Question about the Leadership Feat

[SelcSilverhand]

Unfortunately I don't have the search feature available to me atm, and I need an answer for a players question regarding the Leadership feat for a game tonight.

His argument is that after reading the feat, he wants to recruit a cohort 2 levels lower than him, along with several 1st level followers. My question is this: Does he have to choose between a cohort and followers, or does he get both a cohort 2 levels below him and a number of 1st level followers? He currently has a 14 leadership score and is 9th level.

Text about the feat from the SRD
[SBLOCK]

Benefits: Having this feat enables the character to attract loyal companions and devoted followers, subordinates who assist her. See the table below for what sort of cohort and how many followers the character can recruit.

Leadership
Score	Cohort
Level	Number of Followers by Level
1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th
1 or lower	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
2	1st	—	—	—	—	—	—
3	2nd	—	—	—	—	—	—
4	3rd	—	—	—	—	—	—
5	3rd	—	—	—	—	—	—
6	4th	—	—	—	—	—	—
7	5th	—	—	—	—	—	—
8	5th	—	—	—	—	—	—
9	6th	—	—	—	—	—	—
10	7th	5	—	—	—	—	—
11	7th	6	—	—	—	—	—
12	8th	8	—	—	—	—	—
13	9th	10	1	—	—	—	—
14	10th	15	1	—	—	—	—
15	10th	20	2	1	—	—	—
16	11th	25	2	1	—	—	—
17	12th	30	3	1	—	—	—
18	12th	35	3	1	1	—	—
19	13th	40	4	2	1	1	—
20	14th	50	5	3	2	1	—
21	15th	60	6	3	2	1	1
22	15th	75	7	4	2	2	1
23	16th	90	9	5	3	2	1
24	17th	110	11	6	3	2	1
25 or higher	17th	135	13	7	4	2	2

Leadership Score: A character’s base Leadership score equals his level plus any Charisma modifier. In order to take into account negative Charisma modifiers, this table allows for very low Leadership scores, but the character must still be 6th level or higher in order to gain the Leadership feat. Outside factors can affect a character’s Leadership score, as detailed above.

Cohort Level: The character can attract a cohort of up to this level. Regardless of a character’s Leadership score, he can only recruit a cohort who is two or more levels lower than himself. The cohort should be equipped with gear appropriate for its level. A character can try to attract a cohort of a particular race, class, and alignment. The cohort’s alignment may not be opposed to the leader’s alignment on either the law-vs-chaos or good-vs-evil axis, and the leader takes a Leadership penalty if he recruits a cohort of an alignment different from his own.

Cohorts earn XP as follows:

    The cohort does not count as a party member when determining the party’s XP.
    Divide the cohort’s level by the level of the PC with whom he or she is associated (the character with the Leadership feat who attracted the cohort).
    Multiply this result by the total XP awarded to the PC and add that number of experience points to the cohort’s total.
    If a cohort gains enough XP to bring it to a level one lower than the associated PC’s character level, the cohort does not gain the new level—its new XP total is 1 less than the amount needed attain the next level.

Number of Followers by Level: The character can lead up to the indicated number of characters of each level. Followers are similar to cohorts, except they’re generally low-level NPCs. Because they’re generally five or more levels behind the character they follow, they’re rarely effective in combat.

Followers don’t earn experience and thus don’t gain levels. However, when a character with Leadership attains a new level, the player consults the table above to determine if she has acquired more followers, some of which may be higher level than the existing followers. (You don’t consult the table to see if your cohort gains levels, however, because cohorts earn experience on their own.)

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[krupintupple]

it has been my belief that he gets both. however, i've found this to be a pain in my games, so i've ruled it to just be the cohort, which is nothing to scoff at as most people would rather recruit a 7th level barbarian sidekick, rather than a dozen or so commoners with ranks in profession (farmhand). keep in mind, if he wants to start up a farm, i'd let him go with only the followers, but that's just me.

i do this because i dislike micromanaging all of the crap that can happen, as most of my PCs have failed to realize that eight 1st level warriors with crossbows aren't very good to bring along to a CR10 combat, if you could believe that...

 

[Elephant]

Given that his Leadership score is 14, he should get the cohort, the first-level followers, and a second-level follower.

Though as krupintupple pointed out, a dozen first-level warriors with crossbows don't really help in a CR 10 combat.

 

[JDRogers]

I vote he gets both!

 

[Runestar]

The followers are really only useful at epic lvs, when your wizard uses them to subsidize his epic spells.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I like the Leadership feat if you've got a Warchanter in the party. One of the Warchanter songs gives everyone within 60 ft the BAB of the person in the group with the highest, or BAB equal to your Warchanter level, whichever is higher. Certainly not brokenly powerful, but it is fun to turn a mob of weaklings into an actual offensive threat.

 

[irdeggman]

Per RAW he gets both.

But note that this is an "optional" feat. Look in the DMG and not the SRD for the proper text, including "cautions" on using this feat.

So, as the DM, you had the option to allow or not to allow the feat in the first place.

Personally it depends on the game situation as to whether or not I would allow it.

If there are a lot of players - then no. Having cohorts will only muck up the process and adversely detract from each player's in-game roleplaying.

If the game involves kingdoms and the like where the PCs are "rulers" then the feat makes a lot of sense on a 50,000 foot level view.

If there are very few players allowing the feat is a decent way to give them some more options and survivability. Although the same can be done by simply inserting in NPCs run by the DM in a similar manner.

One thing I do, regardless of the situation - the player does not get to role-play the cohort/followers. They do get to make all key mechanical decisions for them - but I refuse to have a player carry on an in-character discussion with himself (which is what would happen if they role-played their cohorts/followers).

Make sure that you do not count LA as part of the character level for this purpose (per ECL rules it doesn't count).

Also followers and cohorts do not "just show up". Replacing them takes 1d4 months. What is available is highly dependent on where the PC is when attempting to gain his followers/cohort.

Also in 3.5 the followers are not limited to NPC classes (they were in 3.0 but that text is missing from the 3.5 DMG). They are NPCs but that does not mean NPC classes. They are very low level in comparison to the PC though so their "impact" on any encounter is mostly color and bookkeeping headaches.

 

[aboyd]

You should be really up front with him about whatever you decide.

I took the leadership feat and the DM didn't have time to make NPCs, so I went through about 4 gaming sessions without anything from it, while everyone else was using their new feats. This was actually OK because the RAW states that attracting cohort/followers can take a while. But it surprised me. I was going to ask him to let me pick a new feat at the next session, but he had a cohort for me at the next session, so I shut up.

Anyway, regarding the low-level followers, my DM ruled that they have commoner stats (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, I think) and will be loyal only if they are of NPC classes (adept, expert, warrior). If there were a PC class, such as wizard, then I could have them but they would be "flighty."

I opted for 3 gnome experts maxed in alchemy skills, and they churn out about 2 alchemist fire flasks per week. The other 2 followers that I can get I haven't seen yet (he's holding them in reserve).

I'm mostly OK with this now that I know how it works, and the followers are so UN-combat-ready that they really serve little use except as crafters or spies or diplomats. Nice for story hooks.

(As someone else said, the leadership feat is VERY optional based upon DM ruling, as it can get out of hand. For example, what happens when someone takes the leadership feat twice? What happens when the cohorts reach a certain level and THEY take the leadership feat? You have to be careful with this one.)

 

[SelcSilverhand]

Thanks for the input everyone, I did end up giving him the followers he wanted since he decided to have them run his Keep. We've only got 3 players, so a cohort will give the group a boost in power for some of the harder encounters to come.