Your Opinion on the Men of the Lake Starting Weapon Skills

[Nebbiotto]

Hi everyone,
i tried looking on the forum but could not find anything about this.

I feel that when comparing the Bardings and Men of the Lake starting Weapon Skills, Cultural Virtues and Rewards something is odd...

The Bardings have Swordmaster as a cultural Virtue, in the description it speaks of the men of the lake and their longswords, but also have the Tower Shield as a Cultural Reward, their starting weapons skill have cultural swords or the Great Bow as favourite.

The Men of The Lake on the other hand have Shield Fighting as a Cultural Reward and starting weapon skill only for Sword as a favourite skill or Great Bows as a favourite skill.

They don't have the Longsword as a starting weapon.

Reading the description of the Swordmaster Virtue wouldn't make more sense if the Men of the Lake had Longswords as a starting skill set?

Or even just slightly change Starting weapon skill sets, with Bardings having Great Bow 2 or (Swords) 2 as starting skill set and the Men of the Lake having (Bows)* 2 or Longsword 2

*I changed this to keep similarity with other cultures and because of the Men of the Lake Cultural Virtue Bowman of the Guild as it speaks of Bows and Great Bows.

Maybe even swap Swordmaster with Shield-Fighting?

What are your feelings on this? Do you know if Francesco already said anything about this?

Thank you very much,
N.

[zedturtle]

You have to remember that when the rules were initially released, Bardings were intended to cover both Esgaroth and Dale. So you have to kind of think of the Men of the Lake culture as an extension or alternate version of the Bardings.

Past that, I haven't given it much thought, so I don't know...

[Falenthal]

Bardings having Great Bow 2 or (Swords) 2 as starting skill set and the Men of the Lake having (Bows)* 2 or Longsword 2

I think this could work and makes sense. I just feel that Lake-town people are eminently non-fighters (or at least less fighters than Bardings). Therefore, a simple Sword makes more sense than a martial Longsword.
Thinking it twice, I think that (without looking exactly at the Virtues/Rewards) the other way round could do more sense:
Bardings - (Bows) 2 / Longsword 2
Men of the Lake - (Swords) 2 / Great Bow 2

Bardings have knights and other kind of mounted soldiers in their ranks, so that Bows could be useful for them.
And Longswords can be used with shield (Tower Shield) or without (Swordmaster), so that the Virtues/Rewards could be kept as they are. Maybe the conditions of type of Bow could be revised for Fierce Shot, but nothing else I can see.

[Hermes Serpent]

The word 'knight' has connotations that do not resemble the 'facts'. Those 'knights' are mounted and, maybe mail armoured, horsemen more like a mounted fyrd than a force that holds land in right of a king in exchange for mounted service.

[Rich H]

Something I've only just noticed...

I do find it interesting that out of all the cultures Men of the Lake and Hobbits are the only ones that have the 'favoured weapon plus unflavoured weapon' format for the two options rather than 'favoured weapon or unfavoured weapon group plus an unfavoured weapon and dagger' format for the two options*. There's no option for Men of the Lake/Hobbits to pick a Weapon Group and they have to always specialise in a favoured weapon.

Does this point to them being reduced in their combat effectiveness? I think so as I can see the internal logic of the game world alluding to that (ie, proficiency in a whole group of weapons definitely points to a more martial background) but in game mechanic terms I think I'd pick a combat character to have favoured weapons, especially if they put +3 for Body on their Favoured Attribute as doesn't specialisation (favoured) point to a character that has concentrated and focussed on a particular weapon and trained in it more? Hmmmmm, food for thought.

* Even High Elves and Rangers get weapon group options although these are also coupled with favoured weapons too.