Replacing followers and the leadership feat

[HarrisofFord]

I'm running a Warlords campaign and one of the prereqs is that everyone needs the leadership feat. This game is going to be largely battlefield based using their followers as front line troops, thus I am expecting casualties. One thing I didn't see is how a player refreshes their followers that have passed. All the DMG seems to say about the matter is that: "When the character tries to attract a new follower, use any of the following modifiers that apply." It doesn't really specify is there is a check that needs to be made or where these people come from. Any ideas or insights?

[DoughGuy]

In general having followers die detracts from the amount you can attract in the future. It might be easier to write your own version of the feat specifically for the campaign.

[TypoNinja]

I'm running a Warlords campaign and one of the prereqs is that everyone needs the leadership feat. This game is going to be largely battlefield based using their followers as front line troops, thus I am expecting casualties. One thing I didn't see is how a player refreshes their followers that have passed. All the DMG seems to say about the matter is that: "When the character tries to attract a new follower, use any of the following modifiers that apply." It doesn't really specify is there is a check that needs to be made or where these people come from. Any ideas or insights?

Its not a roll, your Leadership score directly corresponds to the table that determines how many followers you attract. Penalties would lower your score (you are a less popular leader), bonuses add to it.

I've always been fairly permissive about things like "Caused the death of a follower" and required some bad decision making. When you raise an army casualties are kind of a fact of life. Engaging in combat and losing some troops is expected. I require some kind of incompetence to come into play, like bad decisions that get your troops wiped out applies the penalty, but simply taking part in battle does not.

[Zahhak]

required some bad decision making.

Smart, but in the real-world, not always accurate. In the US Civil War probably the most popular general was Gen. Lee of the Confederate side. Looking back at his strategy now, he was a complete idiot. His entire strategy in the majority of his battles was a human wave attack. We look back and laugh at how terrible of an idea that was in WWI, but it didn't work any better in the Civil War. Gen. Lee often had incredibly high casualties, but not only did no one think to call him on his (frankly) incredibly stupid way of attacking, he remained the most popular general in the war, often attracting large numbers of volunteers. Despite his incompetence, he remains the most popular and well known general from the war.

Gen. Lee was so popular because (if we were to make the comparison to DnD skills/feats) he had a really high bluff check and was able to BS people into believing he had some idea of what he was doing. Because of that, if I were running such a game, I'd completely drop the Leadership feat and just adapt the Bluff skill.

[Darius Kane]

Smart, but in the real-world, not always accurate. In the US Civil War probably the most popular general was Gen. Lee of the Confederate side. Looking back at his strategy now, he was a complete idiot. His entire strategy in the majority of his battles was a human wave attack. We look back and laugh at how terrible of an idea that was in WWI, but it didn't work any better in the Civil War. Gen. Lee often had incredibly high casualties, but not only did no one think to call him on his (frankly) incredibly stupid way of attacking, he remained the most popular general in the war, often attracting large numbers of volunteers. Despite his incompetence, he remains the most popular and well known general from the war.

Gen. Lee was so popular because (if we were to make the comparison to DnD skills/feats) he had a really high bluff check and was able to BS people into believing he had some idea of what he was doing. Because of that, if I were running such a game, I'd completely drop the Leadership feat and just adapt the Bluff skill.
Fanatical Devotion feat, Dragon #346. No penalties for causing death of your followers.

[Namfuak]

Fanatical Devotion feat, Dragon #346. No penalties for causing death of your followers.

Could also just be a thrallherd.

Anyway, if you are using leadership to attract soldiers, ordering them to fight the enemy shouldn't implicitly trigger the "Caused the death of followers" modifier, since that was what they joined you to do in the first place. Perhaps instead it should be based on whether what you did was smart - if most of your victories are Pyrrhic, or you are fond of firing arrows into a fray where your soldiers are already fighting, or other tactics that unnecessarily cause death, you might start accruing a negative to your leadership score.