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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 2650373" data-attributes="member: 3424">The way I look at it, the issue is whether the "extra" challenges - cohorts, spells, traps, whatever - reduce the challenge posed by the opponent.If an evil cleric trapped his door with glyph of warding two days ago, and the party sprung or disabled the trap and encountered him with a full complement of spells, I'd award XP for both the glyph of warding and the cleric. If the cleric had just cast the spell and was down a 3rd-level spell and had the cost of the material components taken off his gear when the party reaches him, I'd only award XP for the cleric.If a rogue had ranks in Craft (trapmaking), Skill Focus (trapmaking) and had his gear reduced by the cost of creating all the traps the party had to encounter before they met him, I'd only award XP for the rogue. If he had Skill Focus (trapmaking) and his gear was not reduced, it's more of a gray area, but I'd err on the side of generosity (not everyone makes full use of all the feats they have, as pointed out previously) and award XP for the rogue and the traps.So, by the same reasoning, if the party defeats a BBEG and the cohort he had because of the Leadership feat, I would only award XP for the BBEG. Eyeballing the XP tables, it seems that like it isn't really a good deal for the PCs, because a cohort two levels below the BBEG would have been worth about half the XP award for the BBEG if he was a separate NPC.But so what? If you're the DM, you get to pick the challenges faced by the PCs, and you define the risk/reward ratio by the choices you make. If you get your jollies by handing out the smallest award possible to the PCs for the risks that they take, more power to you. :\</blockquote>

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