everyone in group taking 'leadership'?

[krupintupple]

are there any downsides or pitfalls to this? two of our group of five are leaving soon, so the remaining three have decided that the next feat they shall all acquire is 'leadership', in hopes of shoring up defenses and making up for lost man-power.

as a DM, should i be worried?

 

[Jack Simth]

are there any downsides or pitfalls to this? two of our group of five are leaving soon, so the remaining three have decided that the next feat they shall all acquire is 'leadership', in hopes of shoring up defenses and making up for lost man-power.

as a DM, should i be worried?

As a DM, it is explicitly your call on what's available to them. So other than the paperwork, not really.

 

[frankthedm]

In a small group Leadership can be quite useful. But it can be a bit of work.

Remember the player "can try to attract a cohort of a particular race, class, and alignment." Since this is from a precious feat, getting the desired of those three criteria should not be that hard. The player however does not get to pick the NPC's Skills, feats, gear, domains, gods or Spells Known. the Cohort characters should be built reasonably, not loaded down with splat material combos nor crippled with multiple helpings of Toughness.

Feats :: d20srd.org

 

[Shin Okada]

Well, almost only true "downside" is that cohorts will get their share of treasures (though as half as much as PCs). So, if all the PCs take Leadership feat, each PCs will get 1/4.5 of the total treasure they find, instead of 1/3.

 

[aboyd]

The player however does not get to pick the NPC's Skills, feats, gear, domains, gods or Spells Known. the Cohort characters should be built reasonably, not loaded down with splat material combos nor crippled with multiple helpings of Toughness.

That's opinion, not RAW, right? The RAW is very vague, saying repeatedly that the DM should rule on things for himself/herself.

For example, for me as a DM, I'm inclined to let the player make up a cohort from whole cloth -- they basically get a 2nd character to play that is 2 levels lower than they are. I don't want to regulate it or spend time doing it myself (beyond wanting to be sure that there is no cheating going on -- they have to follow my rules for rolling up stats, and so on). If they do that, fine, one less thing for me to manage. I also set a timer on 'em during their turn. Having multiple characters can bog down the game, so they have to be ready or else they lose a turn.

I never got the impression that my system was contradicted by the rules. However, I'm going my memory; I don't have the rules in front of me.

 

[krupintupple]

i'd be inclined to think that this (taken from the d20srd):

A character can try to attract a cohort of a particular race, class, and alignment.

would mean that they can attempt to attract the services of someone of the above parameters, and don't actually have an active hand in the construction.

i trust my players fully, but i think i'd want an active hand in what goes into the mix, as some weird combination of feats, skills or classes might make something unbalancing - not just for the campaign, but within the group. i stressed that these are basically like sidekicks and shouldn't really outshine anyone within the group itself.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

i trust my players fully, but i think i'd want an active hand in what goes into the mix, as some weird combination of feats, skills or classes might make something unbalancing - not just for the campaign, but within the group.

I don't know about this. Either a) they're making powerful feat/class/item combos with their own characters already and thus not letting them do that with a bunch of guys two whole levels below them will only serve to make the cohorts barely useful and almost not worth their share of the loot (beyond choosing support classes for them, like an inspiring bard or a buffer/healer/summoner cleric) or b) they aren't doing this with their actual characters, so why should you have to worry they would with the cohorts?

Personally? I've had to DM groups as large as 8 and have grown to hate big groups. I now try to limit it to 5, tops. In your kind of situation, I'd show them all the gestalt rules and offer to let them re-make their characters as gestalt builds, so they can shore up any loss of roles from the departing players, be even more awesome, AND save me some work in how many party members I need to keep track of. Arguably, a party of 3 gestalt characters should be roughly as good as the standard 4 person party the rules assume. Maybe a little better, but I tend to value amount of actions and sheer number of people (in the cases of monster abilities like mind blast that just plain take some PCs out of the fight) very highly.

 

[Delta]

That's opinion, not RAW, right? The RAW is very vague, saying repeatedly that the DM should rule on things for himself/herself.

Of course you're both right. To be narrowly technically correct perhaps Frank meant "The player however does not get the right to pick the NPC's Skills, feats, gear, domains, gods or Spells Known."

 

[krupintupple]

I don't know about this. Either a) they're making powerful feat/class/item combos with their own characters already and thus not letting them do that with a bunch of guys two whole levels below them will only serve to make the cohorts barely useful and almost not worth their share of the loot (beyond choosing support classes for them, like an inspiring bard or a buffer/healer/summoner cleric) or b) they aren't doing this with their actual characters, so why should you have to worry they would with the cohorts?

actually, the answer is c) we meet twice a month and in the past few months that we've been playing, their original characters are fairly subpar and non-optimized. i've offered a re-roll, but they declined and wanted to stick it out. however, they've learned more about the game and have been online to check out 'builds'. they're practically oozing with new ideas, yet don't want to part with their existing characters. i've already noticed some of them coming up with fairly awesome, but super powerful ideas, and mentioned that technically, any future cohorts are a balancing act between DM and PC.

don't worry, i'm not some fascist DM or anything, just wanted to make sure that the main character is still the hero in the spotlight.

 

[Shin Okada]

Personally, I found 3.5e sessions work very well with 5-7 players. I have never actually run a long campaign with 8+ players. But I ran RHoD with 7 players (7 PCs and a Paladin mount) and it was one of the best campaign I ever had.

Gestalt rule or clever multi-classing and some prestige classes will allow each PCs to fill multiple roles. Still I think a 3-men party is too weak and fragile. One PC can take 1 turn-worth of action in his turn anyway, even if he has many options. And when 1 is fallen, there suddenly be only 2 people. It is hardly called a "party" anymore. I largely prefer a party with 5+, ideally 6+, PCs and NPCs. Both as a player and a DM.