Cohorts - how are they played?

[Corsair]

In my games, and games I play in with my regular group, the player has control of the cohort 95% of the time, with the remaining 5% left for DM veto if the player is trying to abuse having a cohort in some way.

And frankly, I'm insulted at the suggestion that holding a conversation with yourself is anything but normal!

 

[werk]

Ok, thanks for all the information. I'm waiting to hear back from my DM about how he usually handles cohorts and followers.

The only time I've ever had a cohort, our party started to build a stronghold and a city grew up near it. My paladin took leadership and assumed leadership of the town. My cohort was a fighter/paladin in training, and I kinda left him to run everything while I was adventuring.

My DM said that I rarely spent any time training or accompanying my cohort (which was not why I took the feat), and basically turned him against me. It kinda soured me on the whole idea of a cohort, that is, the cohort can easily become a liability if the DM wants to go that direction.

I eventually stopped playing my paladin so that he could devote all of his time to caring and defending his city/followers.

Leadership ruined my character!

.02

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Which is stupid, because the whole point of the Leadership feat is that the cohort and followers so gained are loyal.

Sheesh. Some DMs.

 

[Syntallah]

Impact to 'Party Level'

How does one adjudicate the impact of having a cohort in the Party (for purposes of determining appropriate CR encounters)? Do you average all levels together? Do you assign a cohort's level as a fraction of the whole, or what?

 

[IcyCool]

How does one adjudicate the impact of having a cohort in the Party (for purposes of determining appropriate CR encounters)? Do you average all levels together? Do you assign a cohort's level as a fraction of the whole, or what?

The Cohort is granted by a feat. You don't average it into the party level any more than you would with Power Attack. The Cohort basically stays 2 levels below the character, and is considered part of the character. In other words a 9th level Paladin who took Great Cleave for his 9th level feat is supposed to be roughly equivalent to a 9th level Paladin who too Leadership and has a 7th level cleric cohort.

 

[irdeggman]

How does one adjudicate the impact of having a cohort in the Party (for purposes of determining appropriate CR encounters)? Do you average all levels together? Do you assign a cohort's level as a fraction of the whole, or what?

Check this thread for the most recent discussion of what is one of the most often brought up topics it appears.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=140483

Basically for determining the EL all members of the group are taken into account. Average level (I got an e-mail from Skip Williams that said to add +1 for every 2 members more than four, others use the mixed CR tabe in the DMG). One is quick and dirty the other is the "correct" method to use.

 

[Drowbane]

Check with your dm. I can't think of anything that varies more from one campaign to another than how a dm handles Leadership.

I couldn't of said it better

What I do in my Campaign is meaningless when it comes to your DM's mind.

 

[UltimaGabe]

In other words a 9th level Paladin who took Great Cleave for his 9th level feat is supposed to be roughly equivalent to a 9th level Paladin who too Leadership and has a 7th level cleric cohort.

That's the thing I don't get, though. If one 9th-level Paladin takes Great Cleave, and another 9th-level Paladin with the exact same stats, feats, and equipment takes Leadership, the one with Leadership is going to be better off in almost every single situation, in my opinion. I'd gladly spend a feat for the ability of being able to take twice as many actions (most of which I may not be able to do myself) with the downside of having to buy equipment for two people. I've never seen Leadership as being balanced at a "No XP penalty" feat. In our campaigns, we factor in a cohort for purposes of dividing XP (though not for determining party level), and despite the decreased amount of experience, the cohort still ends up adding far more to the group (and the the player it's bound to) than any other feat ever could (except, maybe, Innate Spell [Miracle] )

 

[Scion]

remember, not all feats are equal in power.

Having said that however, if you count the gear that the cohort has as part of the characters wealth then there really isnt much of a problem. The cohort tends to be much weaker overall than the rest of the party and cuts further into the players options (at least one feat, who knows how much gear, and whatever it takes to have a decent leadership score).

Overall it is definately a tough feat, but making it basically suck up other peoples exp? Ouch. My character should not be punished because someone else took a certain feat.

 

[mvincent]

I've never seen Leadership as being balanced at a "No XP penalty" feat. In our campaigns, we factor in a cohort for purposes of dividing XP

While the leadership is the likely the most powerful feat ever made (likely giving the player extra spotlight time in addition to the extra power), having it also eat up XP's earned by other players probably doesn't make it better. If anything it just makes it doubly worse for your fellow players.

But then, this seems like it would be a self-regulating problem in my group (i.e everyone would soon have cohorts, or no one would... no one alive least-wise )