Optimization Horrible munchkin question about Leadership [Archive]

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Ialdabaoth

2021-10-28, 01:58 AM

Say I'm level 20, with +5 Cha.

Can my cohort, and my level 6 minions, take the Leadership feat?

Horrible follow-up question: can my cohort's cohort take the Leadership feat?

redking

2021-10-28, 03:33 AM

Say I'm level 20, with +5 Cha.

Can my cohort, and my level 6 minions, take the Leadership feat?

Horrible follow-up question: can my cohort's cohort take the Leadership feat?

Yes. Technically speaking, all of that is possible. Especially when you limit yourself to the SRD version of leadership (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#tableAttractingFollowers). The Player's Handbook version (meaning, the canon version) contains limitations that shut down EVERY leadership exploit.

Benefit: You can attract loyal companions and devoted followers, subordinates who assist you. Your DM has information on what sort of cohort and how many followers you can recruit.

Special: Check with your DM before selecting this feat, and work with your DM to determine an appropriate cohort and followers for your character (the Dungeon Master’s Guide has more information on cohorts and followers).

You have to work with your DM. Sure, you may have a DM that doesn't care about verisimilitude of the campaign world, but if they do, you'll find that you simply cannot do it. For one, even if a follower or cohort had the leadership feat, they should suffer a crippling penalty to their leadership score for not being a real leader (they are YOUR followers, after all).

My question to you is why you would want to munchkin leadership. Leadership is potentially flavoursome and enjoyable, adding intrigue and responsibility for the leader character. If you work with your DM on leadership that gels with the campaign world, you might even have some fun.

Beni-Kujaku

2021-10-28, 03:40 AM

Yeah, sure, why not. It would be like a crew captain swearing allegiance to another one, you wouldn't be able to directly command your subordinates' subordinates, but that would definitely be possible. More interestingly, if you have a high enough Leadership score, even your followers can be leaders. Considering you have a 25 leadership score, and every cohort and follower has a +5 modifier (Fairness+18 Cha, for example), that makes:

7 cohorts levels : 17, 15, 13, 11, 9, 7, 5

3 level 6 followers (2 for you, 1 for your main cohort) with Leadership score 11

In total: level 1 followers: 135+75+50+35+25+15+8+6+6+6=361
level 2 followers: 13+7+5+3+2+1=31
level 3 followers: 7+4+3+1+1=16
level 4 followers: 4+2+2+1=9
level 5 followers: 2+2+1=5
level 6 followers: 2+1=3

That's a lot of people. Now imagine what would happen if all your cohorts higher than level 9 had Improved Cohort.

If your 17th to 15th level cohorts have a stronghold or otherwise reach +6 Leadership score, that makes 11 cohorts and five Leader followers:
20, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

With reasonable Leadership scores of respectively:
25, 23, 22, 21, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11
In total:
level 1 followers: 571
level 2 followers: 51
level 3 followers: 25
level 4 followers: 14
level 5 followers: 8
level 6 followers: 5

Now that's an army worthy of a level 20 leader.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-28, 07:44 AM

If you want more control over the kinds of cohorts/followers you attract, and you wanna pull off nonsense like this, what you really need to do is go Thrallherd. No penalty for killing off followers/cohorts, and you auto-attract new ones within a day. Then, because you're evil, you just cycle through until you 'randomly' attract the kinda cohort you want.

(That's not to say DM can't shut that down too, but it's a bit easier to get who you want when it's "passive mind control" rather than "inspiring leader".)

Take "Undead Leadership". Thrallherd forbids you from taking Leadership, which is a different feat entirely. Due to a quirk in the way psicrystals work, they can take feats, so get a psicrystal and have it take Leadership and Undead Leadership (the psicrystal isn't a thrallherd, so no limitation). Have all the cohorts going down by thrallherds with undead leadership and psicrystals that have leadership/undead leadership too. I usually call this The Crystal Cult and once tried to run a game on the concept where the PCs are follower-equivalents that just reached lvl 7 and broke out of their trance.

Beni-Kujaku

2021-10-28, 08:36 AM

Segev

2021-10-28, 08:46 AM

The psicrystal with leadership always makes me giggle, picturing a cult that worships a shiny stone.

It is worth noting that psicrystals only get feats in 3.5. In Pathfinder, they don't gain hit dice, so they don't gain feats.

Particle_Man

2021-10-28, 09:47 AM

The psicrystal with leadership always makes me giggle, picturing a cult that worships a shiny stone.

To be fair, there is an entire 3.5 prestige class (Sapphire Hierophant) built around a cult that worships a shiny stone. They better hope that Captain James T. Kirk never encounters them.

Beni-Kujaku

2021-10-28, 11:10 AM

After a few calculations, and considering every thrall, cohort and psicrystal can get a cohort of the maximum level (this may be a slight exaggeration, but probably not that much if you're trying your best. Just give your psicrystal an admiral bicorne from stormwrack and you're good to go. A country-sized cult following tens of thousands of shiny stones with tiny hats is what D&D is all about.), you get a total of around 100,000 cohorts and thralls of all kinds, including 30,000 necropolitan cohorts. With a bit more simplification (everyone has +4 charisma, only takes thrallherd levels after level 5 and has no other Leadership bonus, which isn't really valid for the psicrystal, but with bicornes it is almost accurate), that's a total of 800,000 followers, including 300,000 zombies and necropolitan. That's not called a cult, AvatarVecna. That's called a country.

liquidformat

2021-10-28, 12:44 PM

You have to work with your DM. Sure, you may have a DM that doesn't care about verisimilitude of the campaign world,

This has always struck me as a horrible argument that has little to no ground to stand on. What is unrealistic about cohorts and followers having their own cohorts and followers? By the time you are even level 10 you are an extraordinary figure in your country if not the world as a whole. If you were to create your own organization (leadership feat) what is so unrealistic about you attracting others with leadership qualities that aren't as powerful as you are. In fact I think restricting you from doing so detracts from the verisimilitude of your campaign world. It is a silly argument that has no merit and the only reason you see it all over the forums is verisimilitude is a big word that makes people sound like they might actually know what they are talking about like many other big words.

With that said, would your entire organization or part of it be following you around all the time? Well that really depends on the campaign and the organization you have made so goes to you working with your dm like the rules state.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-28, 01:34 PM

1) A psicrystal's HD is based purely on psion/wilder levels. Anything else doesn't count. In a reasonable game with a reasonable DM and reasonable players, it is likely you could get this amended to be based on manifester level, or even to just count any PrC that is "psionic enough". I'll be assuming the latter, where psicrystal HD is equal to master's HD regardless of build. Just know that by RAW, Wilder 10/Thrallherd 10 has a 10 HD Psicrystal with only a few feats for leadership shenanigans. This is usually a reasonable ruling, so I'll be assuming that it's allowed even if pulling this in a real game would probably get this particular part shut down.

2) Similar to the first point, an argument could be made that feats like "Improved Cohort" and "Extra Followers" should be able to be taken by somebody who has Undead Leadership but not Leadership (such as our thrallherds), and applied to UL just like L. I'm not going with this interpretation, primarily because it leads to the next question ("the psicrystal has both Leadership and UL, does Extra Followers or whatever apply to both?"). The feats that require leadership can't be qualified for and do not apply to Undead Leadership. You could probably find a DM that allows it, but that's a bit too much of an ask in my mind. Weird line in the sand to draw, I know.

3) There are ways to cheese leadership scores to max out quick without too much trouble. Getting them really quickly (like...lvl 6) would itself be pretty cheesy, but I'm just gonna handwave that. All the LS scores reach 25 immediately. This would probably require some weird finagling and also cost a small mountain of gold, so just know that in a more realistic game where the cult in question doesn't have the DM's unlimited resources, this is a bit harder to justify.

4) A potential consequence of the previous point is "wait, Leadership/Undead Leadership/Thrallherd can make lvl 6 followers, are they also Thrallherd 1s that generate thrallherd 1s?" No. No infinite loops. And it's really easy to shut down the infinite loop by just saying that followers/believers can't become thrallherds or leaders. Cohorts/thralls? Sure, they're kinda like lieutenants. But the lowest-rung don't get to be middle management like that, especially since it changes the cult's population to "infinite" by accident.

So anyway! The thrallherd build that gets copied through all the thrallherd cultists:

Wilder 5/Thrallherd 10/Wilder +5

Undead Leadership at lvl 6

...that's it, the rest of the build would basically be up to you.

...and the crystals...

psicrystal

Feats:

HD 6: Leadership
HD 9: Undead Leadership
HD 12: Improved Cohort (LS only)
HD 15: Extra Followers (LS only)

So! One quick note: when I say "pools", that means "a pool of followers the size of a maxed out leadership". So the Wilder 10/Thrallherd 10 only has four actual pools of followers/believers, but one of them (the psicrystal's leadership followers) is double-size thanks to Extra Followers. Thus, "5 follower pools". Got it? Good.

1 lvl 20 makes 2 lvl 19, 3 lvl 18s, and 5 pools.

2 lvl 19s make 4 lvl 18s, 6 lvl 17s, and 10 pools.

7 lvl 18s make 14 lvl 17s, 21 lvl 16s, and 35 pools.

20 lvl 17s make 40 lvl 16s, 60 lvl 15s, and 100 pools.

61 lvl 16s make 122 lvl 15s, 183 lvl 14s, and 305 pools.

182 lvl 15s make 364 lvl 14s, 546 lvl 13s, and 910 pools.

547 lvl 14s make 1094 lvl 13s, 1094 lvl 12s, and 2188 pools.

1640 lvl 13s make 3280 lvl 12s, 3280 lvl 11s, and 6560 pools.

4374 lvl 12s make 8748 lvl 11s, 8748 lvl 10s, and 17496 pools.

12028 lvl 11s make 12028 lvl 10s, 36084 lvl 9s, and 48112 pools.

20776 lvl 10s make 20776 lvl 9s, 62328 lvl 8s, and 83104 pools.

56860 lvl 9s make 56860 lvl 8s, 170580 lvl 7s, and 227440 pools.

119188 lvl 8s make 119188 lvl 7s, 238376 lvl 6s, and 357564 pools.

289768 lvl 7s make 289768 lvl 6s, 579536 lvl 5s, and 869304 pools.

528144 lvl 6s make 528144 lvl 5s, 1056288 lvl 4s, and 1584432 pools.

528144 lvl 5s have no LS at all.

1056288 lvl 4s have no LS at all.

There are a total of 3197565 pools.

Here's a table summarizing all that:

Lvl
PC
Cohorts/Thralls
Followers/Believers

20
1

19

2

18

7

17

20

16

61

15

182

14

547

13

1,640

12

4,374

11

12,028

10

20,776

9

56,860

8

119,188

7

289,768

6

528,144
6,395,130

5

528,144
6,395,130

4

1,056,288
12,790,260

3

22,382,955

2

41,568,345

1

431,671,275

Overall, with the cheesy assumptions in place (but then, we're already neck-deep in cheese so why not dunk our heads too?), the cult's total membership is 523,821,125.

Obviously, if you're being a little more realistic about leadership scores for the various cohorts and pools, this gets waaaaaaay smaller (like 6 or 7 digits at most ew), but that's still plenty. There's a few interesting things about a crystal cult as far as use as a setting goes:

1) Regardless of the exact size and builds, if you're even doing the crystal cult a little bit, it's never going to be 100% mind control. You're going to have lots of thralls and believers, but you're likely to have just as many (if not more) cohorts and followers.

2) Despite having very big numbers for very high levels, the crystal cult doesn't have a lot of powerful magic to draw on, because all the cohorts/thralls of lvl 6 and up are dedicated to being thrallherds themselves. This leaves your ~6.4 million lvl 6 followers/believers to pick up the slack on that front. If you want a version of the crystal cult that's a good deal smaller but also has a lot more powerful magic available natively, I'd suggest stopping the "thrallherds all the way down" once you officially lose your 2nd thrall. Your lvl 15s will be Wilder 5/Thrallherd 10 and get 2 thralls...but your lvl 14s will be Wilder 5/Thrallherd 9s, and will only have the one thrall. So instead, make your lvl 14s into wizards and clerics. You'll "only" have 547 lvl 14 casters, and your total follower count will be a few orders of magnitude smaller, but you'll probably be a much more powerful threat.

Honestly, though, if you wanted to run this without any "thrallherds all the way down" cheese, it'd still be absurd. Wilder 10/Thrallherd 10 with that psicrystal has 2 lvl 19 cohorts, 3 lvl 18 cohorts, and 5 pools. That's 821 people, with only 165 of them being mind controlled. That's a perfectly sizeable cult, and now you've got 5 casters capable of 9th lvl spells at your beck and call (depending on if that particular aspect of leadership gets shut down or not).

There's a lot of middle-ground between "not quite 100 cultists who have reality-breaking powers" and "half a china but not much magic". The former is optimized PC play, the latter is an honest-to-god Setting: a fake theocracy where the pope is playing second fiddle to his own pet rock. Anywhere in between can work perfectly fine, depending on exactly how big and how powerful you want this cult to be.

That's not called a cult, AvatarVecna. That's called a country.

When a cult becomes a country, it's called a theocracy. :smalltongue:

AvatarVecna

2021-10-28, 01:36 PM

Also, technically speaking, Undead Leadership doesn't require undead cohorts/followers, it just penalizes you if you take living ones. Enough LS cheese can get around that, but there's definitely a lot more corpses in a more realistic crystal cult.

icefractal

2021-10-28, 01:43 PM

My question to you is why you would want to munchkin leadership. Leadership is potentially flavoursome and enjoyable, adding intrigue and responsibility for the leader character. If you work with your DM on leadership that gels with the campaign world, you might even have some fun.I think it's more of a thought exercise, but as for why -
If you want to represent large organizations as directly as result of Leadership rather than fiat / alternate rules, then normal non-chained Leadership doesn't really cover it.

Like, that 800K figure - that's entirely reasonable in-fiction for "One of the most powerful people in the setting, specifically focused on leadership, specifically recruiting other people who are focused on leadership, and using a fortune in magic items to improve that even further." The few dozen you'd get from normal use of Leadership would be kind of pathetic for that situation.

Now the usual approach I've seen for that is "Leadership represents your true loyalists who'd still follow you even if you lost any official titles you have and the whole command structure broke down." You can recruit / employee other people (thousands of other people, even), but they'll only be the usual amount loyal. And that works fine, but it's not the only way to do it.

Balance wise - well, actually bringing 800K people to a fight is a non-starter in D&D, but honestly bringing your entire non-chained Leadership crew to a fight is impractical as well. I feel like in practice, the cohort is who you bring along, the amount of followers primarily matters for downtime purposes like "Do I have enough followers to run a self-sufficient town?"

And in terms of high-op games, most casters already have access to NI minions which are individually fairly powerful. Chained Leadership isn't going to exceed what's already there.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-28, 01:53 PM

And in terms of high-op games, most casters already have access to NI minions which are individually fairly powerful. Chained Leadership isn't going to exceed what's already there.

This is definitely a factor. Past a certain point of charop, minionmancy isn't hard, it's just a matter of what route you're taking. Self-resetting Mind Rape trap, Leadership shenanigans, fractal genie summoning, time travel clones that can't ever see each other...lots of options.

liquidformat

2021-10-28, 02:09 PM

Horde building

You could add in 5 levels of psionic mindbender to increase your horde, sure it isn't a massive increase but it is something...

Beni-Kujaku

2021-10-28, 04:45 PM

When a cult becomes a country, it's called a theocracy. :smalltongue:

Oh, yeah, didn't take into account twofold master to get 5 thralls/cohort instead of 4. That said, even if you go by "the Leadership score of everybody is immediately 25", which costs so much money that it isn't even funny, I don't see how you can get 2 cohorts level 19 and three level 18 as a 20th level character. Not only does the table not allow any cohort above level 17, whatever your Leadership score, but the only pool you can apply Improved Cohort to is the crystal's regular Leadership, and none of the main character's pools. I feel like that grossly overestimates the number of followers you get (mostly because of the 17th level cap, though. Losing 2 iterations cuts the final result by around 10 or 20 by itself).

And about the "theocracy" thing... Isn't that enough people to just become a greater deity all on your own?

About the "minionmancy isn't hard" thing, I concur. Shadow apocalypse has been a thing for over 10 levels now, with no optimisation whatsoever. But it's much funnier to do it in a non-infinite loop way, just to see "how high the numbers get".

AvatarVecna

2021-10-28, 05:21 PM

Oh, yeah, didn't take into account twofold master to get 5 thralls/cohort instead of 4. That said, even if you go by "the Leadership score of everybody is immediately 25", which costs so much money that it isn't even funny, I don't see how you can get 2 cohorts level 19 and three level 18 as a 20th level character. Not only does the table not allow any cohort above level 17, whatever your Leadership score, but the only pool you can apply Improved Cohort to is the crystal's regular Leadership, and none of the main character's pools. I feel like that grossly overestimates the number of followers you get (mostly because of the 17th level cap, though. Losing 2 iterations cuts the final result by around 10 or 20 by itself).

And about the "theocracy" thing... Isn't that enough people to just become a greater deity all on your own?

About the "minionmancy isn't hard" thing, I concur. Shadow apocalypse has been a thing for over 10 levels now, with no optimisation whatsoever. But it's much funnier to do it in a non-infinite loop way, just to see "how high the numbers get".

It's debatable and complicated. There are three things in the rules text about cohort level:

1) "The character can attract a cohort of up to this level. [refers to table]"

2) "Regardless of a character’s Leadership score, he can only recruit a cohort who is two or more levels lower than himself."

3) [All the rules text about how cohort's gain XP]

Cohorts don't deal with the "XP Is A River" phenomenon because they don't gain XP the same way PCs do. Instead, they gain XP as a fraction of the XP the PC gained. So if the PC is lvl 12 and has a lvl 4 cohort (yeesh get a publicist dude), the PC levels up after getting 12000 XP. The cohort gains a fraction of the PC's XP equal to their level divided by the PC's level (in this case, 4/12). This means that if the PC gains 12000 XP (just enough to level up to 13th), the cohort gains 4000 XP (just enough to level up to 5th). So in the specific case of cohorts, the level disparity will always remain the same; unless you do something to drain your own XP (like crafting), or do something extremely weird to give the cohort XP without gaining any yourself, the cohort will always be the same number of levels behind you. The sole exception given to these rules about XP gain are if that XP gain would cause the cohort to (somehow) be 1 level lower than the PC; if that would happen, they gain 1 fewer XP than would be necessary to level, and stop there. There is no given exception for if the XP would take them beyond the level cap from the table.

1 and 2 aren't always both true - if you are 20th level, and you take Leadership via DCS or something, you will gain a 17th lvl follower, no question; this hasn't hit your maximum per rule #2, but that's okay, those rules aren't contradictory. But while rule 3 is written in a way that it doesn't contradict rule 2, it can contradict rule 1, and when that happens, a judgement needs to be made: either they level (breaking rule 1), or they don't (breaking rule 3). How do we determine precedent?

The closest we really have is "text trumps table". Technically, rule 1 is in the text, but it's specifically referring to a column in the table, so when all the stuff about XP and leveling contradicts it, rule 3 takes precedent and the cohort levels. There's also some people who argue that "attract a cohort" in rule 1 is definitely about the cohort you attract when you originally get one, whereas "recruit a cohort" in rule 2 is about the level of cohort you can have at any point in time, and while the "recruit a cohort" reading is pretty defensible, the "attract a cohort" reading is...shaky IMO? But the text trumps table argument is a lot more solid in my book. This also has the added benefit of making cohorts not useless in epic: Epic Leadership table does this same thing in regards to "max level you can attract". Too many things are basically useless in epic as it is, especially things available to non-casters; if there's two ways to read things, and one makes it useful for epic noncasters, and the other makes it useless, the former is probably a better way to read it.

(Of course, I'll also acknowledge that I suspect this particular "text trumps table" reading of the rules is because people tend to do theorycrafting here on the forum, and that usually means lvl 20 characters optimized for something dumb, and when they take leadership it's because they want that lvl 18/19 cohort, so they read the rules in whatever way gets them what they want. Finally, the only games I've ever played at lvl 19+ were charop nonsense games started via a forum, so I'm not even sure how relevant the difference is for actual play.)

The reason this reading of the text is relevant to the crystal cult in particular is because the crystal cult didn't pop into existence when the thrallherd reached lvl 20. It started when he was lvl 6, and it's grown up along with him. The cohorts he gained then have leveled with him, and at some point either stopped because rule 1 took precedent, or they didn't because rule 3 took precedent.

The second point you brought up was in regards to Improved Cohort, and you are correct that it only applies to the psicrystal's leadership feat. I made a point of declaring it doesn't affect undead leadership. The thing is, it's actually thrallherd that's doing the other part giving us a 19th. Thrallherd's main ability is almost identical to Leadership with a few exceptions: what the minions are called (unimportant), how the minions are attracted (which can be cheesed), and cohort max level. We still have the table max which is identical to Leadership, but where Leadership has the text cap cohort level at "character level -2", Thrallherd caps thrall level at "character level -1" by default. When you get a 2nd thrall at Thrallherd 10, that one is another level lower ("character level -2"), but if you were to make your Psion 17 dip into Thrallherd 1, you would have a lvl 17 thrall.

(And sure, this is "better leadership", which is one of the only feats that's honestly just waaaaaaaaaay too powerful and needs hard nerfing, but also you're giving up a level of manifesting for it, so that might actually be balanced? idk)

And yeah, Leadership score of 25 for all members of this cult would cost an ungodly sum of money. I think when I ran this as a game for like 2 seconds, initially the cult leader was a thrallherd who had just reached Twofold Master and gotten a second thrall; being lvl 15 at the top made the cult as a whole much much smaller, even with some generous assumptions on my part.

I might make a post detailing a more restrained crystal cult - start at lvl 15, like you might randomly find in a metropolis, actually calculate leadership scores rather than handwaving it all (including probably eating the penalty from Undead Leadership), assume that rule 1 trumps rule 3, things like that. The result would be a pretty sizeable cult for a metropolis, but not even as overwhelming as something like 800k.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-28, 05:24 PM

Honestly, the ruling that most limits a potential Crystal Cult is the psicrystal thing: if you play it by RAW, a Wilder 5/Thrallherd 10 has a psicrystal with 5 HD. Your pet rock can't even have cultists, very sad.

redking

2021-10-28, 06:55 PM

This has always struck me as a horrible argument that has little to no ground to stand on. What is unrealistic about cohorts and followers having their own cohorts and followers? By the time you are even level 10 you are an extraordinary figure in your country if not the world as a whole. If you were to create your own organization (leadership feat) what is so unrealistic about you attracting others with leadership qualities that aren't as powerful as you are. In fact I think restricting you from doing so detracts from the verisimilitude of your campaign world.

You don't need the leadership feat to declare yourself king, president, first citizen or whatever and form a state apparatus. All you have to do is pay people. Chain leadership is absurd and it's even more absurd to assume that even if chain leadership were possible, that you could micromanage the human resources aspect in ways that even modern human resource specialists cannot do.

The OP showed self-awareness when he called it a "horrible munchkin question". The Player's Handbook says "you have to work with the DM". How is it that you get to tell the DM "oh, my cohort is a 10th level thrallherd, by the way". Why would a thrallherd even be interested in that?

rel

2021-10-28, 09:39 PM

You don't need the leadership feat to declare yourself king, president, first citizen or whatever and form a state apparatus. All you have to do is pay people. Chain leadership is absurd and it's even more absurd to assume that even if chain leadership were possible, that you could micromanage the human resources aspect in ways that even modern human resource specialists cannot do.

The OP showed self-awareness when he called it a "horrible munchkin question". The Player's Handbook says "you have to work with the DM". How is it that you get to tell the DM "oh, my cohort is a 10th level thrallherd, by the way". Why would a thrallherd even be interested in that?

because the thrallherd truly believes in the crystal cult. Also they think it's going to be a big thing some day and want to get in on the ground floor.

If anything insisting on GM adjudication makes the leadership feat less appealing to me as a GM since I now have to spend time stating out NPC cohorts and minions for the players.

My main problem with leadership is that as written it just isn't very good. Its hard to improve without using build resources, the minions are costly to replace and weak enough to be useless outside of gimmicky tricks. And the whole process features a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping; that is bookkeeping that doesn't lead to interesting decision making during play.

Meanwhile angel summoner can, having never devoted any permanent build resources, decide to take a week off to magic up an army and get a lot more CR appropriate minions than leadership will provide. And the angels are more broadly useful, tailored to what you need, easier to replace and a whole lot cheaper.

So my answer to OP's question is you can, but I don't recommend it. At best your king Arthur clone can spend a lot of effort gathering his knights of the round table and field a small army during the final battle. But Gandalf the wizard and sir Bearington the druid will provide a much larger army of bears riding eagles and they won't have to spend the next month visiting the families of bereaved knights.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-28, 10:32 PM

The highest-level sorcerer or wizard you could find in a randomly-generated metropolis is lvl 16, and you'd generally find one of them. We're handwaving and saying there's a similar chance of high-level manifesters.

Wilder 6/Thrallherd 10

Age: dealer's choice (I'm assuming Adult)
Race: dealer's choice (I'm assuming Human)

ULS=Undead Leadership Score
TS=Thrallherd Score

ULS -4 for living cohort/followers. ULS +4 via reputational bonuses. ULS for attracting followers +2 due to having a base of operations.

Psicrystal Affinity is taken, but no extra Leadership cheese - they're just the rocks we're all worshipping. We're just thrallherd+undead leadership here.

Level
Cha
Feats
ULS
TS
Cohort
Thrall
F1
F2
F3
F4
F5
F6
B1
B2
B3
B4
B5
B6

1
15
Inquisitor
Psicrystal Affinity

2
15

3
15
?

4
16

5
16

6
16
Undead Leadership
9
10
4th
5th

5

7
16

10
12
5th
6th
5

8

8
17

11
14
6th
7th
6

15
1

9
17
?
12
16
7th
8th
8

25
2
1

10
17

13
18
8th
9th
10
1

35
3
1
1

11
17

14
20
9th
10th
15
1

50
5
3
2
1

12
18
?
16
23
10th
11th
25
2
1

90
9
5
3
2
1

13
18

17
25
11th
12th
30
3
1
1

135
13
7
4
2
2

14
18

18
25
12th
13th
35
3
1
1

135
13
7
4
2
2

15
18
?
19
25
13th
14th/13th
40
4
2
1
1

135
13
7
4
2
2

16
19

20
25
14th
15th/14th
50
5
3
2
1

135
13
7
4
2
2

When you math it out, you end up with the following totals:

Thralls/Cohorts (all thrallherds):
1 lvl 16
1 lvl 15
3 lvl 14
5 lvl 13
8 lvl 12
13 lvl 11
21 lvl 10
34 lvl 9
55 lvl 8
89 lvl 7
144 lvl 6

Followers/Believers (builds are dealer's choice):
15 lvl 6
30 lvl 5
75 lvl 4
139 lvl 3
348 lvl 2
5897 lvl 1

This is a relatively restrained lvl 16 cult, with basically no cheese outside the leadership pyramid. You've got a good 374 members of leadership in your cult (with access to tons of psionics ranging as high as 8th lvl powers), with a total of 6504 devotees, most of them being 1st level. That's a solid percentage of all but the largest metropolises. In a "typical setting" city like Sharn, Neverwinter, Stormreach, Waterdeep, and the like, this cult won't be anywhere close to running the city, but they'll be a sizeable portion of the seedy underbelly.

As an example, Sharn is the largest city in Khorvaire and boasts ~200k population. It's a big port city, and there the cult would make up a solid ~3% of the population. A simple mechanical setup to justify the villains seeming to have eyes everywhere despite not controlling the city. They don't even technically outnumber the guards, and most of them are probably noncombatants anyway, but that doesn't matter. They have conviction and unity and secrecy on their side. Imagine running a city campaign from lvl 1, where you can slowly pull back the curtain for the players, uncovering a trail of mysterious crimes that don't seem to care about the money. Little clues showing how they're all connected, finding evidence that suggests what the actual motivation might be. Lots of directions you could take it in. Thrallherd isn't even technically evil (at least, not as a pre-req), so one of the most readily-accessible divination spells might not be quite as useful as it would otherwise be in a social crime kinda game (and it's already debatable how useful it'd be to such a campaign to just knife every shifty guy who detects as evil for the paladin).

Bringing something like this to a game...it's honestly not worth the bookkeeping. That's a lot of stuff to keep track of, and even if you've got your thousands, they're best as an information network or a source of reverse-trickle-economics where you're shaving coppers off a few thousand profession checks. But as a DM, it's a nice set-up; sure it's the kind of thing you could do without the mechanical justification, but that allows for new angles, and makes the whole thing feel more legit. Sure, a DM could just write on a notecard that the BBEG has a million followers without spending any chargen resources, and nobody can call him a cheater, but you can do anything in 3.5 if you try hard enough - you don't need to use DM Fiat to cheat when the rules will let you cheat perfectly fine, and it legitimizes what you're doing in the eyes of nitpicky rules lawyers, so that's one less thing you gotta deal with.

liquidformat

2021-10-29, 03:34 AM

Segev

2021-10-29, 01:46 PM

Not only does Undead Leadership not forbid living followers, but regular Leadership doesn't forbid undead ones - nor even penalize you for them!

...kinda makes one wonder what purpose Undead Leadership serves except as a second feat you can take to double up on Leadership stuff.

Misery Esquire

2021-10-29, 02:15 PM

...kinda makes one wonder what purpose Undead Leadership serves except as a second feat you can take to double up on Leadership stuff.

Obviously its real purpose is to suggest other [Type] Leadership feats. I'll see you all next week after my Aberration Leadership comes into full effect.

:smallcool:

mybraaaainismeeeeeeltinggggg aaffggfggghhg

redking

2021-10-29, 07:36 PM

Dude we are talking about a world where you can dominate someone and turn them into your forever slave, have infinite wishes, travel across planes and so forth. I am sorry but your argument doesn't hold water. If 'modern human resource specialists' are what you base verisimilitude on that shipped sailed long ago and you are playing the wrong game. On a side note I don't know what is to be praised with modern human resource specialists 90% of them are incompetent jokes who fail upward...

That's why you have to work with the DM. Traveling the planes isn't unbalancing (not sure why you included that there next to "infinite wishes"), even dominating creatures has inherent risks. Its only when you lack imagination and see the campaign world as static that you run into these problems. Verisimilitude does not mean that infinite wishes cannot happen, merely that if it was possible, then others have done it long before the player characters were even in existence. That levels the playing field and keeps it real.

Whenever I see theoretical CharOp it is premised on the idea that no one else is doing it. Once NPCs are doing it too, the theoretical advantage is lost entirely.

The other choice is not to work with the DM. How is that going to pan out?

AvatarVecna

2021-10-29, 09:15 PM

Whenever I see theoretical CharOp it is premised on the idea that no one else is doing it. Once NPCs are doing it too, the theoretical advantage is lost entirely.

Let's be fair though: this premise is baked into basically every setting. It's not the fault of players that WotC designed a game system where infinite wishes are within reach of a lvl 1 commoner with enough cash, and then paired it with setting after setting that basically assumes a medieval stasis exists except where the PCs are directly involved - and that, more to the point, basically every example NPC ever built by WotC is lame and weak despite their statblocks basically always having mistakes in their favor contained within. This leads to two possible explanations for why the worldbreaking combos aren't breaking the world:

1) The in-universe NPCs are frequently just as rules-savvy (if not more so) than forumites like us, but they're also aware that attempting any of these things will be stymied by some in-universe "absolute force/unstoppable object" who is personally invested in maintaining the particular status quo that the exact combo in question would threaten. This is usually an actual deity, meaning the answer to the question of "why doesnt this work or ever happen" is literally Deus Ex Machina.

2) WotC NPCs are assumed to play just as stupidly as they're built.

The first explanation begs follow-up questions like "if gods are shutting down all the world-ending combos anyway, why aren't they ever shutting down the world-ending plots? If I were to try and start a self-spreading plague of undead, and an undead-hating deity were to stop me from doing that, then why is it my job to hunt down this vampire lord? Shouldn't that same deity have dealt with this a year ago when the vampire lord first decided he was going to do this?"

And the second explanation just requires that the dumb builds are also played in a dumb way - that nobody has ever considered that you could just...wish for more wish-granting genies. That's pretty stupid, especially in a setting that has beings of literally unimaginable intelligence, but it's consistent with the mechanics and the status of the world, and it doesn't require that certain strategies have arbitrary roadblocks when PCs try them, but not when NPC BBEGs try them.

The first will generally be brought up in lore discussions (mostly in Forgotten Realms specifically, where AFAIK it's sorta canon?), but it's not applicable to all settings, and all settings are very distinctly in a "not broken by infinite wishes" state (or whatever the trick happens to be). That's not to say that there can't be things that get in the way of tricks - it's just to say that assuming the DM will invent new ones to shut down your particular trick isn't technically wrong, but it's also basically unhelpful because not every DM is going to shut it down in the same way, or even shut it down at all.

EDIT: And, as I think I've mentioned in a previous thread of yours discussing optimization in general: tricks you see online are about determining the theoretical state of the game, not necessarily what a DM is legally obligated to allow you to do in every game you ever play forever. There is no rule saying a cohort can't take Leadership, no rule saying a follower can't take leadership. There is just a general agreement in the community that the former is a little weird but is at least plausible as a way of representing certain scenarios (ie military rank), but that the latter is really stupid. Cohorts gets XP and level, where followers do not - cohorts are special, followers are not. Cohorts being leaders is plausible sometimes, but followers being leaders is an oxymoron. And despite that, I'm still suggesting that stuff like leadership-stacking (ala OP) or the Crystal Cult is simultaneously drenched in "work with your DM", "the kind of thing that really belongs more in DMs hands than players", and also "this isn't even really all that helpful for a PC unless you're doing something really stupid with it."

redking

2021-10-29, 10:07 PM

Let's be fair though: this premise is baked into basically every setting. It's not the fault of players that WotC designed a game system where infinite wishes are within reach of a lvl 1 commoner with enough cash

When you start with this premise, the rest of what you say appears to make sense. How does a first level commoner get infinite wishes? I can think of certain "methods" that have been put forth, involving extremely tortured readings of the rules.

And the second explanation just requires that the dumb builds are also played in a dumb way - that nobody has ever considered that you could just...wish for more wish-granting genies.

They have and the answer is that it doesn't work. The limitations of wish are defined in the spell itself. The spell description provides various options, then this limitation.

You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

More wishes from a single wish is a "greater effect" than those listed. It doesn't fly.

The first will generally be brought up in lore discussions (mostly in Forgotten Realms specifically, where AFAIK it's sorta canon?), but it's not applicable to all settings, and all settings are very distinctly in a "not broken by infinite wishes" state (or whatever the trick happens to be). That's not to say that there can't be things that get in the way of tricks - it's just to say that assuming the DM will invent new ones to shut down your particular trick isn't technically wrong, but it's also basically unhelpful because not every DM is going to shut it down in the same way, or even shut it down at all.

There are DMs that run gonzo games and that is OK. No one is telling anyone else how to run their games. If a DM allows infinite wishes for the PCs but not the NPCs, fine. That's not a game that I would ever be part of but its great for people that like that stuff.

EDIT: And, as I think I've mentioned in a previous thread of yours discussing optimization in general: tricks you see online are about determining the theoretical state of the game, not necessarily what a DM is legally obligated to allow you to do in every game you ever play forever. There is no rule saying a cohort can't take Leadership, no rule saying a follower can't take leadership.

The Player's Handbook says "work with your DM", and that is for the PC character. Logically that would go double for the cohort. Hypothetically you could have a cohort with a higher leadership score than the leader. It makes you wonder why the cohort isn't in charge.

The player has to work with the DM in all instances anyway. The player telling the DM "well, my PC has stage 4 terminal cancer as a flaw, as well as being near-sighted and 20 other flaws. Because of that, my PC can summon Pazuzu and get infinite wishes through this loop" will work in a situation where common sense has left the room, or the DM is a theoretical optimizer himself. In every case that I have seen, such campaign worlds are completely static. The NPCs lack reactivity. Even CRPGs have more reactivity. It comes down to verisimilitude and these types of campaigns have no sense of plausibility. Again, IF such means were available to the NPCs, then you could suspend disbelief because it happens in an internally coherent system.

Raven777

2021-10-29, 10:57 PM

they should suffer a crippling penalty to their leadership score for not being a real leader (they are YOUR followers, after all).

I disagree on the grounds of Gurney Halleck following Duke Leto.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-29, 10:58 PM

When you start with this premise, the rest of what you say appears to make sense. How does a first level commoner get infinite wishes? I can think of certain "methods" that have been put forth, involving extremely tortured readings of the rules.

A "candle of invocation" costs 8400 gp. Among the ways it can be used is a 1-time Gate, limited to calling forth a planar being of the same alignment as the user. If you're wondering why a scroll of gate costs 8825 gp and this costs less than that despite having uses besides a 1-use Gate spell, I honestly couldn't tell you. I guess technically each candle is limited to a particular alignment when crafted, so that would put the cost of the whole thing at 70% the price such an item would fetch if it weren't alignment-restricted, but that means that all the non-Gate uses of the candle are worth ~3175 gp? Does that feel low to you? It feels low to me. But then, I don't make the prices, WotC does. And WotC is bad at their jobs.

Anyway, the candle doesn't clarify if it's spell completion, spell activation, or what. But it's also kinda irrelevant - the highest the UMD DC would get is 37, and enough money can get us a +30 item, and probably some other things slightly boosting the check to make DC 37 trivial. This would also allow us to fake the alignment, letting anybody use a Lawful Evil Candle to gate in an efreeti. In a large enough settlement, all the pieces of this can be found, so it's a question of how much money your character has to throw around. A commoner 1 with 100 grand burning a hole in his pocket couuld start up an infinite wish loop after shopping around a bit.

Is it weird that every city has theoretical access to every item in existence, up to a certain price point (both per item and per kind of item)? Yes, that's very silly. It's also how the community rules are written, in a pretty unambiguous way, because those rules are less about enabling realistic economies, and more about giving players an idea of where the need to go to buy the magic item they want (and handwaving all the "supply and demand" nonsense concerns they might have). In a real game, a DM might place extra restrictions because even a huge metropolis probably shouldn't have multiple "basically artifact" swords lying around for you to pick and choose from, or they might place restrictions in place to make the economy make more sense. But the default state of D&D is "somebody in this city has it for sale, and it'll take you this long to find them, and this much to buy it from them".

Heck, we don't even need to have the UMD nonsense item if we're willing to bring a single NPC in on the deal: Planar Binding via spellcasting services.

They have and the answer is that it doesn't work. The limitations of wish are defined in the spell itself. The spell description provides various options, then this limitation.

More wishes from a single wish is a "greater effect" than those listed. It doesn't fly.

I'm aware that wish has limitations. You seem unaware that there are ways around them.

As I said, you don't wish for more wishes - you wish for more genies. Specifically, the trick is that you use Wish to replicate a lower-level spell, specifically "Planar Binding" targeting an Efreeti. Efreeti is bound an capable of granting three wishes. Each of those wishes can also bind an Efreeti in the exact same manner. In this way, each wish effectively increases the total wishes available to you by two - a theoretically-infinite loops where the real limitations are "how many genies can I wish for before the universe has no more genies" (in a setting where the outer planes tend to be some measure of infinite), and to a lesser extent "how many genies have already granted wishes today". If you wanna be extra careful, you can first wish for a protection circle to wish them into, just to make sure there's no accidents - that means you're only gaining 1 wish per wish spent (spending 2 wishes to gain 3), but that's still NI wishes if you do it enough.

Planar Binding is a 6th lvl sorcerer/wizard spell. This is well within the territory of "safe wishes" as laid out in the limitations of the Wish spell, so it doesn't (at least by default) provoke the "unforeseen consequences" line. That's not to say there can't be those (the genie can still screw with your wish), but your wish isn't so big that the universe itself rebels against it. "I wish for more wishes" is explicitly going too far. "I wish for more wish-granting genies to be bound to serve me" is explicitly not.

All of this is core material. There are other theoretical methods available to Commoner 1s (common one being sacrifice rules), but that's all kinda extra and not necessary. Core material

There are DMs that run gonzo games and that is OK. No one is telling anyone else how to run their games. If a DM allows infinite wishes for the PCs but not the NPCs, fine. That's not a game that I would ever be part of but its great for people that like that stuff.

Just like there are grognards that run needlessly-punishing games. I'm not saying those are the only people who'd disallow nonsense (far from it), just that it's reductive to No True Scotsman away balance problems.

Additionally, nobody is necessarily arguing that this should ever or has ever taken place in a real game. But if we're to understand how the game's rules should be changed to be more balanced, we have to understand how they're unbalanced in the first place. An objective measure of what is possible and what isn't is necessary to do the DM job right - if you don't, then you're just going to have this same argument every time another little thing in the rules takes you by surprise. And if that's happening all the time, and you don't really like any of it, why are you even running 3.5 in the first place?

The Player's Handbook says "work with your DM", and that is for the PC character. Logically that would go double for the cohort. Hypothetically you could have a cohort with a higher leadership score than the leader. It makes you wonder why the cohort isn't in charge.

The player has to work with the DM in all instances anyway. The player telling the DM "well, my PC has stage 4 terminal cancer as a flaw, as well as being near-sighted and 20 other flaws. Because of that, my PC can summon Pazuzu and get infinite wishes through this loop" will work in a situation where common sense has left the room, or the DM is a theoretical optimizer himself. In every case that I have seen, such campaign worlds are completely static. The NPCs lack reactivity. Even CRPGs have more reactivity. It comes down to verisimilitude and these types of campaigns have no sense of plausibility. Again, IF such means were available to the NPCs, then you could suspend disbelief because it happens in an internally coherent system.

You and the other person are talking past each other. Nobody is denying that the Leadership feat calls on you to work with your DM. But all of this nonsense is about theorycrafting. It's not about what would probably happen, or what would plausibly happen, it's about what might happen. If you tried a maxed out crystal cult in a game where the DM doesn't throw in arbitrary roadblocks, you could theoretically end up with hundreds of thousands of followers pre-epic. If you abuse a reasonable ruling about psicrystals and manifester level, this could become hundreds of millions. You probably couldn't (and shouldn't) do that in a real game, but that's less because "the rules don't allow you to" but rather it's more of a Gentleman's Agreement. You're here to have fun with friends; jerking yourself off with TO nonsense isn't a good game unless it's a circle-jerk.

Responding to theorycrafting discussion with "it says you have to work with your DM" is technicaly correct, but missing the point. You already have to work with the DM on everything, and in particular with stuff like this. When people do theorycrafting like this, it's not "this is something your DM is legally obligated to let you get away with", it's "hey, here's this neat/silly/broken exploit in the mechanics". Sometimes, if you're lucky, the exploiter also includes a "and here's how you can make a fun character/story using that exploit".

Nobody is saying they necessarily do this in campaigns. You invented that straw man in your own head and got mad at the idea people might be having this particular flavor of fun. A setting that lacks reactivity is, again, canon. It's not our fault Faerun is a pile of badly-written justifications for why there's been no technological or magical advancements in the past thousand years, and thus why D&D should default to playing like D&D has always played instead of evolving into something more nuanced. It's not our fault that Faerun is the default setting for D&D, and is a kinda garbage setting. You may not like it, but the reason people assume a setting with no reactivity and dumb NPCs is the same reason people are aware of how to get infinite wish loops: we read the books, and comprehended what was written in them.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-29, 11:06 PM

TL;DR

When some unexpected mechanical combo occurs in a game, the default expected reaction would be something like this:

DM: "The rules say X should happen. I say that Y should happen." And then the game goes according to Y.

Sometimes X and Y are the same thing, and that's cool! But frequently they are not, and most DMs aren't going to have the same Y value a each other - you ask 5 DMs their thoughts on weird niche rule combos, and you'll get 6 answers. But the X value is a constant specific to that situation - regardless of how different people feel the rules should work, the laws of grammar and syntax will (tend to) have a single solitary answer for how the rules do work.

Theorycrafting is about finding X, and seeing what other Xs it can lead to. Theorycrafting is completely unconcerned with Y, because Y is a matter of opinions and not facts (even if it's popularly-held opinions), and even then a properly-formed opinion requires knowledge of the facts. Saying "X doesn't matter in a real game, only Y matters" is 100% true, but it's missing the point of discussing X in the first place.

redking

2021-10-29, 11:48 PM

As I said, you don't wish for more wishes - you wish for more genies. Specifically, the trick is that you use Wish to replicate a lower-level spell, specifically "Planar Binding" targeting an Efreeti. Efreeti is bound an capable of granting three wishes. Each of those wishes can also bind an Efreeti in the exact same manner. In this way, each wish effectively increases the total wishes available to you by two - a theoretically-infinite loops where the real limitations are "how many genies can I wish for before the universe has no more genies" (in a setting where the outer planes tend to be some measure of infinite), and to a lesser extent "how many genies have already granted wishes today". If you wanna be extra careful, you can first wish for a protection circle to wish them into, just to make sure there's no accidents - that means you're only gaining 1 wish per wish spent (spending 2 wishes to gain 3), but that's still NI wishes if you do it enough.

My answer to this is simple. Do you allow this for NPCs as well, or not? If the answer is yes, then your campaign setting has verisimilitude, if not its ridiculous. If its possible in the campaign world for the PCs, then anyone that is able to do it should be doing it. That's all I am saying. That is where my criticism about static and non reactive campaign worlds lays.

As for genie wishes, yes, they are dumb. That's why in the campaign setting, Al-Qadim, that specifically deals with genies and wishes, the genie wishes were nerfed. That's why I wrote up a 3.5e version of these nerfs (https://1drv.ms/b/s!At1QqAc0yBQTgYoF5F5fwtae9dIqEA?e=qKLEmK).

You and the other person are talking past each other. Nobody is denying that the Leadership feat calls on you to work with your DM. But all of this nonsense is about theorycrafting. It's not about what would probably happen, or what would plausibly happen, it's about what might happen. If you tried a maxed out crystal cult in a game where the DM doesn't throw in arbitrary roadblocks, you could theoretically end up with hundreds of thousands of followers pre-epic. If you abuse a reasonable ruling about psicrystals and manifester level, this could become hundreds of millions. You probably couldn't (and shouldn't) do that in a real game, but that's less because "the rules don't allow you to" but rather it's more of a Gentleman's Agreement. You're here to have fun with friends; jerking yourself off with TO nonsense isn't a good game unless it's a circle-jerk.

Power of Faerun widens the scope of the leadership feat, and does it for everyone, PC and NPC. I am not against the crystal cult. I am not even asking for a Gentlemen's Agreement. Just asking that broadly speaking speaking, the same rules (with a handful of exceptions, such as WBL) apply to PCs and NPCs the same way. That is inline with the 3.5e design philosophy. Its what makes it so interesting.

You may not like it, but the reason people assume a setting with no reactivity and dumb NPCs is the same reason people are aware of how to get infinite wish loops: we read the books, and comprehended what was written in them.

Reactivity cannot come out of the page of a book. That is what the DM is for. If the PCs are chain calling genies for infinite wishes, the reaction doesn't call for divine intervention, but for this practice to be normative within the campaign world. But TOers don't like that because when what is good for the goose is good for the gander, there is no more advantage to be had.

Crake

2021-10-30, 12:05 AM

Yes. Technically speaking, all of that is possible. Especially when you limit yourself to the SRD version of leadership (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#tableAttractingFollowers). The Player's Handbook version (meaning, the canon version) contains limitations that shut down EVERY leadership exploit.

You have to work with your DM. Sure, you may have a DM that doesn't care about verisimilitude of the campaign world, but if they do, you'll find that you simply cannot do it. For one, even if a follower or cohort had the leadership feat, they should suffer a crippling penalty to their leadership score for not being a real leader (they are YOUR followers, after all).

My question to you is why you would want to munchkin leadership. Leadership is potentially flavoursome and enjoyable, adding intrigue and responsibility for the leader character. If you work with your DM on leadership that gels with the campaign world, you might even have some fun.

There's nothing in the SRD version of the leadership feat that says the player can micromanage every detail of their cohort. It says they can try to attract a follower of a particular race, class or alignment, and that's it. The DM still has final say on what cohort you attract, and doesn't even have to adhere to these.

That being said, if the DM deems it appropriate, it can still be totally plausible. I once ran an E6 game where one character got some huge charisma bonuses thanks to a succubus he met and fell in love with, and when building a cult dedicated to her he was able to attract level 6 followers (which, in an e6 game, is pretty big) and i let each of those followers have leadership to act as like "head cultists" that each ran their own branch of the cult.

Was definitely funny when the other players went to investigate said cult, and the player had to investigate his own follower and try to pretend like they didn't know each other.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-30, 03:33 AM

My answer to this is simple. Do you allow this for NPCs as well, or not? If the answer is yes, then your campaign setting has verisimilitude, if not its ridiculous. If its possible in the campaign world for the PCs, then anyone that is able to do it should be doing it. That's all I am saying. That is where my criticism about static and non reactive campaign worlds lays.

I would have no issues with NPCs doing this at some point in a campaign. My issue isn't that NPCs are theoretically capable of the same things that PCs are capable of. It's more the "if PCs could do it, NPCs could do it too, and that means somebody else has already done it and ruined it for everybody millennia ago" line of thinking that occurred in one of your previous posts. The way the default setting exists, NPCs can, but haven't. That doesn't mean they can't...just that they haven't up til now (if nothing else, then in particular with regards to tricks that would irrevocably reshape the campaign world and the setting, like wish loops).

This is true of most tricks: there's probably NPC clerics out there with Divine Metamagic, but they're likely using that for things like "DMM: Empower" to get a little extra oomph from their strongest healing spells - because at least by default, NPC clerics tend to be healbots with a few other tricks up their sleeves. Similarly, while some might have nightsticks, they probably only have one at most - low WBL makes item picking a lot tougher, and when you don't primarily go out fighting monsters for money, it becomes a lot less about squeezing every ounce of combat capability out. So they're probably not doing multiple nightsticks for even basic turning attempts, and they're probably not doing very much DMM: Persist, and they're certainly not combining them...at least not yet. But if PCs do these things, NPCs start taking notice. Mid-level clerics have divination spells that can grant divine knowledge, and that leads to them having some inkling of why this is a cool thing to do, and now the trick is spreading by word-of-mouth.

(I probably wouldn't have NPC clerics doing much DMM Persist tho. Again, life doesn't focus around combat for them. But if you're the high priest cleric 18 in a metropolis, you could have DMM Echoing and a pile of nightsticks paid for by your flock, and that would approximately triple the amount of healing you could put out. Echoing is a fun metamagic for NPCs.)

As for genie wishes, yes, they are dumb. That's why in the campaign setting, Al-Qadim, that specifically deals with genies and wishes, the genie wishes were nerfed. That's why I wrote up a 3.5e version of these nerfs (https://1drv.ms/b/s!At1QqAc0yBQTgYoF5F5fwtae9dIqEA?e=qKLEmK).

That's a perfectly valid ruling. Personally, I don't have an issue with genie wishes being able to do literally anything (like, in ways that PCs wish spells can only dream of). I just prefer to keep Wishes of that power as plot devices - the PCs didn't make an optimal wish to break the world, some villain made a really weird and really big wish and the PCs have to deal with the fallout of it. Additionally I tend to make genie economies use fractions of wishes as currency (essentially bank notes, kinda like how we use bills). This tends to cause genie-summoning to result in "sorry, those wishes have been promised to somebody else". A single 6th lvl spell does not get you three wishes capable of literally anything - at the very least, you'd need some kind of intense hunt to find a genie who doesn't sell their wishes. It's similar to a quest to get an artifact.

Of course, that's all ruling, not rules - changes to the default setting to make sure that especially broken tricks aren't actually possible, for the sake of the survival of the setting. By default, if you summon or call something, they have their full default capabilities - bound genies aren't arbitrarily incapable of casting wish for you.

Power of Faerun widens the scope of the leadership feat, and does it for everyone, PC and NPC. I am not against the crystal cult. I am not even asking for a Gentlemen's Agreement. Just asking that broadly speaking speaking, the same rules (with a handful of exceptions, such as WBL) apply to PCs and NPCs the same way. That is inline with the 3.5e design philosophy. Its what makes it so interesting.

I don't mind NPCs being able to do the same thing, in fact I recommend that a crystal cult is best as a plot point in the DM's hands. At least in the default settlement rules, there isn't going to be a high-level manifester in the metropolis, but if you tweak the rules to include them, one could potentially be running a small cult of a few thousand members. It's good primarily because it gives DMs a realistic idea of how many cult members there could be.

This is generally how I handle political figures and especially military stuff: if there's an army being led by a dark knight, giving them a couple extra feats through some method to have leadership/undead leadership is a good way to get a leadership pyramid of lieutentants and infantry. It makes figuring out army numbers and levels easier, and it doesn't tend to impact the builds too much.

Reactivity cannot come out of the page of a book. That is what the DM is for. If the PCs are chain calling genies for infinite wishes, the reaction doesn't call for divine intervention, but for this practice to be normative within the campaign world. But TOers don't like that because when what is good for the goose is good for the gander, there is no more advantage to be had.

For PCs to be capable of it just requires that it's possible within the universe. That's not the same as it being common practice in-universe. If it had been done by somebody before the PCs arrived, the campaign world would look drastically different from the default setting, because anybody getting infinite wishes that are each capable of literally anything is going to change things - changing things on a massive scale is the primary reasons anybody would want resources like that in the first place.

Generally speaking, this is actually kinda a metagaming issue. The reason NPCs don't pull a "I wish for more genies" trick is because they don't know the mechanics of the Wish spell, not the way that players do. The wish spell in-universe is making a verbal request to the universe and having it granted in some fashion; if what they requested can be accomplished in some way by a safe wish, then a safe wish occurs. If what they requested can't be accomplished in some way by a safe wish, they they sorta get what they wanted but the wish gets twisted in some fashion. And either way, if the wish was made via a creature (like a genie), the genie might twist the wish on their own too. High-level NPCs that even have the opportunity to get their wishes granted aren't gonna be that common either.

All in all, these little points add up to "players have a leg up in abusing wish". Players can plainly see that "wishing for more genies" is a viable strat, but NPCs can't read the player's handbook so even if they think to try that exploit, they're going to have to figure out the proper wording for such a wish by trial and error. and T&E isn't a great way to spend wishes as an NPC - you're either burning money, or burning goodwill with a cooperative genie. This gets a whole lot harder if you have an uncooperative genie who's twisting even the safe wishes. Meanwhile, players can see the mechanics, and so they have some idea of the kinda legalese they'll have to employ to get the wish to do exactly what they want.

I'm not saying NPCs can't do it, far from it. I'm just saying that in the default setting...they haven't yet. Because if they had, the default setting would look very different from what it is.

redking

2021-10-30, 04:18 AM

DMM powerful, but it doesn't warp the setting. Stacking nightsticks can warp relations between the classes, so many DMs nerf it. If there was a DMM cleric, I allow it in my campaigns, so long as players accepted that NPCs played by the same rules. In that case, DMM would be something that there is awareness of in the world, known as something that is desirable, perhaps even a main attraction (beyond faithful worship of the gods) to becoming a cleric. This is the part that I don't get.

I would have no issues with NPCs doing this at some point in a campaign. My issue isn't that NPCs are theoretically capable of the same things that PCs are capable of. It's more the "if PCs could do it, NPCs could do it too, and that means somebody else has already done it and ruined it for everybody millennia ago" line of thinking that occurred in one of your previous posts. The way the default setting exists, NPCs can, but haven't. That doesn't mean they can't...just that they haven't up til now (if nothing else, then in particular with regards to tricks that would irrevocably reshape the campaign world and the setting, like wish loops).

So you against setting warping as much as me, but you would prefer that in the campaign world, no one had ever thought about what the PCs are about to do. This is EXACTLY what I am referring to when I talk about static and non reactive. If something were possible, and there are NPCs capable of doing it, there is no reason to think that it wouldn't have happened except for DM fiat. If your players come to you with a munchkin proposal, you say "great, the NPCs have never read the Player's Handbook. Go ahead"? Alternatively you could just say that doesn't work and give reasons. The game is broken in a handful of places and is easily patched up.

Additionally I tend to make genie economies use fractions of wishes as currency (essentially bank notes, kinda like how we use bills). This tends to cause genie-summoning to result in "sorry, those wishes have been promised to somebody else". A single 6th lvl spell does not get you three wishes capable of literally anything - at the very least, you'd need some kind of intense hunt to find a genie who doesn't sell their wishes. It's similar to a quest to get an artifact.

I've seen variations of this technique. Its the gas station that just ran out of gas technique. The problem with it is that you are now trying to mitigate for something you allowed in the first place. So the player asks if they can chain gate genies for infinite wishes under the rules, you say yes, they do it and they end up at the gasless gas station. I guess that's OK because you have your "fractional wish" reasoning and it is you trying to bring verisimilitude to your campaign world. I prefer a less arbitrary approach. Give the players the ground rules, and let them roll with it.

This is generally how I handle political figures and especially military stuff: if there's an army being led by a dark knight, giving them a couple extra feats through some method to have leadership/undead leadership is a good way to get a leadership pyramid of lieutentants and infantry. It makes figuring out army numbers and levels easier, and it doesn't tend to impact the builds too much.

The NPCs don't need leadership if they have a state apparatus, but it could be a good guide for "freedom fighters" or terrorists. Alternatively, the leadership score could tell you how many of the followers are left once the war is lost and the dark knight's state soldiers have fled. So you use the leadership score to figure out how many NPCs follow the dark knight personally (rather than for money or other reasons), and have them defend the führerbunker.

For PCs to be capable of it just requires that it's possible within the universe. That's not the same as it being common practice in-universe. If it had been done by somebody before the PCs arrived, the campaign world would look drastically different from the default setting, because anybody getting infinite wishes that are each capable of literally anything is going to change things - changing things on a massive scale is the primary reasons anybody would want resources like that in the first place.

In a dynamic and reactive campaign setting, that is exactly what would happen. That is the point I am trying to make. The players doing this rely on the NPCs not doing it. If the NPCs do it, it doesn't work for the players. Its Game Over before the campaign starts.

Generally speaking, this is actually kinda a metagaming issue. The reason NPCs don't pull a "I wish for more genies" trick is because they don't know the mechanics of the Wish spell, not the way that players do.

These players don't want to hear anything about the rules that contradicts their assumptions. The DM could easily say "wish for whatever you want, but keep your WBL in mind". That shuts down literally everything in one go.

Beni-Kujaku

2021-10-30, 06:25 AM

redking

2021-10-30, 09:11 AM

What about walls of salt?

If wall of salt is cheaper than salt mines, and there are people capable of casting it and earning money from casting wall of salt in the campaign world, then there are no salt mines and the setting isn't warped. The setting is warped when you have bad guys enslaving people and sending them to salt mines when they have minions that can create salt with a simple spell.

What about planar voyage companies?

No problem. Planar voyage has its own risks. Buyer beware.

What about a limited wight apocalypse in one continent?

Can happen if people stand by and do nothing. I'd expect a degree of reactivity from people victimized by it, however.

What about stacked Leadership

We've already discussed it here. There is nothing wrong with the PCs having 500,000 soldiers under their command. The problems start when they dictate the exact nature of their cohorts and followers.

Even simply allowing potions and 4th or lower spell slots should change everything in a game world, notably allowing everyone to eat their worth with Create Food and Water, which would warp the world so thoroughly that it changes everything and cannot be predicted accurately by the DM.

This is like the opposite of asking why an NPC wouldn't get infinite wishes if he could. Yes, an NPC would get infinite wishes if it could because it is in the NPC's interests to do so. Going around feeding the huddled masses isn't generally in the NPC's interests, and when they do it there is probably some other motive.

But if you want equality between PCs and NPCs, then you're saying PCs should have no way of influencing the world at large, which is.... Both railroading and frustrating for them.

How is that what I am saying? Does a PC need infinite wishes or a cart full of nightsticks to influence the world?

It is much more interesting to allow for creativity and simply shut down one way or the other when you feel like tey go too far. Yes, this is arbitrary. But you're the DM. Everything happens in the game world is arbitrarily decided by you. And you can give reasons why you do this. These reasons can be in-game or IRL ("self-resetting traps are called this for simplification, and they need to be crafted again after 50 uses or so due to the wear on the magical mechanism" or "Yeah, no. I'm sorry but this is obviously broken and you know that. For the sake of the game, I won't allow it").

Is my 3.5e conversion of Al-Qadim rules that terrible? (https://1drv.ms/b/s!At1QqAc0yBQTgYoF5F5fwtae9dIqEA?e=qKLEmK) It sets the ground rules and doesn't shut down anything. Shutting the PCs down would be something like "oh, the efreet you gated in has run out of wishes for today. Yeah, sorry, the solar too. And the pit fiend. The outer planes are real busy and wishes are in short supply".

Since when is "creative" simply mechanical abuse? Creative would be "I have 1000 followers with my leadership feat. I am going to hire mercenaries to help me capture those eight villages yonder".

AvatarVecna

2021-10-30, 09:23 AM

FWIW, I also don't have an issue with PCs (or NPCs) dictating who joins up with them. With Leadership it's a bit harder, but it can be less about "you're so influential that random people show up to join your cause" and more "you're hiring people to join your business/army". With thrallherd, it's trivial: if the person who shows up to be your thrall isn't to your liking, just kill them. Another one will show up tomorrow, and you get penalties for killing cohorts, not thralls. You can do this with believers as well, but that tends to be more time-consuming, and most believers who ever show up are gonna be about as useful as each other.

EDIT: And to take the Doylist perspective, it's easier for players to give a general idea of the kinds of people they're looking for, instead of the DM building them. If the player wants to build the leadership gains, especially the cohort that's gonna be joining them in combat, I'd have no issue with that as a DM - it'd still need my final approval, but that's work I don't need to do myself.

redking

2021-10-30, 09:39 AM

FWIW, I also don't have an issue with PCs (or NPCs) dictating who joins up with them. With Leadership it's a bit harder, but it can be less about "you're so influential that random people show up to join your cause" and more "you're hiring people to join your business/army". With thrallherd, it's trivial: if the person who shows up to be your thrall isn't to your liking, just kill them. Another one will show up tomorrow, and you get penalties for killing cohorts, not thralls. You can do this with believers as well, but that tends to be more time-consuming, and most believers who ever show up are gonna be about as useful as each other.

Cast or have cast for you Mage’s Magnificent Mansion (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesMagnificentMansion.htm). Close the portal behind you.

A thrallherd’s first thrall and believers arrive within 24 hours of her entry into this class; likewise, lost thralls and believers are replaced within 24 hours.

Within 24 hours a thrall and a number of believers will arrive INSIDE the magnificent mansion. Now comes the fun. By unknown means, the believers and thrall have been able to overcome the protections of this powerful spell. Fortunately, you are an expert in psionic torture and mindbending. Soon the secrets of breaking any magical protections will be yours.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-30, 09:43 AM

Cast or have cast for you Mage’s Magnificent Mansion (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesMagnificentMansion.htm). Close the portal behind you.

Within 24 hours a thrall and a number of believers will arrive INSIDE the magnificent mansion. Now comes the fun. By unknown means, the believers and thrall have been able to overcome the protections of this powerful spell. Fortunately, you are an expert in psionic torture and mindbending. Soon the secrets of breaking any magical protections will be yours.

Gasp! They're all 10th lvl Silver Keys!

redking

2021-10-30, 09:58 AM

Gasp! They're all 10th lvl Silver Keys!

Lol. A thrallherd is the ultimate guerilla commander. Their believers are probably crappy, far more likely to be NPC classes than those recruited under the leadership feat, but the ability to fight a limitless war of attrition makes it worth it.

I actually like the thrallherd PrC but my inclination is to slightly nerf that aspect of it. What I do is accept that believers are replaced in 24 hours, but actually getting to you within 24 hours is another matter altogether. It can be simulated by replenishing believers at a rate of 1 + Cha bonus every day. That represents the number of believers than manage to travel to you and the time taken.

A wily thrallherd running away from the authorities will always pick up followers wherever they go. I find that a lot more interesting than a thrallherd that has 50 believers killed by guards one day, only to have them all replenished the next day and then they finish off the guards. If I allowed it exactly as written, the setting would be a "cult wars" setting, with weird gurus and their cultist followers everywhere.

AvatarVecna

2021-10-30, 10:25 AM

Lol. A thrallherd is the ultimate guerilla commander. Their believers are probably crappy, far more likely to be NPC classes than those recruited under the leadership feat, but the ability to fight a limitless war of attrition makes it worth it.

I actually like the thrallherd PrC but my inclination is to slightly nerf that aspect of it. What I do is accept that believers are replaced in 24 hours, but actually getting to you within 24 hours is another matter altogether. It can be simulated by replenishing believers at a rate of 1 + Cha bonus every day. That represents the number of believers than manage to travel to you and the time taken.

Honestly it's one of those balance points in the system where I'm perplexed what side it's on. Like the first level of thrallherd gives you "objectively stronger leadership", in that 1) you don't have to deal with reputational penalties, 2) you can savescum until you get the ones you want, and 3) thralls have a higher level cap than cohorts do. On the other hand...you're giving up a manifester level. At level 6 that's nothing. At lvl 16 that's a much bigger deal. Is it underpowered? Overpowered? Ehhhhhhh overall that's hard to say.

In general though, I agree: I'm kinda allergic to "leadership, but better".

A wily thrallherd running away from the authorities will always pick up followers wherever they go. I find that a lot more interesting than a thrallherd that has 50 believers killed by guards one day, only to have them all replenished the next day and then they finish off the guards. If I allowed it exactly as written, the setting would be a "cult wars" setting, with weird gurus and their cultist followers everywhere.

You've just described the setting, except we've replaced the high priests with manifesters, and nothing else changed. The world is already cult wars by virtue of having competing religions.

rel

2021-10-30, 12:17 PM

2) WotC NPCs are assumed to play just as stupidly as they're built.

The default assumption in most of my game worlds.

Why aren't the NPC's using this one weird trick?

Why is the plot of this published adventure so needlessly convoluted?

Why did that monster think multiple toughness feats were a good idea?

why are the defenders responding to the parties antics in decidedly suboptimal ways that result in a more exciting dungeon crawl?

Because the average NPC is denser than a sack of hammers.

icefractal

2021-10-31, 01:55 PM

I'm also in the camp that finds NPCs being overly dense to usually be an immersion breaker. The exception would be if that was the point of the campaign/scenario - that because of some powerful influence / curse / other, most people were actually incapable of putting certain things together.

But on the other hand, nobody likes to hear "Simpsons NPCs did it" to every idea, and IME most players (including me) enjoy surprising their foes and having those foes on the back foot against their unexpected abilities. And I like that as a GM too, in both directions.

So I solved this by running a "nonstandardized" world. By which I mean that the only universally-available abilities are non-casting NPC classes plus a set of ritual magic that mostly caps out at mid-level stuff; the universally producible magic items are similarly limited. Everything else, like say, levels in PC classes and all they entail? That's a semi-unique ability that's can't generally be identified or systematized. Not [i]rare[i] necessarily, many people have some kind of ability, but you can't really talk about "the things Clerics can do" because Clerics aren't a thing - people with healing and/or smiting and/or buffing abilities are a thing, but they work in a variety of ways.

Result, PCs and NPCs can often get the drop on each-other because many of their abilities will come as a surprise, and that's something that makes sense IC. The world building only need to take the universal abilities into account to make sense, because it's entirely possible that a PC is the first person to ever have this exact combination of abilities.

This makes a difference to the utility of certain elements, obviously, but nothing that's an issue as long as people build with those in mind. If this was a change made to an existing campaign though, you'd definitely want to allow a full rebuild.