Urgent! Leadership feat and follower advancement

[Lord Pendragon]

On a related note:

Is it legal for the followers to be non-humanoid? If so, what would their CR limit be? 1? 1/2?

[edit] humanoid seems clearer than human in this instance [/edit]

 

[Iron_Chef]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Urgent! Leadership feat and follower advancement

DMG 46: Cohorts earn a half share of XP. Followers have no mention of ability to earn XP.

DMG 147: reiterates that Cohorts get a half share of XP. On the next page we see that, unlike cohorts, hirelings get no XP.

Wait a minute. Followers are not hirelings. Hirelings are temporary and their alegiance is by coin, not loyalty and belief in a leader or cause. Followers are different in that while they expect upkeep, they serve out of a belief in the leader and justness of his cause, just like cohorts. So, there appears to be no clear-cut official ruling on this matter after all.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Urgent! Leadership feat and follower advancement

So, there appears to be no clear-cut official ruling on this matter after all.

True, but there are some strong clues.

DMG p. 46, Followers: ...As the leader's Leadership rises, he can attract more followers. If his Leadership goes down, followers may desert...

That hints that your followers are a "real time" phenomenon based on current Leadership score. If true, it doesn't make sense for followers to level up based on adventuring xp because they would almost certainly desert to be replaced by lower level followers. Higher leadership scores give you substantially more 1st level followers, but allow for very modest numbers of level 2+ followers.

 

[drnuncheon]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Urgent! Leadership feat and follower advancement

Wait a minute. Followers are not hirelings. Hirelings are temporary and their alegiance is by coin, not loyalty and belief in a leader or cause. Followers are different in that while they expect upkeep, they serve out of a belief in the leader and justness of his cause, just like cohorts. So, there appears to be no clear-cut official ruling on this matter after all.

OK. We basically have three options:

1. Followers get a full share. If cohorts don't even get a full share, this is obviously ridiculous.

2. Followers get a half share, just like cohorts. You could possibly argue this based on the book - after all, the section on followers does send you to a section on cohorts that talksabout them getting hal;f shares. Sounds good at first glance until you realize that when you've got 20 followers, everybody's earning XP at 10% of the normal rate. Obviously ridiculous as well, when looked at in that light.

3. Followers may be following for loyalty instead of coin, but like hirelings, they still just follow orders, and thus don't get any XP at all.

Now you could come up with some other way to give followers XP, but there's just no support for that stance in the book. Basically, nothing says that followers /can/ earn XP, and when you let them earn XP, the results are nonsensical.

J

 

[Tobold Hornblower]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Urgent! Urgent! Urgent! Urgent! Urgent!

So are you saying you are for or against NPC follower advancement?

You know, you can advance an NPC to a new level without actually tracking and calculating her experience.