Followers Fighting

[HALFORCSTEVE]

my Orc Fighter now has leadership and is going to go Orc warlord so how can I make my followers better in battle by fighting together or alone. I have found the feat that allows anyone with this feat to fight together but can followers even get a feat? any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[unseenmage]

my Orc Fighter now has leadership and is going to go Orc warlord so how can I make my followers better in battle by fighting together or alone. I have found the feat that allows anyone with this feat to fight together but can followers even get a feat? any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Back in 3.0 Followers were restricted to being NPC classes only, that language wasn't reprinted in the 3.5 DMG. You should consult your DM as to which they're using.

- The book Power of Faerun has a lot of options for Leadership characters.

- The Player's Handbook 2 has something called Teamwork Benefits you should also look into.

- Making Followers Wizards or Psions or rangers or Druids gives them - Familiars, Psicrystals, or Animal Companions respectively, this greatly increases the number of possible actions your horde can take.

- The spell Create Crawling Claw put into scrolls and used via use Magic Device can also net each of your followers a swarm of Constructs made from severed left hands to get even more actions.

- Giving higher level Cohorts and Followers Leadership as well nets even more minions.

- The feats Mentor and Apprentice from DMG2 can also net additional minions, as can Wild Cohort.

- Equipping your swarm of minions with at will items of Magic Missile or Orb of spells can be useful as both are low level spells that tend to hit enemies regardless.

- Depending on how your games run some cheese is that all NPCs come with their own equipment as per the NPC Wealth by Level guidelines in the DMG. You could have them all buy animals and max out Handle Animal. Animals can be pretty scary and there are some which are quite affordable compared to their HD. it's one way to turn your low level Follower into a high HD combatant, even if it is just an animal. (By the way, Animals can be trained in Teamwork Benefits too.)

- The totaled Carrying Capacity of an army is nothing to sneeze at, nor are their combined Aid Another checks for skill checks. Skill checks like tearing down dungeon walls or the Profession Mining skill in races of the Dragon that lets your army burrow under things one 5 foot cube of material per minion per 8 hr workday.

- Savage Species has rituals for adding subtypes and changing races. Why not improve your horde? (Note: They're very expensive.) There's also a small list of spells that will permanently add Templates to creatures, among them Mineralize Warrior from the Underdark book.

- And finally, the Retraining rules found in IIRC PH2 are very useful. There's also the Dark Chaos shuffle where via two spells you switch every feat someone knows for new ones. And there's also a psionic power that will let you rebuild parts of a character as well.

Good luck. Leadershp is considered one of the most broken feats for a reason. Taking any of the above advice might get books hurled at you.

Edit: Item Familiar. Give them all the feat Item Familiar, because it's hilarious. If one broken feat on one character is funny then one broken feat on a dozen characters is hilarious.

[Runeclaw]

All of the above advice is terrible for any actual game, as unseenmage seems to admit.

In general, my belief is that your Cohort can go adventuring with you, but your followers should be assigned to other kinds of tasks, like guarding your keep. Taking a bunch of low level schmucks into dungeons isn't just pointless, it's unfun oocly (too much dice rolling and tracking of positions will just slow combat to a crawl), and it's probably irresponsible ICly, unless you don't care about your followers welfare.

Unless the DM is running a scenario where it's appropriate to have a large force involved, leave the followers at home. The feat is really about getting the Cohort - which is awesome enough as it is.

[unseenmage]

All of the above advice is terrible for any actual game, as unseenmage seems to admit.

In general, my belief is that your Cohort can go adventuring with you, but your followers should be assigned to other kinds of tasks, like guarding your keep. Taking a bunch of low level schmucks into dungeons isn't just pointless, it's unfun oocly (too much dice rolling and tracking of positions will just slow combat to a crawl), and it's probably irresponsible ICly, unless you don't care about your followers welfare.

Unless the DM is running a scenario where it's appropriate to have a large force involved, leave the followers at home. The feat is really about getting the Cohort - which is awesome enough as it is.

For the record Power of Faerun was printed specifically with Leadership in mind. So it's actually a good suggestion. Other than that I agree with Runeclaw.