Is a ledger board required if the side of my house is wood?
Wood siding on a house is there for weather protection and looks, it has little structural strength. The ledger board is used to connect the patio cover beams to the internal structural members of the house walls for strength against wind shear forces and (possibly) snow loads that will want to pull your cover away from the house, spreading that force across as many internal structural members (studs) as possible. If you just attach the beams directly to the studs, you are attaching only to one stud and essentially concentrating the mechanical forces onto fewer points, increasing the stresses they will see. If they fail, it becomes major damage to your house walls.