[Quick Review] Steadings & Followers

For those players and gamemasters interested in a quick and easy system for building settlements then I would take a look at Sibling Dex's Steadings & Followers supplement for Dragonbane. Looks like a nice system for building out your local village/township, regardless of what rules system you use, and is available for free from here.

That said, I do like those systems that don't just build a settlement but also provide explicit benefits for the lord (presumably the player) investing in the settlement. Examples of these include:

• The Book of the Manor for Pendragon which provides the character with bonus checks during the Winter Phase based on what they add to their manor, improve income, and the loyalty of their peasants. For example buidling a Hunting Lodge on your lands earns you a free check of the Hunting skill each Winter Phase.
• Houses of the Blooded which provides the players with free checks based on what is built. For example building a brewery can give the players free Courage checks.
• The Dawnline which allows the player vampires to update and improve the human village they are sheparding through the predawn. Such as a Butchers Rack that allows the village to trade Distance for Sustenance (too much time spent may mean the Dawn catches up to everyone), or a Cartographer's Wagon that gives bonus Distance moved each downtime phase.

Beyond, of course, having local craftsmen available at need.

Armour Absorption in MyD&D

One of my big problems with D&D is that artificial armour is simply not as effective as it was in history.

One way to improve this is to allow armour to negate a certain amount of damage. Now there are a number of ways to do this. Many games, including Runequest for example, just absorb a fixed amount of damage. Dragon Warriors has a novel systems where weapons do a fixed amount of damage, but have an Armour Bypass Roll that must be tested against the armour worn to do that damage. But my favourite comes from an old article in Alarums & Excursions (whose author I have unfortunately forgotten) that uses random damage absorption.

Armour Worn	Damage Absorbed
Padded	d2
Leather	d4
Studded Leather/Ringmail	d6
Chainmail	d8
Splint/Banded	d10
Plate	d12

Magic armours get to add their magical bonus to the effect.

Chivalric weapons, which are designed to be swung with great force in order to defeat armoured opponents, halve the damage absorption (round down), but at the cost of striking last in the round (unless they also have reach).

Note that all this is in addition to the normal penalty to hit the target due to AC.

This does help greatly improve a fighter's power, and is invaluable in one-on-one adventuring games. The only problem is that you now need to go through your Manual of Monsters and determine what component of the creature's AC is due to armour that is worn, and what component is due to speed and magic (or whatever other factors might apply). I do like the variability this system provides in that you can generally rely on armour, but it's not always completely predictable and a lucky shot might make it through a gap.