How useful would an E6 cohort be in a 1-20 world?

[Coidzor]

That is to say, at what point would a character with normal level progression cease to notice or care about the contributions of a minion that was locked into the E6 framework? Or at least, at what point would it have fallen behind enough to be irrelevant in all contexts?

I was thinking that the general rule of thumb would be that it'd peter off and become background after the PC has 4 levels over the NPC minion, so that around level 10-11 a PC's E6 minion would cease to be relevant for the most part and the same sort of gap for around level 14-15 for a PC with an E10 companion, though that's largely in terms of combat.

It seems conceivable that a secondary set of skill checks could cover the gap for longer, especially involving skills such as UMD, Handle Animal, & Knowledge skills which require minimal investment but aren't quite worth it for the PCs themselves; or even situations where for some reason gathering information the old-fashioned way would be necessary, though I'm not sure how much longer than the combat-worthiness such would last.

How might progressing HD(or at least HP & skills) but not class features affect this? Say you could have a cohort with its first six levels arranged in whatever manner and then the rest filled in with Warrior/Aristocrat/Expert levels or RHD. Or a more borked higher powered variant where it's the last 6 levels that can be manipulated over time, one level at a time. Would that extend the usefulness even into epic levels rather than cutting out somewhere before or at 20th level?

On a somewhat related note, are NPC classes weak enough that allowing a PC to have an equal-level cohort with only NPC levels would be on the level? If not, why is this the case?

[Roog]

In pathfinder an E6 crafter cohort would still be plenty of use.

[Gemini476]

I'm going to assume that the cohort follows the standard E6 rules of getting a feat every 5000xp in excess of level 6.
DMG p.105 has the rules for cohort XP - it's (Cohort level/PC level)*(XP gained by PC), if you wonder.
Since experienced needed for the next level is level*1000 XP and the Cohort maxed out at level 6, after level 8 it just gets +6000 XP/level.

So one feat every level, plus an extra at level 11 and 16.

The cohort maxes out at level 6+14, or roughly CR 9 according to the E6 booklet.

There are certainly ways to abuse this, but you need some major optimization.

Overall I'd say that it stops being useful in fights round level twelve. Out-of-combat utility is fifth level spells at the most, so it could be easily replaced with Planar Binding or a Paladin 20 with Sword of the Arcane Order.

[Cog]

Some psionic characters already use psicrystals as feat batteries. An E6 cohort would crank that capacity up.

[Zombulian]

Some psionic characters already use psicrystals as feat batteries. An E6 cohort would crank that capacity up.

This one. An extremely versatile psionic trick is the psicrystal feat battery. Pick up the power Feat Leech and use it on your cohort that has way more feats that any character ever should. Maybe make the cohort a Fighter or something on top of that. It could be pretty dang useful, especially if you use Psychic Reformation every now and again on your cohort to pick and choose the feats you want it to have on a given day.

Edit: Feat Leech only works for Psionic and Metapsionic feats. So change those fighter levels to Psychic Warrior 5/Psion 1.

[Madeiner]

Depending on the campaign, any kind of ally can be used.
IMC, we have many NPC and the PCs have sent them on different quests, in order to help with time sensitive objectives.
Maybe while the PCs stop the BBEG from doing something, cohorts and lower level allies search for a way to keep him imprisoned.
Purely following cohorts are less useful past 5-6 levels, mainly due to the dangers of combat since they may die in one or two hits or even from area effects so they are best kept out of combat. They can still provide information, skills, means of transportation or extra carrying capacity or knowledge.

[Coidzor]

Some psionic characters already use psicrystals as feat batteries. An E6 cohort would crank that capacity up.

Ah, quite right, I'd completely overlooked that. :smallredface::smalleek: Seems like that goes from the slightly shady but useful territory of feat battery psicrystals to pretty broken fairly quickly when exploited like that.


In pathfinder an E6 crafter cohort would still be plenty of use.

For a dedicated wand-user, perhaps, but it seems like you'd run out of useful things that could be made except as a way of breaking WBL or outfitting large numbers of followers with lower-level magical gear.

At least without some way of keeping their effective caster level more relevant, such as that feat which allows them to use a craft skill to substitute & the variant of the idea that continues to progress their skills but not HD. Unless I'm very much misremembering how crafting works in PF, anyway. :smallconfused:


I'm going to assume that the cohort follows the standard E6 rules of getting a feat every 5000xp in excess of level 6.
DMG p.105 has the rules for cohort XP - it's (Cohort level/PC level)*(XP gained by PC), if you wonder.
Since experienced needed for the next level is level*1000 XP and the Cohort maxed out at level 6, after level 8 it just gets +6000 XP/level.

So one feat every level, plus an extra at level 11 and 16.

The cohort maxes out at level 6+14, or roughly CR 9 according to the E6 booklet.

There are certainly ways to abuse this, but you need some major optimization.

Overall I'd say that it stops being useful in fights round level twelve. Out-of-combat utility is fifth level spells at the most, so it could be easily replaced with Planar Binding or a Paladin 20 with Sword of the Arcane Order.

Yeah, that's what I was going for, except for the hypothetical where it's basically a cohort except it only has 6 levels of class features, the rest is just chassis like skill points, BAB, & HD. Though I think I'd have tweaked it to gaining 1 feat when it would have leveled up if it were a regular cohort if I had thought about it a bit more.

Thank you.


Depending on the campaign, any kind of ally can be used.
IMC, we have many NPC and the PCs have sent them on different quests, in order to help with time sensitive objectives.
Maybe while the PCs stop the BBEG from doing something, cohorts and lower level allies search for a way to keep him imprisoned.
Purely following cohorts are less useful past 5-6 levels, mainly due to the dangers of combat since they may die in one or two hits or even from area effects so they are best kept out of combat. They can still provide information, skills, means of transportation or extra carrying capacity or knowledge.

Sounds almost like Ars Magica & its division between the fully powerful character(s), the useful secondary characters, and then the lackeys/minions/followers, and different situations would lead to the group playing as different characters. Interesting idea, certainly.

[Baroknik]

Isn't an E6 Cohort in standard also called a max level follower?

[Seerow]

Isn't an E6 Cohort in standard also called a max level follower?

Yeah, regular followers can be level 6 with a leadership score as low as 21. Whatever is done with the Cohort, it should stay well ahead of that point (Though giving it bonus feats and hit dice, and just no high level class features, as was alluded to up thread, could work. Though in that case you may want to be careful if there's a Fighter or similar gimped class in the party... when the Cohort has more feats than them they may cry foul).

[Deadline]

An E6 DFI Bard could be quite potent, even at higher levels, assuming you took precautions. An invisible DFI bard who does nothing but buff and sing would be a significant force multiplier. And out of combat, they make a great face type lackey.

[Coidzor]

Yeah, regular followers can be level 6 with a leadership score as low as 21. Whatever is done with the Cohort, it should stay well ahead of that point (Though giving it bonus feats and hit dice, and just no high level class features, as was alluded to up thread, could work. Though in that case you may want to be careful if there's a Fighter or similar gimped class in the party... when the Cohort has more feats than them they may cry foul).

Any classes in particular that come to mind there? I can think of Fighters(and as a result Samurai) and Monks off the top of my head, and (3.5)Soulknives of course. Maybe Knights? I'm partially torn between using rebalanced class fixes for the more problematical classes and/or just using the gimped base classes as new NPC classes(probably with some tweaks).

If I were going to go with both progressing their HD sans any class features & give them bonus feats thing I'd probably drop the rate of progression though I'm not quite sure what I'd drop it too, possibly every 4 levels or maybe every 3rd level after a certain level in order to stagger it from the usual feat progression(outside of Pathfinder anyway).

[Gnaeus]

For a dedicated wand-user, perhaps, but it seems like you'd run out of useful things that could be made except as a way of breaking WBL or outfitting large numbers of followers with lower-level magical gear.

At least without some way of keeping their effective caster level more relevant, such as that feat which allows them to use a craft skill to substitute & the variant of the idea that continues to progress their skills but not HD. Unless I'm very much misremembering how crafting works in PF, anyway. :smallconfused:

I'm not sure it would. Since PF crafting allows a spellcraft check to ignore requisites, and a level 6 int focused character with feats to burn can have a really high spellcraft check, no trouble there. The issue you would have is that you can't create items with CL below the minimum caster level required to cast the spell in the item. So all you need is a way to push up caster level. This will be much easier if you can fill dead levels with warrior/aristocrat/expert, since there is the trait that works like practiced spellcaster. But even without that, I think you can make him very practical. Clearly, you can get him to CL 7 with an Ioun Stone, at which point he can make any misc item with no spell prereqs of 5th level or higher spells, or pile virtually any special abilities onto weapons as long as the enhancement bonus didn't go above +2. I mean just making luckstones for every member of the party would take 40-80 days of crafting for a 4 member group and likely be worth the feat to get the cohort. He can make Oozes, pearls of power, add dozens of spells known (level 4 or below) to your sorcerer or oracle. How much would your party rogue like an infinite supply of dust of disppearance?

And of course, he can cooperate with any caster in the party by contributing the item creation feat to make items that he couldn't make himself. Craft Wands, Arms/Armor, Scrolls, Wondrous Items, Constructs, maybe Rings, maybe Rods if he can hit CL 9 (easy enough if he is gaining HD), Sin Runes, lots of love there.

[Roog]

Caster level is not a requirement for crafting in PF, it just sets the spellcraft DC. The cohort can easily pump their spellcraft high enough to craft any item.
The crafter cohort is also helped by the extra E6 specific feats that allow craft ring, staff, etc for a level 6 spellcaster. The only issue will be access to higher level spells for staves and scrolls.

[Coidzor]

Hmm.. How does something like limited to 6th level, but gains a feat every 2nd level the PC gains sound?


Caster level is not a requirement for crafting in PF, it just sets the spellcraft DC. The cohort can easily pump their spellcraft high enough to craft any item.
The crafter cohort is also helped by the extra E6 specific feats that allow craft ring, staff, etc for a level 6 spellcaster. The only issue will be access to higher level spells for staves and scrolls.

Ahh, so it is. Not quite seeing how they're able to pump it much higher than 1d20+20, but then I suppose that should account for the vast majority of items anyway.

Good point about that, though it gets at least somewhat existential to have those feats floating around with 20th level characters. Granted, so does having characters that can't exceed 6th level but are able to level at all, or at least 'level.'

[Gnaeus]

Ahh, so it is. Not quite seeing how they're able to pump it much higher than 1d20+20, but then I suppose that should account for the vast majority of items anyway.

That shouldn't be too hard.

Wizard 6. Pumping spellcraft:
6 Ranks
3 Class Skill
2 Aid Another From Familiar
2 Masterwork Item (a book on magic item creation, or a variant of the Alchemists lab) (if Allowed)
4 Int bonus
3 Skill Focus Spellcraft
2 Magical Aptitude Feat
4 Arcane Builder Discovery (Wondrous Items I guess, or whatever has the highest difficulty. Also reduces crafting time)
2 Noble Scion Feat
2 Theoretical Magician Trait (But I won't count this, because you will want Spark of Creation instead to reduce crafting costs by 5%)

Thats 28 before we start with magic items

x/2 Headband of Int +x
1 luck bonus (luckstone?)
special: Fortunate Charm lets you reroll a skill check 1/day
Custom Skill bonus item (If Allowed)

I'm sure there should be other ways, but anyway, I think +30 with a reroll should be doable at 6 hd, and again, if you can throw in extra HD....

[Coidzor]

That shouldn't be too hard.

Wizard 6. Pumping spellcraft:
6 Ranks
3 Class Skill
2 Aid Another From Familiar
2 Masterwork Item (a book on magic item creation, or a variant of the Alchemists lab) (if Allowed)
4 Int bonus
3 Skill Focus Spellcraft
2 Magical Aptitude Feat
4 Arcane Builder Discovery (Wondrous Items I guess, or whatever has the highest difficulty. Also reduces crafting time)
2 Noble Scion Feat
2 Theoretical Magician Trait (But I won't count this, because you will want Spark of Creation instead to reduce crafting costs by 5%)

Thats 28 before we start with magic items

x/2 Headband of Int +x
1 luck bonus (luckstone?)
special: Fortunate Charm lets you reroll a skill check 1/day
Custom Skill bonus item (If Allowed)

I'm sure there should be other ways, but anyway, I think +30 with a reroll should be doable at 6 hd, and again, if you can throw in extra HD....

Definitely a pretty noteworthy contribution for a 6th level character working on behalf of higher level ones, yeah.

So far it seems like conventional combatant/bodyguard/extra spot-check in the active adventuring group usage peters off around level 10 and then ends at or before 12th level and unconventional/RPing/crafting/downtime/social usage is basically indefinite, with the crafting mostly depending upon the PF Crafting rules for its longevity as a role.

That sound about right, then?

[Gnaeus]

That sound about right, then?

I think so. With the added understanding that given a decent UMD and all that crafting he could quite plausibly be a real threat just by WBLmancy.

For example, he creates a golem (craft construct). He'll need someone else to contribute. But by contributing the feat he can be the master. A cauldron of the dead for half a dozen zombies. A marble elephant. Maybe a couple of elemental gemstones for emergencies. He could potenially have 40-50 HD of slaves at a very reasonable price. Then he just hangs out invisible and all of his actions are some variations of "get em". He's a wizard, so haste.....