Morien
01-20-2015, 12:02 PM
So I have talked about this before with the NPC knight generator stuff. But I figure I'll concentrate on the main issue here, which is how high skills would you expect an NPC knight to have, on average. This is to inform the GM what it actually does mean that a Lord's champion has a Sword of 23 or something like that.
Starting point:
We'll assume that the young 21-year knight has his main weapon skill (probably Sword) at 15. This is possibly already overestimating the skill a bit; in previous discussions with people the argument is that while 15 is the recommended start for the PKs, the PKs are exceptional and the true newbie knight should have Sword of 10-15 (nicely approximated by 1d6+9, by the way, for an average of 13). I would have no problem with that, but in the interest of this exercise, I am assuming an NPC knight who is active in adventuring/war, in other words, someone who is more likely to cross the PKs path. Those stay at home knights with lower skills can stay home and will not be met on the road. Besides, it is very easy to increase the weapon skill up to 15 with yearly training, so while a true couch potato knight might have very low skill, I would expect most knights to reach 15 in a couple of years since their knighting. Hence, it will not make a huge difference for the purpose of this exercise.
Progression:
Now things get interesting, as of course the progression should depend on the knight's history and personality. I am adopting rather advantageous assumptions, again more appropriate for a PK-analogue: an adventuresome, active knight interested in combat skills. Hence:
1) Roll an experience check each year until 55. After that, roll an experience check every other year.
2) Every 4th year, starting from the first, use the Yearly Training to improve your Sword (primary weapon) skill (up to 20). (This is likely an overestimate, at least when I am looking at what my players are doing. But also depends on the player.)
3) Glory is ignored for now, as the great mass of the NPC knights would presumably not have that much Glory.
Age Skill
21 15
22 16 (+1 from yearly training)
26 18 (+1 from experience rolls at last, +1 from yearly training)
30 19 (+1 from yearly training)
34 20 (+1 from yearly training, yearly training doesn't help anymore, the experience rolls needs to be 20)
54 21 (+1 finally from the experience rolling)
94 22 (+1 from the experience rolling, the knight is very unlikely to survive this long and still get Sword checks every other year!)
Like said, that was overestimating it already, thanks to the yearly training totally swamping the progression (+1 from experience, +4 from yearly training).
Assuming 'only' yearly experience checks_
Age Skill
21 15 (chance 25%, so 4 years to get +1...)
25 16 (chance 20%, so 5 years to get +1...)
30 17 (chance 15%, so 7 years to get +1...)
37 18 (chance 10%, so 10 years to get +1...)
47 19 (chance 5%, so 20 years to get +1, but since less checks past 55, it actually takes 32 years...)
79 20 (less of a chance of making it this far and still collecting checks)
The truth is probably somewhere in between. Especially towards the end of the curve, that +1 Sword starts to become very attractive rather than waiting 20 years for the successful skill check.
Yearly Training +1 every 8 years, starting 4 years in:
Age Skill
21 15
25 17 (+1 from experience rolls to 16, +1 from yearly training)
32 18 (+1 from experience rolls)
33 19 (+1 from yearly training)
41 20 (+1 from yearly training, yearly training doesn't help anymore, the experience rolls needs to be 20)
69 21 (+1 finally from the experience rolling)
That looks better, and roughly consistent with the rulebook at having an 'average knight' (if we define him as a knight in his 30s) having a skill around 19. What is missing from the rulebook is a knight in his mid-to-late 20s or so, who would have a skill of 17.
As a quick rule of thumb... +1 skill / 2 years for 21-25. Then +1 skill / 5 years. That gives: 21 = 15, 23 = 16, 25 = 17, 30 = 18, 35 = 19, 40 = 20. Looks about right.
So how about Glory? Glory is a difficult topic, as it is so tied up with the knight's history and messes up with the progression analysis if suddenly the skill is a bit higher. On the other hand, you'd tend to assume that the Glorious Knights are also those lucky ones, who start with high stats and get lucky in their experience rolls and so forth. I tend to err on the side of simplicity and just add a modifier to the weapon skill at the end rather than try to trace the knight's full history (although given that in my knight generator, I am going year by year, I could instead do the Glory Point allocation there, too... hmm, food for thought). This is the way it is also done of Book of the Warlord Random Warlord Generator, just adding a modifier in the end.
In Book of the Warlord, the modifier is about Glory / 4000, rounded down. However, the random skill determination already takes some Glory into account (high skill Characters tend to have high Glory, too). So perhaps something like Glory / 2000 would work better? That clearly breaks down significantly at high Glory, but that is the problem of Pendragon Glory Awards being exponential (high Glory opponent being worth much more glory than a low Glory one) while the benefit is absolute (every 1000). Anyway, topic for another discussion.
If we use +1 Sword per every full 2000 Glory, what do we get? Well, we need to estimate how much Glory an NPC knight gets in a year, and that of course depends on the campaigns and so forth. But lets assume that an NPC knight gets about 100 Glory per year whilst actively seeking Glory (i.e. tends to be younger guys, so maybe 50 / year for 46 and older?). Again, it might be an overestimate, but we are looking for some handle here rather than being fully simulationalist. That means a knight of 30 or so years would just break 2000, and 40-year-old would break 3000. Probably around 60 to break 4000, which sounds about right; these guys are venerable! This would up the weapon skill of the mid-30s knight to 20, and early-40s knights to 21 (matches Notable Knight, in the Rulebook). Really old knights would actually reach 22 instead of 20 in the rulebook, but then again, this was just a quick rule of thumb anyway.
In short, the example knight skills in the KAP 5.1 rulebook seem quite reasonable, with the miss of that mid-20s knight in the middle.
Highly Skilled GM Characters and Glorious Knights
Since Glory and experience are the only ways to get a skill over 20, and experience rolls are very difficult at that stage, it tends to be Glory that leads the way. While the GMs are of course free to give whatever skill they want to the NPCs, it would make sense for them to eyeball the Glory amounts, too. A character who has, say, Sword 25, Lance 25, Horsemanship 25 and Courtesy 25, is VERY UNLIKELY to have gotten those skills at those levels by experience rolls alone. Instead, it is reasonable to assume that around 16 points of those come from Glory. At least 12. This means that the Character would have needed to gain at least 12 000 Glory after having all those skills at 20 already (not an insignificant feat, either: as seen in above, getting a skill to 20 tends to take 20 years for most normal knights). And that assumes also that he hasn't spent any Glory Points to keeping his stats up or anything like that.
A good rule of thumb, IMHO, would be to calculate the number of points above 21 (we will give those Glorious Knights a break by assuming one successful experience roll in each skill, which is a bit of a cheat), and then multiply by 2000 Glory. This means that the hypothetical "Knight of 25s" above would have 32 000 Glory, making him one of the most famous knights in all of Britain. One of the Big Names in the Round Table, up there with Lancelot, Gawaine and Lamorak.
The rationale between the multiplier of 2000 is that the knight is likely to have gotten badly wounded at times (so some Glory Points have gone to recovering from major wounds) and also some of the Glory Points would have been 'wasted' by raising the skill when it was less than 20. Naturally, this does break down a bit when you are talking about someone like Lancelot, who never seems to lose (*grumble*). Or once they start accumulating so much Glory that the early 'wastage' shouldn't be comparable anymore. But that is probably more applicable to really a handful of Big Names, and they tend to get pretty old towards Camlann, so some of the Glory Points MUST have gone to the stat upkeep, too.
(The write-ups in GPC for Lancelot and Gawaine in 558 give them way too high skills, in my opinion, even taking into account their huge Glory numbers. I did a quick calculation for Lancelot and came away with him needing something like 150000 Glory instead of his 85000 Glory to actually afford all those 20+ skills that he has. Lance needs to be one darn lucky SOB to get so many 20s in the experience rolls. Gawaine would need around 90000 instead of 60000. And that is without taking account the fact that they still have pretty decent stats (Lance has excellent stats) for men in their early-50s (Lance) and mid-60s (Gawain).)
Anyway, working back from that 2000 Glory per skill point over 21, we can guestimate that a new Round Table Knight (8000 Glory), is unlikely to have many skills higher than 21. Frankly, for a new RTK, I might not even give that 1 experience roll benefit, so he'd have just 4 points to add to his 20s. So something like Sword 23, Lance 21, seems good and matches the Extraordinary Knight (9000 Glory) in the rulebook. Note: this would be a new, but experienced, Round Table Knight, who has earned his place with sweat and blood. Not one of the 'beautiful stranger' ones who get in by doing a simple, easy quest (*cough* Sir Tor *cough*). Then again, the 'beautiful strangers' would not start with so high a Glory in any case, even if they are sons of Kings and whatnot.
A more experienced RTK with 12000 Glory would get 6 points but also benefit from the 21-bonus. So Sword 24, Lance 23, Horsemanship 22?
Even more experienced RTK with 16000 Glory, so probably we are now getting to the 'named badass' -category, might have Sword 26, Lance 25, Horsemanship 22. So these guys should be the ones that are named as good fighters especially, like Palomides.
Starting point:
We'll assume that the young 21-year knight has his main weapon skill (probably Sword) at 15. This is possibly already overestimating the skill a bit; in previous discussions with people the argument is that while 15 is the recommended start for the PKs, the PKs are exceptional and the true newbie knight should have Sword of 10-15 (nicely approximated by 1d6+9, by the way, for an average of 13). I would have no problem with that, but in the interest of this exercise, I am assuming an NPC knight who is active in adventuring/war, in other words, someone who is more likely to cross the PKs path. Those stay at home knights with lower skills can stay home and will not be met on the road. Besides, it is very easy to increase the weapon skill up to 15 with yearly training, so while a true couch potato knight might have very low skill, I would expect most knights to reach 15 in a couple of years since their knighting. Hence, it will not make a huge difference for the purpose of this exercise.
Progression:
Now things get interesting, as of course the progression should depend on the knight's history and personality. I am adopting rather advantageous assumptions, again more appropriate for a PK-analogue: an adventuresome, active knight interested in combat skills. Hence:
1) Roll an experience check each year until 55. After that, roll an experience check every other year.
2) Every 4th year, starting from the first, use the Yearly Training to improve your Sword (primary weapon) skill (up to 20). (This is likely an overestimate, at least when I am looking at what my players are doing. But also depends on the player.)
3) Glory is ignored for now, as the great mass of the NPC knights would presumably not have that much Glory.
Age Skill
21 15
22 16 (+1 from yearly training)
26 18 (+1 from experience rolls at last, +1 from yearly training)
30 19 (+1 from yearly training)
34 20 (+1 from yearly training, yearly training doesn't help anymore, the experience rolls needs to be 20)
54 21 (+1 finally from the experience rolling)
94 22 (+1 from the experience rolling, the knight is very unlikely to survive this long and still get Sword checks every other year!)
Like said, that was overestimating it already, thanks to the yearly training totally swamping the progression (+1 from experience, +4 from yearly training).
Assuming 'only' yearly experience checks_
Age Skill
21 15 (chance 25%, so 4 years to get +1...)
25 16 (chance 20%, so 5 years to get +1...)
30 17 (chance 15%, so 7 years to get +1...)
37 18 (chance 10%, so 10 years to get +1...)
47 19 (chance 5%, so 20 years to get +1, but since less checks past 55, it actually takes 32 years...)
79 20 (less of a chance of making it this far and still collecting checks)
The truth is probably somewhere in between. Especially towards the end of the curve, that +1 Sword starts to become very attractive rather than waiting 20 years for the successful skill check.
Yearly Training +1 every 8 years, starting 4 years in:
Age Skill
21 15
25 17 (+1 from experience rolls to 16, +1 from yearly training)
32 18 (+1 from experience rolls)
33 19 (+1 from yearly training)
41 20 (+1 from yearly training, yearly training doesn't help anymore, the experience rolls needs to be 20)
69 21 (+1 finally from the experience rolling)
That looks better, and roughly consistent with the rulebook at having an 'average knight' (if we define him as a knight in his 30s) having a skill around 19. What is missing from the rulebook is a knight in his mid-to-late 20s or so, who would have a skill of 17.
As a quick rule of thumb... +1 skill / 2 years for 21-25. Then +1 skill / 5 years. That gives: 21 = 15, 23 = 16, 25 = 17, 30 = 18, 35 = 19, 40 = 20. Looks about right.
So how about Glory? Glory is a difficult topic, as it is so tied up with the knight's history and messes up with the progression analysis if suddenly the skill is a bit higher. On the other hand, you'd tend to assume that the Glorious Knights are also those lucky ones, who start with high stats and get lucky in their experience rolls and so forth. I tend to err on the side of simplicity and just add a modifier to the weapon skill at the end rather than try to trace the knight's full history (although given that in my knight generator, I am going year by year, I could instead do the Glory Point allocation there, too... hmm, food for thought). This is the way it is also done of Book of the Warlord Random Warlord Generator, just adding a modifier in the end.
In Book of the Warlord, the modifier is about Glory / 4000, rounded down. However, the random skill determination already takes some Glory into account (high skill Characters tend to have high Glory, too). So perhaps something like Glory / 2000 would work better? That clearly breaks down significantly at high Glory, but that is the problem of Pendragon Glory Awards being exponential (high Glory opponent being worth much more glory than a low Glory one) while the benefit is absolute (every 1000). Anyway, topic for another discussion.
If we use +1 Sword per every full 2000 Glory, what do we get? Well, we need to estimate how much Glory an NPC knight gets in a year, and that of course depends on the campaigns and so forth. But lets assume that an NPC knight gets about 100 Glory per year whilst actively seeking Glory (i.e. tends to be younger guys, so maybe 50 / year for 46 and older?). Again, it might be an overestimate, but we are looking for some handle here rather than being fully simulationalist. That means a knight of 30 or so years would just break 2000, and 40-year-old would break 3000. Probably around 60 to break 4000, which sounds about right; these guys are venerable! This would up the weapon skill of the mid-30s knight to 20, and early-40s knights to 21 (matches Notable Knight, in the Rulebook). Really old knights would actually reach 22 instead of 20 in the rulebook, but then again, this was just a quick rule of thumb anyway.
In short, the example knight skills in the KAP 5.1 rulebook seem quite reasonable, with the miss of that mid-20s knight in the middle.
Highly Skilled GM Characters and Glorious Knights
Since Glory and experience are the only ways to get a skill over 20, and experience rolls are very difficult at that stage, it tends to be Glory that leads the way. While the GMs are of course free to give whatever skill they want to the NPCs, it would make sense for them to eyeball the Glory amounts, too. A character who has, say, Sword 25, Lance 25, Horsemanship 25 and Courtesy 25, is VERY UNLIKELY to have gotten those skills at those levels by experience rolls alone. Instead, it is reasonable to assume that around 16 points of those come from Glory. At least 12. This means that the Character would have needed to gain at least 12 000 Glory after having all those skills at 20 already (not an insignificant feat, either: as seen in above, getting a skill to 20 tends to take 20 years for most normal knights). And that assumes also that he hasn't spent any Glory Points to keeping his stats up or anything like that.
A good rule of thumb, IMHO, would be to calculate the number of points above 21 (we will give those Glorious Knights a break by assuming one successful experience roll in each skill, which is a bit of a cheat), and then multiply by 2000 Glory. This means that the hypothetical "Knight of 25s" above would have 32 000 Glory, making him one of the most famous knights in all of Britain. One of the Big Names in the Round Table, up there with Lancelot, Gawaine and Lamorak.
The rationale between the multiplier of 2000 is that the knight is likely to have gotten badly wounded at times (so some Glory Points have gone to recovering from major wounds) and also some of the Glory Points would have been 'wasted' by raising the skill when it was less than 20. Naturally, this does break down a bit when you are talking about someone like Lancelot, who never seems to lose (*grumble*). Or once they start accumulating so much Glory that the early 'wastage' shouldn't be comparable anymore. But that is probably more applicable to really a handful of Big Names, and they tend to get pretty old towards Camlann, so some of the Glory Points MUST have gone to the stat upkeep, too.
(The write-ups in GPC for Lancelot and Gawaine in 558 give them way too high skills, in my opinion, even taking into account their huge Glory numbers. I did a quick calculation for Lancelot and came away with him needing something like 150000 Glory instead of his 85000 Glory to actually afford all those 20+ skills that he has. Lance needs to be one darn lucky SOB to get so many 20s in the experience rolls. Gawaine would need around 90000 instead of 60000. And that is without taking account the fact that they still have pretty decent stats (Lance has excellent stats) for men in their early-50s (Lance) and mid-60s (Gawain).)
Anyway, working back from that 2000 Glory per skill point over 21, we can guestimate that a new Round Table Knight (8000 Glory), is unlikely to have many skills higher than 21. Frankly, for a new RTK, I might not even give that 1 experience roll benefit, so he'd have just 4 points to add to his 20s. So something like Sword 23, Lance 21, seems good and matches the Extraordinary Knight (9000 Glory) in the rulebook. Note: this would be a new, but experienced, Round Table Knight, who has earned his place with sweat and blood. Not one of the 'beautiful stranger' ones who get in by doing a simple, easy quest (*cough* Sir Tor *cough*). Then again, the 'beautiful strangers' would not start with so high a Glory in any case, even if they are sons of Kings and whatnot.
A more experienced RTK with 12000 Glory would get 6 points but also benefit from the 21-bonus. So Sword 24, Lance 23, Horsemanship 22?
Even more experienced RTK with 16000 Glory, so probably we are now getting to the 'named badass' -category, might have Sword 26, Lance 25, Horsemanship 22. So these guys should be the ones that are named as good fighters especially, like Palomides.