Leadership at 6th vs. 7th Level?

[Palanan]

With the current discussions about Leadership, I’ve been comparing the 3.5 and Pathfinder versions of the feat, and they seem nearly identical apart from when a character qualifies for the feat.

Is there any particular reason why Pathfinder requires one more level to take Leadership? And would there be any significant issue—beyond what’s already common knowledge for this feat—to allow Pathfinder characters to take it at sixth level rather than seventh?

Please note that I’m not looking to duplicate the other discussions already underway; I’m just wondering why Pathfinder changed the level requirement, and if there would be any particular effects if I dropped it to sixth.

[Selion]

I guess simply it's because characters in Pathfinder take a feat at every even level, while in 3.5 feats are every three levels.

[exelsisxax]

I guess simply it's because characters in Pathfinder take a feat at every even level, while in 3.5 feats are every three levels.

This. Virtually all feat requirements have an odd level or skill rank requirement, as do most PrCs. Combat feats regularly break the mold for BaB requirements because fighter bonus feats and iterative attacks at +6.

[Florian]

Beyond that thing with the altered feat progression, also look at the modified versions of Leadership in PF. For example, Squire gives you the Cohort, but none of the Followers and already starts at 4th and will later upgrade to full Leadership.

(Followers in PF can actually be pretty scary. Some classes bring a number of stacking boni to the table that manages to raise the effectiveness of a bunch of level 1 archers way beyond their weight limit.)

[Rynjin]

I guess simply it's because characters in Pathfinder take a feat at every even level, while in 3.5 feats are every three levels.

I imagine it wasn't intentional, but for posterity PF characters get Feats every ODD level, not even.

[grarrrg]

I want to say that PF-Leadership was still level 6 for the longest time.

The only ways to take it at 6 would have been:
*Take a level in a class with a Bonus feat (of which few lined up nicely to be at level 6)
*Retraining rules (which didn't exist for a while)
*Saving your level 5 feat

I guess they eventually realized that if (effectively) no one can take it until level 7, to just make it level 7.

[Jack_Simth]

I guess simply it's because characters in Pathfinder take a feat at every even level, while in 3.5 feats are every three levels.

Odd, but...

It does have a possibly useful effect:
In 3.5, there were - in theory, at least - routes by which a 6th level character could have a sufficient leadership score to have 6th level followers - who could (again, in theory) be similarly optimized and so ALSO have 6th level followers. However: With the leadership table for followers still capping out at 6th level, and Leadership itself straight-up requiring 7th, this is now flatly impossible.

[KillianHawkeye]

*Saving your level 5 feat


Unless Pathfinder changed this from D&D (which I find extremely unlikely), you can't save a feat for later. You have to take it when you get it.

[Psychoalpha]

Odd, but...

It does have a possibly useful effect:
In 3.5, there were - in theory, at least - routes by which a 6th level character could have a sufficient leadership score to have 6th level followers - who could (again, in theory) be similarly optimized and so ALSO have 6th level followers. However: With the leadership table for followers still capping out at 6th level, and Leadership itself straight-up requiring 7th, this is now flatly impossible.

Pretty sure it was this, and it was always level 7 in Pathfinder because of all the griping about it in 3.x.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by grarrrg
I want to say that PF-Leadership was still level 6 for the longest time.

Interesting, I hadn’t realized this.

It looks like the Alpha and Beta Playtests left Leadership essentially unchanged; it’s listed as “Character level 6th” for the latter. But by the second printing of the CRB (Nov. 2009) it’s at 7th level, so it must have been caught fairly early on.

I was mistakenly assuming it could be taken as a fighter bonus feat, and thus possible at 6th level, but it’s not a combat feat so that won’t work.