The Battle Accountant's Guide to Leadership

[DigoDragon]

I'm playing an 8th-level character (Ranger5/Rogue3) in a D&D 3.5 core-only campaign. I took the Leadership feat at 6th level to pick up a druid cohort. We needed a dedicated battlefield controller and she's been nothing but a godsend since joining. The trouble I need help with is that our GM insists on micromanaging all the followers that come with Leadership.

I have a calculated leadership score of 14. The GM has created the following followers, with full stats and abilities:

A 2nd-level fighter
Five 1st-level fighters
Two 1st-level rangers
A 1st-level wizard
A 1st-level cleric

There are six other 1st-level characters, but the GM is still rolling up stats and classes for them. All I know for certain is that all the followers have PC class levels.


For the longest time, I've been presenting the PC party to NPC employers as an adventuring guild of troubleshooters. We've done quite a few missions for mayors, high-ranking clerics, and one emperor. So we're gaining renown. Which translates to me gaining a lot of followers. The amusing part is that the GM is really bad at micromanaging things himself, but he's played a lot of Fallout 4 and has this base-building itch that is likely the reason behind why I'm in this situation. The GM also said if I don't follow through on my followers, I risk losing the Leadership feat and all that comes with it. I have to feed and house them, equip them, and give them something to do. Alright, so I guess I'm going to need to stop adventuring and get my B.A. degree in running a guild business. I've focused my time on making contacts to get the guild name out there and attract good-paying work. The other PCs in the group have mixed reactions, but they help. Especially the bard. She can run PR campaigns like no one's business.

I purchased a tavern to use as a base of operations. It's big enough to house all the followers with room to expand later. I got the title, paid the land taxes, registered the business as an Adventurers Guild. We're based in a huge city state of nearly 100k population (which is super-diverse. In addition to the standard D&D races, there are hobgoblins, goblins, bugbears, drow, and githyanki residents. This is the height of high-fantasy). There is no end to the available work we can pick up (guard duty, labor, bounty hunting, defeat certain creature terrorizing some farm community outside the city, etc). I've hired two servants to do the cooking and cleaning for the base.


What I need right now is to work out how much income and expenses the guild will be generating. Since work is plentiful, the followers can put in a 5-day work week. I believe the DMG has some info on what mercenaries make per day, though maybe there are other resources that have additional info?

[Fizban]

I'm fairly certain you should be able to smack them upside the head with the DMG, because followers do not work that way. They use NPC classes, not PC classes. If you don't want to recruit them nothing says you have to. The DM may decide weather an existing person will join up, but you choose what kind of people you're trying to recruit and weather or not they pass muster. If you fire them or they leave, there is no penalty when you go hiring again, unless you got them killed. Nothing that I'm aware of says you have to literally clothe and feed and assign them chores like a bunch of babies- if you want your followers to all keep doing their day jobs and only help a little on the side, that's perfectly fine (it's a great way to justify a bunch of informants). Forcing you to play sims to keep a feat they already okay'd for a completely different purpose is garbage and they should feel bad :smallmad:

Regardless, PHB2 has its Affiliation system. Founding an affiliation requires Leadership and presumably some starting captial (1,000gp should do, the base you've already bought is likely enough on its own), after which everything is completely abstracted. You could found an affiliation and then specify that your followers all work for that affiliation, which will then run itself. All you have to manage is telling them what to do once a month, maybe rolling a check, and maybe investing more cash if you want it to grow faster.

DMG2 has business rules, but they're more for a PC who wants bigger profits than for occupying a bunch of followers or general NPC use.

[The Insanity]

They use NPC classes, not PC classes.
Citation for that?

[Doctor Despair]

Citation for that?

Not citation, but I believe there's rules explicitly for giving them PC classes and it's much more costly. Iirc, a 1st level PC takes the slot for a level 3 follower, or a level 5 follower if it's taking a PRC

[The Insanity]

That's in a 3rd edition book. Epic Level Handbook, to be more specific. 3.5 Leadership does not have that limitation.

[DeTess]

Looking at the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#leadership), it seems that there is no clearly stated restriction of followers to NPC classes. the exact wording is: "Followers are similar to cohorts, except they’re generally low-level NPCs." However, since the class, race and alignment of the followers and even the Cohort you attract are largely up to DM discretion, the DM can decide whether the followers have PC classes, NPC classes or a mix of both. Therefore, unless you've got a very lenient DM, you shouldn't be assuming you'll get followers of certain elvels or whatever.

[Fizban]

Citation for that?
It's implied by how Cohorts are explicitly not restricted in their classes. The Follower section then says "low-level NPCs"- the emphasis could be aimed at "low-level," but I see no reason to reiterate "NPCs" there unless it's meant to call out a class restriction -Cohorts are exempt from the assumption that NPCs use NPC classes,, but followers don't have that note. Just a few pages later are the NPC classes.

And apparently it was made explicit in the ELH. Remember that just because a 3.0 book which elaborates on something didn't get copy/pasted into the DMG, doesn't mean it stops being relevant. If you want to talk "RAW," there's the grandfather clause. Followers can have PC classes, as an optional rule.

And there's the whole fact that PC classed individuals are supposed to be rare, while the mid-high leadership results would strip even a metropolis of most of their low-level PC classed NPCs.

Bottom line, I think it's pretty dang obvious. The DM can always do what they want, and Leadership is even more of the DM's purview than normal, but I find many people who want to build bases (like the DM here) and NPC organizations, don't actually take notice of NPC classes or city generation, and just throw whatever they want out there. I think it's far more likely that the DM just didn't think about it.

Back to what they do:

Benefits
Having this feat enables the character to attract loyal companions and devoted followers, subordinates who assist her.
Your followers assist you. Like, the whole point of your followers is that they can take care of the busywork. So you can hand your butler a pile of gold and say "handle it," and they'll handle it, and you don't have to worry about them running off with the gold because you took Leadership, so you have a game mechanic that says they're personally loyal. This micromanaging demand *really* ticks me off.

[Blue Jay]

It's implied by how Cohorts are explicitly not restricted in their classes. The Follower section then says "low-level NPCs"- the emphasis could be aimed at "low-level," but I see no reason to reiterate "NPCs" there unless it's meant to call out a class restriction -Cohorts are exempt from the assumption that NPCs use NPC classes,, but followers don't have that note. Just a few pages later are the NPC classes.

And apparently it was made explicit in the ELH. Remember that just because a 3.0 book which elaborates on something didn't get copy/pasted into the DMG, doesn't mean it stops being relevant. If you want to talk "RAW," there's the grandfather clause. Followers can have PC classes, as an optional rule.

I never had a 3.0 DMG of my own, but the scuttlebutt on the internet is that the 3.0 version of Leadership did explicitly restrict followers to the commoner, expert and warrior classes only. But, that restriction wasn't preserved through the 3.5 revision. So, it's pretty easy to see that the ELH optional rule about followers with PC levels is just regurgitating a deprecated rule, and not stating that rule with any sort of authority independent of the 3.0 DMG. However the hierarchy of precedence is supposed to work among the various sourcebooks, it seems like a pretty obvious mishandling of the grandfather clause to preserve a deprecated rule because an optional rule that deals with it was never officially revoked.

Also, the version of the Epic Leadership feat that made it into the 3.5 SRD doesn't have that optional rule about PC levels listed, but it added a new line to the "benefits" section instead: "In all other ways Epic Leadership functions as the Leadership feat." Granted, the SRD doesn't really get a voice in RAW debates, but in this case, I feel like it provides a valuable insight into the editorial process and the intention of the game designers when they made the 3.5 revision of the Leadership rules. And to me, it seems pretty clear that they intended to scrub out that "NPC classes only" restriction.

[Fizban]

I've checked my 3.0 DMG and it does indeed say "Followers can be warriors, experts, or commoners." We'll have to disagree about the permissiveness of the 3.5 version though. While they did rewrite those sections, I don't see the lack of an explicit restriction as strong enough evidence to disregard the usual assumptions about masses of low-level NPCs. I agree that it is less explicit about their class type in the 3.5 version, but that wasn't my main gripe anyway- just the immediate reaction considering I read and re-read that 3.0 DMG quite a bit back in the day, so that's what I remember first. My main gripe remains that the DM is being a butt, even if they're being more generous with the power than I'd be.

[DigoDragon]

I'm fairly certain you should be able to smack them upside the head with the DMG

Vs. the GM, yes. :smallbiggrin:



Nothing that I'm aware of says you have to literally clothe and feed and assign them chores like a bunch of babies- if you want your followers to all keep doing their day jobs and only help a little on the side, that's perfectly fine (it's a great way to justify a bunch of informants).

DMG pg. 105, under Followers, it does say that followers don't ask for a share of your treasure, but they do need to be equipped and fed by the PC. It's a thing I've never had a GM before care to enforce. They wanna join a cause, great, but I would think that common sense says they'd at least bring whatever equipment they had to the table. Especially if they're sporting PC classes (looking at the chapter, it doesn't say followers can't be of PC class levels, and class levels is more useful to running an adventuring guild business).



Regardless, PHB2 has its Affiliation system. Founding an affiliation requires Leadership and presumably some starting captial (1,000gp should do, the base you've already bought is likely enough on its own), after which everything is completely abstracted. You could found an affiliation and then specify that your followers all work for that affiliation, which will then run itself. All you have to manage is telling them what to do once a month, maybe rolling a check, and maybe investing more cash if you want it to grow faster.

DMG2 has business rules, but they're more for a PC who wants bigger profits than for occupying a bunch of followers or general NPC use.

Don't have DMG2, but I'll go dig up my PHB2 and check out that Affiliation system. Thanks for the tip!



Your followers assist you. Like, the whole point of your followers is that they can take care of the busywork. So you can hand your butler a pile of gold and say "handle it," and they'll handle it, and you don't have to worry about them running off with the gold because you took Leadership, so you have a game mechanic that says they're personally loyal. This micromanaging demand *really* ticks me off.

You and be both on the micromanaging part. I'm working out logistics here to make a business work (and in a way abuse this system) because if I have to manage this, then I'm going to manage it to make me the most money. :smalltongue:

[JohnHoltt]

An accountant’s job is to measure everything. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t matter how. It doesn’t matter who.

[Tiktakkat]

What I need right now is to work out how much income and expenses the guild will be generating. Since work is plentiful, the followers can put in a 5-day work week. I believe the DMG has some info on what mercenaries make per day, though maybe there are other resources that have additional info?


Summary (TL;DR)
The supplemental material for such things is very weak, and primarily geared to be out of the control of the PCs. That leaves the core material - Profession, Craft, and Perform checks for income, and Lifestyle costs for expenses, plus whatever you want to invest in property.
The best of the lot is the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, otherwise core. Everything else is inspirational reading at best.

Businesses (DMG2, which you do not have)
Theoretically what you want, but functionally useless. While it suggests having a business partner, it also mentions using a cohort for that, not a follower. You want your cohort in the field. Even allowing a follower to fill that roll and serve as "specialists" requires them to be at least 5th level, and put all of their feats into a set of business feats to have a chance at a profit. And then there are the random events tables to take that away.

Guilds and similar organizations (DMG2, Cityscape, and Dragonmarked)
By definition what you want, but by rules these are NPC groups that throw limited bonuses at PCs in exchange for feat taxes. As such, the utility for your followers is limited, and they have no profit or expenses function. Further, several elements require DM NPC guilds and such to exist as allies and enemies. That means massive DM micromanaging.
Cityscape expands on the material from the DMG2 as well as incorporating some things from Eberron.
Dragonmarked heavily expands on the Dragonmarked Houses, a specific type of organization found in the Eberron setting, and is useful as a reference guide for building guilds and creating the benefits they provide.

Affiliations (PHB2)
As with guilds, these are nice in theory, but functionally limited to throwing some minor bonuses around. Any profit element requires NPC affiliations to interact with, again requiring DM micromanaging.

Students and Masters (DMG2)
Possibly the best of the lot. It provides for a PC to take on apprentices that can turn into secondary cohorts. An actual bonus! Of course, there are skill taxes involved. Plus some hefty DM management of favor requests. And you still do not have this book.

Power of Faerun (a Forgotten Realms book)
I should spoiler this because of the danger it represents. It contains extensive rules on expanding the scope of the Leadership feat, with heavy tie-ins to guilds and businesses. It requires even MORE DM creation of NPC groups and leaders. Other than the specific examples that appear in the book, I find it difficult to imagine anyone using everything in it outside of a computer game. While nice for flavor, it is simply too much to be functional.

Pathfinder Side Trek (Ultimate Campaign with some additional material scattered through a dozen other books)
You want micromanaged downtime building? Pathfinder has it! There are a number of ways to game the system that I found glaring at the rooms and buildings and such. The question is, do you want to play downtime or do you want to play uptime (that is, adventuring)? Because the raw material, spread sheets, and die rolls required for this will pretty much eliminate adventuring except in response to random events. Well, unless you do not mind all your hirelings deserting or taking over your businesses while you are away.
As a side note on this, Ultimate Intrigue provides extensive rules for less-than-loyal followers. I would make sure your DM never even hears of that book's existence. (Powers of Faerun has some similar rules, but not as harsh.
I would also note for accessibility, you can find the rules for this online at some of the PF SRD sites.

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook
Pretty much the only functional source. It requires a feat tax (Landlord), but the rules are reasonably simple. To wit:
"As far as the game is concerned, once you get your stronghold up and running, you can safely assume that the operation is self-sufficient in the sense that it pays for itself. In other words, the income it generates is sufficient to cover the expenses that crop up for maintaining the place (not including staff salaries)."
There is a small section on "resources" for "income", though that is focused on natural resources rather than mercenary work, but it could be allowed.
Several rooms require workers to maintain, and general guards are always needed, tasks for which followers are perfect - provided the DM designs them properly.
And several rooms provide various mechanical benefits, particularly for knowledge and spell research. (The same with Ultimate Campaign. I would stick with the SBG and propose conversions with the serial numbers filed off.)
The design rules are a bit quirky and complicated, with the potential of magic woefully underestimated.
Also, it is 3E and not updated, but that is not that big an issue unless you want to get weird with a mobile, interdimensional, fortress of DOOM!

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by DigoDragon
DMG pg. 105, under Followers, it does say that followers don't ask for a share of your treasure, but they do need to be equipped and fed by the PC. It's a thing I've never had a GM before care to enforce.

My first 3.5 DM required us to purchase the equipment for our followers. Two of us in the party had Leadership, and the other player spent most of his character’s WBL on gear for his contingent.

And then the DM sent a dragon after the party, and with a single strafing run the dragon wiped out most of the other character’s followers. And all their gear. Unhappiness ensued.

[Wintermoot]

There's a disconnect or failure to communicate between you and your GM. It's not your fault, not his fault, it's both of your fault and responsibility and right now only you can fix it.

When you role-played trying to turn your adventuring group into a functional business and chose to take the leadership feat, your GM interpreted that as "this player wants to play the battle accountant minigame" and started working with (he thought) you to let you do that.

The reality is you just took leadership to get the secondary character druid. And that you want this business concern to run itself, without your oversight.

You need to explain that to him. If his response is "well tough, you can't have leadership without these things" then offer to swap out leadership for a different feat.

He needs to understand what aspects of this you want to play and which ones you don't. Right now, i think he assumes he is giving you the game you want based on your decisions.

[RexDart]

Looking at things from a "glass half full" perspective (and disregarding how I might personally handle things as a DM), it seems to me that the "battle accountant" work shouldn't be too onerous, and you've already done a bunch of it.

Equipment and upkeep should be pretty simple (and cheap, if you have enough money to purchase a tavern). Default equipment from the PHB for starting characters should do. It's not like jobs suited for a bunch of 1st level NPCs should require lots of magic items, though it might be interesting/fun to think about what relatively cheap magic items might give them a significant competitive advantage or let them charge a higher price.

Other than upkeep and operating services for the tavern itself, which it sounds like you've already dealt with, it sounds like you just need to worry about food expenses and replacing consumables like arrows. Apparently the DM has the numbers for the "income" side of things, but making a small profit shouldn't be too difficult to do or track.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Thread Necromancy.