Mechanical discussion

Not to mention that lower endurance means taking injuries much faster.

Aerion's 2 DoS does 12 damage after plate AR. An Endurance 4 character must take 1 injury to reduce the damage to 8. An Endurance 3 character must take 2 Injuries to reduce it to 6.

Now, Aerion's damage is higher than most, but the point holds for lower damage, too (Aerion's just makes for a nice demonstration).

Aerion Storm wrote:I feel like Endurance already affects things in a longer fight, though, with the free CYB action every pass.

CYB is extremely trivial IMO.  Even an Endurance 1 can make the Automatic (0) to remove 1 point of damage and even the most stout of warrior only removes a max of 4 damage on a roll of 15 (something that can be obtained with an Endurance of 3).  Better to have a CYB then not, I agree, but with the kind of damage being thrown around with lances, not really material to the overall joust.

The House rule just shortens the amount of tilts.  If that is the only intent, then it's just fine as it is.  Having been involved with actual jousts (not that I would do anything so stupid myself) I can tell you that 20+ tilts is reaching a level of extreme absurdity.  -2 Cumulative is more realistic.  Any more than 6 tilts and you are starting to flirt with silly territory.

As far as Endurance, all I can say is, with all other factors being equal, and barring luck, the person with more Endurance will outlast a person with less.  I can certainly understand why players would not want Endurance to play a larger roll.  The vast majority are glass cannons, concentrating on their Fighting and Athletic stats (or AH if they are professional jousters), often to the detriment of Endurance.  Reasonable under the circumstances, but hardly relevant in the construction of a House rule.  When changing rules, one should always strive for the realistic rather than the convenient.

Endurance also plays a factor in the longevity of a fighter by determining their health, though, as I already mentioned, along with the damage mitigation properties it brings. CYB is just the round-to-round extension of that.

Nathaniel Mason wrote: When changing rules, one should always strive for the realistic rather than the convenient.

I...profoundly disagree there, but I think that just comes down to game design philosophies, not so much this particular example. To me, when in doubt playability trumps realism, hands down.

I considered the point on endurance, but this element is on hold for now at least for the sake of simplicity and changing the rules as little as possible to be fair to existing PCs.

As for realism, hewing to the source material wins out hear, and knights occasionally break double digit lances against one another in the source material.

Thanks to all for ideas, polite discussion and this remains under review.

Reader wrote:I considered the point on endurance, but this element is on hold for now at least for the sake of simplicity and changing the rules as little as possible to be fair to existing PCs.

Fine by me. As it stands, the House rule as written will speed up Tourneys at the very least.

<Nathan wanders back to his skullduggery leaving the Knights to play with their sticks.>

Politics isn't really as important as being greatest stickman!

More seriously, having different folks putting a different emphasis on different elements (or using one to bolster the others) and storylines that weave one and out of each other is in line with the source.

I should hope this doesn't apply to jousts/tourneys already happening because this could potentially (very likely, I think) completely upend choices already made in earlier matches/passes.

Also, much more likely to result in injuries, so I think a gradual increase in stay in saddle TN's possibly should be considered.

Of course, a tentative ruling for the future.

In general, I'd argue for a more gradual decrease in difficulty level, since we do want the occasional Jon vs Forrest match-up to happen, and people will be likely start suffering wounds before we ever get that far. Lifting up Stay in Saddle TN's instead of slashing Passive Ride would remove the injury/wound problem, but may still make ten passes a near impossibility for anyone not Baelon/Theo/Jon/Aerion.

Also only an issue when Passive Ride of jouster A is very close to Passive Fighting (no specialties counting, but flat bonuses like TK should be added for sake of argument) of jouster B and vice versa, and the Ride dice pools are such that a TN9 is pretty trivial. Thus the house rule could be designed with characters with Fighting 5 and AH 4 and upwards in mind. But keeping an eye on what would happen to a match-up between KoQ if a pair of those should find themselves locked in epic tilting.

I should have the time to cook something together, have a look at the chance of things going to 10 matches given such and such conditions for example.

Nathaniel Mason wrote:CYB is extremely trivial IMO.  Even an Endurance 1 can make the Automatic (0) to remove 1 point of damage and even the most stout of warrior only removes a max of 4 damage on a roll of 15 (something that can be obtained with an Endurance of 3).  Better to have a CYB then not, I agree, but with the kind of damage being thrown around with lances, not really material to the overall joust.

For most jousters, you are absolutely correct. For top-level jousters you are quite wrong. Most lance hits are 10 or less damage per DoS. That means the only time actual damage is done is on a 2 DoS hit, or in the rare case like Aerion's where a top-tier jouster is in sub-par armor. Now, when 2 DOS hits are well outside the statistical norm, then CYB allows for recovery from one damage burst to the next. Without it, the second damaging hit would be a guaranteed injury(probably multiple). CYB plays a considerable role in reducing injuries in top-tier jousts.

Aerion Storm wrote:

Nathaniel Mason wrote: When changing rules, one should always strive for the realistic rather than the convenient.

I...profoundly disagree there, but I think that just comes down to game design philosophies, not so much this particular example.  To me, when in doubt playability trumps realism, hands down.

During an ongoing game like this, I prefer solutions that are least disruptive to existing characters. A new houserule should not, if possible, invalidate anyone's character. In general, I think it is a balancing act and the right balance point depends on the game.

I went to a panel on RPG mechanics once - it was Robert Schwalb of SIFRPG (though he was repping D&D), Jason Bulmahn of Pathfinder, and Monte Cook of... uncountable things. At one point they were asked what game mechanic they wished they had thought of, they all agreed that the best new mechanic since the advent of dice was the Jenga tower used in Dread. If you've ever played Dread, it's hard to disagree... it's a super simple resolution system, and creates the perfect kind of rising tension for a suspense-horror game. However, they also agreed that it wouldn't work for any other genre.

Theomore Tullison wrote:In general, I'd argue for a more gradual decrease in difficulty level, since we do want the occasional Jon vs Forrest match-up to happen, and people will be likely start suffering wounds before we ever get that far. Lifting up Stay in Saddle TN's instead of slashing Passive Ride would remove the injury/wound problem, but may still make ten passes a near impossibility for anyone not Baelon/Theo/Jon/Aerion.

I don't see an "injury/wound problem". Jousting is a dangerous sport. Theo of all people should know that accidents happen and people can get seriously hurt or killed.

Theomore Tullison wrote:Also only an issue when Passive Ride of jouster A is very close to Passive Fighting (no specialties counting, but flat bonuses like TK should be added for sake of argument) of jouster B and vice versa, and the Ride dice pools are such that a TN9 is pretty trivial. Thus the house rule could be designed with characters with Fighting 5 and AH 4 and upwards in mind. But keeping an eye on what would happen to a match-up between KoQ if a pair of those should find themselves locked in epic tilting.

You are right that this is an issue that only affects top-tier jousters. To follow through on that though... those KoQs you are worried about? They aren't likely to make it much past 3 rounds anyway - as you say, their fighting outstrips their Passive Ride fairly handily. They are going to be getting multiple DoS hits, even before any reductions kick in and are much more likely to fail even a TN 9 ride.

As proven by how quickly Ser Jorah went down against Lord Drakeson

"The injury/wound" problem primarily being that they'll remove the chance of something like 10 passes happening AND likely ensure that whoever wins out of evenly matched high tier jousters given the setup is so messed up that he might as well not bother doing the next round.

The drop in PR is such that 10 passes is unlikely, but it should be. It should be a notable achievement, not common place, even for top-tier jousters.

On the other side of things, I don't thing it's so drastic that winners will have to concede regularly... the fact of the matter is that as PRs slide up to the peak of the bell-curve, higher PR characters stay safer longer (by the odds, anyway). More than likely a Theo or Baelon will be be taking injuries before an Aerion, and then would have less capability to inflict injuries in return. Someone who is clearly losing can concede, too - no need to spitefully make every win a Pyrrhic victory.

Not to mention that typically your opponent in the next round would also have had to deal with such hardships... unless of course the tourney organizer is blatantly playing favorites, with favored jousters facing hedge knight after hedge knight while others start with KoQ or PCs.

Baelon Drakeson wrote:For most jousters, you are absolutely correct. For top-level jousters you are quite wrong. Most lance hits are 10 or less damage per DoS. That means the only time actual damage is done is on a 2 DoS hit, or in the rare case like Aerion's where a top-tier jouster is in sub-par armor. Now, when 2 DOS hits are well outside the statistical norm, then CYB allows for recovery from one damage burst to the next. Without it, the second damaging hit would be a guaranteed injury(probably multiple). CYB plays a considerable role in reducing injuries in top-tier jousts.

That's okay.  I'll take being absolutely correct most of the time.  

I'm not sure what you mean by 'top-level jousters' though.  Except for two more ranks AH, most of the PCs aren't generating any numbers better than your average Knight of Quality.  They would be rolling 9d6k4 the same as Theo.  Same armour.  Same Endurance.  They do 8 points of damage on a charge.  The only reason the PCs beat them so regularly is a Passive AH of 14, compared to the 22 that Theo is sporting.  Make a few actual Tourney Knight of Quality with an AH5 2b Ride, and these Jousts would probably go on forever.  Of course, they don't because the true top-level jousters in the Kingdom are on the level of Jaime Lannister, Loris Martell, the Mountain, etc.

Certainly I will concede that CYB is useful when both opponents seem to be closely matched like Baelon and Theo are, but an actual 'top level jouster' would clean both your clocks, and 3 or 4 HP a round would not make one bit of difference.  (In the many jousts we have run in our live game, CYB has not mattered very much at all at the top level.  Jaime just pulls out his 'I win' card.)

Top-tier jousters like top shelf alcohol. You can get it in most bars, but it's loads better than what gets scooped from the barrel.

And yeah that's the point I've been making all along - 2 points of AH makes a rather big difference in jousting performance. Much more so than Athletics in melee, for instance. 2 points of combat defense just do not compare to 8 points of passive ride.

Basing things off the campaign guide, AH 5 is Ser Barristan Selmy, Ser Jaime Lannister or Ser Loras Tyrell quality (ex Tourney knight - they're 4B/3B/2B respectively). This game has a similar benchmark - there are a few AH 5 characters kicking about, plus some with the Tourney Knight quality, but I'm trying to match the core campaign guide and keep this level of skill as something are fairly rare and special.

There are also a bunch of characters with Fighting 6 or just very high strength who can be dangerous.

Jaime Lannister, The Mountain and Barristan all do 13 Damage per DoS, Sandor does 12. Loras is top-tier but "only" does 10.

Facing Loras or someone else with 10 DoS, CYB will often safe you an injury or two over repeated passes.

Dropping the stay in saddle test results difficulty by 1 doesn't work well as it can be hard to even generate tests in certain matches.

The campaign guide would make for a horrible benchmark.

Theomore Tullison wrote:The campaign guide would make for a horrible benchmark.

Certainly the campaign guide has it's problems, but they are considered the 'top-tier' jousters of the time period and I have to assume that there would be similar analogs in this time period.

Yeah. Just looking at Loras' sheet, he is not taking the -1B for training die in Lance. The campaign guide is not very accurate.

As the lightest tourney damager, it looks like he should be rolling 12d6k5+2 (not including stance). That a mean of 27. So he would hit a pAH of 22 with 2DoS 50% of the time. His max potential of 3DoS about 2% of the time (off the top of my head).

Loras has a 22 pAH as well. It looks like Theomore and Baelon are keeping 4 without dailies, DP or other fancy tricks. Even with stances, it looks like 2DoS (27) is beyond either of their reach. Assuming Loras wins his coin toss, even if he doesn't get a lucky shot, it's a one sided battle.

I certainly can see that CYB would delay the inevitable, but I still contend it is ultimately irrelevant. It just means he takes slightly longer to defeat you. It doesn't change the outcome of the Joust in any way.

I only have the first campaign guide, so they must have updated them significantly...

Ser Loras with jousting stats identical to Theo... no, 1b more spears: 10d6k4+2 for 9 damage per DoS, 18 PR, 6d6k4 Stay in Saddle.
Barristan Selmy is identical, though with 5 endurance he'll last a lot longer.
Jaime is not quite as good, only having a 17PR but otherwise the same as Ser Loras.

Mainly because that book is basically: "Your reasonably built PC's will get utterly trounced by canon NPC's, have a nice day" sprinkled with occurrences of "We either do not know or do not care about the imbalances easily caused in the system " They gave almost everyone major stat boosts all across the board from the old to the new version.

As far as jousting goes, as opposed to general Combat, is that it really comes down to fighting vs passive ride. But that's just for the DoS, the odds of unhorsing happening goes down drastically at Animal Handling 4+, seeing that it serves the dual purpose of making you take less DoS and thus lower TN's, and higher dice pools making it easier to beat that TN. In the books, I think we get to see Jaime unhorsed, and general suggestions that unhorsing happens frequently enough when the bigger names face off, while in this system, it's not happening.

One way of portraying this effect could be to key the unhorsing TN's to the lowest Animal Handling Rank involved, so that for example, if the lowest AH rank is 4, then the TN's start at 12 instead of 9, that would address the problem we're looking at without causing undue consequences for KoQ, since I think the system works very well for people hanging around the KoQ-array as far as jousting stats goes. And we might want to see the better jousters unhorsing each other every now and then, neh?

Other option with same design goals could be diminishing returns of Passive Animal Handling, like rank 4 adding 3, rank 5 adds 2 and rank 6 adds 1 (with no gain for rank 7). That would turn the 12->16->20 progression into 12->15->17. Though that risks tilting things in favor of Fighting 6 NPC's that we'd like to see our PC's throw down from their pedestals, so..

I'm like 90% sure the issue with the Campaign Guide is something pretty common in the game industry, and that's started to really jump out at me since my own employers have started to do it, and that's "too many chefs." When you get, say, a half-dozen people working on a project, seams are going to show. Some chapters will be written by one person, some by another, and some NPCs -- and this is where I think the CG has the problem -- by different people will 'scale' very differently. Inconsistencies aren't as glaring as outright errors, either, so it's not always something an editor can catch.

Just my two cents.

Now, whether it's a perfect book or not, it can still give some useful guidelines, though.

Theomore Tullison wrote:
As far as jousting goes, as opposed to general Combat, is that it really comes down to fighting vs passive ride. But that's just for the DoS, the odds of unhorsing happening goes down drastically at Animal Handling 4+, seeing that it serves the dual purpose of making you take less DoS and thus lower TN's, and higher dice pools making it easier to beat that TN. In the books, I think we get to see Jaime unhorsed, and general suggestions that unhorsing happens frequently enough when the bigger names face off, while in this system, it's not happening.

Well, we use a contested AH(ride)+End(stamina) roll vs. the opponents Fighting roll rather than a flat TN.

Loras hits you with a 27 with his lance, you need a roll of 27 to stay in the saddle.  With a flat AH5 and End3 you have a good chance keeping your seat (45%), but it is in no way guaranteed.

Lower skilled lancers have a tough time unhorsing someone, but they have a tough time anyway.  We playtested this though several high end tournaments with the campaign NPCs.  Jaime, on average, got unhorsed about once in twelve tilts.  Not a high percentage, but significant compared to the alternative.

I like that approach. It is probably too much of a change for this game, but something I may borrow for future games ;-)

Conceptually I actually think that it should be against combat defense, but the offense toned down considerably - perhaps add Ride dice to mounted attack rolls as opposed to AH, and lower lance damage, too. I'd really have to play with it a lot to get it to balance right, though.

What's the benefit of a Superior shield? I'm seeing that several of our opponents in the melee have 'em, but -- assuming you're not shield bashing with them -- what's the upside to the additional expense?