I am about to start a 480 campaign, and all the PK fathers have died. How is relief handled?

The PK's are going to be swearing an oath to Count Roderick, who will be knighting them. Do they have to have a separate scenario where they meet the king and swear an oath to him also, and pay their relief? Can the Count pay the relief for them and then they owe the Count? Should I just hand-wave it away?

I could use good advice here

In my campaigns, I pretty much ignore the relief. It doesn't really add to the enjoyment, IMHO, and especially since the campaign was pretty far along already, introducing it would have been a bit of a kludge. And surprising the Players with this new payment that they had no idea that they should have prepared for.

In a new campaign... I might include it, but devolve the right to collect it to the liege lord, to give the PKs some advantage in creating vassals (PKs' vassals pay relief to the PKs, helping to offset the PKs' relief to their lieges). So in my hypothetical campaign, the PKs would pay to the Count. However, since there is really no benefit in keeping the PKs hanging like that, I'd say that their fathers did prepare for this and there is a requisite sum waiting to be paid to the Count (or the King, if you choose to do so in your campaign). They wouldn't swear homage/fealty to the King normally, since they are not the King's vassals, only the Count's. It is different if they get rewarded with lands directly from the King, which would make the King their liege lord.

Your idea of the Count fronting the money to the PKs to pay the King would work, too. A nice bit of liege's help there, and it helps the Count, too, to have the PKs in control of their lands under him rather than the King hanging onto them.

I am about to start a 480 campaign, and all the PK fathers have died. How is relief handled?
The PK's are going to be swearing an oath to Count Roderick, who will be knighting them. Do they have to have a separate scenario where they meet the king and swear an oath to him also, and pay their relief? Can the Count pay the relief for them and then they owe the Count? Should I just hand-wave it away?
I could use good advice here
I think having the Count front the money is a really good idea
And if he is unhappy with any of the characters he just doesn't front the money
I think they can wait to swear to King Uther until he summons them for this. He will summon everyone, really, like King William did when he had to go to the continent.

Relief is a concept first brought into the game in BotWarlord, I believe. In there, it starts off addressing the concept from the point of view of the main subject of the book: Warlords (who are Barons, holding land directly from the King), so relief is initially described as payable to the King. It goes on, though, to say (on p29):


If knights have been subinfeudated as vavasours by a lord other than the king, the lord recovers the land upon the death of his vassal.

So Salish PK vavaours in 480 owe their relief to Roderick, not Uther, and any arrangements for relief relief are made with him. In 480, the options "War" and "Borrow it" in the "How can I possibly pay for relief" call out box on p29 aren't practically available to Salish PKs.

Personally, I'd treat the issue as having been dealt with by their fathers' prudence, since they are beginning knights, especially if they're new-to-KAP players. More experienced players can probably handle owing a favour to a family friend who paid it for them (possibly different benefactors for different knights, who somehow end up on the opposite sides of a disagreement...), or the anxiety of knowing Rodders can call in the relief at any time might be a good incentive for any PK group to avoid getting on his wrong side...

So Salish PK vavaours in 480 owe their relief to Roderick, not Uther, and any arrangements for relief relief are made with him. In 480, the options "War" and "Borrow it" in the "How can I possibly pay for relief" call out box on p29 aren't practically available to Salish PKs.

At a guess, one of the more common options from that box would be Deferred Payment. Pay the Relief in installments over the next few years. In a practical sense, this just means making your peasants pay extra taxes to cover the Relief... at most that would involve a few Stewardship rolls to keep the manor accounts balanced and probably a modest increase in the Hate (Landlord) trait, if one bothers to keep track of such things.

So long as you keep in your liege lord's favor, he'd usually have no reason to press for the full amount immediately. Having a loyal vassal knight for a lifetime is usually more valuable than having the Relief all at once.

All great responses. I have decided to explain the relief system to the players, then tell them that their fathers foresaw this and saved it up. I am pretty sure they will be thinking about it for future play and inheritances