Anyone have experience with Cohort xp when there's a large level difference? [PF]

[KillianHawkeye]

Just looking for opinions on this one.

Here's the situation: One of my Pathfinder players wanted a cohort, but asked to take the Squire feat to get a 1st level cohort for story reasons even though they're now at 10th level. I okayed it without looking into how Cohorts work in Pathfinder, and now I'm realizing that the rules for Cohort XP mean the 1st level Cohort will get 1/10th of the xp as the PCs get. (The formula is PC xp * Cohort level / PC level.)

I've never DM'd for a player with a Cohort before. Has anyone ever found themselves with a PC whose Cohort is significantly lower level than usual? How did you handle it? Does it take too long for the Cohort to catch up in xp when they're being penalized this much?

And realizing that the system isn't really designed for such a level gap between a Cohort and the PCs, should I apply some kind of house rule to help the Cohort level up faster or wait and let things play out?

[Gnome Alone]

I don’t have experience with this, but, it sounds like the player just really wants a whole-lot-weaker squire to follow them around, so I’d be inclined to let them have it. Though it doesn’t seem like it’d be too crazy to just let the squire acquire (heh) XP at the rate that he’s “supposed” to, as if he were a, what, 7th level character? I guess what it really comes down to is, does the player want their squire to improve fairly quickly or do they really want to stretch out that “I am just a puppy humble apprentice, please do not murder me” stage?

[zlefin]

With the way xp works in pf, they'll still catch up pretty well.

the xp needed for a level grows as an exponentiation function, which significantly outweighs the cohort xp penalty.

As long as the cohort doesn't die that is.

based on a quick look at the numbers, the cohort should hit about level ~9 when the pcs hit level 13.