Hi, it's me again. I'm just full of questions (we're starting up a Great Pendragon Campaign).

In Character Creation, we rolled up a Levy size and a number of fighting men for each manor. When the knights go to the Battle of Mearcred Creek:
1) Do they bring their family knights and Other Lineage Men and Levy and everything?
2) If so, I assume they lose men based on Sir Elad's Follower's Fate roll, is that correct?

3) Once the players take losses to their knights (whether at the Battle of Mearcred Creek or elsewhere), I assume that the dead knights are just plain dead and they have to wait for younger brothers/heirs/whatnot to be knighted. Is that right? Or is there an assumption that dead knights are replaced by others?

4) Once the players take losses to their Other Lineage Men and their Levy, do you just assume that they get replenished over time? How do you figure out how long it takes? It seems like a 5 round Battle is pretty likely to actually kill almost 20% of the followers in a fight. Is it reasonable that the Levy would replenish itself by 20% in one year?

1) No. Family knights have their obligations to their lord as well. So they would be wherever their liege so requests. They are there to be used in family crisis and as a backdrop/fallback. But you as the GM can give them less/more importance if you wish. The levy is really just peasants with makeshift weapons, almost useless in a real battle. They are there in case of bandits, or an attack on the manor, maybe useful for a siege or such.
2) I think so.
3) This is to my knowledge never stated explicitly. So its more depending on your style as a GM and how much detail your players want. In an ideal feudal world the first son would inherit the knights possession and obligations (liege permitting). So middle-aged and old would be replaced by a young knight, while young knights are a bit more tricky. Likely to be depending on the family's standing with their liege.
4) Again to my knowledge never stated explicitly. So again up to you. 20% sounds like a lot though.

Hi, it's me again. I'm just full of questions (we're starting up a Great Pendragon Campaign).

In Character Creation, we rolled up a Levy size and a number of fighting men for each manor. When the knights go to the Battle of Mearcred Creek:
1) Do they bring their family knights and Other Lineage Men and Levy and everything?

Like Spooner said, the other knights have thier duty to the liege lord. Now it is quite likely that the Earl will bring some of those men along to a battle. You can usually get a idea by the text. Many of the battle have the Earl brining "half his knights and footmen", so you can assume about half the player's family makes it to those battles.

And I'll disagree a bit with Sponner about the Levy. It was typical for knights to bring some of their peasants along to battle, especially if they are on the defensive. But that said, yeah, they are fairly useless. In the old rules it used to take 25 of them to count as 1 Knight Value of combat strength. But thats better than nothing.



2) If so, I assume they lose men based on Sir Elad's Follower's Fate roll, is that correct?

It depends on who unit their commander is during the battle. The knights are most likely fighting in groups under different commanders. You could make rolls for each unit and work out the casualties, or just make one roll for all the followers, or you could just wing it. The focus is more on player knights than on tracking the NPC family members, so unless a PC is in command, I'd say either wing it based on how the fight went, or make one roll at the end of the battle. The latter will keep the PCs casualties a bit low, but then you won't need to worry about replacements as much.



3) Once the players take losses to their knights (whether at the Battle of Mearcred Creek or elsewhere), I assume that the dead knights are just plain dead and they have to wait for younger brothers/heirs/whatnot to be knighted. Is that right? Or is there an assumption that dead knights are replaced by others?

Dead is dead. So if there is an heir the player will have to wait until he grow up old enough to begin play as a knight or maybe as a squire. But that doesn't mean the player can't play a relative, if the GM allows. And if a knight dies without a son, it might be possible that a male relative could inherit. For example, in my cmpaign one of the character died without issue, and I had him cross off one of his young knights from his army and roll him up as the character's younger brother.



4) Once the players take losses to their Other Lineage Men and their Levy, do you just assume that they get replenished over time? How do you figure out how long it takes? It seems like a 5 round Battle is pretty likely to actually kill almost 20% of the followers in a fight. Is it reasonable that the Levy would replenish itself by 20% in one year?


There is no specific mechanic for replenishment, except perhaps the family event table. All those birth and marriage in the family result could eventually provide more knights. Likewise the knights should age too. If you want to, I suppose a system could be made to check for new family knights aging and such. Or the GM could just wing things every couple of years. Maybe every 5 or ten year you could just have everyone reroll the family knights to reflect things that are happing to the family.

As for peasants 20% a year is much too high. That would be a rate of growth faster than modern day. The population would double every 4 years! Maybe 3%, if the harvest has been decent. Or you could just say the player can reroll his levy every 5 or ten years or so to reflect people dieing off, young peasants growing up and so on.

As far as replenishing the Knights, I was actually talking about the Family Knights, not the Player Knights.

As far as replenishing the Knights, I was actually talking about the Family Knights, not the Player Knights.


Officially, you don't.