Leadership

[Raistlin1040]

What is your opinion on Leadership? Do you let the players make another sheet, do you make a sheet in accordance with rough specifications, or do you disallow the feat altogether?

[NullAshton]

I would let my players get leadership, but I would supervise it to make sure they're not doing any sort of brokenness with it. Otherwise, I trust my players to do the right thing and not abuse it.

[melchizedek]

Usually, I just don't allow it. In most campaigns, it just isn't worth the extra trouble.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

I usually get it mostly for flavor purposes. I only have followers for things like maintaining castles or ships, and my cohort's always grievously underpowered. Mystic Theurges, Orc fighters, Aasimar Clerics.... (ok, that last was powerful, but still flavor-only).

[prufock]

Where cohorts are concerned, I generate the specific in collaboration with the player, asking for his or her opinions on what type of cohort would be appropriate for the PC. Followers don't get their own sheets - maybe a cue card or two for the important ones.

[Lemur]

Leadership is probably something I would do on a case by case basis. That is, one character might be allowed to take leadership, but another wouldn't, based on my personal whim. While that may seem unfair from a player's perspective, consider a 4 person party where one person has a cohort, and then consider one where each player has a cohort. Big difference in character and battle management. Leadership essentially has "Prerequisite: DM thinks the feat is appropriate for your character" and that's what I would follow.

Depending on how you interepret the feat, the player might not even be allowed to create the cohort in the first place. Of course, also depending on how you interpret it, the player could have as many cohorts as he or she wanted.

Personally, I'd probably let the player create a single appropriate cohort, under my scrutiny, to make sure the cohort is appropriate, and not obviously going to upset the game.

However, it is reasonable to say that a given PC could have multiple cohorts available, but could only go adventuring with one at a time (somewhat similar to Neverwinter Nights). In this case, I'd personally make each cohort, and let the player choose which one he wanted to take with him, and he could switch between them when it becomes convenient ("convenient" as in during downtime, and able to contact and meet up with the cohort, not "my cohort is at 0 hitpoints, it sure would be convenient to switch them now"). This whole setup probably seems pretty complicated, but I think it would be a good thing to do if the party is really small, and possibly goes on missions where specialization is important.

[adanedhel9]

I've only DM'ed for a character with Leadership once. This is what I did:

The player and I got together and discussed what he wanted to do with Leadership. I took those ideas and created three chraracters. Those three characters appeared in the next session, essentially as plot hooks (all leading to the same place, but in different ways). Whichever way the party went, that character became the cohort.

Now, this probably only worked as well as it did because the player involved was the unofficial group leader. Everyone tended to follow him, so his cohort choice wasn't going to mess up the group's plot choice. I could see a situation where a less dominant player wants to do the same thing, but because he follows the leader, he doesn't get the cohort that he really wanted.

Once the choice was made, I handed the character sheet over to the player and let him advance the cohort however he wanted (it was a spellthief, so I wasn't overly concerned with him cheesing the character out).

If I was put in that situation again, i would probably get more input from the player and then create just one cohort. Of course, that's only for if the character picks up Leadership during an active campaign. If a player wants to add leadership during character creation, he and I would go about designing the character together, just as I (try to) do for normal character creation.

[Matthew]

Leadership is one of the oddest Feats going. I haven't used it in 3.x yet, but I think I would just grant it to all Player Characters as a Free Bonus Feat when appropriate and under heavy supervision.

[KIDS]

I allow it generally, but reserve the right to ban it in case of abuse. The player has the freedom to choose roughly what cohort he gets, as well how it will look like (some feats and skills etc.) and I'm pretty lenient with it as long as it's not an Incatatrix uberbuff cohort.

[Green Bean]

My DM tends to ignore it. Players just aren't allowed to take it. However, occasionally, the party gets a 'free' cohort as the plot dictates, or even a stronghold of low level fodder in high-ish level games. Additional characters are left to the whims of plot, not mechanical choices.

[Saph]

I've never had a player ask to take it. If he did, I'd treat it strictly as an RP thing - you now own a castle/school/monastery/keep/academy with your cohort running it and your followers at it. They'll help you, but the help will mostly be story-related.

There's no way in hell I'd let a player just build a cohort and bring him along under direct control. Apart from anything else, it hurts suspension of disbelief if one person is playing the Multi-Character Hive Mind. "So . . . which of your characters am I talking to?"

- Saph

[Rad]

Interaction with other NPCs is usually best left to roleplay. Also, it makes some parts of the game slower; I had a wizard in my group get an apprentice as her cohort... two caster were so much paperwork she switched to a ranger in o time!

Honestly, I would not allow it, and regulate cohorts and followers only with the actions taken in-game. No need to wait 2 levels and half if the occasion is now, and no need to make it unremoveable either

[Matthew]

Sounds like it caused some problems for some people. I have never found (A)D&D 2.x Henchmen to pose such problems.

[Fawsto]

Well... When the Group you DM 4 is composed of Rogues, Rangers and a Single Wizard, you start considering to give leadership as bonus feat to the most charismatic one. What tends to be dificult, because a group like that is in short supply of charismatic people...

Anyway... I allow Leadership whenever there is an important class missing to the party... Mostly Clerics and Fighters in my situation...

However, if the group has all the important classes (someone to kick ass, someone to scout and open locks, someone to heal and someone to blow enemies with spells) the Cohort will be basically a Bard, or even a Monk... Something useless.

[Damionte]

This feat with me depends on the players or the size of the group.

In a small group I have no problem allowing leadership. When I do I allow the cohort to be played essentially as a second PC by the person who takes the feat. In my group though not everyone is allowed to take it. we have a coupel guys who are just too slow making decisions in combat. So they already know they can't take leadership. :)

In our current group though I don't allow leadership because our group is too large. 7 PC's doesn't leave enough room for a cohort.

Aside from that they have the same limits to making cohorts that they do for PC's.