According to my GM, no knight beneath the rank of baron is permitted to keep household knights. According to him, vassal knights or bannerets just aren't 'important' enough to have other knights swear service to them unless they're given a fief out of it, that only barons because in theory they're "officers of he king", even if in practice they are just vassal knights themselves, can have household knights. In this campaign, the only difference between a banneret and a vassal knight is a purely social distinction, with some glory awards and such for having three or more enfoeffed knights under you, but again having unlanded knights is some kind of special honor preserved for Uthers direct vassals.

I'm not trying to undermine the GM or anything (he probably won't change his min either way), but is this how it is generally done? I'm not the daffy one here am I?

Household knights should be the norm and vassal knights the exception. IIRC, in botw, household knights should outnumber vassal knights by at least 2 to 1. But then it depends on your GM and the house rules.

Percarde is right. Household knights are the norm. I think in Book of the Warlord, the average ratio is about 3 household knights to a vassal knight; this is for Barons (Warlords), of course.

He is the GM, so if his ruling is that vassals have no household knights in his campaign, all fine and well. However, in my campaign, the opposite is the more common case: the mere vassal knights generally have so few manors that they have accumulated via blood, sweat and tears, that they are very reluctant to hand them over to a vassal. Thus, the cases where a vassal knight would have vassal knights of his own are quite rare. In fact, the only two cases have both arisen from the fact that the vassal of a vassal was a potential enemy who needed to be placated, and the manors in question were in France and Malahaut respectively, too far from Salisbury for the PK to race in to do something if things went wrong. It was simply easier to 'buy off' the rival claimants by making them bend the knee to the PK(s) in return for having a grant manor. The other two cases involve PK bannerets and PK vassal knights; first one was a voluntary incorporation of PK manors to form a banneretcy on the Levcomagus border. The idea there was that it would improve the response time for a concentrated defense vs. raids. The other one had Uther rewarding the PKs for killing Gorlois, and it seemed fitting to give the killer the banneretcy (estate) and other 'helpers' vassal manors within that same banneretcy. Why break up a winning team, after all?

My PKs have taken on household knights as vassals. They have several manors so they can afford it.
I have stressed that taking on a household knight is a huge resposnibility. As a liege you must take care of their maintenance. But also that the actions of a household knight reflect upon their liege. So if your household knight acts dishonest it will refkect nack onto you as his liege. Especially if you do nothing to counter it.
Also the bond between liege and household knight is for life. It only ends if one of them dies. If you cannot support the household knight any longer you can dismiss him, but this costs honor.

But as Morien said. The GM is always right.( That is the first rule of RPG in our group)

So if your household knight acts dishonest it will refkect nack onto you as his liege. Especially if you do nothing to counter it.


I think if your household knight is doing something so heinous that mere association with him starts to give YOU Honor penalties, it is probably heinous enough that you can give him the boot without getting additional Honor penalties. I.e. the society at large agrees that he was a bad egg and the soonest you get rid of him, the better.