Hello everyone!

We are playing for some time now, at happened that the manor of my knight has been raided by Saxon, while he was away.
So he decided to rebuild what was burned down and build a Ditch&Rampart with moat improvement to prevent kinds like that to happen again.
What is the effect of that fortification during the winter phase when the lands may be raided? Does it prevents a manor from being raided?

We could not find any clear rule on the books.
What do you all think?

My humble opinion is that a raiding force may choose to move forward to a more easier pray, so that in the winter phase you may benefit from the investments, not only in terms of annual glory 1 point, by the way, which is balanced by the maintenance costs 1£.
Thanks you all already for your wisdom!

If you have the Book of the Manor, the effects of fortifications are explained on page 42 in the sidebar.

To sum it up, the knight can subtract the DV of the fortications from the d20 roll on the destruction table witha successful s Seige roll. So the fortifications do reduce the effects on the raids as far as damage is concerned.

But to get the benefits of fortifcations, the must be manned by at least 5 porfessional soliders. Otherwise the attackers can bypass the fortifcations without much difficulty (knock down or clime over a palisidade, throw a log across the ditch, etc.).


Note that this does not reduce the effects of rading to the fate/harvest roll, as the raiders will strike loot and pillage from the parts of the fief that are not defended. However, if the knight is at home during the raid, he can fight off the radiers, reducing both the property destruction and fate rolls by 1d6.



If you don't use the Book of the Manor, then the simple answer is that fortifcations don't reduce the effects of the raid, but you could allow the knight to fight off the raiders and reduce the effect of the raid by 1d6. (turning the +1d6 for being raided to +1d6-1d6, min. zero).

Well, even if your answer sounds good... that means also that fortification are not so a good investment at all. They cost to be build, they do not protect your manor so much if the knight is not there, they cost you the professional soldiers 5£ to be manned plus 1£ for maintenance, which means that you must have a real productive fief to consider to fortify it.

All that is true, but still, they will be built by those who can afford them.

Yeah that is mostly true. Its also why most manor houses were not heavily fortified. If if was cheap then all the manors would be fortified and defended and raiding would become impractical

Just to clarify, having the knight there or not doesn't make a difference as far as the DV is concerned. A knight can repel raiders with or without fortifications. The effects of the DV apply as long as there are defenders-even if the knight is absent. Since Siege is a skill practiced by the fair sex, chances are the knight's wife can defend the manor house as well (if not better) as the knight can-women start with a higher skill!



A few benefits to fortifications:

-The earn you glory. Usually not a lot, but after the initial investment the annual award is better than the maintenance cost. A ditch & rampart with moat costs 7L to build, but only 1L to maintain. Since it has a DV of 4, paying 1L for 4 glory each year isn't a bad deal, even if you can't adequately man the defenses.

-You can hire mercs or other defenders on a temp basis. While this won't help much with surprise raids, it does help quite a bit if you know that trouble is coming, like when you told the Saxons where to stick their demands for tribute. Ideally, you only want to man the defenses when they are needed, although working out just when that will be, is the tricky part.

-The fortified manor is great if you have some treasures you want to protect. Better to have a bad harvest or two than to loose your spare suit of partial plate, those imported tapestries, that goose that lays golden eggs, or the 40L in roman coin you got tucked away. Think of it in modern day terms, thieves usually will go for the easy to grab items, rather than taking the time and effort it takes to break into someplace that's got guards, gates and other defenses.

-You do need a real productive fief or multiple manors (courtesy of the ol' marriage table), or have some spare L and be willing to run at a loss for a bit.

.

The only player I know who built things like this are when they are in a good position with some nice income and it really became their main stronghold.

You can build loads of defences but unless you have the coin to pay for men to man the walls they are pretty useless any fort, castle etc are costly to run.

My group started building fortifications after getting plunder and ransoms from the battles. The fact that one knight had 30L in coin from the Luck Table contributed to this too.

There was a sudden "building spree" and when it was over a few of the PCs could indeed afford to hire defenders. In actual play they have so far opted not to in order to live as Superlative Knights, primarily to insure the survival of their sons to maturity.

I know hat they are planning on being able to afford defenders and live superlatively in a few years, but they have no idea of what is in store for them in the Anarchy period. Between tribute and manorial luck, they will be fortunate to keep what they have, let along improve upon it.