Leadership feat, but I'm captain of a pirate ship

[falisa]

Hey guys,

Playing through the Skulls and Shackles campaign and we just hit level 4 today. I'm playing a swashbuckler and I'm the captain of our ship. I thought it would be awesome to pick up the scribe feat, which automatically upgrades into Leadership at level 7. Sounded awesome at the time, but thinking about it now, would this really be worth it? Part of the campaign is that I am captaining a boat with 20-30 people on it already following me. Seems like a waste of a feat to grab this, but thought I'd get an opinion from here. Scribe itself sounds awesome that I get to control a complete 2nd character.

[Seerow]

Leadership makes it so your ship's crew is personally loyal to you, as opposed to your gold and promises of loot. It also means if/when they die you can easily recruit new loyal crew members without much hassle. Besides that getting the Cohort is, as you mentioned, a whole extra character for a feat. If your DM is willing to roll with it, there is very little reason not to grab it.

[Geddy2112]

Leadership is bar none the most powerful feat in the game-even if you dumped charisma and have a bunch of negative modifiers for your cohort/followers, you get a second character(cohort) and very loyal mooks(followers). You are a swashbuckler, so you have a decent to good charisma score, and will benefit from the feat.

If your DM allows it, you should take it. You can get a second character that can fill any niche your party is missing. It starts to get really broken when you have a wizard or cleric crafting and abusing spells for the party's benefit. Then when they get to level 7 they take leadership....etc. Hence why most DM's straight ban it.

[daryen]

Even more than the personal loyalty of your crew (which, is BTW, worth the expenditure of a feature by itself), your pool of followers will quickly blow past your 30 crew. At that point, you start getting to have personally loyal followers *wherever you want*. Make sure you have a handful in every port, and you will have virtually guaranteed friendly help everywhere you go. Not to mention how much easier it is to replace lost crew (or upgrade crew that didn't die) to better, more capable people.

Seriously, just nerfing it to have a mundane cohort and personally loyal (and upgradable) crew is worth the feat. Whatever the DM lets you have after that is just gravy.

[falisa]

Thanks for the responses guys. That definitely seems very usable then! I'll have to pass this by him to see if he's okay with it since that would definitely take away a lot of the difficulty this campaign is supossed to have (Piratin aint easy).


You can get a second character that can fill any niche your party is missing. It starts to get really broken when you have a wizard or cleric crafting and abusing spells for the party's benefit.

I'm a bit confused at this one. The feat says I have to recruit a Fighter, Paladin, Cavalier or Gunslinger. How could I get a magic caster? Is this only once I get Leadership and can start having them take levels in other classes?

[legomaster00156]

The feat says I have to recruit a Fighter, Paladin, Cavalier or Gunslinger. How could I get a magic caster? Is this only once I get Leadership and can start having them take levels in other classes?
That is only for Squire. The Leadership feat has no such restrictions.

[falisa]

Ah! So I could, for instance, fire my cohort (squire) at that point and find a mage to bring on once I attain level 7? Didn't think about that. Really hope my DM lets me use this because this sounds awesome. I would find it fun to control two characters.

[Eisfalken]

Ah! So I could, for instance, fire my cohort (squire) at that point and find a mage to bring on once I attain level 7? Didn't think about that. Really hope my DM lets me use this because this sounds awesome. I would find it fun to control two characters.

For running a sailing ship, I strongly recommend you get yourself a bard cohort. They amount of utility they bring to that scenario is amazing: buffs that apply to everyone in earshot, spells that can buff and heal, and lots of skill points to run the ship like Profession, Knowledge, etc.

[legomaster00156]

It's worth noting that your cohort, while loyal to you, is an NPC, and just like a familiar or animal companion, the GM may decide to simply control your cohort themselves and merely act in your interests, as opposed to letting you directly control them.