Handling Sidekicks

[Pax]

I've come to wonder how various DM's handle the Cohort gained from the Leadership feat, or similarly-powerful "sidekick" sorts of characters (an improved familiar like an Imp, an epic Paladin's equally-epic Mount, etc).

Twice now, I've run into "old guard" DMs, who insist "an npc is an npc, the DM controls them, tough luck" -- folks who hearken back to the not-so-good-old-days of 1E and 2E, where a DM (as myth and legend would have us believe) had to beat his players down with a stick, to prevent them form seizing too much power.

Bear in mind, I've been playing for roughly a quarter-century now, since I was about seven years old (and DMing for 18 of them, since I was around 14) ... not long after AD&D (1E) came out, in fact ... and I don't REMEMBER DMs needing such beating-with-a-stick hypervigilance -- until character creation in the 2E days, I suppose. *grin*

It just seems wrong to me, when the DMG (and the apparent spirit of the Leadership feat) explicitly describes a cohort as "effectively a second PC under that player's control", to have the GM insist "nope, a henchman is a henchman, regardless of wetehr you get him from the LEadership feat, or by hiring some schlub off the street" ...

...

So, how do most folks here handle it? If you haven't encountered it, how do you think you WOULD handle it?

And in all cases ... why did/would you choose that particular way to handle Cohorts?

 

[hammymchamham]

Myself? I allow the PC to control it (I have enough to worry about).

Others? Since I've only been in one other campaign with Leadership, the DM runs it as an NPC.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Thus far, I haven't had one of my players gain a cohort, but I have thought about how I'd handle it. I think that I'd follow the example of some of the DMs I've read in the Story Hour forum.

Basically, I'd allow the player to control the cohort, but reserve the right to veto any actions I felt veered too far from what I believed the cohort should be doing. Then so long as the player is doing a good job of playing the cohort, I don't interfere. Only if the player starts abusing the cohort would I need to step in and correct things.

"No Bob, your cohort would not just give your PC all of his share of the treasure."

 

[drnuncheon]

As a DM, I play the cohort out of combat - in personal interaction situations - but when the dice start to bounce, I turn the cohort over to the player. I've got enough to do with the other side!

One exception is when my players are split up - then they frequently play each other's cohorts, so that nobody's left sitting doing nothing.

J

 

[Lord Pendragon]

One exception is when my players are split up - then they frequently play each other's cohorts, so that nobody's left sitting doing nothing.

J

I like this idea a lot. Consider it stolen.

 

[Wormwood]

Let the Player handle it.

After all, the player paid for the cohort in Feats and XP.

 

[dcollins]

Twice now, I've run into "old guard" DMs, who insist "an npc is an npc, the DM controls them, tough luck" -- folks who hearken back to the not-so-good-old-days of 1E and 2E... "nope, a henchman is a henchman, regardless of wetehr you get him from the Leadership feat, or by hiring some schlub off the street" ...

Actually, I have to disagree with that statement... in actual old school D&D (OD&D, AD&D 1st Ed.) henchmen were intended to be perhaps more fully under control of the player than they even are now. Remember that all the original AD&D modules said they were designed for something like 8-10 PCs (!)... it's not that you'd have that many players, it's that the assumption was everyone would be controlling multiple PCs (henchmen). Of course, the game sort of evolved away from that over time.

Note AD&D DMG p. 36-37: if you add up all the modifiers, henchman loyalty is almost certainly unshakeable and over 100%. On p. 103, after a section warning of possible abuses, it says "Some few players will actually play their henchmen as individual characters, not merely as convenient extensions of their main character. In these rare cases, your involvement with these henchmen will be minimal." Of top of all that, in AD&D everyone could have half a dozen or a dozen henchmen based on their Charisma score.

I see the Leadership feat as very much in the tradition, just more restricted in that you have to burn a feat and only get one such sidekick instead of a whole posse. In my D&D campaign, I've started out introducing a cohort as an NPC, and over the course of a number of sessions (having established the personality), let it slide over to the player's full control.

 

[TabulaRasa]

imc I let one of the other players control the cohort. I do the same with animal companion. This prevent the "hive mind" kind of situations where the two PC's know that the other thinks. When the other player controls the cohort and animal it forces them to interact more. And make the game more interesting

/Tabula