Leadership x4?

[jgsugden]

wraith, that's a strange perspective. If someone takes point blank shot as a feat, do you specifically introduce creatures with immunity to ranged attacks? If they take spell focus: enchantment, do you load up on the creatures immune to mind-affecting attacks? Do you respond to the extra turning feat by eliminating undead from your game?

Why penalize a player for taking a particular feat? Any feat the PC takes ought to help them meet the game's challenges; it's generally bad form to design challenges specifically to negate a PC's abilities.

DM priority #1: Keep the game fun for everyone.

If an unbalancingly powerful feat is introduced into the game (leadership), the DM must do things to return balance. Why?

Imbalance ruins the game for most players. Each player wants their PC to do 'important' stuff. They want to feel like they made a difference in the game. They want a shot at taking down the big bad guy. They want to negotiate the agreement that stops the war. They want to find the Staff of Mum-Ra. They want to do something cool.

If one player is doing a disproportionate amount of this stuff, the rest of the players feel englected. This can happen because that player's PC is too powerful. If that PC can, and does, everything that the other PCs can do, it makes the game less fun for the other PCs.

This is a very general statement that will not apply to all games, but it does apply to a strong majority of them. Leadership, unless well run, will likely cause imbalances and lead to a decrease in fun for most players.

 

[MarauderX]

The thing I worry about most is players using the followers as an 'instant' anything: Instant town, instant army, instant builders, instant merchant caravan, instant scouts, instant boot-polishers, whatever. I think most players know where the boundries lie, i.e. not bringing them through a dangerous adventure, but with some story lines the PCs are the ones being hunted. They feel like taking the feat to bolster their defenses/scouts and take a defensive position at some abandoned town with their vast amount of loyal followers to start a new city and wait for the BBEG to come get them.

What about logistically gaining the followers? Marching into a big city may be the best way to explain it, but with PCs on the run it may be the last place they go to recruit. Not only that, but what kind of skills should the PCs expect? If they have 100 followers they get to run, they will want 1 follower skilled as a merchant, a few at armorsmith, one for engineering, a few more for weaponsmith, etc. With those advantages an abandoned town could be resurrected quickly with some walls and towers to hold out invaders, which is exactly what they will want. Give it to them?? Sorting through that whole mess during gameplay will be, well, annoying. Working up a spreadsheet in the off-days is what would have to happen, with some planning of what the followers are doing when, and how much it's gonna cost and such will have to wait until after each session.

Now the fun part is perhaps a few of the followers are moles, sent to spy and sabotage the PCs efforts. Having a mystery like that among the vast amount of followers would bring that drawback to the feat and make the players realize there is more to playing leader than telling peons what to do.

 

[wraith8]

Bah, strange perspective?
I wouldn't make a fight where all cohorts are useless, but a fight that mixes it up and trys to make characters rely on their teamates rather than their cohorts always. Other battles like making certain cohorts only helpful to certain characters is also fun.
For Example: 4 players and 4 cohorts are together, all of a suddent they take a step and they fall into a trap door. Each cohort ends up with a different player than usual..... You try and make it fair so some cohorts that cant help players don't go together but otherwise, it makes things interesting. A cleric helping a cleric instead of helping a fighter still is interesting if played right.....

Leadership is IMO the most powerful feat in the game, and if everyone takes it, it can make playing with other players not worth it. Whatas the point of teamwork when you only need you and your cohort?

having fights with groups of monsters slightly harder than normal (like cr say, 18 instead of 15 in a 4players with 4 cohorts situation) is not unbalenced and adding certain things to null a few cohorts and a few players in a normal battle (say 2 players and 2 cohorts of different players) makes things interesting and fun and keeps up the strategy in the game.

If one person only takes leadership, this isn't necessary. But when everyone does....

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Actually, there's an easy fix to that, IMO: simply rule that Cohorts who take Leadership stop being able to beCohorts at all; the nature of being a Leader is that you're noone's lap-dog.

Yeah, I know. I thought of that about a day afterwards, but I am still a fairly (read: VERY) inexperienced DM, and I'd had to reverse several (read: MANY) decisions previously. That's why I was so relieved when the campaign ended; all my bad decisions went away and I could start over with a clean slate, so to speak.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Actually, there's an easy fix to that, IMO: simply rule that Cohorts who take Leadership stop being able to beCohorts at all; the nature of being a Leader is that you're noone's lap-dog.

Yeah, I know. I thought of that about a day afterwards, but I am still a fairly (read: VERY) inexperienced DM, and I'd had to reverse several (read: MANY) decisions previously. That's why I was so relieved when the campaign ended; all my bad decisions went away and I could start over with a clean slate, so to speak.

 

[Pax]

First rule of being a new DM: admit it, and warn people that you may have to reverse decisions after the fact ... while promising to work with the players to keep thigns as fair as possible. For example, say you say "yeah you can take leadership" ... and after four weeks of play, it turns out the Cohort is throwing EVERYthing else off-kilter; go ahead and reverse yourself, with no regrets.

Just be cool, let the player pick somethign else -- or even KEEP the leadership, but set it up differently; perhaps make him become co-owner of a nice Inn-and-tavern, and the "cohort" is the innkeeper who lives there and operates it. That's a useful non-aventuring cohort, and a decent "status perk" for the PC, to replace the power-perk of the old-style leadership. A reasonable player should be okay with this, especially since you've demonstrated a willigness to TRY questionable stuff out before ruling it out entirely. ^_^

 

[BSF]

First of all, Followers are not Fanatics. For that matter, Cohorts usually aren't either. But, there is no reason why a player shouldn't have to work to recruit all of those followers. You don't take the feat and they appear on your doorstep the next day.

I tend to see followers as loyal serfs/yeoman in a feudal society. They make a good basis for a village or a town. They can be the backbone of the town so that everyone keeps working toward the good of the Lord (The PC). New people may move into the town and it grows in prosperity, but the new residents won't have the same loyalty. Over time, some followers will die, others will fill their place. Maybe the local smith dies in an accident. The PC now has a free follower slot. But, if the PC want the smith's son to take his father's place, including the loyalty, the PC had better work toward it. C'mon, at least show up at the smith's funeral and offer your condolences to the family. Offer a break in the taxes until the family get's business rolling again. Do the things that make your followers like you!

Followers do not represent free labor. Followers do not represent undying fanatacism. Followers represent common people that admire and have loyalty to somebody that might otherwise appear to be another sword/wand/fist waving mercenary. They give a PC credibility. They look out for the PC's interests within their capability.

Old Farmer Joe might come up to the manor house one day. He was out tillin' his fields and this here rough lookin' young'un with a sword stopped by and was askin' questions. Seemed kinda mad at you fer sumthin. Anyway, he took off down the road and disappeared into the trees a little ways off. I know ye gots your own business, but you done right by me when you kept those goblins from messin' up my barn. And you had your cleric friend stop by that one winter when I broke my leg. Your a good guy and I like havin' you as the lord here in these parts. So, maybe it ain't nuthin' to worry about, but if that feller came lookin' fer you and I didn't tell you, I just wouldn't feel right about it.

Old Farmer Joe didn't demand that the ruffian leave. He didn't ask too many questions. He wouldn't rush out and attack the guy. Why? Because he is, essentially, a commoner. It isn't in his capability to do that. If it was, he wouldn't be farming. But, he has loyalty. Something that no good leader will undervalue. While others might have shrugged off the encounter and gone about their business, Old Farmer Joe felt like he needed to warn the PC of a possible threat. The PC has a loyal follower, that is adding to his coffers a little each year. You have a story element and a plot delivery device.

Of course, when the PC decides that he wants to capture a new castle and move his town, Old Farmer Joe might not want to go. Why? Because he already has a home, and a family. Why would he want to move? Maybe some followers would move, but the PC will have to setup his new keep and start making friends with the locals to "refill" his allotment of followers over the next few seasons.

I'm sure this is not how Players would like to see followers being used. They would probably prefer a loyal encampment that is willing to do anything for the PC at the drop of a hat. But, that is not what the feat says you get. And in my game, that's not what you end up with.

 

[clark411]

Although it is tempting to get into a cut-n-paste quote discussion, I'll pass in the interest of not getting solidly off topic. Instead, I'll opt to address what I'm reading as a whole, in the interests of professing my opinion rather than nipping at what I disagree with in the hopes of clarifying my position AND addressing what I would in the process of cutting and pasting.

The core problem that I addressed was allowing players to design their followers for battle. It hit upon several things that I dislike coming into a campaign, the first being a decline of realism (both as 120 identical people show up, identically equipped, with the same skillsets and absolute devotion to die for their PC leaders vs even the strangest of things) and second a degree of munchiness that can theoretically ruin a good number of otherwise challenging encounters. Despite the fact that many challenges, if not most of the challenges of higher level play can wipe out a follower horde, that does not change the fact that random ones properly ranged in grasslands / aerial combat may very likely perish to upwards of 60 damage dice in the first round of initiative (from followers alone) if that encounter fails to eliminate all hundred of minions.

Later, I brought up issue with addressing this problem with an opponent crafted with the primary purpose of wiping it out. This time, my problems lied in the fact that it did not solve the issue adequately, and it also destroyed the realism of the game. It did not solve the issue because the followers would return, and did not solve the issue adequately because repeated "lessons" by the DM would result in the PCss' feats becoming weaker over time. Although it's hard to make Point Blank Shot weaker, I think its a sign of poor DM adjudication if the solution to a player using PBS well to alter the world to make PBS only do +1 to Damage. This is, in some ways, what is happening with Leadership if a DM is going out of his way with some agenda to slam the warrior follower horde.

I also thought realism was lessened through countering the horde with encounters designed specifically around decimating it with area effect spells etc. The realism isn't lessened by the presense of such powerful foes in the campaign setting, but rather their sudden appearance when the warrior horde makes it's debut (or shortly after). As a player with some semblance of awareness to the trends that my DM tends to throw at me, I can usually put the pieces together as to why we are encountering a specific beasty. If we're in a dungeon, the kid gloves are off, if that dungeon has an ecology which supports fungus and duergar- then I know what to expect or it makes some sense in hindsight.

What does not make sense however, are encounters that shift from handling 4-5 PCs right over to handling 4-5 PCs + 100 Mooks. By handling, I mean "presenting a proper challenge for" and also "are designed to give opportunities for PCs to see their strengths and weaknesses." The Undead show the Rogue he needs to bring more than SA's to the table, while the mounted encounter may give the Paladin an opportunity to lay the smack down. However, when an invisible wizard ports in overhead without any sort of reasoning and decimates troops by the dozens, it is not done to show any weakness or strength in the PCs but say, rather explicitly, you should not have the mook horde.

If the reasoning is there, then fine. If a party has the audacity to attack Flamestrikeland with their 100 strong army, then they should find their army ruined. If they encounter a beast that simply is able to wade through the warrior 1's, and would have been encountered in any case due to it's CR, that's fine as well. I have no issue with that. Any sort of encounter designed solely around depriving the PCs of something that they have, with almost no opportunity for either retaliation or prevention of deprivation... that I have a problem with. When the cleric ports in, instantly kills half your camp of followers, makes them undead, has those undead kill the second half of your camp and teleports away... the PCs have not been challenged so much as victimized.

The heroic element shifts from being able to prevent the problem from heightening to scraping up the pieces and simply trying to get by... all due to the DM wanting them to not have their toy or learn a lesson. Unless this is a common theme in the campaign, it shatters the realism. If it is part of the campaign, if anyone with half a brain can tell you, as a character (not as a player) to not bring 100 soldiers into "the wild-where-there-be-necromancers" then fine... but I cannot see this being the case in this specific instance.

That's why I have a big beef with addressing this kind of problem in game. Except for the most saintly DM's, the paragons of our 3.5 edition era, I cannot see giving advice to just smash the problem with a encounter designed solely around doing just that. It opens up so many problems that a simple address out of game would handle. The adjudication that happens in a campaign should not threaten the verisimilitude of the campaign, as the radically unexpected occurs to challenge the unlikely. Moreover, proper adjudication cannot occur when a DM has an agenda which specifically allows players to choose to fail so long as they know that the possibility of failure is there... and the possibility is in fact an inevitability made so by a specifically designed encounter or suite of encounters that pound the warrior horde again and again until the PCs give up.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the best idea I've heard is to allow it, but make the players play each others cohorts.

That way there's even more roleplaying, the players get to play a couple of different characters, and you don't get that teamwork factor when the same guy plays both of his own characters.

It can get confusing, but I think if the players want that kind of game it sounds neat. However, I'd only use the followers for special occasions. IF they are going for that whole army thing, then use the army when its needed. But for dungeon crawls, such things would be liabilities not assets.

If that's not the kind of game you want to run, ban leadership. There's a reason its in the dmg.

 

[Pax]

That's why I have a big beef with addressing this kind of problem in game. Except for the most saintly DM's, the paragons of our 3.5 edition era, I cannot see giving advice to just smash the problem with a encounter designed solely around doing just that.

There you go again, with the assumption that the encounter was designed to take out the Followers. Who says it is, other than you?

...

Noone, that's who.

Adventurers face off against nasty, evil wizards all the time ... they've got to expect fireballs and lightning bolts, as a simple matter of course. If you allow MoF spells, then, you've got to expect Firebrands.

And for many "villain-type" wizards, the WWoC's abilities fit RIGHT into their desires to nuke entire towns with a half-dozen spells (free, double-benefit Widen Spell effects, that's definitely right up THAT alley!). So, while every encounter won't be that sort of thing ... all it takes is ONE.

And frankly, any party that is SURPRISED to ever see an encounter vast numbers of followers wiped out with a few well-placed spells, deserves to be spanked. Out of game, even!