Mostly untested as of now, I'm currently in the middle of making sure everyone has their character sheet sorted out as we start in about a week or two. This will be the fourth campaign I've played, the second I've GM'ed, the first ever in person. Here are the House rules I'm considering,

Stats: 3d6 in order, reroll 1's. +3 to SIZ instead of CON (A necessity I discovered when we tried pitting the characters against eachother. I've heard complaints of the tink tink boom, at each player doing 4d6 it was more like tink tink tink tink boom tink tink tink tink bigger boom). Average roll of 12 for each stat means 27HP and 5d6 damage. So far no one has rolled outside of the 60-70 range, so far so good. [EDIT] Players have two attribute points to spend. Damage Dice are always rounded up for PK's.

Weapon Skills: Untrained Weapon skills start at 1/3 DEX. The Weapon skill hard cap is equal to DEX+STR. [EDIT] Courtesy of Morien: Untrained Weapon skills start at DEX/2 + 3

Skill Points: Somewhat simplified, I've gotten rid of the four heightens in favor of just giving the players more skill points. Set 2 skills at 15, 5 at 10, spend 30 points among non-weapon skills, spend an additional number of points equal to your DEX in weapon skills.

Traits: Religious traits are treated as suggestions. Players pick one trait at 16, four at 13, and of course valorous begins at 15.

Passions: Inspired by Spoonist's thread, Critical success = Inspired +10 to one skill or trait of the players choice or +5 to all, Success = Motivated +5 to one skill or trait, Failure = No effect, Fumble = Blinded by passion -5 to all skills.

High Passions Fumble Reflexively: Passions over 20, in addition to having a higher chance to crit, also have a higher chance to fumble.

Passion 20 Crit 20 Fumble 1
Passion 21 Crit 19-20 Fumble 1-2
Passion 22 Crit 18-19-20 Fumble 1-2-3

This replaces the "Run screaming into the woods" Madness with a more subtle slip into insanity, driven by obsession. At skill 30 the character is completely batshit insane as he can only ever crit or fumble, past 30 the fumbles overtake the crits and at a score of 40 the passion is nothing but harmful.

Fumbles no longer lower the passion automatically. If a character with a fumbled passion succeeds at what they had set out to do, the passion automatically increases by one, their moment of obsessive psychosis appearing self-justified.

Economy: An ordinary Knight's upkeep is 8L rather than 6. This came about from an admittedly uninformed observation on my part that kept bugging me. If a knight with no family costs 4L to upkeep per year, then that would mean that a landed knights household of wife, children, siblings, and servants costs only 2L per year. This didn't seem right to me since it says in the Rulebook that a peasant family of 5 Consumes 1L per year. Since a landed knights household is considerably larger than a peasants, that would mean that a knights family doesn't eat or dress all that better than a serfs. To remedy this, I've bumped up the ordinary upkeep from 6 to 8, with the following breakdown:

2L: Knight's food, weapons, clothing, and armor.
2L: The Knight's Horses

1.5L: The lady of the Manor and two maidservants (non-noble, .25L each). Replaces steward in home manor (1.5L per year)
.5L: Squire
2L: Other Family, initially siblings, slowly replaced with children.

Fit into the grand scheme of things:

Before Surplus, a manor produces 100L/yr
80L support 80 families (5.5 people each, ~440 peasants per manor)
8L supports the knight's household
3L supports 4 footmen (.75 each, one for the lords garrison, 3 at the knight's disposal)
4L The Earls cut
4L The Church's cut
1L Supports the manor bailiff

In a normal year obviously the manor produces more than it needs, the knights share of the surplus coming to about 3d20 shillings, or 1d6x10 shillings if they have a larger estate to roll for. Breakdown of he maximum surplus in a given year:

The manor Produces 25L extra (hypothetical 3 20's in a row)
+3L to the knight
+1L to the Earl
+1L to the Church
+20L to the peasants (.25L per household, typically traded away to market towns)

Mean Surplus, what is assumed to be produced by all NPC manors:
+1.5L to the knight
+.5L to the Earl
+.5L to the Church
+10L to the Peasants (.125L per household, typically traded away to market towns)

A Burgess' household of six lives off of 1.5L per year, so each Libra of peasants surplus adds 4 people to the Urban population of the county.

Investments:

Short term, commodity based investments, buy low this year sell high next year kind of deal. The PK can attempt as many of these as he wishes/can afford.

Low Risk: .5L investment, dividend of 1d20 shillings the following winter phase.
Medium risk: 3L investment, dividend of 1d6+1L the following winter phase.
High Risk: 10L investment, dividend of 1d20+2L the following winter phase.

Long term, unspecified manor improvements. One per manor is allowed per year.
Small Project: 1L investment, +1d6-1s to Knight's income.
Medium Project: 4L Investment, +1d20s to Knight's income.
Large Project: 10L investment, +(1L+1d20s) to Knight's income.

Just to clarify, the profit from a manor improvement is rolled only once, and then added to the base 8L, rather than rolled yearly along with the surplus. This makes escheatment much easier.

Escheatment: Every extra 3L from manor improvements is split into 2 extra footmen (1.5L) and a little something extra for old uncle roderick (.5L) In the unlikely event that a player managed to get his manors income above 5L, the earl will obligate his heir to supply an additional knight (4L) to the Servitum Debitum, after that, every 3L is treated as above.

Effect of Raids:

Village Raided: No Surplus for You!
Village Plundered: No Surplus, -1 income this year, levy decimated (1/10th are either murdered for defending their homes or flee never to return)
Village Pillaged: No Surplus, -2 Income this year, -1 income next year, value of manor improvements halved, levy decimated twice-over.

If the PK's are raiding:

3d6+2L for each level of raid, for total loot.
Obviously the players decide what they feel is a fair division of plunder, but the customary amounts are as follows: 1/2 divided among Knights, of what is left 1/2 divided among squires, other lineage men and hired soldiers, the rest divided among peasants and other participants. If none are present, their share is split between the Knights and Soldiers. This is unlikely however as every Libra looted requires at least two pairs of hands (non-knightly hands) or one packhorse to take home. (meaning the most 5PK knights with no assisting footmen or peasants can loot is 5L, or 1 a piece)

Manor Defense and Footman Value:
I've heard tell of something called Knight Value for calculating battles, here it's footman value for calculating manor defense.

Knight: 5FV
Sargeant: 3FV
Armored Footman: 2FV
Footman: 1FV
Bandit: 1/2 FV
Levy: 1/4 FV

With an Average of 50 Levy, A Knight at home with their full retinue of 3 footman, the Manor can defend against an FV of 20, thus to successfully raid that village, a FV of 21 or greater is required. A manor with no knight present and two footmen off at war (the normal circumstances for raiding in wartime) requires a FV of 14 or greater to subdue, which a hostile knight can easily accomplish with a raiding party of himself (5FV) two footmen (2FV) and 30 peasants (7.5FV).

Something that I've seen suggested and I quite like the idea of is optional militias. Up to half the manors 'levy', or able bodied adult male population to put it more accurately, can be equipped and trained as irregular footmen at a cost of .2L each (5 for 1L) that take up the spear to defend their homes in the event of an attack, contributing 1FV each to the manors defense. They will also count towards a castles garrison, provided the castle is on-site and the peasants have sufficient warning. Of course there are downsides to having these men, for one they're still serfs and therefore are under no obligation to leave the manor unless evicted. To take them on an offensive campaign means paying them a salary, .1L per month for up to 9 months (no fighting in winter) for a total of 1L/yr which means maintaining them year round makes them considerably less cost effective than a normal footman. Also unlike a normal salaried footman, the irregulars have no real vested interest in the knights well-being, nor do they make any effort at enforcing civil order, beyond making sure no one burns down the village. If you ever have the misfortune of a peasant rebellion, expect the militia to remain neutral at best, and on the rebel side at worst. Of course irregular footmen are what makes the saxons such a difficult foe, each of their equivalent manors fielding a militia of ~20 or so, all of which are brought to war.

^^Although, honestly the more I write about it the less certain I am of this system.

Second and Subsequent Manors: The PK must supply a household knight as usual, and I'm ruling that a steward is required for every manor. Also, as a household knight lives with his lieges household (having him live at and defend the manor without landing him with said manor feels a bit like cheating), two additional footman are required to keep order in the absence of a knight. So out of 8L, 4L goes to the upkeep of a household knight, 1.5L pays for a steward, and 1.5L pays the two extra footmen, leaving a profit of 1L to the lord of the manor, in addition to the 1.5L mean surplus.

I'm pretty much ignoring stewardship as a skill. If the story calls for a year of bad weather, there's a year of bad weather, the village gets raided, the village get's raided.


Only a few of these house rules have been tested as of yet, I' love to hear peoples input before the campaign get's going.

EDIT: I forgot all about Appearence rolls. Here are my houserules regarding those, from my post in the "Nerfing SIZ" thread here: http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2650.30

Rename 'Appearance' to 'Appeal' and make it an important component of social interaction or more importantly romantic interaction, modified by relative glory and the expense of one's outfit, rather than those things affecting the courtly skills directly.

For example,
Fumble: The other party has taken an irrational dislike of you at first sight, -5 to future social rolls with them.
Failure: No Affect.
Success: The other party finds you/your company appealing, +3 to social rolls.
Critical: The other party is enamored with you, +6 to social/courtly skills with them.

How often you make players roll APP is up entirely to how much bookkeeping you plan on doing just so long as you adhere to the following principle:

Sir Loderich the Mighty may be able to cleave a man in twain without looking, but it's Sir Laingrin the Fair who ends up with the three manor heiress and the weekly card games with Earl Roderick.

Of Course in the case of Sir Roderick and other heterosexual men, I would reduce the bonuses to +1 on a success (merely likes the cut of your jib), and +3 on a crit (enjoys your company, finds you appealing in a platonic way.) And of course there are some ladies who, for reasons left ambiguous by the romances of the day, will never be very receptive to a man's advances, while conversely the players may notice a few male NPC's who are more friendly/acquiescent to the more attractive members of the group.

I imagine being the arbiter of which Arthurian characters are gay will be a fun bit of GM'ing. I've personally had my suspicions about Prince Madoc.

Player: But doesn't Madoc have a bastard son?
Madoc(GM): *appears out of nowhere* Oh I've had plenty of bastard sons. I had Lindsey's just the other night *winks suggestively, a disembodied 'bad-um tss' is heard on the wind*

I kid, I kid.

But wouldn't it be an interesting spin if Arthur was not enraged by Gueniveres unfaithfulness with Lancelot, but with Lancelot's unfaithfulness with Guinevere? Arthur and Guinivere never had children after all, despite being very close. There may be a very mundane explenation behind it is all i'm saying. Even Arthur's bastards could be easily explained away. All Merlin would have to do is find a couple of bastards born around the right time and ask them 'hey, how'd you like to be a prince?', then with the right coaching, they appear at court in Camelot and unload their rehearsed spiel, to which Arthur replies something along the lines of "Uhh..yes..it's all coming back to me now, I did lay with your mother, I... uhh remember it disctinctly! Haha, welcome home son."

Just a thought, I might or might not use it.

Stats: 3d6 in order, reroll 1's. +3 to SIZ instead of CON


I might have gone with straight 2d6+6 for stats + normal modifiers, especially since you are doing random stats (resulting in much less 'optimized' character builds) and doing away the 4 miscellaneous picks that are part of the normal chargen (and what my players usually use to ensure that they have 6d6, or at least 5d6, in damage).



Weapon Skills: Untrained Weapon skills start at 1/3 DEX. The Weapon skill hard cap is equal to DEX+STR.

Skill Points: Somewhat simplified, I've gotten rid of the four heightens in favor of just giving the players more skill points. Set 2 skills at 15, 5 at 10, spend 30 points among non-weapon skills, spend an additional number of points equal to your DEX in weapon skills.


Fair enough, but see the previous about weakening the characters in the beginning by robbing them the opportunity to raise their stats.

I am also an advocate of using a flat weapon default of 10. In our campaigns, this has worked out rather well, since it means that the knights can pretty much pick up whatever weapon and have some chance of swinging it around successfully, rather than being helpless babes with it. And they still use their main weapons (i.e. the ones they have at 15+) 95% of the time. Simply giving more weapon skill points means having one Melee Weapon (Sword or other) at 15 and Lance at 15, in my experience.

However, I think you are already past chargen, so these points are already 'too late'. If the characters are OK for you and your players, good enough. :)



High Passions Fumble Reflexively: Passions over 20, in addition to having a higher chance to crit, also have a higher chance to fumble.


Interesting. I don't think I have seen this this idea before. The Love/Amor passion had Introspection that worked a bit similarly, in that a critical meant that you were overcome by adoration for your Amor, not really able to function other than to defend yourself.

This would make any Passion over 20 quite dangerous, and that Automatic +1 on a critical very much a mixed blessing.



Economy: An ordinary Knight's upkeep is 8L rather than 6. This came about from an admittedly uninformed observation on my part that kept bugging me.


That is because you assume that the £6 upkeep includes servants. It doesn't. :) Also, that £1 per peasant family includes the male peasant, too. You are not comparing like with like. The knightly family is actually spending over three times as much (£3.25) for the upkeep, four times if you count the squire (+£0.75, the other £2 is for the horses). That is plenty enough to account for their better food, etc, especially since they don't actually have to do the back-breaking labor on the fields unlike a peasant, or live in the shadow of a famine.

The actual income of the £10 manor is £10 in harvests and rents, and another £10 in production, resulting in a balance sheet of £20 for the whole household. (See Book of the Estate or Book of the Warlord). £10 of this goes to supporting all the commoners working in the knight's household & manor. The 'sticker value' of £10 goes to the Army (£4 for knight and squire, £1.5 for three foot soldiers at £0.5 each), the knight's family (£2 wife & kids), 'entourage' (a lady's maid £0.5 and a chaplain £1) and discretionary funds (i.e. left over, £1).

I think it's also probably worth mentioning the difference between Render income and actual treasure, as I think BotE and BotW offer it.

The vast majority of the output of the Manor is in "Render", i.e. stuff that's needed and won't keep. Even the Librum of "discretionary" expenditure is an abstraction of stooks of grain, hogsheads of pickles or bales of leather, or simply hours of labour. It can be used up that year (to hire a couple of extra foot*, or as part of the expenditure on an investment, say), but to keep it, it has to be sold to a merchant for coin, and that merchant will only pay half the Librum value because he's got to make a profit when he gets to the Market Town to sell it.

Once you get to holding multiple Manors, you might be inclined to allow a Banneret to combine all his render excess, so he has to spend less hoarded coin for a larger outlay on his chosen Manor, perhaps, but at the end of the year, any unspent render would have to be converted to cash at the 50% rate or lost.

* possibly better thought of as using up more food to maintain a larger standing army.

Stats: 3d6 in order, reroll 1's. +3 to SIZ instead of CON


I might have gone with straight 2d6+6 for stats + normal modifiers, especially since you are doing random stats (resulting in much less 'optimized' character builds) and doing away the 4 miscellaneous picks that are part of the normal chargen (and what my players usually use to ensure that they have 6d6, or at least 5d6, in damage).



A fair point, though all 2d6+6 does in contrast to 3d6 reroll 1's is raise the minimum from 6 to 8. The average and max rolls remain the same, 12 and 18 respectively. I think it's fun if everyone has one or two deficiencies, just encourages them to play to their strengths. Although I might let them have 2 extra attribute points to spend. It's a quick fix, some people don't even have characters yet.





Stats: 3d6 in order, reroll 1's. +3 to SIZ instead of CON


I might have gone with straight 2d6+6 for stats + normal modifiers, especially since you are doing random stats (resulting in much less 'optimized' character builds) and doing away the 4 miscellaneous picks that are part of the normal chargen (and what my players usually use to ensure that they have 6d6, or at least 5d6, in damage).



Weapon Skills: Untrained Weapon skills start at 1/3 DEX. The Weapon skill hard cap is equal to DEX+STR.

Skill Points: Somewhat simplified, I've gotten rid of the four heightens in favor of just giving the players more skill points. Set 2 skills at 15, 5 at 10, spend 30 points among non-weapon skills, spend an additional number of points equal to your DEX in weapon skills.


Fair enough, but see the previous about weakening the characters in the beginning by robbing them the opportunity to raise their stats.

I am also an advocate of using a flat weapon default of 10. In our campaigns, this has worked out rather well, since it means that the knights can pretty much pick up whatever weapon and have some chance of swinging it around successfully, rather than being helpless babes with it. And they still use their main weapons (i.e. the ones they have at 15+) 95% of the time. Simply giving more weapon skill points means having one Melee Weapon (Sword or other) at 15 and Lance at 15, in my experience.

However, I think you are already past chargen, so these points are already 'too late'. If the characters are OK for you and your players, good enough. :)



That might work, but then the knight's spear and dagger skill would have to start at 10 as well, rather than 8 and 6. It does make sense that a Knight's training would simply make them good fighters in general, no matter what weapon they were using, hitting someone with a mace is much like hitting someone with a sword after all. What I might do is have it at 1/2 DEX, and if either of those skills are below that, raise them to it.

And as I've said, not everyone is past chargen yet, so there's still time to correct any silliness I come up with. That's why I posted this topic now rather than later.

Really like the Passion rule; and, yes, that seems to be a knew one. I might actually steal it!

Regarding Attributes, I think that 60-70 points is the "right amount".

This is my system:



2. Attributes
Special cop-out clause: If you manage to roll a stat-line that you would hate to play or that you think is unplayable, take with the GM.
A. Roll your Attributes:
SIZ: 1d6+12
DEX: 3d6
STR: 3d6
CON: 3d6
APP: 3d6
B. Add your cultural modifiers:
Cymric: +3 CON
Pict: -3 SIZ, +6 DEX, +3 CON, -3 APP
C. If any value is below 8, raise it to 8.
D. Add together all your points. If you have between 61 and 70 points, you are done. Otherwise, proceed to step E1 or E2.
E1. If you have 60 points or less, add one point to all Attributes that are not at the cultural maximum. (Thus, you will add five points if no Attributes is at cultural max). Repeat until you have 61-65 points.
E2. If you have 71 points or more, deduct one point from all Attributes that are nine or higher. (Thus, you will subtract five points if all Attributes are more than eight). Repeat until you have 66-70 points left.

But I'm considering yours! Still, I'm a bit conservative, and that +3 CON ...

I think it's also probably worth mentioning the difference between Render income and actual treasure, as I think BotE and BotW offer it.

The vast majority of the output of the Manor is in "Render", i.e. stuff that's needed and won't keep. Even the Librum of "discretionary" expenditure is an abstraction of stooks of grain, hogsheads of pickles or bales of leather, or simply hours of labour. It can be used up that year (to hire a couple of extra foot*, or as part of the expenditure on an investment, say), but to keep it, it has to be sold to a merchant for coin, and that merchant will only pay half the Librum value because he's got to make a profit when he gets to the Market Town to sell it.

Once you get to holding multiple Manors, you might be inclined to allow a Banneret to combine all his render excess, so he has to spend less hoarded coin for a larger outlay on his chosen Manor, perhaps, but at the end of the year, any unspent render would have to be converted to cash at the 50% rate or lost.

* possibly better thought of as using up more food to maintain a larger standing army.


I'm aware of the difference, and I have seen the 50% conversion rate suggested before.

But it seems to me that most, if not all, the lord of the manors rendered income would come in long-term goods like barley (mostly barley if memory serves), wool, or livestock, whereas perishable things like fruit, vegetables, and dairy would be kept and eaten by the peasants. After all, why would a knight demand a swineherd to give him six hams when he could demand a pig? The hard goods the knight recieves would be sold to pay for weapons, armor, fine clothing and such, fed to his horses, sold for coin, or bartered back to his serfs in exchange for food.

As far as converting to coins go, A libra's worth of hard goods (barley, wool, ore, livestock, etc) should be how many libra it's worth to the PK, not how much a merchant can sell it for, or how much it would cost to buy an equivelant amount of that good at market. 1L's worth means he can get 1L for it.

For paying soldiers and such, I imagine that the goods payed to the knight could be easily bartered back to the peasants in exchange for perishable things like cheese and fruit, the soldiers bread and beer coming out of the knight's own grain stores, and any meat fed them are taken from the knight's animals.



Really like the Passion rule; and, yes, that seems to be a knew one. I might actually steal it!


I'm Flattered :)

A fair point, though all 2d6+6 does in contrast to 3d6 reroll 1's is raise the minimum from 6 to 8. The average and max rolls remain the same, 12 and 18 respectively. I think it's fun if everyone has one or two deficiencies, just encourages them to play to their strengths. Although I might let them have 2 extra attribute points to spend. It's a quick fix, some people don't even have characters yet.


Nitpicky, but the averages are:
3d6, reroll ones = 12
2d6+6 = 13

Also, having a 6 in a stat is not a deficiency, it is, IMHO, a disability. Try it out. SIZ 6? STR 6? CON 6? Any one of those pretty much ensures that your knight is crippled for life. DEX 6 will hurt, but might not be instantly fatal. APP 6 ensures that he will have no luck in love (nor at Court, if you are using APP as charm). 8 is still bad, but at least it is a bit better, and gives a bit more buffer versus a stat of 3 at which you are bed-ridden and ready to die.



That might work, but then the knight's spear and dagger skill would have to start at 10 as well, rather than 8 and 6. It does make sense that a Knight's training would simply make them good fighters in general, no matter what weapon they were using, hitting someone with a mace is much like hitting someone with a sword after all. What I might do is have it at 1/2 DEX, and if either of those skills are below that, raise them to it.


Yes, all weapon skills at 10. Using DEX/2 would be around 6... I might be tempted to use something like DEX/2+3. That would give a maximum of 12, with DEX 18.

To be fair, on 3d6 RRO, a natural 6 has about 8/10 of a percent chance of being rolled. It'll happen, but it's incredibly rare. If the PK's stats are less than 60, I'll allow a fresh set of rolls.

Something I'm also considering is to ceiling round the players' damage dice, ie 4.1 = 5, 5.1 = 6. That would allow an edge for the players while still maintaining the "sometimes the almighty is an unimaginable prick" factor of chargen I was going for.





That might work, but then the knight's spear and dagger skill would have to start at 10 as well, rather than 8 and 6. It does make sense that a Knight's training would simply make them good fighters in general, no matter what weapon they were using, hitting someone with a mace is much like hitting someone with a sword after all. What I might do is have it at 1/2 DEX, and if either of those skills are below that, raise them to it.


Yes, all weapon skills at 10. Using DEX/2 would be around 6... I might be tempted to use something like DEX/2+3. That would give a maximum of 12, with DEX 18.


Sounds reasonable, I think I'll use that.

Added Appearance rolls.

To be fair, on 3d6 RRO, a natural 6 has about 8/10 of a percent chance of being rolled. It'll happen, but it's incredibly rare. If the PK's stats are less than 60, I'll allow a fresh set of rolls.


Yes, it is rare... On the other hand, you have 3.2% of a 6 or a 7, and you are rolling 5 times per player character, so you are likely to see one if you have five characters. So a 6 or a 7 is not that rare.

Granted, the +3 SIZ will help.



Something I'm also considering is to ceiling round the players' damage dice, ie 4.1 = 5, 5.1 = 6. That would allow an edge for the players while still maintaining the "sometimes the almighty is an unimaginable prick" factor of chargen I was going for.


That is equivalent to +2 to STR (since you have to have 25/6 = 4.1666... in order to round to 5, so (25+2)/6 = 4.5 -> rounds to 5 normally). I would rather do that rather than mess up the formula used to calculate the damages of all the NPCs, too.

But I am not that fond of totally random stats, to be honest. And sounds to me that you are not too fond of them, either, since you are allowing rerolls on poor stats and trying to ensure 5d6 minimum damage, etc... :)

I would rather ensure that the random rolling system will come up with something reasonably playable by default, rather than forcing one player to play a character clearly inferior to another. But that might be the GURPS GM in me talking, preferring to have the starting characters roughly on the same line. I think there is one thread where Skarpskytten and I were talking about the random rolling system that he is using and something I might use to discourage minmaxing...

Off the top of my head, it may have been something like:
SIZ: 1d6+12
DEX: 1d6+8
STR: 1d6+9
CON: 1d6+12
APP: 1d6+8

That comes out about 66.5 stat points on average, which is a bit high, but not that unreasonable since you can't minmax and if you are not allowing those miscellaneous picks to increase stats, it is roughly consistent what most characters would end up being (you could easily tweak it by giving additional -1 to DEX & APP and still having a playable character):
SIZ: 15-16
DEX: 11-12
STR: 12-13
CON: 15-16
APP: 11-12

You'd have about 1.6% chance of a character with less points than 60, and 1.6% chance of a character with more points than 75. Also, you'd have:
28% chance of 4d6 damage
69% chance of 5d6 damage
3% chance of 6d6 damage
If you want to play with those, you could easily give another +1 or +2 to STR. With +2 to STR, the numbers change to (with +1, just change 4d6 and 6d6):
8.3% chance of 4d6
75% chance of 5d6
16.7% chance of 6d6
+1 to STR might be my preference. If your player ends up being one of the unfortunates with 4d6, they are probably within 1 or 2 stat raises from 5d6, which is not too bad (couple of years of play).

But, in the end, if your rolling system came up with characters you and your players are happy with, good for you! That is the ultimate test, and Your Pendragon May Vary. :)

To be fair, on 3d6 RRO, a natural 6 has about 8/10 of a percent chance of being rolled. It'll happen, but it's incredibly rare. If the PK's stats are less than 60, I'll allow a fresh set of rolls.


Yes, it is rare... On the other hand, you have 3.2% of a 6 or a 7, and you are rolling 5 times per player character, so you are likely to see one if you have five characters. So a 6 or a 7 is not that rare.

Granted, the +3 SIZ will help.



Something I'm also considering is to ceiling round the players' damage dice, ie 4.1 = 5, 5.1 = 6. That would allow an edge for the players while still maintaining the "sometimes the almighty is an unimaginable prick" factor of chargen I was going for.


That is equivalent to +2 to STR (since you have to have 25/6 = 4.1666... in order to round to 5, so (25+2)/6 = 4.5 -> rounds to 5 normally). I would rather do that rather than mess up the formula used to calculate the damages of all the NPCs, too.


I'm not changing the formula, I'm just preferentially rounding the results :P

Anyway, I like random stats because, as has already been brought up in other threads, the way Pendragon works, there is a clear 'right' and 'wrong' way to build a character if you use point buy. With dice rolls everyone's different, as it should be. You don't get to pick your genetics, why should the players? The optional re-roll below 60 isn't there to make sure the players are awesome, it's to make sure that their talents and deficiencies balance out to human average. From testing it out so far, I think one out of the ten sets of stats I've rolled warranted an optional reshuffle.

Unless it is a player's first KAP game
my campaigns always use the random method
Sure, one time a PK had such a low DEX that the player decided he had a club foot
and often times the random character don't live very long, because of their 3d6 damage (!)
But that is what random characters are all about

I'm not changing the formula, I'm just preferentially rounding the results :P


Which is changing the formula, as the rounding is part of it. ;)

My point is, if you change the damage rounding for PKs, are you changing it for the NPKs too? Why not? And that is a hassle. It is considerably easier to just give +2 STR to PKs and done. :)

Anyway, sounds to me that you and your players are quite happy with the results, so it works for you.

And I do admit that Pendragon's stats are unfortunately very 'minmaxable' thanks to the overwhelmingly useful SIZ (HP, DMG, Knockdown) and STR (DMG, Move, Healing Rate) in comparison to DEX and APP. We actually decided to roll APP randomly to keep it from becoming the dump stat (which it was in the first generation, with most PKs having APP 8 or less), and just give 50 points to spread to stats. Still, DEX is now the dump stat... I think none of the PKs has DEX over 10, while the smallest SIZ is I think 15, and maybe one PK out of 5 has damage of 5d6, with others at 6d6. It is just so darn useful to have high SIZ and DMG.