Leadership

[Greenfield]

Two PCs in our game have just taken this feat.

That bumps our "party" from seven or eight people to a little over thirty.

Methinks our days of "small, elite strike force" are over. We have a gaggle of 1st level types to babysit.

Hey, if my Bard takes the feat, and designs his cohort/followers (at least by theme), we'll have enough people to qualify as a traveling circus.

 

[VariSami]

Well, you could always leave those followers back home. It would require a HQ of sorts but I've always thought that most of them are commoners and experts that are willing to join your cause and advocate it to the best of their ability. Also, they wouldn't be in need of any special protection just because of this: they've held out on their own fine enough thus far.

But then again, it would probably still change the flow of your game. They'd probably want to see their idols once in a while and there'd be an established HQ to begin with.

 

[Greenfield]

The first to take the feat has a stronghold, a city that he's in charge of. (There's a Regent there in his stead while he's on the road).

Then there's the ship. His Cohort is a Bard who recently finished seven years of servitude as a captured soldier. The PC is the first man to help him without trying to command or own him.

The Followers, on the other hand, have the primary duty of being warrior/sailors who man a small vessel we now use to travel around. And that would be fine, if they stayed with the ship.

The party went to meet a mysterious information source, discovering that it's their recently deceased friend, fresh from Olympus. Big impression on the followers, who did come along.

Now they're headed over/through the mountains north of Thebes, Greece, and I have a problem: Any encounter that challenges the PCs will reduce the followers to a fine red mist. PCs are 11th through 14th levels at the moment, and Followers are 1st and 2nd levels.

Where they're going it will help to have a small core of loyal followers to help keep things organized, and to flesh out the ranks. So it's manageable, barely.

Now the recently returned "Son of Jupiter" is building his own following. And although he's lower in level than the Barbarian Prince, his following will be larger. (Son of a god, returned from the dead more or less on his own seems to count as "special power" on the leadership charts. Who knew? )

So the party is about to be over run with diaper cases.

Our agreed upon formula for Leadership is that while PCs are built on 32 points, Cohorts are built on 28, and Followers are built on 24. Cohorts use PC classes, Followers use NPC classes, at least for the 1st level types. While that reenforces the power tiers nicely, it makes followers very breakable.

Think of the heroes who sailed with Odysseus: How many of them survived the tale? (Hint: He reached Ithaca alone and so bedraggled that even his own family didn't recognize him.)

So followers are expendable. It happens. There's even rules for it, and the effect it has on Leadership scores.

At some point, after the first deaths, the PCs may decide that it's better to leave the lower level types out of harm's way.

 

[udalrich]

Generally, the followers are off camera, or back at the home base, or someplace safe.

If they insist on bringing the followers with, a fireball or two will clear the field back down to a manageable size. And also give them minuses to their leadership score (caused the death of followers), so there will be fewer to deal with in the future. Eventually, the problem solves itself, as they get so many penalties that they do not have any followers.

I am being serious here. The cohort, being two levels lower, will be sort of fragile. The followers are not even close to being viable on a battlefield. Most of the power of the feat is in the cohort, and some role-play value to explain the hordes of willing servants you now have. (If the have mundane or magical crafting ability, there is also the free time to craft items and plenty of +2's from aid another when the hero is working during down time.) When the party is at the stronghold or the boat, the followers will be around (and get to see their hero), but should the party be attacked there, they will run for safety.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Followers are there to do the things that the PCs don't have time for or lack the ability to. Example:

PC 1: Sweet, we just got the Pirate King's boat!

PC 2: Does anyone know how to sail a ship?

PC 3: No, but I just took leadership!

And now the PCs can actually sail a ship.

 

[Sekhmet]

I had a player decide to use his followers as an army against an invading wizard.
One meteor swarm later and he had no more followers, either from being plunged to zero Leadership, or due to the 160' diameter crater where his followers used to be.

 

[Herzog]

I think some of you are missing the point here.

Disposing of the followers is easy. Keeping them alive isn't.

Adding the Bard Cohort to the party was a good move, his usefullness is increased by every addition to the party, since all of them will benefit from his bard songs.

The main problem (for the party) is to give the followers as much protection as possible. This means:

1. Making sure they have ample protection against all kinds of energy damage from AoE spells.
2. Making sure they will not be hit. They have extremely low hp, so boosting hp in some way will hardly make a dent. Find ways to boost their AC, and find something to have their opponents have miss chances.
3. If possible, give them 'team' feats like Phalanx fighting. These kind of feats increase in usefullness the more characters have/use them together.

Although protecting them will drain the party resources significantly, keeping them alive will give them some satisfaction.

If the party doesn't come up with these strategies themselves, you might want to point them out. Taking Leadership shouldn't be penalized by killing off the followers, but does give them a responsibility.

 

[Li Shenron]

Despite their name, I think followers were never meant to follow the PC in her adventures. They are meant to take care of your businesses while you go to adventures.

The cohort on the other hand is meant as a party support, in fact he is a classed NPC.

Personally I've always told my players that the cost of one feat to take Leadership is in exchange for loyalty. You don't have to RP being kind and generous to your cohort and followers, they will be utterly loyal to you when you have the Leadership feat. Otherwise why the feat cost? You could have just tried to gain followers through roleplay... Notice in fact that evil characters are totally entitled to getting the Leadership feat too. There are penalties to the Leadership score that can be triggered by mistreating them, but the score affects the number of followers and the cohort's level, not the loyalty of those who you are entitled to have.

But taking the followers with you inside a dungeon is beyond the scope of the feat. Maybe your case is more complicated because your followers drive your ship, so they are coming with you wherever you go geographically, but then once you're in a location, they would faithfully tend to your ship, take care of shopping for supplies etc, but that doesn't mean they are willing to follow you into an Orc's encampment or a Dragon's lair. It's not their job.

Think of them as loyal fans or "supporter", like the fans of a boxe or wrestling champion: they might be willing to do his laundry and mop his floor, but they won't go into the ring and get the punches in his place!

 

[Yora]

If the PCs, who should be at least 7th level, insist of bringing level 1 commoners and warriors to fights with CR 9+ monsters, I think the best way to teach them is to have a third of them being killed in one of the very first fights.
They should have completely seen it comming and when they already have 30 or so, wasting 10 of them should send the message without actually taking anything valued from them.

As the crew for the ship and as support staff who drives the cart with spare weapons, helps them into armor, and gets the loot back to the ship, they are great.
You might even take a few of the stronger ones to a dungeon to wait at the entrance watching their back and sending a messenger after them, if there's trouble outside.
But I think followers should be Point Buy 15, they are average people doing a job, not heroes.

 

[Greenfield]

As an update: The Barb/Wiz PC with the Leadership feat decided to "freelance" his men around town, by which he means to keep them out of battle. He was thinking of sending them, with his Cohort, back to their ship, but decided that sending them out of the city when an enemy is due to arrive was a bad idea.

The second PC with Leadership has so far held off introducing them.

They did capture an enemy spy and encountered another adventuring party working as forward scouts for the army. They captured an enemy Bard and were actually quite taken with him.

End result? A third PC is thinking of taking Leadership, just so they can keep the NPC Bard around as a Cohort.

If this keeps up then they're gonna need a bigger boat.