D&D 3E/3.5 D&D 3.5e/Path Need some help maximizing leadership.

[Fooly_Cooly]

Hey guys. I know its a touchy subject but let me re assure you it is NOT for game breaking purposes. Im running a campaign that is a mixture of 3.5 and pathfinder. My party is lvl 7 and one of them just took the leadership feat. Now they have a size able slice of land and just spent 2 months building their keep etc. But now he wants to max his leadership because he knows that the 20 or so lvl 1's and 2 lvl2's arent going to stop the surrounding empires army from wiping them off the face of the planet. Now as a Dm I wasnt even thinking about doing that. I mean putting a territory ran by PC's up against an empire roman style that is the size of the untied states is obviously lop sided. But they all bring up the point that since they set up their territory in the empire and fight them on a regular basis that the empire would have valid reason. So can anyone help me out? I found extra cohort,Improved cohort,Extra followers,Great leader and thats pretty much it. Now those are all well and good but Im fairly sure there was an improved leadership feat somewhere and a few others. Or does anyone have any more advice for my players?

 

[Nomnath]

Usually, when you "cheese" leadership, you do so by chaining leadership feats, ie you have a royal guard of minions, your cohort has leadership & is the "general" with his own battalions, his cohort is a major w/ leadership and so on until cohort levels are too low to take leadership. It sounds like they can't really use diplomacy like most small territories can. The biggest issue i can see is the time it takes to get enough feats (leveling takes time).

Anyways, I suggest you look at heroes of battle, it explains running large wars and leading mass armies, leadership really isn't meant to be expanded past the squad level.

from HoB: there are the leader feats, that's where you get imp cohort & extra followers from.

to beef up your army, remember that you can buy hirelings and mercenaries w/ gold, they just won't be as loyal or effective as followers.

Also, remember that if it is a sizeable stretch of land; it should have people. Generate a reasonable amount of cities/villages as you feel needed, that should result in a couple dozen combat ready npc's that the players should be able to conscript. Leadership gives them (more or less) direct control over low level characters that they can cherrypick, but that doesn't mean they can't ask/order the residents of their land to fight, they could even create a standing peasant army if they're persuasive enough. They just don't end up w/ direct control. Maybe set it up so that the army would lose, but through special ops actions of the players and their elite squads (the followers from leadership), like cutting supply lines etc (see HoB) they survive.

Finally, traps are a great low power, fast, way to gain battlefield advantage (it worked for drizzt), terrain & clever use of mass attacks etc could allow a few to defeat many (once again see HoB for ideas, it's really great for this kind of things)

 

[Sekhmet]

PrC: Thrallherder
Thrallherder minions are Thrallherders.
Thrallherder's minion Thrallherder's are Thrallherder's.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

Every day, sacrifice all of your level 1-6 minions, which are replaced within 24 hours by nearby denizens (humanoid and nonhumanoid).
Suddenly, 10-20 thousand people are missing from the nearby cities every day.
A week later, no one is left to oppose you.

Baldur's Gate, the most notoriously difficult city to take in the entirety of the Forgotten Realms universe, gone in days, with no saving throw.