Come on people. If you don't like the idea, ignore it, or take the time to think out why the idea is bad and explain it to the OP. All that's happened here so to make the OP defensive and fill a thread with crap. I don't think this is a very good idea either, but I'm going to say WHY.
You want to protect newbies from the ‘demi-gods’, but there are no demi-gods in this game. There is a great deal of forum hype and rumors spread by posters who would rather complain than try to play on the same level, but the fact is, it’s not as easy to raid as many people like to pretend it is. Look at this recently posted video:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5661#p65708
The brazier coverage is brutal but look at how many people are there. Mute the goofy music and look at how the raiders move. Do you see the coordination and lack of mistakes? This obviously took a great deal of hard work and practice to be able to pull off. And this is a whole group against one hermit. Claim defense is overpowered enough.
The intent behind your suggestion is to make it safer for new players? It won’t end up working that way. Right now, new players don’t have a chance at real resistance, it’s true. But, they also don’t have much worth taking, for the most part. A raider might break into their claim if they have a bunch of chests and such sitting around and rifle through looking for iron and other valuables, but newbies really are fairly safe, especially if they either make nice to the more powerful factions or just use what they get instead of hoarding it. Newbies are probably in the most danger when meeting someone in the wild, which is something your idea doesn’t address.
Having a ‘claim defense’ skill won’t really help small hermits. It’ll give a claim owner a false sense of security knowing he can get a huge buff to blood and yb, but an experienced player can best an inexperienced one no matter what the humors are. Your idea is more likely to get new players’ mains killed, when what they should be doing is learning to just port to boston or log off when it becomes clear they’re being raided in order to SAVE their mains for rebuilding.
Experienced players, on the other hand, ones who already know combat and how to create alts, will take full advantage of this. Imagine an experienced player with a combat alt, a main farming alt, and a ‘claim owner’ alt. The claim owning alt has learned your skill, been outfitted with the best gear the player can afford, and buffed up in humors already. The player also has combat experience. Raiders come along, the claim owner alt recieves a further boost to abilities and becomes a terror to the raiders who not only have to work hard to get into the very well defended claim of this advanced player, but also have this extra problem of a super-defender. You end up with a situation where a huge group of advanced raiders cannot overpower a single player in an opposing faction. The tribe, for one, would become effectively unstoppable because you know they’d make their best fighter the claim owner of any important pclaims they have. I’m sure the same is true of the factions on roanoke and jamestown.
TL;DR: This idea would make it even easier for experienced factions like the tribe to defend themselves and stay on the top of the heap. It would be bad for new players as it would encourage them to risk their only character by giving them a false sense of security thinking they can survive combat when they can’t because they don’t know what they’re doing.