Step 1: Choose a Target

Decide where you want to raid. Is it the neighboring manor? A Saxon-occupied city? Or even a daring raid to the mainland?

Step 2: Determine Target’s Difficulty

Difficulty is an abstract measure of the target’s distance and how vulnerable they are. And because it includes distance, the difficulty will determine the duration of the incursion.

Difficulty	Examples	Duration
Easy	A neighboring manor, farmland in the adjacent county, an unguarded road within 30 miles, etc.	1 week
Average	Farmland up to three counties away, a lightly fortified manor, a guarded trade road, a village within 100 miles	3 weeks
Hard	Fortified cities, small castles, land farther than 100 miles away	6 weeks

Duration includes planning, travel time, and the battle itself. The summer raiding season is limited, as is the military obligation of vassal knights, so typically only one incursion can be made per year. Duration is also important when determining your knight’s stewardship (BotM, pg.42) or if he’s there to defend his manor against people raiding him (BotM, pg. 42). It also determines how much you’ll have to pay your mercenaries.

Step 3: Choose your Personnel

The more personnel you bring with you, the safer you’ll be and the more loot you’ll gain.
The minimum number of personnel needed for an incursion:

Incursion Size	Knights	Lineage Men	Levy
Raid	1	3	30
Pillage	10	30	300
Plunder	50	150	1,500

Knights: this is typically player characters and their family knights, who lead and plan the attack, with the ability to fight other encountered knights.

Lineage Men: knight’s brothers and cousins trained to intimidate and fight the commoners.

Levy: manor personnel used to drive the stolen cattle & sheep, ride the wagons, feed the troops and limited fighting.

Step 4: Determine Casualties

Determine the casualties your personnel take when you attack your target. Your leader makes an unopposed skill check (based on the incursion size), modified by the Target’s Difficulty.

Skill Check

• Raid: The leader rolls the higher of his Battle or Hunting skill. Check Vengeful.
• Pillage: The leader rolls the higher of his Battle or Siege skill. Check Selfish.
• Plunder: The leader rolls the lower of his Battle or Siege skill. Check Cruel.

Skill Check Modifiers for Target’s Difficulty

• Easy: +0
• Average: -5
• Hard: -10

The results of your skill check (above) will determine the Raid Casualties for each category of personnel. If you end up with more casualties than you have men in that category, excess casualties must come from another category (player’s choice).

Raid Casualties Results

Skill Check	Knights	Lineage Men	Levy
Critical	–	–	–
Success	–	–	1d6
Failure	1	1d2	1d20
Fumble	1d2	1d6	3d20

For Pillage: multiply rolled casualty results for Knights and Lineage Men by 10
For Plunder: multiply rolled casualty results for Knights and Lineage Men by 50

Any time a Player Character is determined to be a casualty he instead goes into a normal melee combat (played out in rounds) against his opponent. Based on your target (e.g. Saxons, Brits), use a typical opponent from the Book of Armies (or from the KAP rulebook).

Step 5: Determine Loot

The incursions’ Reward is based on the same skill check your leader made in step 4 (don’t roll twice). The results are the net Libra in looted goods each knight will receive. Payment to your personnel (lineage men and levy, but not mercenaries) and supplies for the incursion (food, wagons, etc.) has already been deducted from this amount.

Incursion Level	Easy	Average	Hard
Raid	£1d6	£1d6+3	£1d6+5
Pillage	£2d6	£2d6+6	£2d6+12
Plunder	£3d6	£3d6+10	£3d6+20

Note: in addition to possible retaliation, raided enemies will start to put up defenses against return incursions. Each year of raiding the same target causes their difficulty level to increase one step. Each year you don’t raid that enemy, the difficulty return’s to the previous year’s step.