Leadership + Undead Leadership

[myancey]

I know this has probably been touched on a thousand times, and admittedly, my boolean is pretty poor, but what is the consensus (RAI, RAW) in allowing characters two cohorts if they utilize both leadership and undead leadership as feats?

I wouldn't normally even consider this, but our DM has given players permission to use a rather high level of cheese in this 15th lvl sandbox campaign he plans to host. (We've got an optimized war weaver and tainted scholar for other PC classes being used, to give idea of cheese scope).

Leadership, having been written first, doesn't have any wording to disallow undead leadership. Undead leadership doesn't specifically indicate that leadership cannot also be used-it just mentions a penalty to attracting living beings. I had looked into Thrallherd, and it specifically mentions not being able to utilize leadership/replacing leadership--giving emphasis to my thought that if undead leadership doesn't disallow use, its ok to do.

So, again, ethical implications of breaking a game aside, what is the consensus on using both?

And thanks for the help. :-)

[AvatarVecna]

The general consensus? Don't use stuff like this. That said, if you're DM's letting you...

I found this trick a while back, and found a way to push it even further. I've taken to calling it the "Crystal Cult trick", and actually started a pbp game based on the idea. So, allow me to expand:

Firstly, what can various characters take? Technically, there's no rule saying your cohorts and followers can't take Leadership and similar abilities themselves (including becoming Thrallherds themselves, if they're high enough level). Furthermore, Thrallherd only forbids the actual Leadership feat, saying nothing about various other methods of gaining cohorts and followers.

Secondly, here's a list of such abilities (at least, the ones relevant outside of gestalt/tristalt madness):

--Leadership grants you followers according to your leadership score, as well as a cohort of your level-2.
--Undead Leadership is a modified Leadership that makes taking undead cohorts/followers more efficient.
--Thrallherd 1 grants you followers according to a modified leadership score, as well as a cohort of your level-1.
--Thrallherd 10 grants an additional cohort at your level-2.
--Psicrystal Affinity.

Why Psicrystal Affinity? Well, due to a difference in wording when comparing the familiar rules to the psicrystal rules, it appears that psicrystals actually advance in HD, which means they level up with you. Among other things, this means that a psicrystal can take feats. Now, here's where it gets a little sketchy (and more importantly, outside of RAW): a psicrystal has HD equal to its master's level--but only it's levels in psion or wilder. Now, by a strict interpretation of the rules, this means that going Psion or Wilder 5/Thrallherd 10, you can't have your Psicrystal take Leadership. If you can convince your DM to allow psionic prestige classes to advance your psicrystal, or even better, for their level to be your manifester level, then you can really go to town: use the Improved Psicrystal feat to get your manifester level up to your character level, so you can really have fun with it. Seeing as your psicrystal has nothing better to spend feats on, get it Vow of Poverty for the Charisma boost, as well as some Leadership-boosting feats (such as Improved Cohort).

The way it works out, every Thrallherd in your power structure that has 10 levels in that PrC has a cohort of lvl-1, four cohorts of level-2 (one from Thrallherd, one from Undead Leadership, one from Psicrystal's Leadership, one from Psicrystal's Undead Leadership), and four leaderships worth of followers/believers. Since you're starting at 15th level, that's gonna be just you; that said, the rest of the Thrallherd cohorts will just have one less cohort of their lvl-2, which is still pretty ridiculous. Without even touching on psicrystal cheese or followers going into Thrallherd, we can get...


--1 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 10 (that's you)
--1 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 9 (your Thrall)
--3 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 8 (your thrall, your undead cohort, and your Thrall's Thrall)
--4 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 7 (Your Thrall's cohort, your thrall's Thrall, your undead cohort's Thrall, and your Thrall's Thrall's Thrall)
--7 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 6 (I'm done explaining, it just keeps going)
--11 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 5
--18 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 4
--29 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 3
--47 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 2
--76 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 1

So, without going into Psicrystal cheese or followers taking Thrallherd levels, we have a total of 197 characters who are powerful psionic users, and StP erudites to boot. Furthermore, each of those characters has a pool of followers and a pool of believers. Assuming a decent Charisma score on this lot, their Leadership scores get pretty high pretty quickly, especially with feats and items to boost them. Just a reminder, that's 197 pools of followers and 197 pools of believers. Without Psicrystal cheese.

By the way, there's some obscure rule in...I think it's the Miniatures Handbook, that says your Leadership score can continue increasing beyond 25; it doesn't allow epic cohorts, but it gives access to more followers of higher levels. However, since I can't find it, I'm just not gonna calculate as if I had it.

I'm gonna edit this post with what happens when you include psicrystal cheese, as well as some vague numbers of followers you can expect in either situation.

EDIT: Okay, so assuming some items and a decent Cha score, the group above can expect the following Thrallherd/Undead Leadership scores:

--25/24
--25/23
--25/21
--23/20
--21/19
--19/18
--17/17
--14/15
--12/14
--10/13

Thus, the total number of followers by follower level, assuming you don't take any feats to increase either your follower pool or your Leadership scores, are as thus:

--7456 ECL 1 characters
--624 ECL 2 characters
--220 ECL 3 characters
--131 ECL 4 characters
--54 ECL 5 characters
--26 ECL 6 characters

And what do you have to get this veritable army of followers and small militia of StP Erudites? Two feats, 10 levels of Thrallherd, and a decent Cha score. This is without psicrystals taking feats, or any of those ECL 6 followers/believers taking levels in Thrallherd. This is without Extra Followers, Improved Cohort, Assemble the Horde, or any Leadership boosting feats. And it's already ridiculous.

Let's see how bad it gets with psicrystals in the mix...

So now, the ECL 15 guy gets 1 ECL 14 cohort and 4 ECL 13 characters, and all others get 1 ECL-2 and 3 ECL-2 characters. That means that now, the number of characters, and their various scores (Thrallherd/UL/Psi L/Psi UL) are as thus:

--1 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 10 (25/24/18/22)
--1 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 9 (25/23/17/21)
--5 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 8 (25/21/15/19)
--8 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 7 (23/20/14/18)
--23 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 6 (21/19/13/17)
--47 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 5 (19/18/12/16)
--116 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 4 (17/17/11/15)
--257 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 3 (14/15/9/13)
--605 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 2 (12/14/8/12)
--1390 Erudite 5/Thrallherd 1 (10/13/7/11)

So now, your follower/believer numbers are as thus:

--70961 ECL 1 characters
--4929 ECL 2 characters
--1051 ECL 3 characters
--519 ECL 4 characters
--146 ECL 5 characters
--53 ECL 6 characters

Of course, if you make each of those ECL 6 characters a Thrallherd like the characters above them. It makes a small difference, but it's something. This build requires 5 feats, but that's hardly a great sacrifice for having a literal army of characters at your beck and call. At 15th level. Imagine how this looks if you level up to 20th. Imagine how big your army will be if use that obscure Leadership extending rule from the rulebook I can't remember. Imagine the ridiculous lengths this reaches when you go into epic levels.

[OldTrees1]

I allow all cohort granting abilities to stack provided the cohort use meets my table's optimization level. (In my case, cohorts are for RP uses and not for a combat advantage)