I have reached the end of my campaign and will be running Camlann in the next session. Problem is, I find battles have got a bit boring. Almost all my players have got full plate and not much damage gets through. Yet the battle should end with the field littered with knightly corpses.

Now, having started (and stuck) with 3rd Edition plus a bit of homegrown bolt-on for battles, I imagine I am running something much simpler than 4th Ed, and obviously at this point it's a bit silly to try switching. But has anyone got any suggestions as to how I can make Camlann sufficiently deadly to be meaningful?

While the old Battle System isn7t a detailed as the new one, there are a few things you can do to make it tougher for Camlahnn.

1) Adjust the Unit Events table to give more - numbers. Altering the table slightly can mae it a bit deadlier.

2) Make a custom foe table to use instead of the standard one. If you add 1D damage, a few poits of armor, and a few skill poits to the foes on the random table they can get much nastier. If you customize the foes a bit more (Knights, Saxons, Picts, aLongbowmen, Musketeers, etc.) you can really make something brutal.

3) Ingore the battle length. In the newer supplments Greg actually setsw up Camlann to run through the night and into the next day,continuing on until all of the player characters are killed save one (who gets to throw Excalibur away and see Arthur taken off to Avalon).

4) Apply the -10 darkness penalty to the players and thier foes (except Picts) skills during the night hours.

5) Have opponents attack the knights mounts. Battle7s a lot tougher on foot.

6) Opponents in good armor using the all-out berserk attack ups the lethality.

Opponents in good armor using the all-out berserk attack ups the lethality.

Oo I like that one.

I have used the 'kill' the horses tactic with my Mongol raiders very successfully! My players have all shelled out for barding now...

If you extend the battle, you can also add fatigue, especially if they have been fighting for 6 hours, then tell the players, you are getting a little bit tired (-5 to all skills), then after another 6 you are also getting very hungry and even more tired (-10 to all skills) and so on. Eventually, even those with godlike abilities will become mere mortals.

Bob