House Rules and Homebrew [Consult for Character and House]
Character Creation
Status
Increasing status is only ever a 10 XP expenditure, but must be justified by existing benefits and House Influence where appropriate.
Tourney Knight justifies a status of at least 3.
Anointed and Maester, and the Priest wealth Holding, will justify a status of 4.
Landed, Heir, and Head of House will justify a status determined by the House's influence.
Secondary heirs will have a status higher than 2 only if Influence is invested as a House Resource.
When a character loses the influence or benefit that justifies their status, they immediately take a -D penalty to bring them down to their "new" status. This is automatically removed when the influence is restored, and XP invested is not lost.
Other Abilities
Increasing any other ability to a rank of 5 or higher requires 50 XP, rather than 30, in addition to the other requirements for raising an ability [time, a sufficiently expert trainer].
Increasing any other ability to a 3 requires 10 XP, whether done at or after creation,
Characters may not drop an ability to 1 for bonus xp - this is accounted for already in the rules with the various drawbacks that impose a -1D on abilities, such as Flaw.
Modifications to Benefits:
Sponsor - If your Sponsor is Landed or possesses the Head of House benefit, you may make use of their wealth holdings for personal purchases [castle forged weapons, cheaper mounts, hounds, bonuses to intrigue, or healing etc]. If you also have the Head of House of Landed benefit, then 1 Unit of your house may also make use of this benefit.
Expertise may not be selected for the following abilities: Fighting, Marksmanship, Persuasion, Deception, Warfare, as Expertise in these abilities is already accounted for by other benefits.
In addition to their existing benefits, both Landed and Heir will confer a +1 bonus to all status checks.
House Fortunes
Vassal and Banner Houses provide their benefit to House fortunes only if their own House fortunes modifier is positive.
When at war, each unit of troops raised imposes a -1 penalty on the House Fortunes Roll. Where this forces a vassal house into a negative modifier, their liege no longer receives the +1D benefit for their Vassal's allegiance.
Those houses subject to the taxation of House Durrandon receive a -1 penalty to Wealth gains from House Fortunes, and -1 penalty to losses to Wealth from House Fortunes.
New House Actions -
Shared Venture
When a Liege house rolls for house fortunes, if their vassal is providing a +1D benefit, they may choose to forego that benefit. The outcome of the House Fortunes roll, whether positive or negative, applies in full to the Vassal House as well.
Raise Levies
This house action may be combined with the wage war house action.
For each separate land holding that the House owns, it immediately recruits and raises 1 green peasant levies. Reduce the house's population by a total of 2, and its Law by 1. Increase the house's power by 1 [already invested in the levies] for each unit of levies raised in this way.
House Holdings
The Out of Strife Prosperity Supplement is in use for determining available Holdings, and the stacking of bonuses for House Fortunes and Increasing Resources.
Influence
Maximum Status is identified on page [107]
A Male Heir with 20 Influence Investment has the same status as a lord of that house.
A Second son or firstborn daughter has One less influence than a head of house and is an investment of [10]
Other sibling have the Lord's status -2, or of 3, whichever is higher, so long as [5] Influence is invested in their rank].
Power
Veteran and Elite units may not be directly purchased with Power [except for mercenary units]. Instead, units can become Veteran or Elite as a result of the casualties table after a battle.
Cavalry units are considered to be composed of 50 men and horses, rather than 20. Cavalry use their mounts athletics and endurance[4] in place of their own when mounted. However they suffer a -1D penalty to endurance to reflect their smaller numbers, resulting in an effective endurance of 3 or 1 when mounted or dismounted respectively.
Peasant levies can be deployed as their own unit, as normal. Alternatively, they can be deployed as an upgrade to an existing unit that is neither cavalry or ships. The original unit receives +1 Athletics and +6 HP. However, once the original unit takes 6 points of damage, the bonus to athletics is lost, and the peasant levies are considered to be routed from the battlefield for the purpose of casualties.
Equipment and Combat
The Armour Penalty that applies to Combat defence is capped at -3. Penalties of -4 and higher apply to Agility, Stealth, etc. but remain capped at -3 for Combat Defence.
The penalty for being prone is a +1B for fighting checks made against you, not +1D.
Prone individuals cannot move more than 1 Yard as a move action and cannot sprint.
Intrigue
The influence damage done by the charm technique is based on Language, not Persuasion.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:15, Sun 18 Oct 2020.