My player's suggestion how to slightly balance Leadership

[Jon_Dahl]

It's simple: The cohort and followers receive no starting wealth. The PC has to buy everything.

I have no idea what to say. Anyone?

[Ashtagon]

My usual fix is:

1) The follower may not have any Leadership feat (or equivalent feat).
2) The follower cannot have any class levels from a class that can grant 5th level spells or higher.
3) If the follower has any class levels that can grant followers of their own, the only follower they may take are special mounts, animal companions, psicrystals, and familiars.
4) The follower cannot benefit from a Vow of Poverty. This rule also includes any special mounts, animal companions, psicrystals, and familiars.

[Extra Anchovies]

It's simple: The cohort and followers receive no starting wealth. The PC has to buy everything.

I have no idea what to say. Anyone?

Still overpowered. Even a stay-at-home artificer cohort will break a game eventually.

If you want your players to have a cohort and/or followers, don't make one of them spend a feat on it, and don't give control of the cohort/followers to one party member.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The builds found in the DMG on pages 112-126 should be used for all NPC cohorts of one of those classes, no exceptions. The DM controls the cohort, since it's an NPC and not a second PC, which means the DM picks its feats, spells, skills, and makes all of the decisions for the character.

The PC who has Leadership needs to role-play how he intends to recruit his cohort, and keep in mind that metagame concepts such as character classes don't exist in-character. Words like Wizard and Cleric can still be used, but he's not guaranteed to get a cohort of exactly that character class, and he could end up with a cohort who only has a few levels in the desired class, and has multiclassed into Monk for the rest of his levels.

A cohort is an NPC, and the DM controls and makes all build decisions for all NPCs, end of story.

[BowStreetRunner]

I knew a DM who made PCs who took leadership recruit their followers and cohort in-game. Usually it amounted to putting out notices, hiring a town crier, and sitting in a tavern interviewing the candidates who applied. The player never even saw the character sheets for anyone he recruited - it all had to be handled in-game.

[Brova]

It's simple: The cohort and followers receive no starting wealth. The PC has to buy everything.

I have no idea what to say. Anyone?

This flows from a common misconception about the game. Lowering WBL punishes martial classes (the ones that suck) but not magic classes (the ones that rock). So this just says "you can have a cohort, but only if it's a Druid/Wizard/Sorcerer". As those are the best classes, this is not really a nerf.

Honestly, I suggest one of three solutions (other than the "anything goes, except stupid wish/gate/shapechange/etc shenanigans" path).

1. Ban it entirely. Also ban the other "extra token" options like planar binding, animate dead, charm person, and so on. I don't like this option (kill too many cool concepts), but it's simple and relatively balanced.

2. Use it to close the utility gap between casters and noncasters. An Ubercharger or Tripstar is totally capable of threatening level appropriate monsters, but he can't solve noncombat problems and lacks utility like flight. So you give Leadership to noncasters (possibly as a bonus feat), and require them to take a caster cohort. How you deal with other "extra token" options is up in the air, but something like the standard gentleman's agreement is required.

3. Replace all the "extra token" mechanics with Leadership. There are a lot of ways that people get extra characters. They all work differently, and even if one is balanced voltron-ing them together is insane. So you just declare that everyone gets Leadership at level "whatever", their cohort is a CR = Level - 2 encounter, and that's how all the planar binding type spells work.

[Sagetim]

I knew a DM who made PCs who took leadership recruit their followers and cohort in-game. Usually it amounted to putting out notices, hiring a town crier, and sitting in a tavern interviewing the candidates who applied. The player never even saw the character sheets for anyone he recruited - it all had to be handled in-game.

That sounds like the DM was using leadership with the rules as written.

As for 'make them buy everything'....a cohort should have gear appropriate to their starting level. They are basically an adventurer unto themselves that is looking for someone to lead them rather than doing things on their own or leading a party. It's up to the DM if the cohort has pc wealth by level to start with or npc wealth by level to start with, but in any case the players should not see the cohort's character sheet. And no, they can't just loot the cohort if the guy signs up with them either (that's not to say they can't murder the cohort and take his stuff...but you tend to have problems when you do stuff like that. Like bounties being put on your head, hits to your leadership score for your awful reputation, etc).

The guys they will need to gear up are the followers. Followers would Maybe have like...clubs or daggers, perhaps a sling, and potentially padded armor or leather. They just aren't going to be well equipped to start with, if they even have that much. More likely they would have things like professional tools (not masterwork variety) and a backpack with provisions and whatnot in it. And would probably be rather sore with you if you tried to appropriate their foodstuffs.

Just remember that taking leadership does not grant the player any kind of direct control over the actions of their cohort/followers. They can issue commands, but all the cohort/followers from the feat are npcs under the control of the GM and they have their own minds and what not.

[Malimar]

I limit Followers and Cohorts to tier 6 classes unless you spend a feat to let the Cohort take higher-tier classes, one feat per tier. This nerf is drastic enough that nobody has bothered to take Leadership in any of my games. I probably might as well just ban it.

[Orderic]

When my players take Leadership, I build the cohorts and followers. However, they don't just appear out of nowhere, they still need to be found and convinced. Also, they do require some maintenance, which may lead to more rp oportunities.

For example, one of the characters has his Leadership followers as a kind of evil cult in a faraway swamp. However, since he barely ever visits, he may eventually find out that they have all been converted by a missionary, especially since he ist taking their "high-priest" (a warlock), who is his cohort, with him on adventures.

[Jon_Dahl]

Some of the ideas in this thread have very little use to me since the PCs are of so high level that they can begin with Leadership. The background story just have to say that the cohort and the followers have been following the PC for years. What can I do?

[Extra Anchovies]

What you can do is ban Leadership.

If you want the players to have cohorts, give them cohorts. Don't make them spend feats to get cohorts, and don't let them spend feats to get cohorts. Allies, cohorts, followers, etc should be story rewards, should not require one or more players to spend build resources on them, and should always be built and controlled by you.

If someone writes into their backstory that they've had a friend who's followed them for years and has conveniently always been 2 levels behind without ever taking a share of the XP, you don't have to include the cohort in the story at all.

[ekarney]

Yeah removing the Cohort's WBL won't do anything other than annoy your players. I'm pretty sure that once my players get back into town, they're actually going to have to start borrowing food money from the party cohort. Being martials they're broke enough as it is without having to pay to outfit a cohort.

I just give my players total control. If they want to build their cohort they can, if they want to control their cohort they can.
So what? I have to throw a few more monster into the encounter.

If you don't allow leadership then you've effectively put a hard-crop on the limit of players you have. If you have more than 6 then combat can be slowed down or so, then yeah that's fair enough. But if you'd allow an extra player at the table then there's no real reason you shouldn't allow leadership.

If it's that big of an issue just build (and play if you need to) the cohort yourself.

[Sagetim]

Some of the ideas in this thread have very little use to me since the PCs are of so high level that they can begin with Leadership. The background story just have to say that the cohort and the followers have been following the PC for years. What can I do?

Read the section in the DMG about Cohorts and Followers. It starts on page 104, shortly into the chapter on Nonplayer Characters. What you already proposed as a 'fix' is pretty much how it works, save that since cohorts are supposed to be accomplished adventurers unto themselves, they should have their own starting gear.

Followers are not intended for use in combat because they are so many levels lower than the party. And as npcs, they generally don't have player class levels because something like 95% of the world or more doesn't have player class levels. So limiting them to tier 6 and saying you need a feat per tier over that is just...obnoxious.

And in case anyone mentions it: Cohorts can't take the leadership feat. To quote just one paragraph from the section:


Cohorts are people who take on a subservient role. Cohorts are
not leaders. They might voice an opinion now and again, but for
the most part, they do as they’re told.


If you're willing to allow Leadership in the game, then you should be crafting the npc followers and the cohort, and the player should probably do some set up roleplay with you if they are starting the game with said npcs. This will help you to guage if the player has been treating his followers and cohort well, or if he has been mistreating them and is thus ripe for betrayal/revenge. This would be doing a little establishing rp within the context of the player's background, and would be a reasonable requirement to starting with the npcs granted by the leadership feat.

Do remember that mistreated followers and npcs are more than willing to betray and seek revenge upon the players who mistreated them, and if nothing else they will spread the word of the players mistreatment of them. Which lowers the players leadership score.

And as I stated in my last post, the player does not have direct control over his followers and cohort. Unlike, say, a summoned monster. Similarly, there's no real backlash for sending a pack of summoned celestial dogs to their 'death' by using them to spring traps. Summoned monsters poof on being hit down to 0, they don't die or leave remains. It's implied that summon magic prevents them from being actually killed while they are summoned.

[Urpriest]

The best way to balance Leadership is to require the player to recruit another player to the game to play the cohort. You can then compensate for the nerf by giving them a free feat and letting the cohort have equal level to the PC rather than level-2.

[Myou]

I don't use leadership. If a player wants two characters I let him play two characters. Everyone in the game has that option (unless the party is already getting too big, in which case I certainly wouldn't allow leadership either), just as everyone would normally have the option to take leadership, but unlike taking leadership, the effect on the party is to split up loot and XP more and lead to harder encounters, rather than giving one character two turns per round essentally for free. As funny as it sounds, I feel that it's more balanced than the feat.

[Waddacku]

Just lose the cohort. Followers are fine.

[Andreaz]

The feat is useless. You are fine with the Players having two characters? However they earn the loyalty of someone, don't make them spend a feat on it.

[Talionis]

What you can do is ban Leadership.

If you want the players to have cohorts, give them cohorts. Don't make them spend feats to get cohorts, and don't let them spend feats to get cohorts. Allies, cohorts, followers, etc should be story rewards, should not require one or more players to spend build resources on them, and should always be built and controlled by you.

If someone writes into their backstory that they've had a friend who's followed them for years and has conveniently always been 2 levels behind without ever taking a share of the XP, you don't have to include the cohort in the story at all.

I don't agree that the DM controls the cohorts. We quite often play with two characters in my play groups and it doesn't break the game.

My advice is work with the characters and try to be balancing and fair if you give them extra characters. Often this is a good way to get abilities into the game you think your characters may need. Its a good way to fix holes when no one wants to play a Thief, Cleric, etc. Give one to a player to role play. Call them out if they don't play them as separate characters, don't let them throw away one character to protect the other unless it makes sense, etc.

Having lower level casters can help a lot in the game, over time those casters become pretty powerful, but are always a little behind the main characters, we did this on purpose in a campaign where everyone was playing characters that were tier 4 or lower. It made it fun and helped to cover up some of the weaknesses as the enemies got more challenging.

I also think that its a good opportunity for you to get players to play characters that they might not otherwise play. I wouldn't give them an opportunity to just pick the character that will be the cohort, make it a collaboration. It maybe okay to just give them a character and that's what they get to play with have the characters be creative with what they are given. But I think its a good opportunity to spice up a game, especially if its been going for a while. Personally, I always feel better if a cohort dies than a main character. The game feels dangerous, but the character your player is vested in isn't gone from the game. We often have some gruesome cohort deaths that become the motivation for entire arcs.

But I like the PC's to be in charge of their characters and haven't had real problems with people playing two characters.

Don't get me wrong, I think NPC's can be in the game too and sometimes its okay to play a game where NPC's help the player characters, but I've found that if you aren't really careful the NPC can take over the game and hurt the role playing. Plus, DM's have enough to do.