knights is pretty weak so this is a worthwhile bonus).

I have to say that the horse's damage should be used regardless. The knight is not putting the full might of his power behind the attack; he's only the targeting mechanism, so to speak, making sure the lance lands on target. He's not putting any significant force behind it, save holding it steady for a solid impact. The horse is providing all the power with the charge.

The horse's damage is always used when you are making a lance charge, even if the rider's damage is greater.

Remember, though, you do get +5 to your skill when lance changing someone not using a lance, so the chance of getting a critical is usually significantly higher.

I might be totaly off base here ( I often am as many of you have seen ;)), but i could almost swear that there was an optional rule that said that if you do more dmg than your horse then you get to add 1 extra d6 to your roll regardeless of weather or not you do 2 or even 3 d6 more. I could be totaly wrong of course. One of my favorite knights had this problem. I did a natural 7d6 damage so even on a charger I only did 6d6. I just never jousted unless it was at tourney or a first charge or something, because Greg does have a rule for sure that says if u charge with any other weapon other than a lance you definitely get an extra d6 to your player knights dmg. So I would charge and do 8d6 damage, AND i always used a mace, so against chainmail garbed enemies I would do 9d6 damage!!! Ohhhh Those were the days. But that knight fell at Badon and died a heroic death. I just started playing his son which shares many of his fathers attributes. So I am 7d6 again, baby. No mace this time though. I thought axe might be fun. :P

I've not seen such a rule, Palomydes...

Not being able to use the greater gives the high-damage saxons a reason to switch to an axe or sword.

In my campaigns, the Saxon Damage Bonus may be added...

because Greg does have a rule for sure that says if u charge with any other weapon other than a lance you definitely get an extra d6 to your player knights dmg. So I would charge and do 8d6 damage, AND i always used a mace, so against chainmail garbed enemies I would do 9d6 damage!!! Ohhhh Those were the days. But that knight fell at Badon and died a heroic death. I just started playing his son which shares many of his fathers attributes. So I am 7d6 again, baby. No mace this time though. I thought axe might be fun. :P


I'm not aware of any rule similar to the one I've quoted in bold.
There's a rule in the current draft of the new battle system which says that if you charge in battle, you get 1d6 extra damage under certain circumst5ances, but that's a very specific case.
As far as the published rules are concerned, you always use the horses damage.

I used to dislike that and had various house rules over the years to allow players to get their own personal damage. But these days i don't do that. Take a knight who has Lance 18, Sword 22, and does 7d6 personal damage. That character is actually slightly better off when he uses his lance - even though the damage is 1d6 less - because he'll succeed mroe often and the chance of criticalling for double damage is greater.
More importantly, if his opponent has a lance, it stops him getting +5 to skill, and increasing his chance of criticalling you.

The base damage is only a part of what you should be considering. It's worth training up your lance skill to 20, to get that 25 effective skill to start a fight with a decent chance of a devastating critical.

By the way, my grossest PC (not mine, but one run by a player) was a Saxon Knight with SIZ 27 and STR 24, who had the Wotanic religious bonus, and used a Great Axe... That's 12d6 damage against an opponent who uses a shield, by the way, on a normal hit. He managed to keep his stats close to that till he was about 50.

Thanks for the advice!

Personally, I was finding the damage inflicted by lance charges to be too low in comparison to what the regular damage of the players knights was. Especially since they were focusing their skill in sword so much more than in lance. That extra +5 wasn't making up for their high sword skill and higher normal damage.

So I've upped the damage stat for all horses by an extra d6.
That's worked out pretty well so far.

That sounds pretty good. Of course, in the middle of the campaign, when everyone has horses doing 8d6 (now 9d6), there won't be any complaints about horse damage being too low :)

I had the same complaint, but apart from you keeping hold of your lance and keeping it level, I would say personal strength has little impact on the lance.

I like it were it is because:-

6d6 is high enough, raising it any more, would mean an increase in dmg for opponents and beasties. Also it's reducing the effectiveness of armour, I think Pendragon is lethal enough without any help.

As time passes stronger horse are introduced, so it gives the knights something to spend their money on.

So I wouldn't change it.

But hell it's your game :)


Cheers,

BigSteveUK

I'd like to add a 'me too' on the advocating the idea of +1d6 to lance attacks. 6d6 was worthwhile when everyone had basic chain and ran around with barely 5d6 with a sword. Now, they have reinforced chains and 6d6 with a sword, and the lance just doesn't seem so much worth it.

Steve expressed worry that 7d6 would be too deadly. I don't see it. 6d6 is on average 21. Reinforced Chain + shield is 18. 3 point wound. That is almost a bruise, potentially utterly erased by First Aid. After getting hit with a lance. That's some find pectorals right there! Of course, you could make the claim that a shield hit isn't a proper 'right to the chest' hit, and hence we should take that off. 9 is a much more respectable hit, but hardly deadly, still.

7d6 would make the damage about 25, leading to 7 points and 13 points of damage with and without a shield. Now that's starting to hurt, and potentially drop a knight with poor CON if he doesn't get the shield up. But the lance was supposed to be a major weapon and innovation to ensure the dominance of knights on the battlefield. I am fine with these results.

Of course, if you are playing with 8d6 destriers, this is getting nasty (9d6). But then you probably have Chivalric Knights in Full plate, too, for 16+3+6 = 25 in armor, no?

End of the day it's your game, so you play it how you feel.

At the moment I find the rules pretty balanced, my knights are getting getting hurt enough and the opponents last long enough, it's not D&D and getting healed is a pain).

Also isn't the whole point they bought better armour was to reduce damage, whats the point of letting them have reinforced chain and the increasing the dmg?

Also bear in mind, that charging with a lance will give you plus +10, which greatly incease the chance of crit, espcecially as they advance. Yet I still find a knight receving a crit who gets his shield, will be knocked flying from his horse, but survive.

Also as it says in the book with regards to armour, you start of with moderate armour and getting hurt a lot and end up with knights in plate hacking away at each other and hardly being hurt.

Also bear in mind with your 8d6 destrier (+1d6, 9d6) adjustment a decent knight with 19 lance skill will crit on 13 or more average 63 points of dmg.

But like I said if you and your players are happy with it, the it's the right rule 4 u, we all end up playing in the same world with different rules.

Cheers,

BigSteveUK

Charging with a lance gives +10? Where? Have I missed a rule?

I have always assumed that if two knights charge at each other with lances, it is +0/+0 situation. Thus, my knights would not be critting almost ever (especially since we are using a houserule when both skills are 20+: we reduce the lower to 20, and reduce the higher by the same amount, to avoid the 'every other roll is a crit, hope you crit as well or you are one-shot-killed'). Naturally, if yours are critting one third of the time, this influences the statistics a lot! Your lance combat is bound to be much deadlier than mine would be even with that +1d6 added to my damages! No wonder you are against it! :)

As for armor vs increased damage... This is all about the arms' race, innit? :) Were I to add +1d6 to charge damage, I'd probably start the players with 'poor chargers' which still would do that 6d6, but be cheaper, in the anarchy period. As finances improve and horse breeding gathers pace, true chargers would start to appear, with better armor... If you can afford them, good for you. The thing is, Reinforced Chain + Shield + Chivalric Bonus makes you pretty much invulnerable to Lance attacks with a charger. Add one die of damage and it will hurt. Take the shield and chivalric off and it will hurt more to fail. If you are in Norman chain, don't get your shield in the way and you don't have Chivalric bonus, then heck, you deserve to take a major wound for it, in my humble opinion.

Finally, those bigger horses are so darn expensive that I despair for any 'normal' PC getting one, ever, if not as a reward or some such. The PK's did manage to get Andalusians during the Roman War, and now they are only riding them in parades and tournaments, unwilling to risk their prize warhorses in combat! :) Thus, I don't think that 9d6 (or the monstrous 11d from that biggest warhorse) is any more common than a monster with similar damage stats. I do think that Lance should be the hardest hitting weapon in the knight's arsenal. +1d6 to damage would achieve this even amongst poorer knights (5d6 damage, 5d6 courser as their 'poor charger').

But like you said, it is a flavor issue, more or less.

Splitting hairs, I think the plus ten is +5/-5, so if you charge with your sword against a lance, then you get a -5 and the lance gets a +5. So your sword better be 10 better than your lance to have a better chance hitting.

In response to the house rule of lowering skills when both are over 20, I think it makes sense to have regular crits when two great knights go against each other. Its an epic struggle that almost always ends in one decisive blow!

The +5/-5 modifier is against non-mounted opponents (who also don't have a great-spear). There is an additional +5 modifier if you are doing a lance charge against someone, mounted or not, who isn't using a spear/lance, but I don't believe that there is the -5 reflexive modifier in that situation.

The +5/-5 modifier is against non-mounted opponents (who also don't have a great-spear). There is an additional +5 modifier if you are doing a lance charge against someone, mounted or not, who isn't using a spear/lance, but I don't believe that there is the -5 reflexive modifier in that situation.


This is correct. Anyone got the page numbers?

The +5/-5 modifier is against non-mounted opponents (who also don't have a great-spear). There is an additional +5 modifier if you are doing a lance charge against someone, mounted or not, who isn't using a spear/lance, but I don't believe that there is the -5 reflexive modifier in that situation.


This is correct. Anyone got the page numbers?



From Pendragon 5 ed page 122:

If a lance charge is made against anything other than a character wielding a great spear or another character making a lance charge, the charging knight gets a +5 modifier to his Lance skill.

on the same page:

As noted in ?Combat Modifiers,? a mounted character fighting an enemy who is afoot gains a +5 modifier to his weapon skill unless the footman is armed with a great spear or halberd. This modifier stacks with that gained from a lance charge (for a total of +10), if applicable.

for completeness from Pendragon 5 ed page 177 Combat Modifiers

Any time a character fights with the advantage of height, such as a horseman versus a foot soldier or a knight on a rampart attacking a man scaling the wall, a +5/?5 reflexive modifier applies in favor of the character with the height advantage.

On the subject of criticals it seems that some people have changed their crit rules so that one opponent is always winning and the crits dont just cancel each other out...Is this correct or have I misunderstood? And If correct I assume it is because the players are both just criticalling evertime and that they arent really damaging each other? I believe that Greg has told us before that his house rule in this situation is that if two people critical then they both simply deal 1d6 dmg to one another( no armor), That way each will slowly wear each other down, someone will likely win, and it fits well with the literature. Often two knights who were fantastic fought for 3-4 hours supposedly before one went down or they called it a draw. This might be another alternative, courtesy of Greg, that people could use in those situations that would be easier. Maybe. :-\

Also it seems that BIG Steve was not really off-base at all. +5/-5 for lance vs. person with shorter weapon or unhorsed, etc.... AND Unless the opponent is SPECIFICALLY a group of mounted men with lances that are ALSO CHARGING against u as well, you get a further +5 charge bonus. Hmmmm........ So even if a group of knights with Lances are on the field( best case scenario for your opponents), if they are unable to get up their own charge to meet you with...then you get +5 at least vs. them. And if they have melee weapons drawn insted...+10!!!! Crit city baby!!!!!! WHHOOOHHOOOOOO!!!!!!!

I can just speak for myself and our group in this... The way we handle criticals in our houserules is two-fold:

1. If both combatants have skills over 20, reduce the skills by equal number so that lower will be 20. Thus, skills 24 and 22 become 22 and 20. This came about when inspiration and so forth meant that people easily had skills approaching 30. As the result, battles got very short and binary.
Lets asume skills 29, so a roll of 11+ is a crit, that is, 50% of the rolls.
A crits, B crits = 25% draw
A no crit, B crit = 25% A dies
A crit, B no crit = 25% B dies
A no crit, B no crit = 25% normal
What this means is that, on average, the fight is over in two rounds! Either A is dead or B is dead, because of the critical!
Even with skill 24 (crit on 16+), this means that the fight is over in 4 rounds, on average. This is the epic fight?
With our houserule, if two knights are of equal skill, they fight as if their skills were 20. This leads, in our opinion, much tenser, more epic fights, when the crit doesn't come around in a couple of rounds to kill you.

2. Another houserule we use (although I may suggest going back on it, since the above rule actually favors the more skilled one, too) is that we calculate the actual roll. Skill 24, roll 18 is 18+4 = 22. Normal critical, skill 19, roll 19 is 20. Criticals cancel out, so then we simply deal with it as a normal opposed roll: bigger wins. Roll 22 does normal damage.

+5/-5 mounted vs. unmounted
+5 /+0 lance vs. short weapon

Oh, I knew about those. I wondered if there was something that gave both mounted, lancewielding knights +10 against one another, which is how I was reading Steve's comment. If you are a footman with a sword and you are charged by a knight on horseback, you should be kissing your tuckus goodbye anyway.

In my experience, however, the usual case is a knight vs. knight, both with lances, charging one another. No modifiers.

I guess I misunderstood the critical rule. My understanding was that once a skill made it to 20+, you had to roll a 20 to crit. The extra points for a skill being over 20 was added on to the die, but a crit only occured on a natural 20. Thus, crit chance is the same all the way around, but the bonus to your die roll help to ensure that a knight with a skill level above 20 has a better chance to hit a knight with a lesser skill level by increasing the base number rolled.

Example: Knight A has a sword skill of 24. Knight B has a skill of 15. A rolls a 12, but gets plus 4 because of his points over 20, effective roll of 16. Knight be rolled a 14, higher naturally than Knight A, but Knight B gets a partial success because of the bonus A recieved for his skill being above 20.

Is this wrong? Have I misinterpreted the way that crits work? Or is that a house rule that skill above 20 lets you great over a wider range? Just wondering, thanks.

Nevermind. Just re-red KAP5, and it is clearly spelled out the way that ya'll have been discussing. My bad.

A common enough house rule (half the games I've encountered) is to still count the final die-roll, so it's possible to crit but lose... with any exact skill score being counted as a 20.

But the actual rule is any adjusted roll of 20+ is a crit, and all crits are treated as 20.

So even if a group of knights with Lances are on the field( best case scenario for your opponents), if they are unable to get up their own charge to meet you with...then you get +5 at least vs. them. And if they have melee weapons drawn insted...+10!!!! Crit city baby!!!!!! WHHOOOHHOOOOOO!!!!!!!


The lance-charging knight only gets +5 against the mounted knight with the sword. If the sword wielding knight has a Sword skill that is 5 higher than the lance skill of the charging knight (which isn't all that unreasonable) and does 6d6 damage (also very possible) then the lancer has no advantage whatsoever unless he is on a destrier. In fact the lancer has a few significant DISadvantages such as the good possibility of the lance breaking and that even if it doesn't the lancer probably won't get to charge again next round.

Having those disadvantages when lance charging I felt it was really appropriate that the lance charge really be a devastating opening attack to make it be worthwhile. Thus I decided to add the +1d6.

Actually, years ago we used to have this house rule that any normal weapon (sword, axe, mace etc) from horseback gave -1D6 since its actually harder to get full swing momentum compared to when you are firmly planted standing on the ground and can swing your body/hips fully.

Knights do still have the huge advantage of reflexive +5/-5 so its worth sitting up. This negative modifier would be canceled if the knight was actually charging with his mount. Lance attacks were either normal, or with +1D6 if the mount could gain enough speed like with a higher successful, or critical first charge.

This post got me thinking that maybe I should bring these back.