Does it seem to anyone else that with only one squire to a typical knight, that a squire must have an awfully busy and dangerous time of it?

I mean if you have unarmored, mostly unarmed, adolescent boys on rouncies, who are in a position where they are obligated to swoop into the middle of battle to retrieve their masters, why aren't they constantly being hacked to pieces by the same foes that felled the knight? Is there an honor system in place? It could be argued that the squire in this scenario is at greater risk to life and limb than the knight is.

But this is only if we're talking about a single squire, aged 14-21, who dresses, serves, armors, cleans, follows into battle, and occasionally has to rescue his master.

An idea I've been toying with is to have 'ordinary' knights with two squires.

1.) The arming squire, or armiger, or valet. The younger of the two, aged 14-18, but may end up spending his entire squireship in this position. He does not follow the knight into battle, he holds back. He is in the apprenticeship stage, polishing weapons, looking after spare horses, donning the knight's armor etc.

2.) The body squire, or Esquire, or coutiller, can be substituted with a sargeant. Aged 18+, could be either an arming squire who has proved himself capable and is getting some firsthand experience, or a career cavalryman. Armed and armored reasonably well, with padded coat and boiled leather and an iron helm + shield, atop a rouncy with a sword in hand, following behind the front line of barreling armored knights in the second row, fighting as medium cavalry, and when necessary, pulling his knight from the field.

I use the terms valet and coutiller because I've been doing some looking around on the organization of the medieval 'lance' unit, which in prendragon consists of the knight, one squire, and two spear-men, but in many cases it seems historically that a distinction is made between the lighter armed cavalryman who follows and supports the knight, and the youth who bears his arms, as two separate people, coutiller (dagger-man) and valet.

Now I know the problem with this is that it throws off the money a fair bit, but I think some creative accounting might solve it.

So you have the ordinary knight, who consumes 1L of food and clothing. He has a charger that costs .5L to feed and care for, and two other horses, which combined come to .5L. The upkeep of his weapons and armor comes to .5L

He has an arming squire, who needs .25 for food and clothing, and .25 for his horse.

He also has a body squire, who needs .25 in food and clothing, .5L for a courser, and .25 for his equipment

There you have 4L ordinary knight, two squires factored in.

Not only that, but there is a huge gulf in ability between a 14-year old Squire (Sword 5 or some such) and 20-year old Squire (Sword 10-15), too.

In the old Battle system, squires were not expected to actually fight, so the Honor system was enough to keep them alive, or the ability to avoid the Saxons on foot thanks to the rouncy. However, in Book of Battle, Squires explicitly fight to cover their masters' retreat.

I have been considering a similar approach to yours, giving the knight two squires. I haven't gotten off the planning stages, though, since there is no pressing need in our campaign (we have not made use of BoB yet). Secondly, giving the squires an explicit military role will encourage the Players to apply them in fights outside battles, too, which is not something I wish to see (for one, it is more work for me and bigger and longer battles!). Occasionally, we may have a 20-year old squire donning armor and fighting as a knight (usually a new PK just before he is knighted), but this is more of a 'final exam', a chance to 'earn his spurs'.

I rationalize squires rushing in to grab fallen knights as them all waiting in a reserve near the unit of knights they serve. When a knight goes down both entire units move to evacuate him. The knights push hard into the enemy to force them back and create room while the squires get the knight into his own squire's care and allow him to withdraw.

A similar thing happens when a unit of knights disengages. All the squires move up to threaten the enemy flank and then immediately turn and retreat when the enemy stops to deal with them. Think of a wolf pack hunting. The younger wolves help harry the prey but its the adults who make the kill. Even a squire with Sword 5 is deadly to a common footman with skill 10-12 due to the reflexive modifier for being mounted. And that's before you add in the fact that he has to split his skill to attack both knight and squire that round.

I'm not saying you can't go the separate squires route but like Morien I want to avoid squires becoming a common sight in combat.

I've come to the realization, since implementing this change, and since I always throw in a few more spearmen than the book recommends, I've got exactly twice as many cavalry and infantry per manor per capita in Logres as there are supposed to be.

I'm kind of digging this, because in order to keep troop numbers where they ought to be in GPC, all I have to do is cut the number of manors in half.

So say if Count Roderick/Robert had 100 manors in Salisbury before, now he has 50, which makes the PK's a lot more significant.

Also since this puts the number of actual knights down to around 1,100 in Logres and it's supposed to have a population of around 1 million, this puts knights back into the wheelhouse of the old "1 man in 1,000"

I'm kind of digging this, because in order to keep troop numbers where they ought to be in GPC, all I have to do is cut the number of manors in half.

So say if Count Roderick/Robert had 100 manors in Salisbury before, now he has 50, which makes the PK's a lot more significant.

Also since this puts the number of actual knights down to around 1,100 in Logres and it's supposed to have a population of around 1 million, this puts knights back into the wheelhouse of the old "1 man in 1,000"
Good work
My intention was to have vassal knights be pretty important