Childbirth is pure murder for women in Pendragon.

Assumptions:
1) I am using Greg's new childbirth tables: http://www.gspendragon.com/newchildbirthtables.html
2) I stop rolling childbirth as the woman's 'childbirth age' (age+children+aging events) hits 46. I start rolling at 16 years old (getting married at 15 and aging happens before the childbirth roll) and run it for 30 years (to the age of 45). I personally feel that if the woman hits the 46+ childbirth age, she deserves to have menopause and actually stop being a baby factory and risking her life more than knights do. :P

The numbers are: Min Median Mean Max
Min = minimum result, so someone who dies on the first roll has the age of 16, 0 children and 0 aging events from the childbirth table
Median = median result, so you can say that 50% of the women die by the time they are 22 (so in 7th year from their marriage at 15) and 50% live to 22 or over.
Mean = the average of all the women, so we can see that whilst 50% of the women die by the age of 22, the long tail of women living until 45 (in this calculation) the average age is actually closer to 24.5. Same with children, we have some women who get many children while most women have just a few.
Max = maximum result, so we can see that some very rare women manage to get 14-16 children!

Ordinary maintenance (childbirth roll +0)
Age: 16 22.0 24.45209 45
Children: 0 3.0 3.54696 14
Aging events from childbirth: 0 1.0 1.3441 11
= So the 'typical woman' at this grade would have had 3 children and died at 22, having had one rough childbirth (aging roll).

Rich maintenance (childbirth roll +3)
Age: 16 22.0 24.47404 45
Children: 0 4.0 4.84938 15
Aging events: 0 0.0 0.06045 4
= So the 'typical woman' at this grade would have had 4 children and died at 22, having had no rough childbirths (aging roll).

Superlative maintenance (childbirth roll +5)
Age: 16 22.0 24.48012 45
Children: 0 5.0 5.5434 16
Aging events: 0 0.0 0.0 0
= So the 'typical woman' at this grade would have had 5 children and died at 22, having had no rough childbirths (aging roll).

Then of course you have to take into account of child survival (using Book of the Estate), if you wish to consider how likely it is that the kids that are born survive to be adults. And it is murder, too. About 40% of the girls reach 15 and can be married off to die in childbirth forthwith. Only about 20% of them survive until 22. Boys are a bit luckier; about 33% of them survive to 21. In BotE, the maintenance influences child survival ONLY in the case of Famine, Pestilence or Plague, so there is nothing a PK can do to influence these grim numbers. :( (In fact, they just get worse since i assumed peaceful, non-raiding, no pestilence conditions...) It means that the ordinary woman will probably get one of her children to survive to be an adult... (Which actually means that the population is under the extinction threshold, shrinking 50% per generation!!!)

Alright. It is manifestly silly that 50% of noblewomen are dying with 7 years of their marriage in childbirth. Sure, it was common, but it was not THAT common. How to fix this? Easy solution: take away the 'mother and child die in childbirth' (which my players absolutely hate, as it robs them of a wife and a child at the same time) and replace it with the 'Conception causes illness, no birth and Aging Roll for mother' (what I call an aging event).

How does the wife survival look now? The numbers are much more pleasing.
- The women's median age is 29 instead of 22. So there is a good chance that they might actually survive the marriage if that lout of a husband goes to wars and battles. And this also means that the PKs are unlikely to be on the 3rd stepmother, if the father is still alive and married... More likely, it would be the first stepmother or at worst, 2nd. (One woman to birth you, one woman to raise you, and one woman to tempt you... Since the last stepmother is probably close to the PK's age and PK has been away as a squire... :P )
- Ordinary women get, on median, 5 children instead of 3. So they actually have some chance of seeing a son grow to adulthood. And suffer 3 aging events (median).
- Rich women have median 7 children, whohoo! And suffer only 1 aging event (which would have killed them before in a miscarriage).
- Superlative women have a median 8 children, and suffer no aging events.

I think this is a good change. The damsels actually live long enough that they get to accumulate some skills and personality, and there will be more widows around as they don't all die in childbirth. Also it makes those romance solos worth more as the damsel you are wooing won't drop dead the instant you marry her. Finally, it prevents the PKs from marrying their way repeatedly into fortune and glory, treating the wives as simple dowry bags and baby factories... All good things, in my opinion.

Next thread, the issue of children's survival.

http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/

a significant percentage of women died in association with childbirth: 5% perhaps from the birth itself, often dying with the child, and a further 15% from childbed fever

That means our Table1 isnt far off..
Technically you would have to split the table first into 50% of conception and 50% non-conception.
Then of those 50% with conception 5% die with child and 15% die while child lives.
So odds combined: 2.5% die with child and 7.5% die while child lives. [10% total]
Table 1: gives 5% die with child and 5% die while child lives... [10% total]

Question then is, is 50% chance of conception realistic?

fg,
Thijs

http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/

a significant percentage of women died in association with childbirth: 5% perhaps from the birth itself, often dying with the child, and a further 15% from childbed fever

That means our Table1 isnt far off..


First of all, assuming you came to that number by counting the ladies mentioned on that page, that is a sample size of 10 noblewomen. But more significantly, that is a 20% over their whole lives certainly, not per YEAR.

The Table 1 has 10% per year or about 20% per child. Which, as I have shown in those calculations, means that 50% of the women are dead in 7 years after their marriage. This is much too high, IMHO. The 5% mortality that I was advocating still gives 50% mortality rate within 14 years of marriage. Which means that from the 10 ladies in the list, 5 of them should have died in childbirth using those rules. Note that maintenance doesn't reduce the chance of death in childbirth.

As for the 50% chance of conception... it depends? I think it seems pretty OK. The probabilities come down with age, so the bonus from higher maintenance diminishes. Certainly some couples seem to have lower fertility rates than this: for instance King Richard I never did get a child from his queen. Maybe the high maintenance bonus could be smaller, like +1 and +2, and then give each woman a potential for a small bonus / penalty, like I did in the wife generator. End result, you get some women who keep popping out babies like nobody's business, and some who do not seem to get pregnant no matter what you do. The dice gods will take care of the rest.

But more significantly, that is a 20% over their whole lives certainly, not per YEAR.


Oh, very good point. More googling:

Childbirth: In fifteenth century in Florence, the best estimate for maternal mortality is 14.4 deaths per 1000 births, which 1.44%–so actually pretty rare. http://tinyurl.com/43f27bk

Other sources state: “Studies by Roger Schofield, B. M. Wilmott Dobbie, and Irvine Loudon estimate that maternal mortality rates between 1400 and 1800 were between 1 and 3 percent. Most often, women died in childbirth due to protracted labor caused by a narrow or deformed pelvis, fetal malpresentation, postpartum hemorrhage, or puerperal fevers. The health risk was renewed at each pregnancy. Since a woman averaged five pregnancies, 10 percent of these women died during or soon after childbirth.” http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Me-Pa/Obstetrics-and-Midwifery.html

This is clear, those tables are too killing. Mothers should have between 1-3% mortality rate per child, not 10%...
Time for new tables... Morien?

fg,
Thijs

Well, off the top of my head and to keep me from writing too much... I'd probably stick to the Tables as they are, with three changes:
1) Replace the 'mother and child die in childbirth' with 'conception causes an illness' (aging event).
2) If the 'mother dies in childbirth' -result comes up, roll woman's CON minus the number of aging events minus 10 if this is the first child. (This is to represent the fact that if there is something wrong with HER (pelvis, etc), then the first child will probably kill her. Once she has successfully given birth to one child, it shows that everything in her ought to work, and then it is just bad luck if she happens to die. The aging events make it so that an older woman is probably more at risk. Normally, you'd track her CON, but I don't really wish to bother with that for all the NPCs, so using the number of aging events to track 'wear and tear' should be fine.)
3) Ditch Table 4. The woman in question hits menopause and becomes infertile. After that, she can only die accidentally, Family Event rolls or story considerations.

You'll need to roll for the Woman's constitution, of course. Something like 11+1d6 ought to do the trick for Cymric ladies and maybe 8+1d6 for the other ones?

This should result in about 6% / child mortality for non-Cymric and 3% / child mortality for Cymric women in childbirth (assuming no bonus to childbirth). The first birth is slightly more dangerous, and about 10% of the women would roll that up and likely die on it... You know what, lets ditch that one? It is an edge case and we have a higher mortality in any case already.

I think 3-6% / child mortality works for gaming purposes. Sure, it is a bit higher than the true average, but we don't want to deprive the PKs all the chances to marry again...

As for the lifespan of the Cymric wives under this system...
Age Cumulative Probability (10000 women) Threshold percentage (5% chunks)
19 0.0591 0.05
22 0.101 0.1
26 0.1543 0.15
30 0.2062 0.2
35 0.2522 0.25
45 1.0 0.3

In other words (since I don't trace the age past 45), we can see that about 10% of the Cymric wives under this system die by the time they are 22, and about 25% die by the time they are 35. I find these odds OK to play with, maybe even a touch low for playability, since it means that only 1 in 4 PKs is likely to lose a wife to childbirth and hence remarry. Thus making the marriage market much less of an appeal.

I am a bit surprised by the fact that the mortality seems to taper down with age, something I didn't expect to see... Ah, it is simply because I have a rather rough 'comb' in there, every 5%, so it is easy to get +-1 year in each 5% slot. And then you start losing women to the menopause in their mid-to-late 30s, due to the childbearing age being age+children+aging events.

Of course, a more elegant way to do this would be to roll first for conception and if a conception happens, then roll for childbirth and associated hazards. However, good enough for an RPG, I feel.

Nah, no extra stats [however much sense it makes]

How about making two tables.
Table one with chance of conception (-for #children and age)
Table two with outcome pregnancy (- for first birth)

Table 1 (D20)
10+ Conception
- #children
- age/10
that means no conception after 6 kids with age 36...

Table 2 (D20)
1-5 Child still-born
6 Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
7-9 Sickly child
10 Twins
11+ Healthy kid
-2 first Child
+1 physician in retinue [Rich+]

fg,
Thijs

Now combine those tables back to one:

Table (D20)
1-10 No conception
10-11 Stillborn (=20% of all children born)
12 Mother dies on 4+ on D6 (5% per conception), child dies on 4+ on D6 (5% of all children born) [+2 first birth, -1 if physician on hand]
13+ Healthy Child
natural 20: Special: D20:
1-14 Blessed Child (GMs can go wild with this one)
15-19 Twins (1-in-80 off all children),
20 Triplet (1-in-400 (should be 6400, but ok))
Modifiers:
- #children
- age/10

Only problem here is that between 7-10 'births' you will only get miracle kids (natural 20) or stillborns...
Any idea how to solve that?

fg,
Thijs

I agree, best to keep it simple. Two roll system seems like a way to go.

I am not sure I would penaltize the woman with the number of children? The way I see it, if someone has popped out 4 children no problem, there is no particular reason why she might not go and pop out 4 more. Normal people regularly had large families, too. However, fertility starts to decline after 30 and sharply after 35, and the child's health can suffer, too.

So:
Conception Table (-1 / year past 35)
1d20: Conception on 11+, go to Childbirth.

Childbirth Table (+2 first Child)
1d20 Result
1-16 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = If the mother is past 35, a roll of (age-35) is a Sickly child as well.
(I turned the table around so that it would be easier to see which results are the sickly children for older mothers.)

Lets see now, about 20 years of high fertility and 10 years of lowered fertility... Call it 50% and 25% / year, roughly. It comes to about 12 children with average rolling, 6-8 of whom survive (50% / 70% survival rate). Might be a bit high, especially with the bonuses from high grade of maintenance.

If Conception is on 14+, this gives 35% chance of children for ordinary maintenance, resulting in 7 children during first 20 years of marriage and possibly one or two more when the mother is older. This would then end up maybe 4-5 surviving children on ordinary maintenance. Rich would be as previously (the +3 to conception -> conception on 11+, childbirth rolls as normal) and Superlative would get about 12+3 children, of whom 6+1 - 8+2 would survive.

Although keeping in mind that those numbers are the expected averages, you might have some annoyingly high outliers. One way to curb that would be a modifier based on the number of children born, which is a bit of a hassle to keep track of, but doable...

Alternatively, we could hit the cutoff at 30, give -1 / year after that, and keep conception at 11+.

This would result in 15 years of high fertility + 10 years of low fertility. About 10 children all in all, for a normal family, 5-7 survivors.

High maintenance would have 15 years of 65% fertility (about 10 kids), and then 13 years of decline (call it 33% = 4). The youngest children might be sickly, so bit higher mortality there... Say 5+1 or 7+2 survive (50%/70% survival rates).

Superlative maintenance would have 15 years of 75% (11 kids) and then 15 years of decline (call it 6 kids). Again, youngest kids sickly so something like 6+2 or 8+3 would survive.

Given that the women might not get married straight at 15, they might easily 'lose' a few years of their prime baby factory age (loss of 2/3/3 kids born, 1/2/2 survivors?). Also, women in 30+ might not be that desirable for family, although they might come as widows with property and be desirable in that sense.

I might crunch some numbers and see what kind of a distribution we see, once we account for the death in childbirth (increased possibility of death with each birth).

Ah, I see you posed again. No, lets keep it with two tables. Much better like that, and the first roll is quick and easy, just comparing numbers.

You're right.
Drop #kids modifier.

I think we need to drop conception chance.
Because with yearly checks this means these poor women have only 2 months to recover from last delivery before getting pregnant again..
We could modify the table to lower the chance if someone delivered the year before, but thats bookkeeping, so better just lower average conception number...
I read somewhere on average 6 kids..

fg,
Thijs

Yeah, we definitely need to lower the conception chance... Maybe even quite dramatically.

I lowered the first child death bonus to +1, because otherwise we'd have 1 in 6 women dropping dead at the birth of the first child, and that was a bit too much. Now it is 1 in 10, which is still a noticeable spike, but I think I can live with those odds.

I track the age of the woman when she dies in childbirth, the number of children she has birthed and the numbers of children surviving to adulthood (for both 50% and 70% probabilities). I have sickly children surviving on 30% and 50% respectively.

I lowered the conception chance to 15+, and still I get a median of children to be 9 (mean is 8.3, as there are a lot of those first child, mom dies -cases). Mind you, the survivors are (median) 4 and 6 respectively, so I don't see that as a huge problem, especially as this is under very favorable assumptions: peaceful realm, marries at 15, stays married all the time. If the girls marry closer to 18 and there is even a bit of warfare making survival more uncertain, those numbers drop quickly. I am still losing a lot of the women to childbirth, about 30% by age of 22 and 40% by 28. Still, 50/50 is pretty good compared to the previous 99/1. :P This could be tweaked by having the 1d6 to be rolled for the child to give the mother a chance to survive, too. Like 1d6: 1-2 both die, 3 baby dies , 4 mother dies, 5-6=both survive.

Since the conception chance dropped from 50% to 30%, the modifiers need to be scaled appropriately. Hence, Rich +2 conception (10%, so +33%), Superlative +3 conception (15%, so +50%). Lets see what they give...

Rich: median children 11 (mean 9), survivors 5/7.

Superlative: median children 12 (mean 10), survivors 5/7. And I know why that is happening. The increased conception chance gives more opportunities for the women to die in childbirth, hence lower lifespan and hence not as much time to get babies out.

So, seems to work now. I don't think I wish to lower the chance of childbirth too much more, because the issue for the generational play is to get the heir out ASAP. Often, the PKs manage to get themselves killed and leave a widow behind, so not too worried about the family trees exploding, either.

The childbirth death tweak, halving the chance of the mother dying, results in
Ordinary: median 10 children, 5/7 survivors. 20% chance of dying in labor by 26, but 70%+ make to 45. Call it 1 in 4 dying in childbirth.

Alright, lets make the mom die on 4 or below, so 33% reduction in childbirth mortality:
Ordinary: median 10 children, 5/7 survivors. 20% chance of dying in labor by 22, 30% chance by 30, but 60%+ make to 45. Call it 1 in 3 PKs' wives dying in childbirth.

My gut feeling is that whilst 25% would be closer to the reality, I think from gaming perspective, the 33% or even 50% might be preferable for childbirth deaths. It'd happen often enough that it would actually come up in the campaign, but not so often that all the wives die in a decade.

So:
Conception Table (-1 / year past 35)
1d20: Conception on 15+, go to Childbirth.
+2 Rich
+3 Superlative

Childbirth Table (+1 first Child)
1d20 Result
1-16 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = If the mother is past 35, a roll of (age-35) is a Sickly child as well.

Did I miss anything?

fg,
Thijs

Fixed it for you:

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30)
1d20: Conception on 15+, go to Childbirth.
+2 Rich
+3 Superlative

Childbirth Table (+1 first Child)
1d20 Result
1** Stillborn
2-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = If the mother is past 30, a roll of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.
** = An unmodified roll of 1, even if the first time. Stillborn doesn't count as the first child.

Stuff like this is why I love this forum. I'm definitely using this table in my campaign, it "feels" right. Nice work guys!

Edit: Am I missing what happens when you roll a 17? :-\

Stuff like this is why I love this forum. I'm definitely using this table in my campaign, it "feels" right. Nice work guys!

Edit: Am I missing what happens when you roll a 17? :-\


Typo, fixed now.

And thanks, glad you found it useful! Sometimes Thijs and I feel like we are in an echo chamber when we get down to number crunching. :P

EDIT: Also, checked up the number on still births... The modern ratio in US is 1 still birth per 160 births, and in developing countries this is much higher. If you want to have that option in the table, the easiest way would be to say that unmodified 1 in childbirth table is actually a stillbirth. That maps reasonably well with the developing countries' rate. Actually, let me go and change that right now. It won't make a big change in the results, since it is just 1 in 20, but might as well, right?

I for one love the number crunching and analysis. Please keep it coming, it is much appreciated! 8)

Yes, someone reads our math!

PS: According to sources its 20% stillborn in mideval times (that includes first year). So I would make 1-4 stillborn..

fg
Thijs

That many? Huh. That starts to skew the odds, then. I think I'd rather put them to the conception table at that stage. Like 1-2 unmodified roll the woman gets pregnant, but the child is stillborn. That gives you roughly 1 in 4 pregnancies ending in stillborn, but doesn't require us to re-tweak the childbirth table and death in childbirth probabilities.

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +2 Rich, +3 Superlative)
1d20:
1-2 Stillborn*
3-14 No conception
15+ Baby carried to term, go to Childbirth.
* Only on an unmodified roll of 1 or 2. Stillborns don't count as a first child.

Childbirth Table (+1 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = If the mother is past 30, a roll of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.

Quote Lancaster:
In the same periods, stillborn plus neonatal
deaths amounted together to 100 and 107.5 per
thousand, respectively, with deaths counted up
to the end of the first year, the corresponding
rates were 193 and 246 per thousand. The rate
for offspring of parents marrying in 1850-1930
was 18.5 per thousand.

Since kids dont roll on survival table that first year, I'd say 20%. If you consider Birth table only about birth it should be 10%.. Now that I think about it, it should be 10% on the table. Kids roll on the survival table after 1 year and any casualty is assumed to be anywhere in that first year. So, sorry, 10% it should be on birth table.
And stillborns should be in table 2 (as they give chance death wife).

fg,
Thijs

And stillborns should be in table 2 (as they give chance death wife).


Nah, just leave it as is, Thijs.

The thing is, we have already tweaked the women's death in childbirth to match what we want to see. Those women who die whilst giving birth to a stillborn baby? Already included in a roll of 20 and a follow-up 1d6 4+. Those 1-2 stillbirths in the conception table? Those are the stillbirths that the mother survived without problems. The end result is the same, but you get done with one roll instead of two, and don't have to re-tweak conception & death in childbirth to get the probabilities that we want out of it.

Also, it simplifies the rolling as people, who are squemish about it or just don't care that much detail, can just ignore the stillbirth results in the conception. Thus simplifying the situation back to 1d20: 15+ rule which is easy to remember. It doesn't really matter, as the only things that do matter is if a child is born or not and if the mother lives or not. And we are already happy with those two probabilities.

EDIT:
Rereading your numbers, it hints strongly that we ought to lower the stillbirth chance to an unmodified roll of 1 on the conception table. That gives us about 168 / 1000 ratio for stillbirths for Ordinary. About 137 / 1000 for Rich and 126/1000 for Superlative. Adding the 10% 1st year mortality gets us to:
Ordinary: 251 / 1000
Rich: 223 / 1000
Superlative: 213 / 1000

Which happens to be more or less where you wished it to be. Given the above rationales, I am happy with the following tables:

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +2 Rich, +3 Superlative)
1d20:
1 Stillborn*
2-14 No conception
15+ Baby carried to term, go to Childbirth.
* Only on an unmodified roll of 1. Stillborns don't count as a first child.

Childbirth Table (+1 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = If the mother is past 30, a roll of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.

And just for completeness, 5% first year infant mortality spits out the following numbers for children stillborn or dead within an year:
Ordinary: 210 / 1000
Rich: 180 / 1000
Superlative: 170 / 1000

Given that any average will be weighted towards the most populous group (Ordinary, presumably) and that we are not trying to write a scientific paper here but find a roll table for an RPG, I am willing to say: close enough! :P

Given that there is no dependence anymore on nmr of children..
Or should we add -1 conception per previous kid? No, too much bookkeeping, agreed?

I would indeed even remove the stillborn from the table out of respect for those people haven gone through such terrible experience, as it has no 'gaming effect'.

PS: please explain how to read this:
* = If the mother is past 30, a roll of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.
So if age is 33 then birth roll of 1,2,3 become sickly kids as well? Or as a third roll?

fg,
Thijs

I would indeed even remove the stillborn from the table out of respect for those people haven gone through such terrible experience, as it has no 'gaming effect'.

PS: please explain how to read this:
* = If the mother is past 30, a roll of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.
So if age is 33 then birth roll of 1,2,3 become sickly kids as well? Or as a third roll?


Happy to remove it. That was the reason why I didn't put it in in the first place.

Too much work keeping track of children, imho, and I am not convinced that there is a magic number there anyway. Hmm. Although... It is pretty rare that children pop out every year. Partially this is because of breastfeeding, which the nobility might not do. You could easily put in a modifier that if the woman had a child last year, she gets a small minus to conception. That would be easy to keep track off, since you just glance at your character sheet and see if you have a child coming to 1 this winter phase. That would cut out more of the big number children, but probably not impact so much on the lower end, unlike what would happen when you have a general lowering of conception. I can crunch some numbers again. Do you have a preference as to the target number?

Yes, that is the correct way to roll it. Let me rephrase that in an edit...

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +2 Rich, +3 Superlative)
1d20: 15+ Baby carried to term, go to Childbirth.

Childbirth Table (+1 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = A childbirth roll result of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.

After some playing around with the numbers...

If I introduce a -5 to the conception roll if there was a child the previous year:

Ordinary (Min Median Mean Max)
Age: 16 45.0 35.9175 45
Children: 1 8.0 7.0282 15
Survivors (50%): 0 3.0 3.3426 12
Survivors (60%): 0 5.0 4.7075 14
Age Cumulative Probability of death by this age
16 0.091 0.05
17 0.1258 0.1
18 0.1573 0.15
20 0.2118 0.2
22 0.2556 0.25
25 0.3059 0.3
29 0.3517 0.35
45 1.0 0.4

Rich (+2 Conception) (Min Median Mean Max)
Age: 16 45.0 34.909 45
Children: 1 9.0 8.0753 17
Survivors (50%): 0 4.0 3.8229 12
Survivors (70%): 0 6.0 5.3882 14
Age Cumulative Probability of death by this age
16 0.0963 0.05
17 0.1318 0.1
18 0.1656 0.15
20 0.224 0.2
22 0.2735 0.25
24 0.316 0.3
27 0.3631 0.35
31 0.4049 0.4
45 1.0 0.45

Superlative (+3 Conception) (Min Median Mean Max)
Age: 16 45.0 34.2792 45
Children: 1 10.0 8.5383 19
Survive 50%: 0 4.0 4.0518 15
Survive 60%: 0 6.0 5.6934 16
Age Cumulative Probability of death by this age
16 0.0999 0.05
17 0.1376 0.1
18 0.1719 0.15
19 0.2061 0.2
21 0.2649 0.25
23 0.3128 0.3
25 0.3513 0.35
29 0.4074 0.4
35 0.453 0.45
45 1.0 0.5


The -5 conception the following year works very well in restricting the number of children in the upper end, while having almost no effects on the lower end. After all, if you get just one child, this doesn't come into play. And if you have two during the whole life, what are the chances that they are born on subsequent years? As conception is rarer, the mother's death in childbirth is rarer, too. Those numbers from about 35% - 45% seem quite alright to me for gaming purposes.

What this really does is constrict the numbers of women with high-teens of children. For example, without the -5, 10% of rich women had 15+ children. Now the number is around 1%, and 90% of the rich women have 12 or less children, which is reasonable. For superlative, the numbers were 10% of 16+, now around 1% and 90% have 13 or less children.

It adds a bit of complication and up to about 9-10 children (about 40%, superlative, -1 child for Rich and -2 for Ordinary) it doesn't seem to make noticeable a difference. I probably would introduce it in my campaign, just to keep things a bit more reasonable, and the small extra check wouldn't matter so much as you will be rolling for Child Survival anyway for those babies... Could even do that first, so that it is fresh on memory if you had a baby born last year or not.

Yes, I also prefer to lower the odds for next year.. most siblings are 2 year spaced..
I agree that since you'll roll survival for that 1 year old, you have no problem remembering, and -5 is a nice round number :)

So now we are at:

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +2 Rich, +3 Superlative, -5 if childbirth last year)
1d20: 15+ Baby carried to term, go to Childbirth.

Childbirth Table (+1 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = A childbirth roll result of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.

And now there is one I would like to add.... barren...
What I understand is that some women become barren after difficult birth or most are born that way.
It also adds that nice dilemma for a knight, what to do with barren wife...
I see some 10% have problem.. of which 1/3 is males fault (but lets ignore that in our chauvenistic Arthur period, deep apologies to all females on this forum and the internet).
You would most likely discover to be barren with the first child, so:

Childbirth Table (+2 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20-21 Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
22 No conception, permanent Barren** from now on
* = A childbirth roll result of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.
**= 50% the woman is barren, 50% male is (so also no bastards).

Another I would like to add, is the increased chance of pregnancy for affairs (yes, there is research to prove this).
So the first time you roll on this table with a female add +10 (also nice to increase those odds to get that first kid 9 months after wedding night).
Add a -5 if female is attempting to avoid pregnancy. (some of the wenches would like to get pregnant of knight, I assume..)
Add a -5 if male is attempting to avoid pregnancy. (sometimes you have too many bastards already)

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +2 Rich, +3 Superlative, -5 if childbirth last year, +10 for first roll, -5 if male avoiding pregnancy, -5 if female avoiding pregnancy)
1d20: 15+ Baby carried to term, go to Childbirth.

fg,
Thijs

Personally, I like the "Barren" and +10 for the new wife/lover, but am not a fan of the "avoiding pregnancy" modifier. Aren't PKs already given a chance to avoid pregnancy with a chaste/lustful roll? I know this roll is probably meant to represent abstinence, but personally I'd just include any birth control methods in this roll. Although your suggested (-5) modifier is probably more realistic, I guess I just don't feel it adds much from a gameplay standpoint. I've already given PKs a chance to avoid children if they want to, why do this step twice?

22 No conception, permanent Barren** from now on
**= 50% the woman is barren, 50% male is (so also no bastards).


Didn't you say that about a third is the man's fault but you'd ignore it in Pendragon? Not to mention that I would be a bit miffed with the GM if he rolled the dice and unilaterally decided that my character cannot have children, ever. :P



Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +2 Rich, +3 Superlative, -5 if childbirth last year, +10 for first roll, -5 if male avoiding pregnancy, -5 if female avoiding pregnancy)


Hmm. +10 seems a wee bit too high. It would basically guarantee that all princesses ever would become pregnant on the first year. I'd accept +5. Also, the -5*2 is ultimate safe sex... While I know that combining different natural contraceptive methods can have a pretty high success rate, they also rely very much on cooperation. Two lovers who can't pick and choose their moment, not a chance. Two people having a one-night-stand on the spur of the moment, nuh-uh. I would accept -5 when both cooperate and in a longer term situation.

Also... I think I need to see some research on that +10? That is about x2.5 fertility. While I can accept that a married man might do better with a young hottie than a wife he has fallen out of love with, x2.5 sounds a bit too high if assuming that he is trying to have children with his wife, too. Even that +5 is something I wouldn't give to one-night stands.

Ok, I changed my mind on the male part...
and given that Pendragon is about a dynasty, killing that dynasty with a single roll might be harsh.. [but he, such was life, better hope you have a brother]
Lets make that ** optional...

Yeah, +10 on conception might be too high.. I realize now also that for a one-night fling you might not be in fertile period, while when trying to get pregnant you will..
Make it +5...
Even if it is not 'realistic', for gaming reasons I like it for all those randoms bastards for lustful characters...

Oops, you are right on the -5*2.. -5 if mutual avoidance... [that makes it 20 only, sounds ok]
--
However I just realised you only have 25% change of getting pregnant during a year. That means 75% of all people on average do not succeed. That means that according to modern definition 75% of all people are infertile (= not able to conceive with 1 year).
Is that too harsh? Should we increase fertility? I would suggest going back to 11+ conception, those were also the old statistics..
Together with the modifier for 'birht previous year' and age modifier we should be able to get the statistics we want (6 average kids).

fg,
Thijs

30% conception rate, actually, BUT...

I was wondering why I have such a strong mortality spike at the newlyweds, and then I realized I have a bug in the code. I was doing straight -(age-30) modifier for conception roll, which naturally for a 16 year old new bride means +14 conception... Oops! No wonder it didn't seem to make a big difference when I raised conception limit to 15+! :P

So yeah, putting it down to 11+, +3 Rich, +5 Superlative and calculating again. I think we may have to put the child last year mod to -10 (for a nice round number), which I think is still OK. I am not going to add +5 to wedding nights... as far as I recall, those things tended to be damn stressful for the bride and groom. :P

Alright, so new results...

Ordinary (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 37.9776 45
Children: 1 6.0 5.8012 13
Survivors 50%: 0 3.0 2.7193 10
Survivors 70%: 0 4.0 3.8382 11
Age
17 0.0744 0.05
19 0.1168 0.1
22 0.1629 0.15
25 0.2058 0.2
29 0.2582 0.25
34 0.3083 0.3
45 1.0 0.35

So the Ordinary wife gets about 6 children, of which 4 survive, 88% get 8 children or less, and 1 in 3 wives die in childbirth before reaching menopause. Sounds OK to me.

Rich (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 36.5161 45
Children: 1 9.0 7.5751 15
Survivors 50%: 0 4.0 3.5096 11
Survivors 70%: 0 5.0 4.9998 14
Age
16 0.0527 0.05
18 0.1141 0.1
20 0.1561 0.15
23 0.2114 0.2
26 0.2607 0.25
29 0.3102 0.3
33 0.3598 0.35
39 0.4034 0.4
45 1.0 0.45

For Rich Ladies, they get around 9 children, of whom 5 survive (some of those 9 are obviously unhealthy). 91% get 11 children or less. 40% of Rich ladies die in childbirth. Again, OK with that idea.

Superlative (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 35.5607 45
Children: 1 10.0 8.7271 19
Survivors 50%: 0 4.0 4.0653 12
Survivors 70%: 0 6.0 5.7562 16
Age
16 0.0628 0.05
18 0.1206 0.1
20 0.1669 0.15
22 0.2076 0.2
25 0.269 0.25
27 0.3063 0.3
30 0.3597 0.35
33 0.4005 0.4
39 0.4522 0.45
45 1.0 0.5

For Superlative ladies, we have median of 10 children, of whom 6 survive. 91% get 13 children or less. Around 45% of the women die in childbirth. High for historical, but gives the opportunity for those old knights (if they live that far) to marry rich heiresses.

Seems to work, so the new table is:

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +3 Rich, +5 Superlative, -10 if childbirth last year)
1d20: 11+ Baby carried to term, go to Childbirth.

Childbirth Table (+1 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = A childbirth roll result of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.

I'd leave the Barrenness roll for something that is rolled separately. After all, it can be a major plot point, and sometimes, the GM and the PK may know it in advance: "Well, she is very hot, and she was married 10 years to the most Lustful and Energetic knight in the County... 0 children. You do the math if you wish to marry this widow."

I agree that this is a problem, and lacking Moriens and Thijs mathematical skills, this is what I came up with:

I agree that this is a problem, and lacking Moriens and Thijs mathematical skills, this is what I came up with:


It doesn't take too much mathematical skills. I am simply running a random number generator several times (10000 in this case) to find out what is the actual distribution when we play with the numbers.

Yours is actually pretty elegant, having 1/36 death in childbirth and 1/36 chance of twins. In comparison, we have 1/20 for the first child, and 1/40 for the subsequent ones. And 1/40 for twins. Roughly. Yours stay the same while ours depend on the number of conceptions, which is altered by the age and the grade of maintenance. But yeah, yours is a quite nice design. Easy to remember, too. :)

Yours is actually pretty elegant, having 1/36 death in childbirth and 1/36 chance of twins. In comparison, we have 1/20 for the first child, and 1/40 for the subsequent ones. And 1/40 for twins. Roughly. Yours stay the same while ours depend on the number of conceptions, which is altered by the age and the grade of maintenance. But yeah, yours is a quite nice design. Easy to remember, too. :)


Thanks :)

I'm pretty proud of it, actually, since I am somewhat mathematically challenged. It was designed with the goal of being easy to remember. The only thing I'm not quite happy with is that Grade of Maintenance do not affect the risk to the mother, but I'm can live with that, given that the table is so easy to remember.

And it decreases the number of children born somewhat, too!

The one thing I miss is indeed age-effects..

fg,
Thijs

The one thing I miss is indeed age-effects..


Easy enough to add an age modifier:
Age 30-34: -1
Age 35-39: -3
Age 40-44: -5
Age 45+: No roll.

Using the above modifier in Skarpskytten's table, I get the following results:

Ordinary (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 40.0 35.4647 45
Children: 1 7.0 7.1725 19
Survivors 50%: 0 3.0 3.4283 12
Survivors 70%: 0 5.0 4.8066 16
Age
17 0.0573 0.05
19 0.1095 0.1
21 0.161 0.15
23 0.2084 0.2
26 0.2667 0.25
28 0.3067 0.3
31 0.3661 0.35
33 0.4016 0.4
36 0.4514 0.45
40 0.5057 0.5
44 0.561 0.55
45 1.0 0.6

Since the death in childbirth probability stays the same, the age distributions don't change between the grades of maintenance, so I won't reprint them.

Rich (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 40.0 35.5388 45
Children: 1 11.0 9.8234 24
Survivors 50%: 0 5.0 4.7722 18
Survivors 70%: 0 7.0 6.6726 21

Superlative (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 40.0 35.4498 45
Children: 1 14.0 12.3867 25
Survivors 50%: 0 6.0 6.0432 19
Survivors 70%: 0 9.0 8.4673 21

The reason why the numbers of children and survivors jumps so rapidly with Rich and Superlative is because the bellcurve distribution of 2d6, the peak being in 7. So having Rich, you move to the peak (+40% fertility), and with Superlative, the wife stays on the peak up to 34.

EDIT:
One way to tweak this would be to play with the childbirth and child survival modifiers. I'd do it like this:
Ordinary: +0 Childbirth, Child death on 1d20: 1-2 up to 8 years -> 50% survival rate -> 3 surviving children per woman, approximately
Rich: +1 Childbirth (Rich result), Child death on 1d20: 1-2 up to 8 years -> 50% survival rate -> 4 surviving children per woman, approximately
Superlative: +1 Childbirth (Rich result), Child death on 1d20: 1 up to 8 years -> 70% survival rate -> 5 surviving children per woman, approximately

Given that the men may remarry (and usually a younger woman), if a man survives to a ripe middle-age, he is likely to have more surviving heirs than this.

Conception Table (-1 / year past 30, +3 Rich, +5 Superlative, -10 if childbirth last year)
1d20: 11+ Baby carried to term, go to Childbirth.

Childbirth Table (+1 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20+ Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
* = A childbirth roll result of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.

With minor discussion if a Barren option should be added as below:
Childbirth Table (+2 First Child)
1d20 Result
1-17 Healthy child*
18 Twins
19 Sickly child*
20-21 Mother dies (on 4+ on D6, so does child)
22 Mother Barren from now on
* = A childbirth roll result of (age-30) is a Sickly child as well.





vs

2D6
<7 No Birth
8+ Child
Natural 12 Twins
Natural 2, Mother dies, on 4+ (D6) so does child


Superlative +2
Rich +1
Poor -1
Impoverished -2
Age 31-35: -1
Age 36-40: -3
Age 41-45: -5
Age 46+: No roll.


Personally I of course like my own table most :)
But Morien, perhaps you can run the odds on all three options.. ?

fg,
Thijs

Personally I of course like my own table most :)
But Morien, perhaps you can run the odds on all three options.. ?


Just did to Skarpskytten's. I can run the numbers for the barren option, too. Easy enough to do. I don't expect it to change the results much: it just takes 5% of the women out of the childbirth race. So the bin of 0 children pops up and gets 5% occupancy. Moment...

....

Morien,
I think that we are giving the world a bad impression that we have time to visit this forum during working hours as astronomers [then again we also tend to work at night and we must read these forums sometimes] :)

fg,
Thijs

Barren option enabled:

Ordinary (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 38.2628 45
Children: 0 6.0 5.5287 14
Survivors 50%: 0 3.0 2.5955 10
Survivors 70%: 0 4.0 3.6706 12
Age
17 0.0696 0.05
19 0.1129 0.1
22 0.1605 0.15
26 0.2116 0.2
30 0.2594 0.25
35 0.3016 0.3
45 1.0 0.35

Rich (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 36.963 45
Children: 0 8.0 7.1999 17
Survivors 50%: 0 3.0 3.3689 11
Survivors 70%: 0 5.0 4.7508 13
Age
16 0.0521 0.05
18 0.111 0.1
21 0.1684 0.15
23 0.2029 0.2
27 0.2618 0.25
30 0.3071 0.3
35 0.3567 0.35
45 1.0 0.4

Superlative (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 36.0822 45
Children: 0 10.0 8.2621 19
Survivors 50%: 0 4.0 3.8258 13
Survivors 70%: 0 6.0 5.4191 16
Age
16 0.0667 0.05
17 0.101 0.1
20 0.1668 0.15
22 0.2029 0.2
25 0.2566 0.25
28 0.3045 0.3
32 0.3602 0.35
36 0.4028 0.4
45 1.0 0.45

As expected, it has a minor impact: mainly just reducing the mean value of children & survivors (since you add 5% into the 0 column), and lowering the death by childbirth and increasing the age (as those 5% now live to the ripe old age of 45). But it is a small effect as the statistics are still defined by those 95% non-barren women. Actually, by including it to the childbirth roll, you actually decrease the chance of a healthy first child from 80% to 75%. But like said, it is a minor effect, mainly lost in the noise. And of course, the effect would be almost the same if you just roll the Barrenness separately and include the barren women in the statistical analysis after the fact (in this sample size, adding 500 barren women with 0 children and age 45 to the end of the sample of 9500 women).

I dislike our still high natal mortality (number of wifes dying during childbirth). 35%
Kittens goes to 60%
Right?
Should be around 20% max...

Weird is in our method is that superlative wifes die more often as they have more children...
How about on that wife dies roll, another roll is made
D20: 1-5 mother & child dies, 6-10 mother dies, 11-15 Misformed child, 16-19 mother barren, 20 Triplet

fg,
Thijs

Should be around 20% max...


Historically, yes. But gameplay-wise, I like having the chance to be 1 in 3 or even 1 in 2. If you have the chance to be 1 in 5, then you are pretty sure that most of the PKs will marry once, end of story. I prefer having a bit higher chance of remarriage.

Of course, if you are including also Survival rolls from BotE for the wives separately, then I agree, we could have a smaller chance of childbirth deaths. How about this... If you get a 'Trouble in Labor' or whatever we wish to call that 20+ result, you roll 1d6 as before: even = mother survives, child dies; odd = mother dies, child survives. To be honest, I am not even sure I would have the child die (re: stillbirth arguments).

The chance of death in childbirth IS the same per conception for all the women. If you divorce it from the conception, then you will make the per birth death rate shoot up for the Ordinary women. I guess it could be argued either way.

The one thing I miss is indeed age-effects.


In the Olden days, when I used the table in the book, I gave a cumulative -1 one the Childbirth Table per children born (instead of the age of the mother). It worked very well in keeping the size of the families down, and I felt it was a bit more fair than using the age of the mother. But I have dropped all that now, I find it to much of a hassle to keep track of stuff like that.

As for how long women are fertile; they can roll on the table as long as I say so (i.e. a player wife with ten children would become barren long before Sir Unlucky with one sickly daughter alive after a twenty year marriage. And so I check Arbitrary, I guess.

Yes, 20% from chilbirth alone. On top of that you need normal survival rolls..
So good chance on at least one-two PC remarrying.
D20: 1-5 mother & child dies, 6-10 mother dies, 11-15 Misformed child, 16-19 mother barren, 20 Triplet

The above roll ass more 'spice'..

fg,
Thijs

D20: 1-5 mother & child dies, 6-10 mother dies, 11-15 Misformed child, 16-19 mother barren, 20 Triplet


The number of Misformed (deformed?) child is way way way too high. Down Syndrome is one of the commonest birth defects today, and even that is 1/1000. Your odds here are 12.5/1000 (and 25/1000 for the first child!)! Furthermore, many birth defects would be either nigh fatal for the baby born before modern medicine (or even today, for that matter), and sickly child result takes care of many minor birth defects already. Finally, I don't think it is a good thing to make things TOO interesting for the players by saddling them with deformed children and the like.

Triplets is too high, too, 2.5/1000 in your table. Modern number (and remember that triplets tend to born 6 weeks early and about half the size -> more infant mortality in pre-modern medicine) is a bit less than 0.3/1000 and that is with fertility treatments. Before then, the rate was about 0.1/1000.

Even the number of twins is already cinematic, 1/20 births (50/1000). The modern number is closer to 15/1000. But that I don't mind. Twins are nicely mythical. So are triplets, I agree, but while I can agree having x3 the number of twins, having x25 the number of triplets is starting to push it. And that is without considering the death toll after birth...

That last roll is not to represent correct numbers, but add spice... something interesting in that 1/20 cases...
In every story there is a hunchback... :)
D20: 1-5 mother & child dies, 6-10 mother dies, 11-15 Changeling, 16-19 mother barren, 20 Devils kid [like merlin will likely come for him]
[Changelings we'll leave up to GM if they really are or not]

fg,
Thijs

OK, for 5% chance of death in childbirth / birth (i.e. roll of 20 if conception happens, no barren option):

Ordinary (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 41.31 45
Children: 1 7.0 6.4624 12
Survivors 50%: 0 3.0 3.0359 10
Survivors 70%: 0 4.0 4.2865 11
Age
18 0.0519 0.05
24 0.1008 0.1
32 0.1517 0.15
45 1.0 0.2

Rich (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 40.3606 45
Children: 1 9.0 8.664 18
Survivors 50%: 0 4.0 4.0259 11
Survivors 70%: 0 6.0 5.6989 14
Age
18 0.0634 0.05
22 0.1029 0.1
28 0.156 0.15
34 0.2031 0.2
45 1.0 0.25

Superlative (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 10000
Age: 16 45.0 39.8156 45
Children: 1 11.0 10.1905 19
Survivors 50%: 0 5.0 4.7136 15
Survivors 70%: 0 7.0 6.6999 17
Age
18 0.0628 0.05
22 0.1101 0.1
26 0.1535 0.15
31 0.2025 0.2
39 0.2552 0.25
45 1.0 0.3

Alright, so that is with childbirth death. Now, we can take the 'Pretzel' probabilities from NPC survival rolls -thread (http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2420.0) and see how the things change when we add non-childbirth deaths, too. I'll post here again once I have those numbers.

20% for Ordinary people, that's fine.
My biggest issue with these numbers is that richer wife have larger chance to die as they'll have more children...
That doesnt make sense to me..
My image (from the movies): those rich people didnt procreate that much with their wifes, they had seperate rooms, while the peasants (who more often married for love) tended to 'entertain' themselves with their actual wifes more. Hence they should have more chance on conception.
Suggestion: Remove wealth modifiers... [your wealth does not increase your chances of getting your wife pregnant..]

Agreed?

seperate point: wealthy people could afford better doctors and hence their wifes and kids should have more childbirth survival chances...

Agreed?

fg,
Thijs

Alright, so that is with childbirth death. Now, we can take the 'Pretzel' probabilities from NPC survival rolls -thread (http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2420.0) and see how the things change when we add non-childbirth deaths, too. I'll post here again once I have those numbers.


Doing this with sample size of 10000 each, rather than 100000... It should be accurate enough for the ages we are mainly interested in... And apparently this post is too long, so cutting and pasting each category separately.

Of those who marry (15 year olds or older)
Ordinary (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 7628
Age: 15 36.0 39.9099370739 98
Children: 0 6.0 5.63673308862 13
Survivors 50%: 0 3.0 2.65600419507 11
Survivors 70%: 0 4.0 3.75603041426 12

Starting population: 10000
Age Survivors Die during Childbirth Misc Life expectancy
0 10000 991 0 991 31.46
1 9009 99 0 99 34.93
2 8910 107 0 107 35.30
3 8803 97 0 97 35.71
4 8706 105 0 105 36.07
5 8601 109 0 109 36.46
6 8492 93 0 93 36.87
7 8399 96 0 96 37.21
8 8303 109 0 109 37.56
9 8194 95 0 95 37.95
10 8099 85 0 85 38.29
11 8014 93 0 93 38.59
12 7921 96 0 96 38.91
13 7825 98 0 98 39.25
14 7727 99 0 99 39.58
15 7628 274 180 94 39.91
16 7354 191 95 96 40.84
17 7163 190 95 95 41.50
18 6973 134 66 68 42.17
19 6839 147 69 78 42.64
20 6692 119 48 71 43.16
21 6573 240 55 185 43.58
22 6333 209 55 154 44.44
23 6124 196 47 149 45.20
24 5928 212 51 161 45.94
25 5716 205 45 160 46.75
26 5511 187 53 134 47.56
27 5324 186 52 134 48.32
28 5138 185 44 141 49.09
29 4953 166 39 127 49.87
30 4787 159 40 119 50.60
31 4628 161 35 126 51.31
32 4467 149 28 121 52.04
33 4318 161 32 129 52.73
34 4157 112 17 95 53.49
35 4045 120 27 93 54.03
36 3925 130 14 116 54.62
37 3795 100 10 90 55.25
38 3695 100 8 92 55.75
39 3595 86 5 81 56.24
40 3509 75 0 75 56.66
41 3434 98 0 98 57.03
42 3336 81 0 81 57.50
43 3255 82 0 82 57.88
44 3173 94 0 94 58.27
45 3079 136 0 136 58.70
46 2943 133 0 133 59.34
47 2810 156 0 156 59.97
48 2654 113 0 113 60.73
49 2541 121 0 121 61.30
50 2420 125 0 125 61.91
51 2295 113 0 113 62.56
52 2182 119 0 119 63.16
53 2063 118 0 118 63.80
54 1945 77 0 77 64.46
55 1868 89 0 89 64.89
56 1779 89 0 89 65.38
57 1690 102 0 102 65.88
58 1588 75 0 75 66.45
59 1513 95 0 95 66.87
60 1418 63 0 63 67.39
61 1355 79 0 79 67.74
62 1276 60 0 60 68.16
63 1216 70 0 70 68.46
64 1146 63 0 63 68.79
65 1083 223 0 223 69.07
66 860 181 0 181 70.13
67 679 129 0 129 71.23
68 550 111 0 111 72.22
69 439 83 0 83 73.28
70 356 60 0 60 74.28
71 296 64 0 64 75.15
72 232 46 0 46 76.30
73 186 36 0 36 77.36
74 150 23 0 23 78.41
75 127 30 0 30 79.20
76 97 17 0 17 80.51
77 80 13 0 13 81.46
78 67 20 0 20 82.33
79 47 9 0 9 84.17
80 38 7 0 7 85.39
81 31 5 0 5 86.61
82 26 3 0 3 87.69
83 23 3 0 3 88.43
84 20 2 0 2 89.25
85 18 2 0 2 89.83
86 16 2 0 2 90.44
87 14 1 0 1 91.07
88 13 3 0 3 91.38
89 10 1 0 1 92.40
90 9 1 0 1 92.78
91 8 2 0 2 93.12
92 6 3 0 3 93.83
93 3 0 0 0 95.67
94 3 1 0 1 95.67
95 2 1 0 1 96.50
96 1 0 0 0 98.00
97 1 0 0 0 98.00
98 1 1 0 1 98.00
99 0 0 0 0 nan

Of those who marry (15 year olds or older)
Rich (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 7541
Age: 15 35.0 39.3279405914 96
Children: 0 8.0 7.42540777085 17
Survivors 50%: 0 3.0 3.43601644344 11
Survivors 70%: 0 5.0 4.89881978517 13

Starting population: 10000
Age Survivors Die during Childbirth Misc Life expectancy
0 10000 1027 0 1027 30.69
1 8973 106 0 106 34.20
2 8867 116 0 116 34.60
3 8751 113 0 113 35.03
4 8638 119 0 119 35.45
5 8519 110 0 110 35.89
6 8409 98 0 98 36.30
7 8311 91 0 91 36.65
8 8220 110 0 110 36.98
9 8110 80 0 80 37.37
10 8030 99 0 99 37.66
11 7931 108 0 108 38.00
12 7823 116 0 116 38.38
13 7707 80 0 80 38.77
14 7627 86 0 86 39.04
15 7541 315 232 83 39.33
16 7226 214 125 89 40.39
17 7012 192 108 84 41.13
18 6820 158 90 68 41.81
19 6662 130 63 67 42.38
20 6532 149 65 84 42.84
21 6383 220 62 158 43.38
22 6163 196 56 140 44.17
23 5967 215 69 146 44.90
24 5752 199 59 140 45.72
25 5553 225 73 152 46.50
26 5328 179 66 113 47.41
27 5149 210 57 153 48.15
28 4939 187 49 138 49.05
29 4752 168 51 117 49.88
30 4584 157 43 114 50.64
31 4427 153 44 109 51.38
32 4274 136 38 98 52.11
33 4138 125 28 97 52.77
34 4013 130 31 99 53.38
35 3883 118 25 93 54.03
36 3765 107 31 76 54.63
37 3658 112 26 86 55.17
38 3546 92 22 70 55.75
39 3454 88 17 71 56.22
40 3366 65 12 53 56.67
41 3301 102 12 90 57.00
42 3199 81 3 78 57.51
43 3118 68 0 68 57.91
44 3050 77 0 77 58.24
45 2973 153 0 153 58.61
46 2820 168 0 168 59.35
47 2652 129 0 129 60.20
48 2523 122 0 122 60.87
49 2401 96 0 96 61.53
50 2305 119 0 119 62.05
51 2186 91 0 91 62.70
52 2095 101 0 101 63.21
53 1994 109 0 109 63.78
54 1885 96 0 96 64.40
55 1789 104 0 104 64.96
56 1685 90 0 90 65.58
57 1595 65 0 65 66.12
58 1530 87 0 87 66.50
59 1443 68 0 68 67.02
60 1375 62 0 62 67.41
61 1313 59 0 59 67.76
62 1254 81 0 81 68.08
63 1173 63 0 63 68.50
64 1110 63 0 63 68.81
65 1047 215 0 215 69.10
66 832 158 0 158 70.16
67 674 121 0 121 71.14
68 553 114 0 114 72.04
69 439 90 0 90 73.09
70 349 67 0 67 74.15
71 282 53 0 53 75.13
72 229 40 0 40 76.09
73 189 40 0 40 76.96
74 149 33 0 33 78.02
75 116 19 0 19 79.16
76 97 20 0 20 79.98
77 77 16 0 16 81.01
78 61 13 0 13 82.07
79 48 4 0 4 83.17
80 44 9 0 9 83.55
81 35 4 0 4 84.46
82 31 10 0 10 84.90
83 21 3 0 3 86.29
84 18 2 0 2 86.83
85 16 3 0 3 87.19
86 13 7 0 7 87.69
87 6 2 0 2 89.67
88 4 1 0 1 91.00
89 3 0 0 0 92.00
90 3 2 0 2 92.00
91 1 0 0 0 96.00
92 1 0 0 0 96.00
93 1 0 0 0 96.00
94 1 0 0 0 96.00
95 1 0 0 0 96.00
96 1 1 0 1 96.00
97 0 0 0 0 nan
98 0 0 0 0 nan
99 0 0 0 0 nan

Of those who marry (15 year olds or older)
Superlative (Min Median Mean Max) Samples: 7549
Age: 15 34.0 38.085839184 98
Children: 0 10.0 8.56272353954 19
Survivors 50%: 0 4.0 3.96489601272 13
Survivors 70%: 0 6.0 5.66565107961 15

Starting population: 10000
Age Survivors Die during Childbirth Misc Life expectancy
0 10000 1002 0 1002 29.83
1 8998 99 0 99 33.15
2 8899 117 0 117 33.51
3 8782 105 0 105 33.93
4 8677 110 0 110 34.30
5 8567 113 0 113 34.69
6 8454 84 0 84 35.09
7 8370 102 0 102 35.38
8 8268 92 0 92 35.73
9 8176 109 0 109 36.04
10 8067 109 0 109 36.41
11 7958 119 0 119 36.77
12 7839 88 0 88 37.16
13 7751 108 0 108 37.44
14 7643 94 0 94 37.79
15 7549 324 234 90 38.09
16 7225 206 116 90 39.12
17 7019 216 133 83 39.80
18 6803 178 97 81 40.52
19 6625 181 93 88 41.13
20 6444 175 93 82 41.75
21 6269 238 78 160 42.36
22 6031 233 75 158 43.20
23 5798 207 61 146 44.05
24 5591 209 75 134 44.83
25 5382 204 72 132 45.64
26 5178 181 64 117 46.45
27 4997 192 72 120 47.19
28 4805 187 58 129 48.00
29 4618 180 67 113 48.81
30 4438 158 46 112 49.62
31 4280 150 40 110 50.34
32 4130 154 58 96 51.04
33 3976 136 51 85 51.78
34 3840 137 36 101 52.44
35 3703 125 31 94 53.13
36 3578 135 29 106 53.76
37 3443 105 21 84 54.46
38 3338 103 24 79 55.01
39 3235 112 25 87 55.55
40 3123 86 9 77 56.14
41 3037 103 18 85 56.60
42 2934 98 11 87 57.14
43 2836 83 7 76 57.67
44 2753 75 3 72 58.11
45 2678 142 0 142 58.51
46 2536 138 0 138 59.26
47 2398 113 0 113 60.03
48 2285 110 0 110 60.67
49 2175 125 0 125 61.31
50 2050 92 0 92 62.06
51 1958 94 0 94 62.63
52 1864 85 0 85 63.21
53 1779 84 0 84 63.75
54 1695 79 0 79 64.28
55 1616 77 0 77 64.78
56 1539 82 0 82 65.27
57 1457 74 0 74 65.80
58 1383 80 0 80 66.27
59 1303 56 0 56 66.77
60 1247 80 0 80 67.12
61 1167 74 0 74 67.61
62 1093 53 0 53 68.06
63 1040 32 0 32 68.37
64 1008 43 0 43 68.54
65 965 185 0 185 68.74
66 780 165 0 165 69.63
67 615 143 0 143 70.60
68 472 100 0 100 71.69
69 372 81 0 81 72.69
70 291 63 0 63 73.71
71 228 50 0 50 74.74
72 178 31 0 31 75.79
73 147 29 0 29 76.59
74 118 17 0 17 77.47
75 101 27 0 27 78.05
76 74 16 0 16 79.16
77 58 13 0 13 80.03
78 45 12 0 12 80.91
79 33 9 0 9 81.97
80 24 5 0 5 83.08
81 19 5 0 5 83.89
82 14 4 0 4 84.93
83 10 2 0 2 86.10
84 8 2 0 2 86.88
85 6 2 0 2 87.83
86 4 2 0 2 89.25
87 2 1 0 1 92.50
88 1 0 0 0 98.00
89 1 0 0 0 98.00
90 1 0 0 0 98.00
91 1 0 0 0 98.00
92 1 0 0 0 98.00
93 1 0 0 0 98.00
94 1 0 0 0 98.00
95 1 0 0 0 98.00
96 1 0 0 0 98.00
97 1 0 0 0 98.00
98 1 1 0 1 98.00
99 0 0 0 0 nan

My biggest issue with these numbers is that richer wife have larger chance to die as they'll have more children...
That doesnt make sense to me..


You can argue it any which way. However, it does make sense that the more births you have, the more you risk something going wrong.

As for visiting the wife's bed & doctors & fertility between commoners and nobility:
1) Dynastic succession was a big deal for the nobility.
2) Medieval doctors knew jack about childbirth. The local midwife was probably better at it.
3) Nobility used wetnurses -> noblewomen stopped lactating quickly, and that is one of nature's contraceptives. A lactating, breastfeeding woman is less likely to become pregnant.

And finally, a game mechanical point is that it gives a clear dynastic benefit for the PKs to splurge money on lifestyle, rather than hoarding money. Splurging money on lifestyle is to be encouraged, and we already are making the child survival a non-issue for maintenance...

But feel free to put whatever modifiers you wish in your campaign, of course. :)

We are of course trying to find a balance between game mechanics and 'reality'.
Most of my players pay up their lifestyle for the horse survival checks :)

Very well, we can add that all that wealth works as aphrodisiac...

Then we're just left with the last detail before we mad-kids finish:
What happens on a 20+ childbirth:
Two options now:
D20: 1-5 mother & child dies, 6-10 mother dies, 11+ everyone happy
D20: 1-5 mother & child dies, 6-10 mother dies, 11-15 Changeling, 16-19 mother barren, 20 Devils kid [like merlin will likely come for him]

As every rule is of course optional how about we go for:
D20: 1-5 mother & child dies, 6-10 mother dies, 11+ nothing**
** optional: 11-15 Changeling, 16-19 mother barren, 20 Devils kid

We need to agree because we should create the 'ultimate math rules' pdf...

fg,
Thijs

The calculations so far presume: 20+ 1D6: 1-3 = mother & child die, 4-6 = both survive. But this is minor tweaking, it won't make a big impact on the statistics. And if we end up agreeing on the final results, we can rerun everything with those parameters and bigger sample size. :)

I am still not fully convinced that we wish to have the barren result in the childbirth roll. Granted, I can accept that sometimes, complications at birth can render the woman infertile. But mostly I would expect it to be something you are either born with or not. At least the chance is now somewhat smaller, but still... I'd have to crunch the numbers some more. (Back of the envelope: 1/100 chance per conception, approximately 10 conceptions per woman, 9.6% chance of barreness over the woman's lifetime. Still, she might be good for a few children first.)

The offical number is 10% these days (likely higher in past).
You're right, perhaps barren should have enlarge chance during first pregnancy (because thats when you discover you are born with it).
But doesnt the +1 first birth double the chances of barren-ess already?

fg,
Thijs

I assume with that 10% you are referring to something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infertility#Prevalence
"In Sweden, approximately 10% of couples wanting children are infertile.[15] In approximately one third of these cases the man is the factor, in one third the woman is the factor, and in the remaining third the infertility is a product of factors on both parts."

Infertility is NOT the same as being barren, though. Not the way I usually define the term.
WHO's definition of infertility (same page as above):
"Infertility is “a disease of the reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse (and there is no other reason, such as breastfeeding or postpartum amenorrhoea)"."
What I mean by 'a barren woman' is 100% (or very close to that) incapability to bring a baby to term. This number would be much much lower than the infertility number.

Now you could argue that this means that our conception rate is annoyingly low. Partially, I'd like to plead gameplay considerations here. But yeah, I guess we could increase it even more, if we wanted to. Having it at 90% might be a bit too much, though. Might just as well simply roll the result each year at that point.

Arguments for including an 'infertility result' in the conception roll:
"Infertility is, in fact, common in sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike in the West, secondary infertility is more common than primary infertility, being most often the result of untreated STIs or complications from pregnancy/birth.[55]"

I don't think we wish to include STDs in Pendragon, though. :P

All of the above does speak in favor of the wives having a Fertility stat, though, that can be decreased by complications from childbirth. Rather than having a binary Can/Can't conceive. Unless the Can't option is very rare, that is.

Putting Barren as 1 in 20 option after a 20+ childbirth roll would make the chance per conception to be 1 in 400. Double chance for the first child, after 10 pregnancies the combined probability would be 2.7%. And chances are that most of those 2.7% women would have had at least a couple of babies before their luck runs out.

Now the question becomes... Given that it almost never happens during a typical campaign, and when it does, it will suck so bad for the player, is it really something we'd like to introduce?

I have similar problems with the 'Devil Child' -result. At least with a changeling result it can be a storyhook, for the PK to negotiate/fight with the Faeries to get his child back. The kid is still out there, just needs to be rescued.

I stumbled upon this website:
http://www.medievaltimes.info/medieval-life-and-society/children-in-the-middle-ages/

"The period of the Middle Ages was characterized by high nativity as well as by high mortality of the children. Fertility rate was 4 to 8 children per woman but the mortality of the children was very high: 15-20% in first year and 30% to the age of 20 years. The mortality during the early childhood was higher in the male population, while high percentage of mortality at childbirth resulted in the higher mortality rate in the female population after 14 years of age.

Noble and bourgeois families had in average less children than the peasant families. For that reason their survival was much more important, especially of legitimate male descendants who were also the heirs to titles and family’s holdings or to family’s business. In addition, the children were often also an instrument to enlarge family’s holdings and wealth through advantageous marriages. Thus parents often arranged marriages of their children while they were only infants."

That would argue making away with the conception modifier like you suggested, Thijs. That would also allow us to increase the conception chance without making it insane for the Rich and Superlative families. Of the top of my head, I'd go with something close to the +3 Rich modifier effect, lowering the conception threshold to 8+ (65%). This gives about 12% chance that the healthy wife doesn't conceive within two years.

The number of children would increase, of course, probably around 10, which is a bit higher than stated on the website. But I think I could live with that. Of course, if we have the infertility modifier on that 1d20 roll, that might counteract some of the increased fecundity. Doubt it, though. Too rare an event and death in childbirth isn't making a huge dent into the statistics, either.

Something like:
1d20 Childbirth Table (+1 first child)
20+ Complications at birth, roll 1d20 again: 1-5 Mother and child die, 6-10 mother dies, 11-20 mother gains -5 Infertile stat (cumulative with subsequent events, -10 Very Infertile, -15 Barren).

Maybe have your 'special events' in an unmodified roll of 1?
Some ideas:
Questionable Paternity: roll against the wife's Chaste to find out if that is true, roll Suspicious vs. wife's Deceitful to find out if it is true and fight a duel to defend her honor / to punish the knave if necessary. Good chance for Trusting/Suspicious, Forgiving/Vengeful checks!
Changeling: save your baby from the Faeries!
Exceptionally Healthy Child: No chance of dying as a child. (I'd not give extra stat points, for play balance reasons, although... 'You get +3 to CON, but your initial CON has to be 15+.' would work, to prevent the players from 'minmaxing' to a low CON to get high SIZ & STR.)
Exceptionally Beautiful Child: +3 APP, if he/she grows up to adulthood. (APP is cheap, and I always demand to roll it, not use it as a dump stat for the rest.)

As for the gameplay benefit from having a higher maintenance... well, I guess I have to concede that it is likely a losing battle anyway. Most of the PK knights are vassals and should count as Rich in post-BotE universe. Thus, they are already entitled to 9 extra Annual Glory. Lowering the general death toll on children and increasing conception rate just fixes the default on the Rich level. And just leave Superlative as something up to the players to get interested in: more entourage members, etc. Mind you, I'd be quite happy to increase the benefits gained from splurging money around willy nilly. But that is a topic for another thread, I am sure. :)

Nice special events!

Statistics sounds reasonable.

Lets drop modifiers Wealth
[I could imagine in future to have entourage that would allow rerolls or 'saves' on these rolls]

I am convinced we need Barren, it evens happens to Arthur.. You could always go for a bastard..
The odds should be low, but obtainable.

I am very against introducing a new stat... either you are fertile or you're not...
[No extra bookkeeping!]

fg,
Thijs

fg,
Thijs

OK, how about this:

d20 Childbirth (First child +2)
1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1-3 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 4-6 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child. (Other ideas?)
2* Sickly child**
3-19 Healthy child**
20-21 Tragedy, roll 1d6: 1-2 = mother dies, 3 = mother and child die, 4 = Changeling, 5-6 = Questionable Parentage
22 Barren marriage. (GMs' Note: Good opportunity to quest for faerie blessings/deals, miracle cures and so forth.)
* = Unmodified roll of 1 or 2. Do not add first child modifier.
** = If the unmodified roll is larger than 1 and less than (age-30), the result is a Sickly child.

Sure, I know that the first child modifier makes changelings more common. But first-borns are ever the prime targets for the faeries. The questionable parentage is a bit harder to explain, but... either the woman is a young bride, and hence might be a bit flighty/flirty/unknown to the husband, or she is an older, childless woman, who suddenly conceives. Good enough for me.

Alternatively, if you want Barreness to be rolled with each conception:

d20 Childbirth (First child +2)
1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1-3 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 4-6 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child. (Other ideas?)
2* Sickly child**
3-18 Healthy child**
19 Questionable Parentage
20-21 Tragedy, roll 1d6: 1-2 = mother dies, 3 = mother and child die, 4 = Changeling, 5-6 = Barren marriage (GMs' Note: Good opportunity to quest for faerie blessings/deals, miracle cures and so forth.)

The potential infidelity would be 5% of the pregnancies, which is not too high in my opinion. Especially as many/most of the accusations might be false to begin with, like:
1. Roll 1d6 (-1 Christian, +1 Pagan): on 4+, it is true. (But you don't know this yet.)
2. She denies it (whether true or false). If you believe her, check Trusting. If not, roll Suspicious vs. her Honest+5 if she is telling the truth and Deceitful if she is lying. (Assume 10/10 Christians or 13/7 Pagans?) If she wins, you believe her. If you win, you check Suspicious and are sure of her guilt.
3. Confront the accusers or the knave who seduced her. A duel?
4. What to do with the 'guilty' wife? Adultery is grounds for an annulment. Forgiving / Vengeful. Merciful / Cruel? Try to declare all her children bastards (Love (Family) -1 at the very least)?

d20 Childbirth (First child +2)
1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1-3 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 4-6 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child. (Other ideas?)
2* Sickly child**
3-19 Healthy child**
20-21 Tragedy, roll 1d6: 1-2 = mother dies, 3 = mother and child die, 4 = Changeling, 5-6 = Questionable Parentage
22 Barren marriage. (GMs' Note: Good opportunity to quest for faerie blessings/deals, miracle cures and so forth.)
* = Unmodified roll of 1 or 2. Do not add first child modifier.
** = If the unmodified roll is larger than 1 and less than (age-30), the result is a Sickly child.

Very nice!
Suggestion Blessed:
Talented (second roll on family skill table)
Elf-friend (never bad harvest)
Large child (replace racial bonus with +3 size)

fg,
Thijs

Very nice!
Suggestion Blessed:
Talented (second roll on family skill table)
Elf-friend (never bad harvest)
Large child (replace racial bonus with +3 size)


Thanks. :) I am tempted to go with the second table now, though, to make the Questioned Parentage a bit more common. And to make outright 0-births barreness a bit more rare. The chance now is about 1/30 for the first child, rather than 1/20. If we can come up with another 'Tragedy', we could bump Barreness to 1/60 for the first and 1/120 for the subsequent pregnancies. Depends a bit how common we wish it to be.

As for your suggestions:
Talented: Two family characteristics? These tend to be pretty powerful boosts to the skills... but yeah, maybe I could see this as a 'blessing'.
Elf-friend: Overpowered, IMHO. I'd rather make this an extra starting Faerie Lore 10.
Large child: Seems OK.

I am playing with this a little and I have factored in the woman CON on survival. The healthier the woman tot he more she is able to survive the rigours of child birth.

I think of a +1/5 CON, this will be affected by the harvest modifier.

So my tables look like this.

Table 1

Conception 15+

Modifiers
35-Age/10
+1/5 CON
Harvest Modifier.

Table 2

1-4 Child Stillborn
5 Mother dies (4+ so do child)
6-9 Sickly Child
10 Twins (if fae are involved on 15+ on a D20 Triplets)
11+ Healthy Child.

Same Modifiers as table 1

Modifiers
35-Age/10


Oh, you mean (35-Age)/10! I got confused at first by having a modifier +33. :)

OK, so it is +2 for the young bride. Probably +3 from CON/5 for Cymric women? So conception on 10+, basically. What is the harvest modifier? -2 Very Bad, -1 Bad, 0 Normal, +1 Good, +2 Excellent? Something else?

Having +5 in the Childbirth means that the wife can't die. Not until she is 21, at least, when the age bonus drops to +2. Or if the Con is lower, then it is 5% all the way. This comes up to 40% mortality in 10 years, 64% in 20. Bit low survivability, like we have discussed in this thread with Thijs.

Chance of Healthy Child 6+ for a young, healthy wife. Or 75%. Counting twins, 80%.

I can see how that would work. It is definitely better than the 10% mortality in the KAP rulebook. (Sorry, Greg!)

EDIT:
I think, personally, I would make it depend more on Age. But then again, you have seen my suggestion where the conception chance comes down quickly after 30 years of age. The problem I see in your system, Tanty, is that in principle a woman could stay fertile up to 95 (-6 from age, +1 from CON 3). Of course, that is manifestly silly and doubtful that she would even survive that long, but mechanistically, it is possible. If you tweak it to (35-Age)/5, and raise the conception chance to 17+ to start with, you'd still get a 16 year old CON 13+ young brides conceiving on 10+, but the old bags would be through at 58-63 (CON 3-12). Still unrealistically high for menopause, though... And of course they would be dead in childbirth probably way before that.

> Talented: Two family characteristics? These tend to be pretty powerful boosts to the skills... but yeah, maybe I could see this as a 'blessing'.

ok

> Elf-friend: Overpowered, IMHO. I'd rather make this an extra starting Faerie Lore 10.

ok

> Large child: Seems OK.

ok

The potential infidelity would be 5% of the pregnancies, which is not too high in my opinion. Especially as many/most of the accusations might be false to begin with, like:
1. Roll 1d6 (-1 Christian, +1 Pagan): on 4+, it is true. (But you don't know this yet.)
2. She denies it (whether true or false). If you believe her, check Trusting. If not, roll Suspicious vs. her Honest+5 if she is telling the truth and Deceitful if she is lying. (Assume 10/10 Christians or 13/7 Pagans?) If she wins, you believe her. If you win, you check Suspicious and are sure of her guilt.
3. Confront the accusers or the knave who seduced her. A duel?
4. What to do with the 'guilty' wife? Adultery is grounds for an annulment. Forgiving / Vengeful. Merciful / Cruel? Try to declare all her children bastards (Love (Family) -1 at the very least)?


Future discussion with own thread...

fg,
Thijs

Morien,
can you summarize what tables/modifiers we like at this moment?

fg,
Thijs

My current preference:

d20 Childbirth (First child +1)
1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1-2 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 3 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child, 4 = Exceptionally Large Child, 5 = Talented Child, 6 = Elf-Friend)
2* Sickly child**
3-17 Healthy child**
18 Twins, 1d6: 1 = Sickly/Sickly, 2 = Healthy/Sickly, 3-5 = Healthy/Healthy, 6 = Identical twins.
19 Questionable Parentage
20-21 Tragedy, roll 1d6: 1-2 = mother dies, 3 = mother and child die, 4 = Changeling, 5-6 = Barren Marriage. (GMs' Note: Good opportunity to quest for faerie blessings/deals, miracle cures and so forth.)
* = Unmodified roll of 1 or 2. Do not add first child modifier.
** = If the unmodified roll is (age-30) or less, the result is a Sickly child (except 1 is still a Blessed Birth).

Added Twins back in. I originally figured to have them as one result in Blessed Birth, but I don't mind them being a bit more common than that.

OK, down to last detail...
twin should be in blessed birth, chance is 1:80... (now 1:20), if blessed birth D6 roll 1 than 1:60, good enough...
And twins are of course healthy and identical... [what else is the point..]

So:
d20 Childbirth (First child +1)
1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1 = Twins, 2 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 3 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child, 4 = Exceptionally Large Child, 5 = Talented Child, 6 = Elf-Friend)
2* Sickly child**
3-18 Healthy child**
19 Questionable Parentage
20-21 Tragedy, roll 1d6: 1-2 = mother dies, 3 = mother and child die, 4 = Changeling, 5-6 = Barren Marriage. (GMs' Note: Good opportunity to quest for faerie blessings/deals, miracle cures and so forth.)
* = Unmodified roll of 1 or 2. Do not add first child modifier.
** = If the unmodified roll is (age-30) or less, the result is a Sickly child (except 1 is still a Blessed Birth).

OK, down to last detail...
twin should be in blessed birth, chance is 1:80... (now 1:20), if blessed birth D6 roll 1 than 1:60, good enough...
And twins are of course healthy and identical... [what else is the point..]


Plenty of point of having two children in one go. Twins are generally smaller and weaker when they are born, so heightened risk of dying is reasonable... Although I admit that Sickly label is probably too much. Maybe have their first year survival at -1? Giving 15% infant mortality instead of 10%.

If you'd go with 1/60, you'd need to have 1-2 for Twins. But I would rather go 1/20 for twins, and 1/120 for identicals... But if you want, we can make identicals 1/60 and other twins 2/60. It is about double the amount of identical twins, but who cares. (The division is 50% son-daughter, and 25% for each son-son, daughter-daughter pair, and between 25%-50% of the same sex pairs are identical, depending on the genetics. Actually, it is the amount of non-identical twins that changes, the probability of identical twins per birth is about constant across the world, around 5/1000, while the non-identical same sex twins vary between about 6/1000 and 15/1000.)

So the twins line would become:
18 Twins, 1d6: 1-2 = boy/girl, 3-4 = non-identical same sex, 5-6 = Identical twins.
A bit cinematic, but... (more realistic: 1-4, 5, 6)

Twins are so much fun, lets not make them sickly... or add extra bookkeeping..

Ok, we'll leave twins at 1:20 odds, that's too much, but we are talking mythical realms here. Long live those faeries.

18 Twins, 1d6: 1-2 = boy/girl, 3 = 2 non-identical boys, 4 = 2 non-identical boys, 5-6 = Identical twins.

or
18 Twins, D20: 1-6 = boy/girl, 7-9 = 2 non-identical boys, 10-12 = 2 non-identical boys, 13-19 = Identical twins, 20 = Triplet

fg,
Thijs

Twins are so much fun, lets not make them sickly... or add extra bookkeeping..


OK. I'd prefer the one below.

18 Twins, D20: 1-7 = boy/girl, 8-10 = 2 non-identical girls, 11-13 = 2 non-identical boys, 14-16 = identical girls, 17-19 = identical boys, 20 = Triplet

EDIT:
Or, actually, here is an easier thing to remember:
1. Roll 1d6 for the sex of each twin.
2. For boy-boy, girl-girl, another 1d6: 4+ means they are identical.
3. If 1+1 or 6+6, roll a third child 1d6.
And yes, that is easier for me to remember! :P I only have to remember that the chance of identical twins is 50% and 1+1 and 6+6 are triplets!

18 Twins, D20: 1-7 = boy/girl, 8-10 = 2 non-identical girls, 11-13 = 2 non-identical boys, 14-16 = identical girls, 17-19 = identical boys, 20 = Triplet



Ok, agreed on this one...

fg,
Thijs

OK, assuming I have it right:

d20 Childbirth (First child +1)
1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1-2 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 3 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child, 4 = Exceptionally Large Child, 5 = Talented Child, 6 = Elf-Friend)
2* Sickly child**
3-17 Healthy child**
18 Twins, d20: 1-7 = boy/girl, 8-10 = 2 non-identical girls, 11-13 = 2 non-identical boys, 14-16 = identical girls, 17-19 = identical boys, 20 = Triplets
19 Questionable Parentage
20-21 Tragedy, roll 1d6: 1-2 = mother dies, 3 = mother and child die, 4 = Changeling, 5-6 = Barren Marriage. (GMs' Note: Good opportunity to quest for faerie blessings/deals, miracle cures and so forth.)
* = Unmodified roll of 1 or 2. Do not add first child modifier.
** = If the unmodified roll is (age-30) or less, the result is a Sickly child (except 1 is still a Blessed Birth).

Blessed Birth results:
- Exceptionally Healthy Child: No chance of death as an Infant/Child. +3 CON, but the resulting CON value has to be 18 or more.
- Exceptionally Beautiful Child: Roll APP 1d6+12 (if a boy) or 2d6+12 (if a girl).
- Exceptionally Large Child: Replace the cultural modifier with +3 SIZ. (For Saxons, replace +3 STR.)
- Talented Child: Roll an additional Family Characteristic skill.
- Elf-Friend: The child has managed to make friends with the Faeries as s/he was growing up. Starting Faerie Lore skill of 10.

Should those specials be inherited, though? It would give a bit of a bonus for the lucky ones who get it, assuming that they can keep the family line intact. I doubt it would mess up the game.

1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1-2 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 3 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child, 4 = Exceptionally Large Child, 5 = Talented Child, 6 = Elf-Friend)


Lets use the full D6 range..
1* Blessed birth, roll 1d6: 1 = Exceptionally Healthy Child, 2= Exceptionally Dextrous Child, 3 = Exceptionally Beautiful Child, 4 = Exceptionally Large Child, 5 = Talented Child, 6 = Elf-Friend)

If you have to hand in your cultural modifier, it should be a large bonus than the cultural modifier total.
Or it should be beside the cultural modifier...

Blessed Birth results:
- Exceptionally Dextrous Child: Replace the cultural modifier with +4 DEX (min 18)
- Exceptionally Healthy Child: No chance of death as an Infant/Child. Replace the cultural modifier with +4 CON (min 18)
- Exceptionally Beautiful Child: Replace the cultural modifier with +6 APP (min 18), or if random 2d6+12.
- Exceptionally Large Child: Replace the cultural modifier with +3 SIZ. (For Saxons, replace +4 STR.) (min 18)
- Talented Child: Roll an additional Family Characteristic skill.
- Elf-Friend: The child is blessed and will make friends with the Faeries as s/he grows up. Starting Faerie Lore skill of 10.



Should those specials be inherited, though? It would give a bit of a bonus for the lucky ones who get it, assuming that they can keep the family line intact. I doubt it would mess up the game.

Sounds like a nice optional rule, up to GM.

fg,
Thijs

If you have to hand in your cultural modifier, it should be a large bonus than the cultural modifier total.


The only place where you have to hand in your cultural modifier is that Exceptionally Large Child, since +3 SIZ is a significant advantage over, say, +3 CON. To make them more balanced, the SIZ bonus would need to be like +1, and that is no longer exceptional. Well, I guess we could make it like: you get a +1 SIZ, but minimum SIZ is 16. Thus ensuring that those big babies will grow up to be big people. And it allows the person to break up to SIZ 19, without the use of Glory Points. So yeah, I think that is a nice enough bonus. These are not supposed to be supermen, after all.

+6 APP with a minimum APP of 18 is insanely high for male characters, IMHO. Rolling APP with 1d6+12, while advantageous, still keeps you within the bellcurve. Same with 2d6+12 for women. You are clearly more beautiful on average (and if you are not, well, not all pretty babies grow up to be a pretty adult, and vice versa). If you are not rolling for APP, +3 APP but minimum is 13 for men, 14 for women. Hence preventing you from minmaxing with those points (you get a free upgrade from 10 to 13, but can't take APP 7->10 and put 3 more points to STR, for instance).

CON+3, minimum 18 forces you to have a CON of 12+3+3 for a Cymric character, so slightly above the norm, again ensuring that the grown up character WILL BE more healthy than the average, not that the CON bonus has been misappropriated for SIZ or STR.

Exceptionally Dexterous Child? Maybe +2 with minimum of 13? I see DEX as slightly more useful than APP and more proactive than CON.

Note that these would be freebies. You'd still have your cultural modifier. And the player can always choose to ignore the bonus and have a lower stat than the minimum.

Hmm. I see we miss out on STR. Should we drop Elf-Friend, which sounds like something better to be drawn from a play-event? And then we can have 1-5 for the stats and 6 for Talented?

Argh..
we just drew ourselves into a discussion of the relative usefulness of different stats...
ok, for me there is Size (not changeable), the rest, and APP (no rules effect).
We'll leave in cultural bonuses (to avoid discussion on those).
That makes
Size +2 (min 15)
CON/STR/DEX +3 (min 15)
App + 6 (min 15)

Rolling for APP is optional rule. Lets just go for the bonus and let GM decide how to apply it.

Personally I prefer Elf-friend much much more than a simple attribute bonus (story bonus is much cooler).
Oh.. idea..
How about combining both, both as a 'story' hook and an attribute bonus?

1. an Unseelie-friend +3 Siz (start boating 10),
2. a Forest-friend +3STR (start hunting 10)
3. an Horse-friend would have +3 CON (start horsemanship 10),
4. an Bird-friend would have +3 Dex (start Falconry 10),
5. a Fae-friend would have +6 App (start Faerie Lore 10),
and then option 6 remains Talented (roll again family characteristic)


fg,
Thijs

Depends. I am a bit of a stingy, low-power GM, and I know you prefer a more... hmm... open-handed approach? :P

Sure, this is just 1 birth out of 20, so it is probably not going to be a huge deal, having one extra skill at 10 (horsemanship starts at 10, by the way) and +3 to a Stat. That is about equivalent of starting a character who is 4-5 years older than the others. And at least in our campaign, we tend to start seeing 10 year differences in age, and 10 000 difference in Glory, depending who happens to lose his RTK knight and start with a newbie again. So probably not crippling. Still, I think I would go more for flavor than a big game-mechanical effect. (By the way, in our campaign? +6 APP would be a big benefit at Court.)

Let me think about your 'story hook' idea a bit longer... I am starting to veer towards:
1 Healthy (+2 CON, survives to adulthood)
2 Beautiful (+4 APP)
3 Hound-friend (Hunting 10)
4 Horse-friend (Horsemanship 15)
5 Bird-friend (Falconry 10)
6 Elf-Friend (Faerie Lore 10)

How about those?

I agree that +6 APP can be too much if you use certain rules.
In my (RAW) campaign APP has no benefit, hence one of my players was born with the gift to turn his APP from 15 into 30 'at a price'..
I just roleplayed the results of 30 APP [he should never have seduced that French princess :) ]

Know what.. shall we make it a different thread.. 'Blessed Birth'
I can image that fae or christians will bless a child and it could gain benefits.. [who does not know the story of the girl and her 3 good fairies and their blessing]
Hence this table might be rolled on after some good RPGing..
Default Blessed Birth is 'survive to adulthood' (a better blessing does not exist in this harsh world).

If we want to add other options in skills or attributes. Lets then (out of metagaming) add bonusses to skills and attributes players tend not to pick themselves. This will stimulate those underappreciates skills/attributes..

1 Dexterous (+3 DEX)
2 Beautiful (+4 APP)
3 Commoner-friend (Folk Lore 10)
4 Marsh-friend (Boating 10)
5 Bird-friend (Falconry 10)
6 Elf-Friend (Faerie Lore 10)

But this could be expanded to a nice D20 table as well of course :)
Anyone else ideas?

fg,
Thijs

Know what.. shall we make it a different thread.. 'Blessed Birth'


Sure, feel free. :)



I can image that fae or christians will bless a child and it could gain benefits.. [who does not know the story of the girl and her 3 good fairies and their blessing]
Hence this table might be rolled on after some good RPGing..


To be honest, I didn't expect 'Blessed Birth' result to mean that the baby was literally blessed by a fairy godmother waving a wand. :P Just that it was a birth with some bonus to the baby.



Default Blessed Birth is 'survive to adulthood' (a better blessing does not exist in this harsh world).


Fine with this.



If we want to add other options in skills or attributes. Lets then (out of metagaming) add bonusses to skills and attributes players tend not to pick themselves. This will stimulate those underappreciates skills/attributes..


While I can appreciate the metagaming intention, their hook potential is much worse, IMHO. In my list, I had hounds, horses, birds and elves (fae), all of which could also be easily weaved into the narrative. Such as strange dogs wagging their tails like meeting an old friend when the hound-friend comes close. Which might make a normally Suspicious Lord to decide to trust this guy since 'Dux's instincts are never wrong'. Horse-friend always being able to find a remount in the battlefield (assuming he has time) since the horses like to be near him. Bird-friend trying to tame a griffon. :P

But yeah, take this to a new thread, and we can continue the debate there. Just crosslink it here and there so that people can easily move between the threads when they are reading?

Could you set up that new thread.. bit busy here?

fg
Thijs

Here is the new thread in the Houserule section:
http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2431.0