Why does having a Mount make it harder to attract cohorts?

[Dragodar]

In 3.5, the Leadership feat specifies under the "Attracting Cohorts" Table that having 'a familiar, special mount, or animal companion' incurs a -2 penalty to the PC's effective Leadership score when trying to attract a cohort.

Why is this? I understand mechanically that it may have something to do with a familiar, mount, or companion equating to a cohort in itself, and this mechanic may merely be an attempt to prevent characters from becoming OP and having too many cohorts. But is there any explanation from a roleplaying perspective as to why having a mount would make cohorts less willing to join you?

Confused on this. All the other modifiers seem to be pretty self explanatory and make sense, but I can't wrap my head around this one.

[heavyfuel]

Potential Cohorts get super duper jealous of the special connection you have with your pet and are more difficult to attract.

[Vhaidara]

"You treat your horse better than you treat me!"
"This horse is a gift from my god. Literally."
"It's still a damn horse!"

[The Shadowmind]

"He spends all that dang time brushing that horses coat. He never brushes my coat."
"You're a bald goblin!"
"So?"

[Andor13]

You ask that as if you were planning to sweep the stable yourself.

And if that doesn't seem like an issue to you, recall that cleaning out a stable was one of the labours of Hercules.

[legomaster00156]

Horses are smelly. :smalltongue:

[Necroticplague]

It exists entirely for mechanical reasons. If you have more sidekicks, you should have weaker sidekicks. Thus, a penalty to your sidekick's strength if you already have a sidekick (especially since those other sidekicks are normally weaker than cohorts).

[denthor]

You are more mobile. Less time to establish your base of loyalty. You have a specific interest in an expensive hobby.

You have a horse your cohort has to have a horse just to keep up. A cohort does not like horses like my father scared of them. Everything else matches up , but I am scared of horse. I never took skill points in ride he will laugh at me for wanting to sign up with him.

I have gold I am better than a cohort he should be my cohort.

Now I would not give a penalty if you say rode a cow as you mount. I may give a bonus for the milk you could supply. Well at least I would be able to get something to drink. I was a peasant and good food was scarce growing up

[Acanous]

Hard for a cohort to keep up with your mounted speed.

[Bavarian itP]

If you think that #2, 3 or 4 are joking, you are wrong.

[Reversefigure4]

A familiar, a special mount, or an animal companion are more than just some dog you happen to have, or a horse that you ride from Point A to Point B. They are one of your closest relationships, your friend, your faithful companion you've been with through thick and thin, and a dear ally. You spend a lot of time with them (most of this happens as off-screen assumed roleplaying in a normal game).

Your cohort is also not 'some guy who brushes your horse'. He's your dear follower, a close friend, somebody who has devoted their life to your example. You presumably also spend a lot of time with them off-screen.

The penalty is supposed to reflect the relative difficultly of having 'two best friends' travelling with you all the time.

[heavyfuel]

If you think that #2, 3 or 4 are joking, you are wrong.

I can't speak for either Keledrath or The Shadowmind, but I most definitely wasn't.

[KarlMarx]

It exists entirely for mechanical reasons. If you have more sidekicks, you should have weaker sidekicks. Thus, a penalty to your sidekick's strength if you already have a sidekick (especially since those other sidekicks are normally weaker than cohorts).

It also *helps*, to some extent, in preventing one person's cohorts et al from hogging combat time. If a character has a mount and a cohort and so on, they eat up an unfair share of combat time, even if they're at least nominally balanced.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Because they're -weird-.

The PC-centric view of players and forum-goers tends to have you forget that -all- PC class characters make up less than 10% of people in the game world and the classes that have those companion features are amongst the rarest of those. While the paladin being a shining beacon of light in a dark world may be comforting for the common folk, his zeal and fearlessness can be a bit off-putting.

The supernaturally enhanced horse that's plainly at least as intelligent as some of the weaker minded monstrous races (or even stranger creature) being that much more disturbing isn't hard to understand.