How many GMs would allow this

[Calthropstu]

A level 20 thrallherd takes as his thralls...

a 19th level and an 18th level thrallherd.

Who take as their thralls an 18th and 17th and 17th and 16th level thrallherds who take as their thralls...

and so on down the line.

Optimizing each thrallherd for maximum thralls and believers, it would quickly get over the top.

Are there any GMs who would tolerate this level of shenaniganism? (did I just make a new word?)

[GreyBlack]

Most certainly not on careful reading. Honestly, I wouldn't let the PC choose their thralls or believers at all. The text not only calls out that these thralls and believers are often more weak willed, and that you're not supposed to be in control of who you attract. As such, I would call it highly suspect that you would attract exactly the followers you want. Especially with psionic powers.

[Calthropstu]

Most certainly not on careful reading. Honestly, I wouldn't let the PC choose their thralls or believers at all. The text not only calls out that these thralls and believers are often more weak willed, and that you're not supposed to be in control of who you attract. As such, I would call it highly suspect that you would attract exactly the followers you want. Especially with psionic powers.

A fair point, and one I would raise myself as a GM.

But what about allowing a chain of leadership. Nowhere near as absurd of an abuse, but still numbering followers in the thousands. Particularly since psions have the ability to literally dictate what their followers feats are via the whole psychic reformation thing.

[Seppo87]

On a cheese scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is: "I made a monk with the Run feat", 10 is pun-pun, and 3 is the intended power level (vanilla monsters are an appropriate challenge at their intended CR) this is a solid 7

[AnachroNinja]

I'd allow it in a non combat sense. In combat it would just make that players turn such a huge mess that it wouldn't be viable, but I'd let him use them as a resource for strategy and role play

[MisterKaws]

DMs don't usually allow Thrallherd and Leadership. It gets kinda ridiculous sometimes. This is one such case.

[Ashtagon]

The bargain I've struck is that the player can either let the GM choose the follower, or the player can build the follower using NPC classes only, and race restricted to the PC's own race or one or two GM-chosen LA+ races.

I know that's a lot harsher than most people play with, but I found the only other reasonable alternative was to ban Leadership and similar feats and abilities.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'd allow it in the background only, barring a hypothetical intentionally high-power game (in which case I'd demand very fast play). If you want to be the guy leading a city of mind-controlled worshipers, that's cool. If you want to be the guy that brings his thralls along for extra turns, that's a lot less cool.


I think a background city-state is a pretty reasonable PC feature at level 15+. At level ~10, it's probably exceptional, but if you invest the resources, why not?

[Tiri]

I wouldn't allow it. After all, the only way it's not completely broken is if you let all your thralls and believers form a some sort of settlement, and at that level most PCs are capable of getting that anyway (in my games, at least).

[AvatarVecna]

I wouldn't allow it, because it gets even cheesier.

Thrallherd forbids taking Leadership, but not other feats with similar effects. Thus, a Thrallherd is perfectly capable of taking Undead Leadership, Draconic Leadership, and so on. Oh, but it gets worse: did you know that Psicrystals actually gain Hit Dice? Indeed, unlike familiars, psicrystals gain actual HD...which comes with attribute bumps and (most importantly) feats. Now, you can't have your psicrystal take Thrallherd levels, but you most assuredly can have them take Leadership, Undead Leadership, Draconic Leadership, and Leadership-boosting feats.

It gets ridiculous if you fully optimize this...hence why it shouldn't be allowed.

[JNAProductions]

I'd allow it in the background only, barring a hypothetical intentionally high-power game (in which case I'd demand very fast play). If you want to be the guy leading a city of mind-controlled worshipers, that's cool. If you want to be the guy that brings his thralls along for extra turns, that's a lot less cool.

I think a background city-state is a pretty reasonable PC feature at level 15+. At level ~10, it's probably exceptional, but if you invest the resources, why not?

I agree with this-dropping some character resources on a fun background feature, with the ability to enact strategic powers, is perfectly fine!

But using it to cheese every encounter? Not so much.

[Inevitability]

I wouldn't, if only because I don't think thrallherds should get to design their minions from scratch.

Ignoring that, it depends on the situation. If the player has a great concept that requires large masses of expendable minions, I might allow it, but I'd suggest some less cheesy ways to get a similar effect as well.

If the player just wants to bring a few thousand mid- to high-level characters with him on a quest, I'll throw the DMG at him.

[Deadline]

But what about allowing a chain of leadership. Nowhere near as absurd of an abuse, but still numbering followers in the thousands. Particularly since psions have the ability to literally dictate what their followers feats are via the whole psychic reformation thing.

Depends on the game I was running. If it was structured for such, or I was in the mood to optimize the bad guys to be sufficient challenge, sure. Optimized minionmancy is a powerful thing, regardless of how you go about it. But my groups routinely get together before starting any campaign to do a "producers" meeting where we all talk about the type of campaign we want, potential hooks between loose character concepts, world-building ideas, etc. That way we don't wind up with Angel Summoner and the BMX Bandit unless everyone intentionally want to play that game (and are fully aware of the issues).

[Calthropstu]

The bargain I've struck is that the player can either let the GM choose the follower, or the player can build the follower using NPC classes only, and race restricted to the PC's own race or one or two GM-chosen LA+ races.

I know that's a lot harsher than most people play with, but I found the only other reasonable alternative was to ban Leadership and similar feats and abilities.

At issue here is the fact that a psion can alter their followers' feats using psychic refomation allowing them to force the issue.

[Calthropstu]

On a cheese scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is: "I made a monk with the Run feat", 10 is pun-pun, and 3 is the intended power level (vanilla monsters are an appropriate challenge at their intended CR) this is a solid 7

Lol, agreed. The cheese is very strong. I'd say limburger level chese.

That is why I said I would think about. But my session is almost here and I have decided that followers will not follow another minion.
Not without encouraging or actively attempting to break the control the thrallherd has.

As for the epic 25,000 strong army that thrallherd minions would grant... no. Just no.

[OldTrees1]

I allow followers and cohorts as long as they remain in the background. This also applies to a Necromancer's army beyond a small personal squad.

They can:
1) Defend a territory you own (base, keep, city, kingdom, etc). Preemptive strikes and offense are not enabled.
2) Manage a business (your share of the income would be constrained by balance)
3) Act as a skilled-based network. If both you and the followers share a skill, then you can roll a skill check at a distance with an appropriate penalty. (Some skills may not apply)

[Bohandas]

Most certainly not on careful reading. Honestly, I wouldn't let the PC choose their thralls or believers at all. The text not only calls out that these thralls and believers are often more weak willed, and that you're not supposed to be in control of who you attract. As such, I would call it highly suspect that you would attract exactly the followers you want. Especially with psionic powers.

And even if you did you'd only get ones with really crap wisdom

[AvatarVecna]

A couple of important points regarding the kind of thralls/believers you can attract:

1) There's no kind of check or save involved; IIRC, even being immune to mind-affecting effects doesn't protect you from becoming a thrall, so low-Wis/Will doesn't factor in.

2) While you don't exactly control who you attract with your Thrallherd ability, I'm pretty sure you can dismiss them (or "dismiss" them with weaponry), and you'll end up attracting new ones within a day. There's no penalty for losing thralls/believers in this manner, either, so you may as well hold out for the guys you want, or at least similar guys.

In regards to this second point, here's what I'd probably allow a standard Thrallherd to do: as long as they're not abusing Thrallherd like the OP is suggesting you could, and they're just using it like standard Leadership, I'd allow the Thrallherd player to have some say in the kind of follower they attract, which I would decide the specifics of.

[Troacctid]

So a Thrallherd recruits another Thrallherd, and that Thrallherd recruits more Thrallherds. It's a classic pyramid scheme. I know we all want to get thralls quick, but these Thrallherd leaders are really just exploiting gullible thralls and believers who will never make it to the top of the ladder. I believe the government needs to crack down on dishonest thrall recruitment tactics in order to protect consumers from these harmful scams.

[Calthropstu]

A couple of important points regarding the kind of thralls/believers you can attract:

1) There's no kind of check or save involved; IIRC, even being immune to mind-affecting effects doesn't protect you from becoming a thrall, so low-Wis/Will doesn't factor in.

2) While you don't exactly control who you attract with your Thrallherd ability, I'm pretty sure you can dismiss them (or "dismiss" them with weaponry), and you'll end up attracting new ones within a day. There's no penalty for losing thralls/believers in this manner, either, so you may as well hold out for the guys you want, or at least similar guys.

In regards to this second point, here's what I'd probably allow a standard Thrallherd to do: as long as they're not abusing Thrallherd like the OP is suggesting you could, and they're just using it like standard Leadership, I'd allow the Thrallherd player to have some say in the kind of follower they attract, which I would decide the specifics of.

You would, as gm, decide base stat assignments, starting items, and character class as well as base class abilities (for instance bloodline, oracle revelations, rogue abilities, ninja tricks etc)

You could assign everything else, but psychic reformation would allow the thrallherd to reassign all skills, stat boosts, feat selections and spell selections.

So forcing a feat selection of leadership is literally possible RAW. But cheese. And when it comes to cheese, the gm should just say no.

[JNAProductions]

You would, as gm, decide base stat assignments, starting items, and character class as well as base class abilities (for instance bloodline, oracle revelations, rogue abilities, ninja tricks etc)

You could assign everything else, but psychic reformation would allow the thrallherd to reassign all skills, stat boosts, feat selections and spell selections.

So forcing a feat selection of leadership is literally possible RAW. But cheese. And when it comes to cheese, the gm should just say no.

Emperor Tippy wants a word with you. :P

In less humour and more seriousness, the DM should say no to anything inappropriate for the table. That varies table to table. Some people find adamantine bowling ball Hulking Hurlers cheesy, other tables find that amusingly pedestrian. It just depends on how much optimization is in play at a given table.

[Calthropstu]

So a Thrallherd recruits another Thrallherd, and that Thrallherd recruits more Thrallherds. It's a classic pyramid scheme. I know we all want to get thralls quick, but these Thrallherd leaders are really just exploiting gullible thralls and believers who will never make it to the top of the ladder. I believe the government needs to crack down on dishonest thrall recruitment tactics in order to protect consumers from these harmful scams.

Actually, hunting down thrallherds is perfectly logical. 2 optomized thrallherds who went to war with each other could easily depopulate an entire kingdom.