Vaxalon said:
Have you ever played Ars Magica? ...
If everyone in the party has Leadership, then the cohorts can form something like a "backup party" or "advance party" whose job is to prepare the way for, and clean up after, the heavy hitters.
D&D is not Ars Magica.
Nor is the situation you describe what will occur in most D&D games where the DM doesn't take a stand and players decide to exploite this area.
Picture 1 DM and 4 players. Each player has 1 PC. That PC has a leadership cohort, a dragon cohort, a dragon steed, a wild animal cohort and leadership followers. In addition, some of these PCs have familiars, animal companions, fiendish servants, planar cohorts or other additional help.
A party of 4 can grow to an army. Considering the strength of cohorts compared to other feats, this is something that power gamers may seek to do. If a DM has a power gamer seeking to do this, he either has to tell them 'No' and look like a bad guy or go to extraordinary lengths to keep the PC happy without letting them have all of the creatures at hand that they are 'entitled' to by their feats.
Leadership is the most overpowered feat in WotC products. It nearly doubles the power of a PC by effectively giving that PC extra abilities in an entirely new class as well as giving him extra actions in which to use these abilities. In a sense, it is like an improved permanent 3.0 haste.
Now, they've decided to allow you to triple, quadruple or quintuple their power by adding dragon cohorts, dragon steeds and wild cohorts to their cohorts and followers.
In addition to drastically increasing the power of the PCs, these feats also make headaches for the DM. The DM must manage all these extra creatures in combat. That requires planning for them to be in combat when he designs an adventure. This creates a greater chance of error in difficulty design.
Take, for instance, a case of 4 PCs and 8 cohorts. If the DM designs the battles for these 12 beings, what happens if one player can not make it to the game (or dies in an early combat) and 3 of those creatures (the PC and 2 cohorts) are lost to the party? Suddenly, everything else the DM planned is far too hard. The DM either has to make huge adjustments on the fly or the PCs are in serious trouble.
I'm not claiming to be an expert on everything in D&D. I do, however, understand enough to know that having a small army of cohorts is out of balance, yet WotC has decided to allow you to do this by adding all these feats. That has been discusses thoroughly on the boards ever since 3.0 was in its infancy. There are few that doubt those claims.
A conspiracy nut might think there is some connection between the release of the WotC figures and the sudden increases in party size ("now I need to get my hands on two gold dragon figures and a bear figure to represent my dragon cohort, my dragon steed and my wild animal cohort"), but I doubt that there is any evil effort here. If they can't figure out how important it is to create a solid foundation for D&D by fixing the rules problems present in 3.5 (polymorph discrepancies, etc ...), I doubt that there is any chance that WotC is the rise of a new evil empire.
[Note: Does anyone else know what ars (arse) means in England? Am I the only one that thinks "butt magic" whenever they hear Ars Magica?]
It's a great game, but not necessarily adapted to the most basic style of play used in D&D.
