Hi all,

I noticed, reading some ancient arthurian knight adventures, and especailly fight, that the great helm has a great importance, because when a knight lose his helm, it would often mark the end of the fight, as the knight would then often beg for mercy, or receive a lethal blow.
Any body has house rules for this, because mine are a little complicated.

Thanks,
Regards.

I don't have the rulebook currently at hand, but I think fighting without a helmet reduces armour value by 10-25 % (e.g. a chainmail would only afford 8 or 9 points of protection sans helmet).

You could also resurrect the 4th edition rule of Double Feint, wherein an attacker can roll DEX (with armour penalties) after a successful attack to strike a less protected body part: Crit = armour offers zero protection, Success = halved armour value, Failure/Fumble = the attack misses. Ergo, if a knight wishes to aim at an unhelmeted foe's head, you could ask him to roll DEX after a successful attack, and reduce the foe's armour value accordingly, perhaps even nullifying it altogether with a success.

Personally, I am not a big fan of Double Feint, and actually offed it altogether from my old campaign. However, I MIGHT allow its use against an unhelmeted opponent in a situation you have described.

I know the rule and have read it also, but I have not used any house rules on the subject other than that people can remove their helmet to signal the end of the fight.

In Knights adventurous the Great helmet was worth 2 points of armour. So if someone has no helmet he would reduce his armour by that amount. the helmet in the norman chain was 1 point.

Trying to remove a helmet from an opponent would mean you need to grapple him to accomplish this. Of course removing a helmet is not easy, so you could impose some penalties.

Note that usually, when the victorious knight is unhelmeting his opponent, he already has a great advantage: maybe he has wrestled the opposing knight down or the opposing knight has been stunned long enough to be unhelmeted. In those cases, I pretty much go for an automatic critical hit or a coup de grace. If the enemy is still upright and able to fight back, then Cornelius' suggestion sounds like a good one.

I think the rulebook in grapple had rules for pinning the opponent, and then you could follow up on it by removing the helmet, arm yourself with a dagger and then go stab-happy on the poor enemy's face if he didn't surrender promptly.