Monthly Challenge #1: The Band of Knights-Errant

[Santo]

Good day everyone! I'd like to welcome you to our brand new Monthly Challenges, a community thing I've wanted to do for some time now. Battle Brothers is almost literally an endless game -- you can play it for hundreds and thousands of hours without running out of things to do. Even so, at some moments some players might feel they are running out of challenges or ideas -- or might want to experiment with the limits of the game. That's why I thought of this idea. Roughly once per month, I will post here an open challenge. It can be a specific battle (for which I would share an edited savefile that you can download and use) or an idea for roleplaying a new campaign, like this one. Some will be harder than others, but there is no winning or losing these challenges -- it's just for fun (and, at most, bragging rights if it's something particularly difficult).

Just to be transparent, the devs aren't designing these challenges, so any problems in balancing or difficulty or whatever are absolutely on me -- and nothing I write here is canon or a hint of future official content. Also, I want to thank @Turtle225, @JCSato and @Abel, who have very kindly given me feedback and/or created tools to help me design this stuff.

All this said, let's start with the first challenge, something fun and light for you to play over this Christmas -- let's play Knight-Errant! I invite you to post your optional rules, headcannon and stories from your run in this same thread.

[Santo]

Monthly Challenge: the Knights of the Valiant Order

Where you play as a band of knight-errands, set on a quest to protect the innocent and smite Evil wherever it can be found

Rules

Economic Difficulty: Expert (knowing you are of noble origin, vendors will try to squeeze extra coin from you)
Starting Funds: High (you are noble after all!)
Combat Difficulty: we recommend Expert for a more exciting challenge, but up to you!

Starting bros: 3 adventurous nobles (you can download a save here[we.tl], pr BB-Edit the initial bros yourself if you prefer to use your own seed. I picked the seed for this one from this thread).
The Round Table: You can only hire highborn backgrounds (Adventurous Nobles, Disowned Nobles, Bastards, Hedge Knights), plus Squires, Minstrels and Historians (for singing their mighty deeds) and Monks (for the wellbeing of their souls).
Chivalric code: Your goal is to protect the innocent and weak. You cannot accept raiding contracts nor take part in quarrels between nobles (no escorting spies or plundering other nobles’ lands). In the event of a Noble War, you can only take part in defending peasants against nobles’ armies.
Not in this for the money. You cannot haggle for better pay when accepting a contract. You do need money for your adventures, but you’re not in this to get rich but for honor and glory, and knights are supposed to be generous.

Looking for an extra challenge? If you want a harder version of this roleplay, follow the Commandments of Chivalry: on top of defending the weak and innocent, once engaged in combat you cannot flee from an enemy (as it would be dishonorable), and if a Holy War begins, you have to fight for the North. You can also make Fortified Mind a compulsory perk (because your knights have to be the bravest and noblest of all) and forbid Ranged weapons (because it's dishonorable to attack an enemy from afar instead of facing them in single combat).

How do you “win” this scenario? You can play this just as any other origin and retire whenever you feel you’ve “beaten” the game. However, thematically you shouldn’t retire before reaching at least one of these conditions:

Reaching “Legendary” renown (you got the everlasting glory you were searching –
now you can go back home as a hero)
Beating at least one of the hardest legendary locations (you wanted to defeat Evil, after all – what better way than clearing the Black Monolith, the Sunken Library or the Goblin City!)

Background

As a highborn, you’ve lived a life of luxury and comfort, destined by birthright to rule over the lesser men. You spent your childhood mastering the blade in the training hall, and your youth commanding your father’s troops in campaigns of conquest. But you always dreamed of more: of a higher cause than the petty squabbles of the nobility; of honor and glory, like the stories of the knights of old. After being severely injured on the battlefield facing another noble’s scion, just like you, you came back home and decided enough was enough. You convinced three of your childhood friends, sons of other noble houses, to join you with promises of everlasting glory. You left your rooms in the middle of the night, grabbed whatever gear you could raid from the armory, saddled your horse up, and set to the roads to become knight-errands, protect the weak and the innocent, and fight against the many Evils that beset the land.

[Sebslocker]

Sweet. But this could take a while. Is it ironman?

[The Duck Knight]

I suggest to add the "Sir Robin" rule:
One of the knights has to be Sir Robin.

-Sir Robin is not afraid at all, so his resolve must be raised every level up and he needs to get fortified mind as soon as possible
- Sir Robin is not afraid to be mashed into a pulp, or to have his eyes gouged out, And his elbows broken, To have his kneecaps split, And his body burned away, And his limbs all hacked and mangled so he must always take part in the fighting and can't stay in reserve
- But when danger shows it ugly head, instead of fighting, Sir Robin only shat himself, so Sir Robin is not allowed to do any kind of damage. Ever.
- Swiftly taking to his feet, Sir Robin beat a very Brave retreat, so If Sir Robin is the last Brother alive on your side of the fight he NEEDS to retreat at all costs
and obviously:
- Since Sir Robin is not afraid to have his head smashed in and his heart cut out
and his liver removed and his bowls unplugged
and his nostrils raped and his bottom burnt off he won't allow himself to not be avaible so: If Sir Robin somehow manages to die he will be replaced by a new Sir Robin (add title "The second/third/etc) to take his place from the Nobles you got left after the fight.
- Sir Robin is the bravest of the brave so equiping a weapon with range above 1 is not an option )so, no he won't be your bannercarrier or stand around in the back with a whip for disarm only.


Now go out there and tell tales of the great deed brave Sir Robin did.

[Santo]

Funny enough, there *is* a Sir Robin in the edited savefile xDDD

[The Duck Knight]

Originally posted by Santo:

Funny enough, there *is* a Sir Robin in the edited savefile xDDD

See? Brave Sir Robin is not afraid to be go out there and seek legends.

[Santo]

@Sebslocker: no Ironman unless you want to impose it on yourself ;)

[Scathe]

hmm, this sounds like an interesting premise, not sure if I'll play this one or not, but, I do have some thoughts on The Duck Knight's rule:

no replacing a dead sir robin with a new sir robin who is above level 1, so that you can't cheese your way around the resolve rule.

bonus retirement objective: get at least 7 sir robins to level 7 before they die, and reach at least sir robin the 21st

[turtle225]

I'm not sure what this Sir Robin reference is supposed to be...

I'm going to try and limit myself to Noble gear (within reason).

[Santo]

The reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYFefppqEtE

[Hairy Coo]

Originally posted by The Duck Knight:

I suggest to add the "Sir Robin" rule:
One of the knights has to be Sir Robin.

-Sir Robin is not afraid at all, so his resolve must be raised every level up and he needs to get fortified mind as soon as possible
- Sir Robin is not afraid to be mashed into a pulp, or to have his eyes gouged out, And his elbows broken, To have his kneecaps split, And his body burned away, And his limbs all hacked and mangled so he must always take part in the fighting and can't stay in reserve
- But when danger shows it ugly head, instead of fighting, Sir Robin only shat himself, so Sir Robin is not allowed to do any kind of damage. Ever.
- Swiftly taking to his feet, Sir Robin beat a very Brave retreat, so If Sir Robin is the last Brother alive on your side of the fight he NEEDS to retreat at all costs
and obviously:
- Since Sir Robin is not afraid to have his head smashed in and his heart cut out
and his liver removed and his bowls unplugged
and his nostrils raped and his bottom burnt off he won't allow himself to not be avaible so: If Sir Robin somehow manages to die he will be replaced by a new Sir Robin (add title "The second/third/etc) to take his place from the Nobles you got left after the fight.
- Sir Robin is the bravest of the brave so equiping a weapon with range above 1 is not an option )so, no he won't be your bannercarrier or stand around in the back with a whip for disarm only.


Now go out there and tell tales of the great deed brave Sir Robin did.

Actually according to this rule Sir Robin will make a solid Indom/Taunt tank.

[Hairy Coo]

Santo, any rules on trading? Is it RP to trade goods with this party?

[Santo]

To be honest, I hadn't even thought of it -- I'm not much of a trader myself! But I think you can apply the Not in this for the money rule by extension -- trade doesn't fit the theme!

[Heron]

He, I started something quite similar a few weeks ago. Named them The Bloodlines. They vanquished trying to take a Sea of Tents on day 40.

I would allow multiple servants and one jester in the company for thematic reasons.^^

[Hairy Coo]

Originally posted by Santo:

To be honest, I hadn't even thought of it -- I'm not much of a trader myself! But I think you can apply the Not in this for the money rule by extension -- trade doesn't fit the theme!

And how about using things like nets, bombs, whips? Too dishonorable? ;)

[Santo]

You decide! If you think the basic rules are too easy, impose as many honor rules as you want ;) If you ask my opinion, whips are melee weapons anyway, and bombs and nets aren't as widely used as arrows so I would allow them.