Researching to GM 5th ed. Trying to get familiar with character / family generation.

I might be missing something. From reviewing the tables, a new Knight (might) have some younger brothers that are also Knights, but never has any younger brothers below age 21? This seems odd and limiting. A younger brother who was, say, 17 at character generation would be a great thing to have if the first character died childless 4 years into the campaign... the younger brother would be 21 now and ready to Knight Up and become the player's new character.

Yes, you are missing something. :)

The knighting age is 21. Thus, AT CHARACTER GENERATION that 17 year old younger brother CANNOT be a KNIGHT yet. Instead, he would still be a squire, and would need to be knighted 4 years into the campaign (if the PK can afford it). The younger brothers (older than 21) being knights at character generation applies to those PKs who might start older than 21 for some reason. The way it is set up is that the PK himself is the eldest of the family and thus the heir to the family manor and all that good stuff.

I very much recommend that each PK would start with a couple of younger brothers, spaced 5-10 years apart, if at all possible. Like starting your main character at 21, his younger brother at 15, and the baby of the family at 9. This means that each 6 years you would have a character ready to be a squire/knight. This has been very useful in our campaign: two players were playing their third brothers just recently, which nicely bridged the gap to the eldest son of the eldest brother. I also generally make them guardians of their nephews/nieces and in charge of the manor while the heir grows up (even if this would be normally the liege's job). This keeps it nicely in the family, allowing the Player to continue looking after the family fortune. (Yes, I know that the usual rule is Heir, Spare and Prayer, but if the family is not particularly religious, I am not pushing for that on the Players. It is worth more to me as a GM to have that third spare. Of course, easy way to sidestep this whole issue is to have a fourth son, and bump the third son up a couple of years, sending him to the monastery...)

Speaking of affording the knighting... the way I GM it, the eldest son gets his equipment via the Universal Aid, i.e. the peasants pay an extra 'tax' to outfit him. The second son will inherit his father's old equipment (if possible and after the father passes on), and gets a small knighting feast to become a knight, too. The third one is up to the PKs themselves, but since he usually wouldn't become a knight unless one or both of his older brothers have died, he usually gets to use his brothers' equipment until the heirs grow up, usually up to the point until he finally kicks the bucket, as if he were their father.

Morien brings up good points. The point you have to bring about is father surviving long enough to have those extra sons which may make tweaking his death necessary. So I try not to spread them out as the dice allows, but if the father dies, I quickly calculate how children could have been born between the Player Knight and father's death. I am very open to the idea of women knights, so discuss this with my players beforehand.

I find that the third son can go to the monastery. If the first and second son have unfortunate accidents, I offer the player the choice to bring out the third son from the religious life to continue the family's affairs. If that son is over 21, the rules say how to even more points to a character past 21, and I use them as the background. I tend to make sure at least half any skill points are applied to skills a religious life, rather than martial, would have.

There are lots of ways a creative gamemaster and player can work together to continue a family line, unless as the rules state, you have suffered the curse of no heirs and have run out of siblings. It is unfortunate, but it does happen. In the campaign I had, the player had a fellow knight who had been a drinking buddy at court, and thought he would be a good choice so we went ahead and back engineered that character and made him a full fledged player and the campaign continued.

I offer the player the choice to bring out the third son from the religious life to continue the family's affairs.

That is a good way of handling it, too.

Thanks guys. So I think I am getting # of younger brothers and sisters from Page 52 (Siblings) and just kind of plug them into the father's history anyway I (as GM) think serves the player's and story's best interests. Cool.

Heir/Spare/Prayer made me laugh because I immediately knew what you meant, but I haven't seen any rules or guidelines in main rulebook about family in the clergy. I'm intrigued, though...