Help with an epic Leadership loophole

[wllmfiore8]

I'm playing a 3.5 pvp epic gestalt level 30 game with my IRL d&d group. I am an Aasimar Lich Cleric 30//Ex-Paladin 10/Blackguard 14. I control a large island and have an extremely large undead army (around 40,000). This includes Leadership, Undead Leadership, Epic Leadership, and Legendary Commander. My leadership feat gives me a wee bit less than 35,000 followers and one cohort of 28th level. Now, my friend has been bragging a bit, and apparently he found a loophole that lets him have 4 cohorts of 28th level and 150,000 followers, just from his leadership feat. I need that loophole to be able to attack him! Otherwise the undead will not conquer the world! Any of you have any suggestions?

[Circle of Life]

I suggest epic spellcasting abuse to wipe out all of his followers with no save.

Shouldn't be too hard.

[molten_dragon]

I'm assuming that if you have a horde of 40,000 undead, there are several spectres/vampires/wights/wraiths (basically any undead with the 'create spawn' ability that creates more of themselves) in there. Who needs loopholes when you can take all his 150,000 followers and turn them into your own.

[Lateral]

...Ask him to explain this 'loophole.' I'm quite suspicious of it.

Also, you can probably get a lot more minions with chained leaderships. Have your cohort take leadership, epic leadership, legendary commander, and close cohort. Now, have his cohort take leadership, epic leadership, close cohort, and legendary commander. Have that cohort's cohort take all of those, then have the next take all of them but Legendary Commander. (He won't qualify, being 26th level.) Keep doing that until you get to having a 20th level cohort. That cohort won't be able to take the epic feats, so instead make him a thrallherd. Have those thralls be thrallherds, and so on, until you run out of characters high-level enough to be even 1st level thrallherds. (They'll be too low-level to take Leadership at that point, and thrallherd is better.)

After that, have your highest-level followers (and possibly believers; I'm not sure if they're high enough level) be thrallherds. (Some of them may be able to take Epic Leadership; again, I'm not sure if they're high enough level.) Keep doing what you did with the original chains.

At the end of the day, you should have a ridiculous amount of minions, including nine epic-level ones. (Plus, you'll effectively own four kingdoms, each with their own strongholds. Fun.)

...Of course, don't actually do all of this unless you think your DM will allow it. (In an epic-level game, it really isn't that crazy, I suppose, but it's still pretty nuts.)

[wllmfiore8]

I believe the DM has houseruled that cohorts (and presumably followers) can't take Leadership, but I'll ask him if he'll allow it for me (to balance out me and my friend). Also, tell me about this feat, Close Cohort. What book is it in? Also, what book is the Thrallherd class in? Sounds interesting.

[wllmfiore8]

One thing I found- the dreadmaster from Faiths & Pantheons gets you a Leadership bonus and 3 cohorts. Still can't figure out the 150,000 followers though.

[Urpriest]

I believe there are some feats that multiply followers in Heroes of Battle.

[Arundel]

Getting 4 level 28 cohorts is what I really question. Followers grow on trees. Cohorts though? Offhand I don't know of a way to get more than 1.

[Hirax]

I believe there are some feats that multiply followers in Heroes of Battle.

Bingo, the extra followers feat doubles your number of followers, I would rule that in conjunction with legendary commander you'd get 11x instead of 20x.

Also something that might be of interest to you is the might makes right feat from Races of Faerun, which adds your strength mod to your leadership score in addition to your charisma mod. Some people say that it replaces your charisma mod, but this is unambiguously false if you read the feat text to which there is no errata.

[gomipile]

I believe the DM has houseruled that cohorts (and presumably followers) can't take Leadership, but I'll ask him if he'll allow it for me (to balance out me and my friend). Also, tell me about this feat, Close Cohort. What book is it in?

Perhaps they mean Improved Cohort, from Heroes of Battle (p. 98.)

[Lateral]

Perhaps they mean Improved Cohort, from Heroes of Battle (p. 98.)

In fact, I meant the one from Dragon #346, but this is better. (I don't have HoB.)

[wllmfiore8]

I downloaded the Pdf of #346, and found that Close Cohort is the same as Improved Cohort. Another feat I found is Assemble the Horde, which grants you a number of 1st-level followers equal to the number of 2nd+ level followers you have, which should grant me another few thousand skeleton archers. Bad news though, my friend found Extra Followers from HoB and now he has around 300,000 followers! Hooray!

[Morithias]

This is probably a bit off topic. But how are you an "aasimar Lich"? The lich template can only be applied to "humanoid" creatures. Not outsiders.

[Tyndmyr]

Lesser Aasimar?

[Groverfield]

Replace Lich with Vampire? Not worth much, but infinite spawn chain is infinite

[Hirax]

As a way to perhaps compensate, do everything you can to boost your overall score, so that you can hopefully get more higher level followers, and make several of the higher level ones dedicated crafters. A couple level 12s are ideal because they can make rings. Don't necessarily do much with this beyond RP, to argue to your DM that as a result of your dedicating a few men to crafting, your horde will be better equipped in general.

[Godskook]

With these numbers, superior tactical advantage, not numeric advantage, will win the day. Instead of focusing on undead hordes who're too weak to matter to level 28 or 30 characters, focus on optimizing your cohorts and yourself so that you can reduce it to where you're either picking off or recruiting his horde after slaying anything powerful enough to defy you.

Draconic undead are powerful allies, great targets for Awaken Undead, and are quite possibly your strongest source of 'mook' undead at these levels. Bloodhulks are beefy for their CR, but horrible for their 'effective' HD. If you believe you can get away with using magic to the control them, there's a level 2 spell (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203352) that can get you obscene numbers of them with little investment, especially at your level.

The evolved template is absuable, check with your DM to see how abusable.