Leadership feat or roleplaying

[fafhrd]

Forgive my ignorance, but I keep reading about all these people stealing this and that idea from this "Sepulchrave" person. Pray tell, where can I find this fountain of original thinking who seems to be single-handedly rewriting the game, or at least how the game is expressed?

Check the Tales of Wyre storyhour. Sepulchrave's epic saga begins there(the written portion at least). But beware, you're likely to lose a week due to engrossment. He is indeed a "fountain of original thinking". Not to mention a damned good writer.

 

[Fenes]

You know, when I read all that my first thought was "this is not D&D anymore". But after thinking about it I now say "Why NOT"? As a DM, and even as a player, I like how your house rules completely remove the most tedious aspect of the game, the math and number crunching. In the long run, does it really matter exactly how many XPs a character has and exactly how much money? Probably not.

Question: If you don't keep track of XPs, how do you handle magic item creation?

Pretty simple: PCs do not create magic items, and magic items are rare in general, though usually powerful (with the exception of scrolls and potions). If a player wanted to create a magic item I would drop the xp requirement, but demand some exotic component or process or text, therefore getting a few adventures out of the creation.
I am also a fan of magic items that grow with the wielder, usually not by getting upgraded by a mage though, but by "making them whole again", or "fullfilling the destiny of the weapon" or other quest-like "processes" inserted at fitting places in the campaign.
The barbarian's spear he got in a battle turned out to be a stolen spear a desert tribe had prepared to kill an ancient foe of the tribe, a giant monster, so it kind of fell to the barbarian to do the deed, after a spiritual test of his courage and morals, and the spear was completed for the quest.
The priestess/duellist has an ancient sword which is a part of a legendary weapon used to defeat an evil wizard in the past, trapping him in between undeath and life, but getting shattered all over the planet in the process. Now the party and the minions of the evil wizard are trying to gather the parts so that the wizard can be killed for good/resurected/transform in an undead.
The knight got his blade as a gift from his weaponmaster upon completing his studies, and the blade bonded with him, growing with him (he can use meditate and add new powers to the blade with each new level in his blademaster PrC.)

 

[Larcen]

Check the Tales of Wyre storyhour. Sepulchrave's epic saga begins there(the written portion at least). But beware, you're likely to lose a week due to engrossment. He is indeed a "fountain of original thinking". Not to mention a damned good writer.

Thank you kindly. I'm off...

If I don't respond anytime soon, it's probably because #1, I am at work and #2, Tales of Wyre has me engrossed.

Say, #1 and #2 are a bad combination, no?

 

[Narfellus]

I like using leadership as a feat, but also having the PC give it his best shot based roleplaying-wise. If he does good, a bonus; he says lame stuff, a penalty. Sort of merge the two approaches, straight Leadership feat or straight rp.

 

[Larcen]

Pretty simple: PCs do not create magic items, and magic items are rare in general, though usually powerful (with the exception of scrolls and potions). If a player wanted to create a magic item I would drop the xp requirement, but demand some exotic component or process or text, therefore getting a few adventures out of the creation.
I am also a fan of magic items that grow with the wielder, usually not by getting upgraded by a mage though, but by "making them whole again", or "fullfilling the destiny of the weapon" or other quest-like "processes" inserted at fitting places in the campaign.
The barbarian's spear he got in a battle turned out to be a stolen spear a desert tribe had prepared to kill an ancient foe of the tribe, a giant monster, so it kind of fell to the barbarian to do the deed, after a spiritual test of his courage and morals, and the spear was completed for the quest.
The priestess/duellist has an ancient sword which is a part of a legendary weapon used to defeat an evil wizard in the past, trapping him in between undeath and life, but getting shattered all over the planet in the process. Now the party and the minions of the evil wizard are trying to gather the parts so that the wizard can be killed for good/resurected/transform in an undead.
The knight got his blade as a gift from his weaponmaster upon completing his studies, and the blade bonded with him, growing with him (he can use meditate and add new powers to the blade with each new level in his blademaster PrC.)

Very very cool. I never did like how magic items are so widespread in 3E. The rules themselves assume they are plentiful and readily available when determining Challenge Ratings. Your campaign makes them the rare and unique items I think they should be. I suppose though, that you have to put a lot of thought before you use monsters as is from the books....since their CRs are thrown off somewhat.

 

[Larcen]

Since I keep hijacking this thread on a tangent I think it only proper that I contribute something to the topic at hand, so here it is:

Our group usually does pretty much the same thing with all RP skills that Narfellus described above. (i.e. a bonus or penalty to the skill roll for active roleplying the situation)

Also, even though we all know how powerful a PC with a cohort and followers can become, our DM usually allows Leadership. We TRY to keep the cohorts in the background as much as possible, even to the point of making them act on the same initiative as the player’s main PC.

As a funny side affect of the widespread use of Leadership in our group, we now call all cohorts “Red Shirts”. If you don’t know what the reference means, ask any fan of classic Star Trek. In a way, the red shirts… I mean cohorts… add a certain realism to the game because for one reason or another we VERY rarely have a PC fatality. Having the cohorts and followers around kind of “allows” someone to die and make the epic battle that much more epic and still have everyone happy at the end of the adventure. (I’ll never forget that poor rogue cohort who had all those tons of rocks dumped on her….but that’s another story.)

 

[Fenes]

Very very cool. I never did like how magic items are so widespread in 3E. The rules themselves assume they are plentiful and readily available when determining Challenge Ratings. Your campaign makes them the rare and unique items I think they should be. I suppose though, that you have to put a lot of thought before you use monsters as is from the books....since their CRs are thrown off somewhat.

I rarely use monsters, most opponents are NPCs.

 

[NPC]

I allow the Leadership feat in my campaign but I warn the player that s/he should not take too much time during his or her turn. We use a 1 minute turn clock. I'll allow another 30 seconds or so on the clock if the player has a cohort.

As a player, I loved the feat. It made my kobold rogue/sorcerer/arcane trickster really cool. The party needed a cleric, and since nobody wanted to play one, the cleric cohort worked out great.

It's when the cohort started creating undead where it got a little messy.

Imagine a little kobold towing along a deep dwarf, two skeleton griffons, and a skeleton grey render. Awesome!