I've found in the few months I've been running KAP that it sometimes feels like KAP: Medieval Accounting the RPG. There are so many stat lines to track for both players and NPCS.

I have been trying to create a slightly more manageable NPC stat line to keep things flowing faster. Especially for PK who want to know what their Wife or Household Knights stats are but don't want to fully stat out everyone using the Book of Knights and Ladies.

Right now, I've come up with simplifying NPCs to a small group of stats:

Chivalry/Gentlewoman (Staying true to the ideals)
Warcraft (Battle, Siege, etc.)
Stewardship (Care for Estate and Holdings)
Combat (Weapon skills, Horsemanship, etc.)
Hearth (Faerie Lore, Industry, etc.)
Health (First Aid and Chirurgery)
Court (Romance, Flirting, Intrigue, etc.)
Tournaments (Tourney, Heraldry, Recognize, etc)

Each NPC will have an Age and three Prime Stats. Skill rolls for NPCs are d20 vs their (1/2Age+4) for Prime Stats or (1/2Age-4, Max 10) for Secondary Stats. So, a 28 Year old Wife with Stewardship, Warcraft, and Gentlewoman Primes would be able to make any rolls for Stewardship, Battle, or Siege at 18 (1/2 of 28 = 14 + 4 = 18 total) and any Secondary rolls at 10 (14 - 4 = 10). Having Gentlewoman or Chivalry as a Prime means they can make rolls with those Traits at the Prime target plus gaining the Gentlewoman or Chilvalry bonus. Passions would be normally generated and are increased by the winter phase option below. You can also Generate Attributes if necessary through the normal rules.

Each Winter you increase the NPC's age and their Prime/Secondary numbers. All NPCs also gain a d3-1 in extra points that can be devoted to specific Skills or Trait OR they can raise a single Attribute or Passion (if they have them) by 1. An NPC can never have more than a +5 bonus to any given Skill/Trait.

Some NPCs may gain specific bonuses to skills, like having a Distaff of +4 or such, those are applied to the target numbers after the fact. So if a 26 Year Old Household Knight had Warcraft, Combat, and Tournaments as Prime skills and a +2 to Sword and First Aid (meaning he'd be a Sword 19 and a First Aid of 11 at the age of 26) would be statted out as follows:

Sir Genericus, Household Knight of Buckholt Manor. Age 26. Prime (17): Combat, Warcraft, Tournaments. Secondary (9). +2 to Sword and +2 to First Aid. Loyalty (Lord of Buckholt) 14.

Any thoughts?

You are much more generous with your Players than I am. :P

Book of Entourage has rules for dealing with support NPCs like squires and wives (and why not, household knights).

I'd not even bother tracking the skills of the NPCs in detail, but if I did, I would focus on knowing their Lance, Sword and ONE skill in which they excel. That is the skill that defines them from other household knights. Sir Bob, the jovial one with high Courtesy. Sir Rob, the huntsman (Hunting). Sir Robert, the leader (Battle). Sir Robertus, the geek (Heraldry). Sir Robertissimus, the nerd (Read). In all other skills? If I think he might have it, roll vs. 10 (typical knightly skills). If I think he would not have it, roll against the starting skill. Most of the time I would not even roll.

I have way better things to spend my time on than running winter phase for some support characters. The PKs are supposed to be the stars of the show, after all! :)

Using the Knight Generator is a good way of having some knights if I need them: http://pendragon.uplink.fi/?tab=knight&nr=1

I'm with Morien here.
I only enter the stats I know will be necessary and, in case I am surprised by the PKs, have a character sheet hand to check on the starting skill needed, and then boost it according to age.

I tried to just handwave NPCs, but once they started getting married and having Vassals, things started growing. So we tried Entourage, but the biggest problem with Entourage characters (especially wives) is that there is a mechanical bonus to some stats/bonuses that don't exist in Entourage. For example, the Gentlewoman Bonnus that impacts the Knights in Book of the Estate that isn't reflected in Entourage. So the players wanted full wives to track when their wives got them free Lot repair... That's the problem I'm finding with the "release new rules by bits and pieces" is that you add a new rule like Gentlewoman bonus to BoE that isn't covered in any of the previous rules (Book of the Entourage) meaning things don't fully function together.

So I came up with this to try to fit the puzzle pieces together. Granted, it's based heavily off of the StarSIEGE game I wrote for Troll Lord Games, but it worked there. I do think I need to probably limit the number of "Improvable Skills" like Entourage, but the "use Age" and Prime mechanic from the SIEGE Engine games seemed like a natural fit to try to put together some personality/skill stuff without having to fully stat things.

The Gentlewoman Bonus is stated to be only for full characters
If tracking wives is the problem, then make them full characters run by a player different from the husband
The game takes on a new light

So I came up with this to try to fit the puzzle pieces together. Granted, it's based heavily off of the StarSIEGE game I wrote for Troll Lord Games, but it worked there. I do think I need to probably limit the number of "Improvable Skills" like Entourage, but the "use Age" and Prime mechanic from the SIEGE Engine games seemed like a natural fit to try to put together some personality/skill stuff without having to fully stat things.

Like Greg said, the Gentlewoman thing is not for common NPC wives, unless the GM specifically decides to make that happen for an exceptional NPC. I could very well see myself doing that to reward a player for spending some years to court this special lady, who might not have huge tracts of land, a big dowry or looks to start a war, but who has a gentle soul etc. But it definitely NOT would be allowed as a buffet option for the players to select for their characters' wives. Same goes for Chivalric Bonus. You are not going to see that in a basic household knight and again definitely NOT as a player-chosen option. They can look for it, certainly, but it is not guaranteed and it will cut out quite a few otherwise qualified candidates. (This is triple sure when using the corrected 96 limit for Chivalric: http://nocturnalmediaforum.com/iecarus/forum/showthread.php?1306-Gadzooks-the-fracking-Chivalry-bonus-is-wrong! I don't use that myself, by the way, since I didn't feel like changing that rule in the middle of the campaign. I will probably use one of my own variants for the second campaign, once they hit the Boy King Period, since I have not allowed Chivalric Bonus in pre-Arthurian times and told the players as much at the chargen.)

As for your system in detail, I think it is way too generous, like I said. Having three Prime Stats means that the standard household knight can be a master jouster, courtier and fighter. He will have almost all the skills a knight would ever use at 15+, much better than any PK could hope to have, and the rest at 10 (at the age of 28). A flat 1/2*Age increase also makes a mockery of the rule of 15, after which the skill improvement slows down to a crawl. At the age of 32 this household knight has almost all the skills ever needed at 20, which I assume is the maximum, although you didn't mention it, since otherwise a knight of 40 will have his skills at 24, better than most of the Round Table Knights. (Similarly, women would also have almost all of the skills they'd ever roll at 15+.)

You referenced Book of the Entourage, so you can see how the knightly husband's skills are determined by his age. It is based on these kinds of estimates:
http://nocturnalmediaforum.com/iecarus/forum/showthread.php?2261-Skills-and-Glory-%28especially-NPCs

Personally, I would be very tempted to just use the knight generator I linked in the previous answer to spit out candidates until I found one that I felt would be a reasonable household knight to seek a position in the PK's household, and then just let the PK roll 1d6 for the increases of the skill as in BotEnt for other support characters.

There is also a wife generator that I came up with here (not the same as in BotEnt, alas, since I made it up for myself before I had BotEnt and then Jesper made it available online):
http://enora.dk/pendragon/wife/wife1.asp

It limits the skills to Stewardship, First Aid and Chirurgery, since those were the only skills I bothered to keep track of, but you could easily switch them with some other skills. Again, I'd leave it to the players to track the increases during Winter Phase: many hands make for a lighter load for the GM.

While I appreciate the suggestion of using a Knight/Wife generator, the whole concept of this is to not have to keep track of a fully statted NPC in the game, regardless of how easy it was to "roll up".

You make good points about needing caps and such. And I need some way to quickly put together Glory, MW, and Damage, too. I need to ponder this more, but I don't think this is something that needs to be dismissed quite as quickly as you guys seem to.

My approach to date is essentially not having a standard for all GM characters. Those close to the PKs are more detailed, while those farther from the PKs in rank or distance have much less - often just basic combat values, a skill or two, and something indicating personality or goals since the latter will be what the PKs interact with.

The complicated part is that I am trying to work out how to automate the families and generational attributes of some of these groups using either spreadsheet macros or a database product (like MS Access). I want the dynamic parts of the game included even in this part of the environment since in addition to Arthur's reign developing and changing the local environment will be changing as well with the GM cast getting older, or being replaced by younger folk.

Previous I had issues in that the GM cast was static, or very time consuming doing even minor updates to the major characters. Thus I am trying to get something where I can have varying amounts of information with more important cast members getting more details, AND also have options to "winter phase" some of the cast as well, including chances for them to marry, have children, etc. This would include having the PK's extended families entered in the system so that you could handle family events and help track what is going in with the siblings and cousins.

While I appreciate the suggestion of using a Knight/Wife generator, the whole concept of this is to not have to keep track of a fully statted NPC in the game, regardless of how easy it was to "roll up".

You make good points about needing caps and such. And I need some way to quickly put together Glory, MW, and Damage, too. I need to ponder this more, but I don't think this is something that needs to be dismissed quite as quickly as you guys seem to.


My point about the knight generator is that it gives you all that, main skills, Glory, MW, Damage, Statistics... So what I was suggesting is that you'd roll up a household knight using the knight generator (to avoid doing it by hand, which is a pain if you are making an older knight), which also spares you the necessity of coming up with your own methods of rolling for Glory etc. Then basically just hand the stat bar to the player, telling him to roll a 1d6 per skill each winter phase to see if it goes up. Minimal hassle for the GM, not too much work for the player, either. The GM can then roll or simply adjust traits and passions as he sees fit, for example Loyalty/Homage (PK) based on the RP. No need to run them as a full character and worry about if they are spending their yearly training for stats or something; they are not full characters.

As for the attributes & aging, I came to the following conclusion...
Quick NPC aging system: Roll 1d3-1 per stat for statloss for each full 5 years after 35.
(See the reasoning here: http://nocturnalmediaforum.com/iecarus/forum/showthread.php?1943-Aging-probabilities-and-a-quick-NPC-aging-scheme&p=16550&viewfull=1#post16550)
So again, no need to roll yearly, just roll each time they cross a threshold (40, 45) and then adjust the stats accordingly. Although, if you wish, you could roll 1d3-1 for SIZ at 36, DEX at 37, etc, if you really wanted to bother with it, but at that point, you could just do the regular aging rolls.

Like said earlier, my problems with your system are:
1) The breadth of the categories is way too wide, resulting in know-it-all household knights who will outshine their lieges, the PKs. Furthermore, it severely limits the differentiation between the household knights: since everyone is good at everything, all you have left is how good they are to differentiate them.
2) The skill increase is way too fast past level 15, which, combined with the above breadth of the skill categories, will mean that the household knights are simply better than the stars of the campaign, the PKs.
Neither result is particularly desirable to me as a GM. I want the PKs to be the heroes of the stories, who will be the ones rolling their skills, not the household knights.

I am not saying that the knight generator is perfect. It was not intended for generic household knights for one thing but as tournament/quest opponents, so the probabilities are weighed accordingly. And naturally, there are limited numbers of different types of knights it will spit out, as we put in limited skill templates. But as far as having a reasonable supporting character with a handful of stats and skills, it works fine.

The complicated part is that I am trying to work out how to automate the families and generational attributes of some of these groups using either spreadsheet macros or a database product (like MS Access). I want the dynamic parts of the game included even in this part of the environment since in addition to Arthur's reign developing and changing the local environment will be changing as well with the GM cast getting older, or being replaced by younger folk.

Previous I had issues in that the GM cast was static, or very time consuming doing even minor updates to the major characters. Thus I am trying to get something where I can have varying amounts of information with more important cast members getting more details, AND also have options to "winter phase" some of the cast as well, including chances for them to marry, have children, etc. This would include having the PK's extended families entered in the system so that you could handle family events and help track what is going in with the siblings and cousins.

Yeah, that can be a pain to do. I ended up writing down the birth years for 20 or so named NPCs (mostly family and some movers and shakers) and then rolled the BotE family survival for all of them each year, and childbirth rolls for married women (if a child was born, a quick roll to see if the child survived to adulthood so that I wouldn't have to roll for the brat each year, too). Luckily for me, the PK families tended to be reasonably small, so I didn't have too many cousins to look after, and most of the time, as the patriarchs and matriarchs of their families, the PKs took care of finding husbands and wives for the cousins as they grew up. I also used the family events to bring new matrimonial proposals or accidental deaths etc to the game, but I didn't bother making an event roll (it would have to be a different one, obviously) for each and every NPC. I did tinker with that kind of a system, too, and it wouldn't be too bad, if you pushed it to the players to roll and track each Winter Phase for their own families, and the GM could focus on the bigger players.

Then again... Even though our group tend to average between 3-5 sessions per game year rather than the recommended 1 adventure (and by implication, 1 session) per game year, there is still no time to do the NPC soap opera! The players are quite happy to do their own thing and have the spotlight on them, so I don't tend to focus too much on every possible knight in Salisbury. It took me until quite recently to even bother coming up with the high officers (Marshal, Seneschal, Constable and the Castellans), although I did have the surviving bannerets and their heirs even earlier, as there was some jostling for wardships and power in-game. But Your Pendragon May Vary. :)

The Gentlewoman Bonus is stated to be only for full characters
If tracking wives is the problem, then make them full characters run by a player different from the husband
The game takes on a new light

I have been trying this. But I have stop full stating the wife on the grounds that in 10 years he as had 5 wives. All lost in child birth, in only 2 cases the child did survive the the mother too. I have been play around with the idea of a full stated wife to get a CON save to stop the childbirth death for the wife.

Each Winter you increase the NPC's age and their Prime/Secondary numbers. All NPCs also gain a d3-1 in extra points that can be devoted to specific Skills or Trait OR they can raise a single Attribute or Passion (if they have them) by 1. An NPC can never have more than a +5 bonus to any given Skill/Trait.

Also, this doesn't work as soon as the skill increases over 15, so it won't work for any of the Prime Skills...

Here is a suggestion, though.
1) Replace Chivalry with Outdoorsman/Nature (Awareness, Hunting, Falconry) or something like that. Add Church (Read, Religion) and split Court to Court and Love. I would also give Battle 'for free' to the knights at Prime level, since this is part of their job description. This gives the following groups:
Warcraft (Battle, Siege)
Stewardship (Stewardship, Folk Lore)
Combat (Weapon skills, Horsemanship)
Hearth (Faerie Lore, Industry)
Health (First Aid and Chirurgery)
Court (Courtesy, Orate, Flirting, Intrigue)
Love (Compose, Dancing, Play, Romance, Singing)
Tournaments (Tourney, Heraldry, Recognize)
Nature (Awareness, Hunting, Falconry)
Church (Read, Religion)

2) Every knight has Combat and one group each as Prime, Secondary and Tertiary. Now you will have 6 types of knights: Soldiers, Hunters, Courtiers, Lovers, Jousters and 'Templars', with a minor in one of the other fields. Differentiation!

3) Starting values:
Combat: If Age is less than 25: (Age-10)+1d3, max 16. If Age is 25 or over, 9+Age/5+1d2. (If you prefer simpler, just use the latter one: 9 + Age/5 + 1d2.)
Prime: If Age is less than 30: Age/2-5+1d6. If Age is 30 or over, 8+Age/5+1d2. (If you prefer simpler, just use the latter one: 8 + Age/5 + 1d2, although this gives you 21-yr old knights who are pretty skilled for their age.)
Secondary: Age/2-7+1d3, max 15.
Tertiary: Age/3-4, max 10.
The Rest: 3 (Since it is easier to recall than the mass of skills at 1-3, and only a few skills are higher than this, but if the GM likes, he can just grab the starting skills from an empty character sheet)

4) Winter Phase Increases:
Combat: +1 per year until skill is 15, roll 1d6 per year after that (as in BotEnt).
Prime: +1 per 2 years until skill is 15, roll 1d6 per year after that.
Secondary: +1 per 2 years until skill is 15, roll 1d6 per 2 years after that.
Tertiary: +1 per 3 years until skill is 10. Then doesn't improve.
The Rest: These do not improve.

5) Stat, Trait & Passion adjustments: Up to the GM, based on the RP and the events of the year, not for the Player to choose.


21-yr old knight under this suggestion:
Combat skills: 11+1d3 (12-14, so average Sword 13, Lance 13, Horsemanship 13)
Prime (Nature): 6+1d6 (average 10, so Hunting 10, Awareness 10, Falconry 10 + Battle at 10 as a freebie, which happens to be the starting value for knights)
Secondary (Court): 4+1d3 (average 6, so Courtesy 6, Flirting 6, Orate 6, Intrigue 6 and that's it)
Tertiary (Tournament): 3 (Tourney 3, Recognize 3, Heraldry 3, so practically all at the starting values or close enough)
This guy is someone I can see coming out of the Chargen as a starting character.

Compared to your system's 21-yr old knight:
Combat, Nature, Court: All 15. (Sword 15, Lance 15, Horsemanship 15, Hunting 15, Awareness 15, Falconry 15, Courtesy 15, Flirting 15, Intrigue 15, Romance 15, ...)
Tournament (and other groups!!!): All at 7.
This guy is a polymath extraordinaire and the PK starting characters will hang their heads in shame.

Your system's 31-yr old knight:
Combat, Nature, Court: All 20.
Tournament (and all other groups!!!): All at 10.
This guy will put 90% of the Round Table knights to shame and is a superman compared to the PKs of equivalent age.

My suggestion's 31-yr old knight:
Combat skills: 9+6+1d2 (16-17, so average Sword 17, Lance 17, Horsemanship 17)
Prime (Nature): 8+6+1d2 (15-16, so Hunting 16, Awareness 16, Falconry 16 + Battle 16, which doesn't seem out of place for a veteran of a decade of warfare)
Secondary (Court): 9+1d3 (average 11, so Courtesy 11, Flirting 11, Orate 11, Intrigue 11 and that's it)
Tertiary (Tournament): 6 (Tourney 6, Recognize 6, Heraldry 6)
Definitely a capable knight, but unlikely to overshadow the PKs, and quite reasonable level of skills (and I did round that 1d2 up in both cases, so this is more of an upper limit).


EDIT: Added the final thoughts to the suggestion and examples above.

Couple of other things I would do... I would likely break the Court into at least two different categories, since it is currently too broad:
Court: Courtesy, Orate, Intrigue, Flirting
Love: Singing, Play, Dancing, Compose, Romance
I'd also add Church group (Read, Religion) to represent a more learned background.

Also, I would probably give all knights Battle at the Prime level, since it is part of their job description, and give them a Tertiary group at Age/3-4, to a maximum of 10 (age 41), no improvement after that.

I have been trying this. But I have stop full stating the wife on the grounds that in 10 years he as had 5 wives. All lost in child birth, in only 2 cases the child did survive the the mother too. I have been play around with the idea of a full stated wife to get a CON save to stop the childbirth death for the wife.

Here's a better idea (IMHO): Fix the whole childbirth.

My preferred solution:
http://nocturnalmediaforum.com/iecarus/forum/showthread.php?2155-New-Childbirth-Table-amp-Blessed-Birth&p=18243&viewfull=1#post18243

The yearly 10% wife mortality is way way way too high. If you give a CON roll for fully statted wives (which would work, too, to decrease the insanely high childbirth mortality), you will need to give the other wives a CON stat, too, or it will be unfair.

While the above link is what I am using in my campaigns, here is a simple, quick fix:
1-11 No children.
12 Difficult birth. Roll 1d6: 1-2 mother dies, child survives, 3-4 both mother and child dies, 5-6 mother survives, child dies.
13 Twins born.
14-20 Child born.
This accomplishes about the same effect as the CON roll you are thinking (the wife mortality drops from 10% per year to about 3% per year), but doesn't require statting the wives. Needless to say, this makes a huge difference on the longevity of the wives.

While I am at it, the child mortality in KAP 5.1 needs a fix, too. You can find the link in the linked thread. BotE corrects this (hooray!) but if you don't have it, as a stopgap measure: stop rolling at 7 years instead of 15, which gives about 50% child mortality; the currect KAP 5.1 child mortality is 80!!! Historically the child mortality was about 30%, and if you have death on 1 (Rich or better) and roll until they have become 7, then you'd get that 30% child mortality.

You may notice that this is one of my button issues in KAP 5.1. :)

I've been thinking about it more and I think I can simplify things a bit more. I like your suggestions of new groups, I had been pondering adding an Outdoors and Religion group as well. I'm going to keep the Chilvary/Gentlewoman bit in for my own edification and playstyle of my group, but I can understand why you would see it removed. I see leaving it in as a way to hinder NPCs, giving them only a single real Prime they can roll... which seems worth the trade-off.

NPC Generation
Step 1: Attributes
Generate Attributes per the normal method for the character's Culture. Also generate derived statistics.

Step 2: Skills/Traits
You choose two Primary fields of training from the list below. All other fields of training are considered to be Secondaries. All rolls in the NPC's Primary Field of Training start at 15 and all rolls to Secondaries start at 8. Each NPC can choose up to three Skills/Traits to "specialize". Specialties do not have to be linked to Prime Stats (i.e. a NPC with Court and Hearth could choose Sword as a Specialty). A Specialty's skill rating start at the appropriate level for the field of Training the Specialty falls under. So the NPC with a Court and Hearth Primaries that has Specialties in Orate, Industry, and Sword would have Orate and Industry rolls start at 15 (since those are covered by the NPC's Primary field of Training) and Sword rolls start at 8 (since it is a Secondary field of Training). Any increases to Specialties due to age go off of these base numbers.

Ideals (Gentlewoman or Chivalry)
Warcraft (Battle, Siege)
Stewardship (Stewardship, Folk Lore)
Combat (Weapon skills, Horsemanship)
Hearth (Faerie Lore, Industry)
Health (First Aid and Chirurgery)
Court (Courtesy, Orate, Flirting, Intrigue)
Love (Compose, Dancing, Play, Romance, Singing)
Tournaments (Tourney, Heraldry, Recognize)
Nature (Awareness, Hunting, Falconry)
Faith (Read, Religion)

Step 3: Passions
Create starting Passions as appropriate for the NPC. Love (Family), Loyalty (Lord), and Honor would be the most appropriate. These should start at 3d6 unless game events would modify the starting score.

Step 4: Glory
Choose a starting Glory Rank for the NPC from the list below (or roll randomly). Each year the NPC does something of great note during a campaign (think a Very Heroic Task or greater on the Glory Scale), place a hash mark by the Glory Rank. Once a character has amassed five hash-marks, the character can tick up one Glory Rank, erasing all amassed hash marks. Note that the bonuses below are cumulative (so a Famous Knight gets a +1 to all Specialties and a third Primary Field of Expertise)

Ordinary: No bonus
Notable: +1 to all Specialties
Famous: Choose third Primary Field of Expertise
Extraordinary: +3 to a single Specialty

To randomly determine Starting Glory Rank, roll 3d6 and add 1/10th the NPC's age (e.g. +3 for a 21 year old Knight or +5 for a 45 year old Lady). Compare the result to the following table:

01-14: Ordinary
15-17: Notable
18-19: Famous
20+: Extraordinary

Step 5: Winter Phase
During the Winter Phase for each NPC, you will do the following:

Increase Age by 1
Gain a +1 for every three years of age after 21 until the NPC reaches 35 (so +1 at 23, 26, 29, 32, and 35). After 35 the NPC can gain +1 to any one Specialty every 4 years (GM or player's choice as to which Specialty is raised).
Roll 2d6. On a 12, the NPC can add one to any single Attribute or Passion. No Attribute can go above Cultural Maximums nor can any Passion go over 20.
Check to see if the NPC's Glory Rank has increased. If it has, gain the bonus for the new rank and remove all hash marks.
Check for Aging if the NPC is over 35.


Example NPC
Lady Tanree, 24 Year old Wife of Sir Rhydderch of the Bridges
SIZ 11
STR 8
DEX 14
CON 18
APP 22

Glory: Notable (+1 to all Specialties, noted below)

Primary fields of Training: Stewardship and Court
Specialties (+1 for Age): Gaming (10), Stewardship (17), and Chirurgery (10)

Passions: Love (Family) 14

Is the increase only for the specialities, it wasn't clear to me? And specialities start at the prime or secondary level depending under which category it is?

Yes, Primes stay at 15 and Secondaries stay at 8 for the life of the character. Only Specialties can increase and they are based off of where the Skill would land in the fields of Training.

Assume a 32 year old NPC with Warcraft and Stewardship as Primes and is an Ordinary Knight with the following specialties: Sword, Recognize, and Siege.

This Knight would have a +4 to his Specialties. This would mean that he would have a 12 in both Sword and Recognize (since they come from Secondary fields of training) and a 19 Siege (since it's from his Primary field of training). I will clarify above. When he turns 35, he'd get a final +1 bump to all of his Specialties (13 to Sword and Recognize and 20 for Siege). After that he'd get a +1 at 39 to put in one of the Specialties. Any other rolls made in Warcraft and Stewardship are 15 for the life of the character. Any other rolls that aren't Sword or Recognize are at 8s.

I have edited the post above with an example and clarifications.

Doing some more facts and figures and comparisons to the example Knights in the book, I think I'm going to reduce the Prime number to 15 so that a fully aged out person only has 20 in their Specialties within their Primes. Then they either have to be of Greater Glory or really old to actually bump into the 20+ range.

I'm also considering allowing the +1 bump on a 12 being able to be applied to a single Specialty as well, but I need to ponder that a bit more.

Updated the previous post with the new number, though

Your Pendragon May Vary and all that. I have some rather strong opinions on some things, so please take it in the spirit of IMHO.

I admit, it is looking like a rather much more simplified upkeeping version and by limiting the skills to 15 and 8, you prevent the Master-of-All syndrome. So that part I do like, as well as the fact that you only need to keep track of basically three Specialities.

Alas, I haven't had that much time to look at this, so I will now only concentrate on the two particular issues that bother me, particularly the first one, Glory.



Step 4: Glory
To randomly determine Starting Glory Rank, roll 3d6 and add 1/10th the NPC's age (e.g. +3 for a 21 year old Knight or +5 for a 45 year old Lady). Compare the result to the following table:

01-14: Ordinary
15-17: Notable
18-19: Famous
20+: Extraordinary


First of all, I assume that these are corresponding to the Glory levels on pp. 176-177 (which used the old Glory levels, Famous 4000+ and Extraordinary 8000+) rather than pp. 101 & 222 (where Famous is 8000+ and Extraordinary is 16000+). That is plenty bad enough, in my book. 8000+ Glory means that this knight is deserving of a ROUND TABLE SEAT. I would never ever allow a Player to simply decide that he wants a household knight with 8000+ Glory. Getting such a household knight needs a story and some serious RP, not just plucked from 'I wanna'. Even if I were to allow it, this guy would deserve a hefty bonus to his upkeep, since he is no regular knight, but one of the most famous knights in all of Britain. (Remember me bitching about household knights overshadowing the PK lieges? Well, here we are again...)

Even if you leave it to the dice, with +3 for 21-yr old knights, you will get about 2% of STARTING 21-yr knights being Extraordinary! Yes, young sir, welcome straight to the Round Table, young sir. Even Gawaine had to wait for years before he was added! (Granted, I first read it as 1d20+3, which would have meant 20%.) Even having 4000+ Glory should be insanely rare for a starting knight, since that qould require for 3000 inherited Glory, which means his Father had 30000 Glory, which means that he is in the class of Uther, Pellinore, Lamorak, Gawaine, Lancelot and Arthur in Glory. This is no random household knight! At 4000+ level the probability of rolling it with 3d6+3 is 9.3%. So every tenth starting knight you hire is a son of Gawaine. Good to know. If you drop it to Notable (3000+ in the old system), you still have a father whose Glory is 20000, which is still in the high-name recognition territory, like Bors, Gaheris, Gareth... the probability is 37.5%, about one in three. You see my disbelief, I am sure? A random starting 21-yr knight should, IMHO, have a maximum of 2000 Glory and 1500 Glory would be even better. (Under the current system, at least.)

I also disagree with your Glory check system, since it makes achieving Extraordinary status much easier than it is for the PKs. Why not simply keep track of the actual glory and give him a Glory bonus point for the Player to spend if he goes over a thousand?

Finally, Women tend to accumulate Glory slower than the males. At least the stay-at-home wives in comparison to the adventuring PKs. Battles, especially, are Glory-mills that the women lack. Since the marriage glory is capped at 1000 regardless of the husband's Glory, and it is the main source of NPC female glory in my experience, I would be very surprised of a random maiden starting even with 1000 Glory (since they only have inherited glory until they marry), and a (one-marriage) widow with more than 2000, whom I would assume that most of the lady candidates are (at least with the regular childbirth tables, since they die so easily).




Step 5: Winter Phase
During the Winter Phase for each NPC, you will do the following:

Increase Age by 1
Gain a +1 for every three years of age after 21 until the NPC reaches 35 (so +1 at 23, 26, 29, 32, and 35). After 35 the NPC can gain +1 to any one Specialty every 4 years (GM or player's choice as to which Specialty is raised).
Roll 2d6. On a 12, the NPC can add one to any single Attribute or Passion. No Attribute can go above Cultural Maximums nor can any Passion go over 20.
Check to see if the NPC's Glory Rank has increased. If it has, gain the bonus for the new rank and remove all hash marks.
Check for Aging if the NPC is over 35.



My problem with the skill increases here is that 8 -> 9 is not equivalent to 15 -> 16 in Pendragon rules. I would simply use the BotEnt rules here: +1 per year until 15, and 1d6 roll per skill per year afterwards. Works out just fine.

Also, purely from Winter Phase rules perspective, and I know that BotEnt rules break this a bit already, but it is curious that the skill progression grinds into an almost total halt after 35 regardless what the skill level actually is. If the +1 to one Speciality after 4 years is supposed to represent an experience check roll of 20, I could kinda sorta understand that, but what if the Speciality is 13 by that stage? It should go up very easily if the character were a PK.

The 2d6 roll is, in practice, unnecessary. The probability is 1/36. Which means you'll get a 12 once in 36 years, on average. Might just as well not roll it at that point, especially since the idea was to keep the hassle to a minimum.

Suggestions for the Winter Phase:
1) Minimal hassle version: just use the BotEnt system and Glory Bonus Points whenever the Glory counter passes an even thousand. Done.
2) Secondary character: Roll 'experience checks' for the specialities as normal, and then give the Practice and Training choice to the Player. Bit more generous than Option 1.

I don't know if you are familiar with the phrase "constructive criticism" but you're not very good at it. Stating "I think the Glory levels are off, here are some suggestions" is far more conducive to newbies to this game actually sticking around the forum than your tirade about how there's a 1.6% chance that a NPC Knight might have Extraordinary Glory. Seriously... take a step back.

I don't think I can be blamed for a Glory system that obviously has issues... I didn't write it. I just adopted the bands as described in the Glory section of the KAP 5.1 book for ease of use (since that would be what mattered if the Knight was captured/killed). And requiring NPCs accomplish VERY HEROIC deeds to even get a check is more than enough to warrant my simplified system. How often do NPCs solve such huge tasks by themselves? Rarely, if ever. The focus is on the Knights, but if your Household Knight stands bravely by a ford to let your army prepare for the Saxon charge or if your Wife manages to fight off a Pillaging from a nearby landowner raiding your lands while you're away at war, that's a good reason to get them a single check. If they manage to do five of such things, sure, bump their Glory... obviously something great is happening there. And since the GM is pretty much fully in control of when a VERY HEROIC thing is an option for an NPC, this is a self-correcting problem.

As far as the advancement system. I was trying to heed your earlier complaints about things getting too powerful without having to track lots of little numbers. A simple +1 every 3 years makes it easy to track (and correct if you accidentally miss a year). No real bookkeeping is required until the character comes up, really. The 1 in 36 thing was kind of a shot in the dark since increasing Passions and Attributes are harder and I thought it was a nice nod to luck but falls into the "probably never happening"... maybe I'll make it 11 or 12. It needs some playtesting, sure.

As far as the concept that a +1 at a skill of 6 is very different than a +1 at a skill of 15 I say: No. It's still just a 5% improvement. Perhaps a slightly larger bump with inspiration, since you get closer to the magic number of 20, but, fundamentally it's a 5% statistical change in a skill.

I appreciate your comments on this, I really do, but I really feel a lot of hostility and derision in your posts. Maybe I'm reading too much into your tone, but it's very off-putting.

I don't know if you are familiar with the phrase "constructive criticism" but you're not very good at it. Stating "I think the Glory levels are off, here are some suggestions" is far more conducive to newbies to this game actually sticking around the forum than your tirade about how there's a 1.6% chance that a NPC Knight might have Extraordinary Glory. Seriously... take a step back.


Yeah, I guess I went off on a bit of a rant, there, didn't I? I won't offer any excuses for doing the inexcusable, so I will simply have to apologize and hope that you will forgive me for it? I assure you that it was not intended to be offensive or patronizing towards you.

Last thing I want to do is to discourage a newbie who has already shown such passion for the game that he is tinkering with a NPC generation system. (Reminds me of myself ten years ago. :) )



I don't think I can be blamed for a Glory system that obviously has issues... I didn't write it. I just adopted the bands as described in the Glory section of the KAP 5.1 book for ease of use (since that would be what mattered if the Knight was captured/killed). And requiring NPCs accomplish VERY HEROIC deeds to even get a check is more than enough to warrant my simplified system. How often do NPCs solve such huge tasks by themselves? Rarely, if ever. The focus is on the Knights, but if your Household Knight stands bravely by a ford to let your army prepare for the Saxon charge or if your Wife manages to fight off a Pillaging from a nearby landowner raiding your lands while you're away at war, that's a good reason to get them a single check. If they manage to do five of such things, sure, bump their Glory... obviously something great is happening there. And since the GM is pretty much fully in control of when a VERY HEROIC thing is an option for an NPC, this is a self-correcting problem.


You are quite correct on that it is in the GM's hands so it might not become that much of an issue. However, I do feel that it would be easier to just keep track of the Glory and rather than get fixated on the Glory bands, just award that one Glory Bonus Point each time he crosses a thousand Glory limit. You could combine it with your system easily enough: since you are only tracking something in the 250 Glory range (heroic, right?), you could simply award a Glory Bonus Point each time he gains 4 ticks (instead of 5, but that is a quibble, 5 would be fine) and then simply advance him by 1000 Glory. This would be fully in line with the system that the PKs use and thus would be comparable: a PK and a NPK doing the same thing get the same Glory & benefit.

My big concern with your system is that going from 1000 to 3000 (using the old system), each of your ticks is worth 400 Glory, which is already something almost beyond the pale for a PK to get in a single encounter. Wife managing to fight off a raid (presumably by leading the foot soldiers, rather than fighting herself in melee) would be 50 Glory according to BotManor, for example, and given the new Glory rules for melee, fighting Saxons on the bridge would require you to kill maybe 20 of them to get 400 Glory, which is possible but reasonably unlikely without one of the Saxons getting lucky. It gets even worse when moving from Famous to Extraordinary (using the 4000 -> 8000 bands, if you are using the new 8000 -> 16000 bands it is doubly worse still): each of your five ticks needs to be worth 800 (or even 1600!) Glory to be equivalent. According to Book of the Estate, gaining 800 for a single event should mark the household knight up for a promotion to a vassal knight status.

As for Glory bands, it is an unfortunate editing legacy from 4th edition: the Glory bands were shifted in 5.1, but the sample knights in pp. 176-177 were not renamed to reflect the new bands, so they were lagging behind. That is not a problem of the Glory system as such, merely an errata of the labels. This actually gets a bit worse in a way since we altered the Glory bands in BotW, too, for the Warlord Generator... Yes, I can hear your groans. :) But wait, there are good news!

The New Glory Bands are these:
Unproven (1000 – 1499)
Veteran (1500 – 1999)
Respected (2000 – 2999)
Notable (3000 – 3999)
Renowned (4000 – 7999)
Famous (8000-15,999)

As you can see, from Respected to Renowned, this is in 1000 Glory steps. If you join Unproven and Veteran into the old Ordinary Knight, then you will have:
Ordinary 1000
Respected 2000
Notable 3000
Renowned 4000
Meaning that my suggestion above (track 1000 Glory) and yours (track Glory band) would match perfectly up to 4000 Glory. Since almost all of the starting knights would be Ordinary (save for sons of Famous knights), this would make it quite easy to keep track. You could either come up with a roll or simply assign +1000 Glory for each decade of knighthood, and it would be OK-ish: 31-yr knight being Respected and 41-yr old knight being Notable. Or, and here is an idea, how about rolling 1d20 vs. (Created Age-22)*2? If you succeed, you will go up a tier (1000 Glory) and two tiers on a critical? It is pretty close to the decade suggestion above.

No, wait, an even better idea... Since you are using those 3-yr steps anyway, why not give a Glory tick mark or each step? This means that a 24-yr old knight would start off with one tick over the 21-yr old one... Although you could give them all one tick to represent Inherited Glory, too. Once they have 5 ticks (1 inherited + 4 'earned', so age 33... for some reason you are giving +1 already at 23, which is just 2 years older than 21?), they would go up a step to Respected. To get some variance, you could even roll 1d3-1 extra ticks (or 1d3-2 if you prefer it to be symmetric) easily enough at the beginning. Furthermore, this allows you to easily track the Annual Glory Accumulation of the NPK. Just add a tick every 3 years up to 36!

EDIT:
The above would be geared towards getting really the average, ordinary household knights, which is what I'd be comfortable with in my campaigns, since these are the most common knights and if the PK wishes to attract a higher Glory household knight, well, that is a scenario and RP right there! :) If you want to keep a door open for more glorious household knights, you could roll 1d3 ticks instead of just awarding 1 tick at the beginning. This would increase the average to 2 ticks per 3 years, which is a bit much for an NPK, but not impossible, meaning that they would reach 5 ticks (actually 6) at the age of 27, and 10 ticks (2 glory levels) at the age of 33. The maximum at 36 would be 18 ticks (6d3 all turning up 3), so Renowned, just shy of getting another Glory point, but this would be quite rare (about 10% would reach Renowned, 15+ ticks), and wouldn't bruise my suspension of disbelief. 1d2 ticks per 3 years of past adventuring would also be possible, of course, as a compromise between the two.




As far as the advancement system. I was trying to heed your earlier complaints about things getting too powerful without having to track lots of little numbers. A simple +1 every 3 years makes it easy to track (and correct if you accidentally miss a year). No real bookkeeping is required until the character comes up, really. The 1 in 36 thing was kind of a shot in the dark since increasing Passions and Attributes are harder and I thought it was a nice nod to luck but falls into the "probably never happening"... maybe I'll make it 11 or 12. It needs some playtesting, sure.

As far as the concept that a +1 at a skill of 6 is very different than a +1 at a skill of 15 I say: No. It's still just a 5% improvement. Perhaps a slightly larger bump with inspiration, since you get closer to the magic number of 20, but, fundamentally it's a 5% statistical change in a skill.

I hear you on that. Here is a quick suggestion... Make it +3 per 3 years up to 15? This only comes up if the specialty comes outside of Primes, and you can easily have a table ready:
Age Specialty level (Prime/Secondary base) Glory Ticks
21 15/8 1 (inherited) Glory tick (Ordinary Knight Glory level)
24 16/11 2 ticks
27 17/14 3 ticks
30 18/15 4 ticks
33 19/16 5 ticks (= Glory rank increases to Respected + Glory bonus point)
36 20/17 6 ticks (= Glory rank increases to Respected + Glory bonus point + 1 tick left over)

It is a minor point, but it would make those Secondary-based Specialties a bit more useful, although not as good as the Prime-based Specialities.

I should have been a bit more clear on the skills... I was talking about the increase of the skill. Using Training and Practice, a PK can have 5 points to skills if they are less than 15 and 1 point if they are 15 to 19. So that same winter training would raise 8 to 13 or 15 to 16. Hence my comment that 8 to 9 increase is not equivalent to 15 to 16 increase in the Pendragon system. The same is true for experience rolling. The chance of rolling 9+ on 1d20 is 60% = average of one raise in two years. The chance of rolling 16+ is 25% = average of one raise in 4 years.

As for the Glory, I already referenced it in the above, but I would really encourage to just use the 1000 Glory and the Glory Bonus Point system, rather than introducing new Primes. This would also allow you to do away with the 2d6 roll as the Glory Bonus Point can be used for Attributes, Passions and Traits. In particularly with the latter two, I would just use GM Fiat based on the RP and tell the Player to adjust Valorous or Loyalty (PK) depending on what happened during the year.

Speaking of Passions and Traits, I'd probably just have these ones:
Loyalty (PK) 15
Honor 13
Valorous 15
One Famous Trait at 16



I appreciate your comments on this, I really do, but I really feel a lot of hostility and derision in your posts. Maybe I'm reading too much into your tone, but it's very off-putting.

Again, I am sorry that it made you feel that way. I tend to get a bit passionate about math and my sense of humor is quite dessicated, so rereading it this morning, I can see how you had taken my tone like that. I meant no offense and my remarks were intended more in a humorous fashion, but you are quite right to call me out on that. Again, you have my apologies, and my appreciation for your work and for the stimulating discussion we are sharing here.

Thanks for the discussion and the apology. I'm going to ruminate on what you said here and see what changes need to be made.

Something to ask about the new Glory Bands... are they worth new Glory rewards when defeated/captured/killed? Where are they outlined?

I really think some of these various and sundry rule changes really could use some kind of master Index or errata sheet. Back when we played 4th edition Pendragon we used to joke that the game spread out all the useful information across various books lest they fall into the wrong hands... 5.1 seems to be continuing the tradition. :D

Something to ask about the new Glory Bands... are they worth new Glory rewards when defeated/captured/killed? Where are they outlined?

It may have missed your attention, but KAP 5.1 redid the combat Glory Rewards, too... Officially it is: (Used Skills)+1% of Glory of the knight.

So a Sword 15, Lance 15, Horsemanship 15 knight with 4200 Glory attacking a PK first with a lance charge and then switching to a sword after unhorsed would net:
15+15+15+42 = 87 Glory for defeating him.

Personally? I am still using 4th edition Glory since that is what I and my players are more used to and comfortable with. So Notable Knight is still Notable, anything less than that is Ordinary, and Renowned is the old Famous and new Famous is the old Extraordinary. Easy-peasy.

(In practice, I am eyeballing it from Skill, which tends to be correlated with Glory. Skill 15 is around 50 Glory. Skill 16-17 is around 75 Glory, and Skill 18-20 is 100 Glory. Particularly Glorious knights get a bump up, while non-knights tend to get a bump down, or even two bumps if they are weeny spearmen, too.)

It may have missed your attention, but KAP 5.1 redid the combat Glory Rewards, too... Officially it is: (Used Skills)+1% of Glory of the knight.


Where is that? I can't find it in either my 5.1 PDF nor in my Hard Back. They still both list the rewards by Tier.

Where is that? I can't find it in either my 5.1 PDF nor in my Hard Back. They still both list the rewards by Tier.

Huh... you know what, I can't find it either in my PDF...

Found it in Greg's old webpage: http://www.gspendragon.com/missingglory.html

The Glory rewards were missing in the old 5.0 dead tree book, which I had, so I used the webpage a lot as a reference, so that is where it has stuck in my mind, I guess. As far as I can recall (too tired to track down the thread reference, way past my bedtime, sorry), Greg has spoken in favor for the webpage system... I am including a quick cut and paste to show how it works from the webpage:
"
Normal Combat Against a Knight
This includes most normal combat. The victor gains this Glory even if the loser surrenders and is spared by the victor's Mercy.
Glory = total of all the loser's skill value(s) that were used in the combat + 1% of the loser's Glory.
Typically 30 for an Ordinary Knight (15 skill + 15 for Glory), 65 for a Famous Knight (20 skill + 45 for Glory.)
"

Anyway, like said, I continued and still do continue to use the 4th edition Glory rewards for the fights, tweaked to match my estimate of how dangerous the opponent really is and what is his perceived fame.

Similarly, the Glory bands don't matter, since that is just the label change. What matters is the Glory amount, and you have it on Appendix Six, just delete the labels:
(1000-1999 Glory) = 50
(2000-3999 Glory) = 100
(4000-7999 Glory) = 150
(8000+ Glory) = 200