Leadership (revamped)

[rferries]

Fearsome Presence [General]
Your ability to intimidate foes rivals that of a dragon.

Prerequisites
Intimidate 9 ranks.

Benefit
At the start of each encounter you may make an Intimidate check as a free action to demoralise all enemies within 120 ft that can see or hear you. You only make one Intimidate check, regardless of how many enemies are present. Your check result is opposed by each enemy's modified level check as normal for the Intimidate skill. If you beat an enemy's modified level check they are shaken for one round per level you possess, rather than for just one round.

If you beat an enemy's modified level check by 10 or more, that enemy is frightened instead of shaken. If you beat an enemy's modified level check by 20 or more, that enemy is panicked instead of shaken.

Special
A fighter may select Fearsome Presence as one of his fighter bonus feats, and gains a +2 bonus on checks made with this feat for each bonus fighter feat he possesses.

A barbarian adds one-half their class level to Intimidate checks made with this feat while raging.

Combat Inspiration [General]
You rally your comrades in battle, inspiring confidence through your humour, bravery, artistry, or sheer ferocity.

Benefit
At the start of each encounter you may make a Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, or Perform (any) check as a free action to prepare your allies for the fight. All of your allies that can see and hear you gain temporary hit points equal to the check result, and may act as though they were not fatigued (though they are still susceptible to exhaustion). Temporary hit points gained in this way last until the end of the encounter, as does the fatigue protection. This is an exceptional morale effect. If multiple characters possess this feat only the best check result is applied, though the Aid Another action may be used.

Special
Skill checks made in this way do not affect enemies. For example, an Intimidate check might impress your allies with your raging brutality, rather than cause your foes to cower.

A fighter may select Combat Inspiration as one of his fighter bonus feats, and gains a +2 bonus on checks made with this feat for each bonus fighter feat he possesses.

A bard adds one-half their bard class levels to checks made with this feat.

A barbarian adds one-half their class level to Intimidate checks made with this feat while raging.

[rferries]

Intimidate is sorely lacking outside of roleplaying applications, so here's a feat to buff it immensely (think of it as granting the ability to cast fear).

My revamped Leadership is intended to help early adventuring parties (note no prerequisites) avoid premature deaths by granting a reserve of temporary hp; it also removes the munchkinism of having cohorts and follower abuse. I've also considered expanding the benefits beyond just temporary hp, i.e. everyone gets a free Lesser Restoration spell if the leadership check exceeds DC 25 or somesuch.

[Nifft]

I'd suggest changing the name of the your Leadership feat to Combat Inspiration (or something), and just being up-front & honest with the players about the fact that you ban Leadership.

It's okay to ban Leadership. Many people do it, and most of them retain the ability to taste ice cream.


For the Intimidation feat... usually I see that sort of effect being triggered by something you do, like making a Charge attack, or dropping an opponent. Heck, even Dragons have to take an action to trigger their Frightful Presence ability:



A young adult or older dragon can unsettle foes with its mere presence. The ability takes effect automatically whenever the dragon attacks, charges, or flies overhead.

[jqavins]

I'd suggest changing the name of the your Leadership feat to Combat Inspiration (or something), and just being up-front & honest with the players about the fact that you ban Leadership.
Or making it a whole new feat with a new name and not banning Leadership.


My revamped Leadership... also removes the munchkinism of having cohorts and follower abuse.
There must be a better way to accomplish that than eliminating cohorts and followers completely. I'm not sure what abuse you're concerned about. If you mean loading up the party with extra swords and canon fodder, you can limit the availability of them or jack up the penalty on attracting them for having killed others. Also, be sure to take the horde of them into account when deciding on the CR of the encounters you create*. If you mean the players treating their followers/cohorts abusively, you can run these NPCs as people with wills of their own and have them leave or even rebel.

And you could try telling your players "Stop being munchkins!" though I recognize that that doesn't always work.

I admit that I have very much less experience playing or DMing 3.x than I'd like. That said, the only time I've encountered Leadership was as DM when one of my players took it. In the party's next adventure, they were doing a mission for the local lord, who sent his son along. He told the son that this was so he could help the party, gain experience, and watch out for the lord's interests. In private, he told the character with Leadership that it was because his son was a naïve, entitled brat full of romantic notions of honor and valor, and he wanted his son to get a dose of reality without getting killed. So the lord's son became the character's cohort and pupil. Needless to say, having a naïve, entitled brat full of romantic notions of honor and valor along presented certain role-playing challenges. The campaign didn't go on much longer, unfortunately; if it had, I'd have allowed him to gain other followers/cohorts, but gradually and without abusing either them or the rules. This would have worked because he is not a munchkin.


I've also considered expanding the benefits beyond just temporary hp, i.e. everyone gets a free Lesser Restoration spell if the leadership check exceeds DC 25 or somesuch.
Lesser Restoration seems a bit much to me. I would add a morale bonus on all successful checks, providing protection from any morale attacks from the enemy (like, say, I don't know, Fearful Presence).

* If you do this just right, you should be able to get the encounter reasonably balanced as long as everybody's luck holds, but when the dice start turning against the party it's the followers/cohorts that drop first, leaving the party in deep doo-doo when they suddenly find themselves outnumbered. Eventually they'll learn that counting on disposable NPCs as a Wall of Meat is not a good idea.

[rferries]

You both make fair points about renaming the Leadership feat. I suppose another quibble I've had with the feat is it doesn't feel like you're being a "leader" (apart from maybe the followers, but they're generally not tagging along for your adventures). I feel like this feat makes you more of a party leader, thematically. However the consensus seems to be against supplanting the original leadership, so I'll rename my feat to Combat Inspiration as suggested.

Nifft, the Fearsome Presence feat was indeed going to be a simple rewrite of the Frightening Presence ability, but I got fed up with finding an equivalent for "flying overhead" so just did it this way - talking is a free action so presumably you let out a roar at the start of the fight or somesuch.

jqavins, I love the roleplaying opportunity you presented to your PC! Too often Leadership becomes a pretext for having a 2nd character IMHO but you deftly avoided that (of course I'm sure there was OOC negotiation as well! :D). I like your morale bonus suggestion as well in place of lesser restoration or similar effects.