My Cohort

[Talya]

Perhaps you are familiar with my favorite character.

Well, we just hit 15, and I took leadership. Why not? She has aspirations to start a huge temple of Sune in Calimport, so she needs the followers.

So I conferred with the DM about a cohort. He decided to use an established NPC as my cohort, a romantic interest my sweet Nara had been developing.

My Character Nara is a Sorcerer/Heartwarder (class must remain CG), a religious leader among the Sunite Faith. Her cohort is a paladin. Yes, this breaks the rules, but this paladin is already a number of official exceptions, and this one makes sense.

Sune is the only CG deity in FR that has an order of Paladins (yes, they are still LG.) The Ruby Rose Knights even have substitution levels in Champions of Valor.

Among their alternate class features:
They lose divine health. Instead, they gain immunity to ANY spell, damage, effect, drain or other means of suffering penalties to their charisma score. They lose "Remove Disease x/week" and gain "Bestow Heroism x/week." And they lose a third level spell slot, and gain some buff they grant through an embrace.

Yeah, sorta blah. But here's the fun part.

She's half celestial. So she gets her disease immunity back. She gets her remove disease back (and then some.) She gets +4 wisdom (among other stats), which means she gets her 3rd level spell slot back. Furthermore, the DM, when statting her out, gave her a feat "Magic in the Blood," which allows her to use all her spell-like abilities an extra 2x a day. So she's 6 Hit Dice behind me instead of 2. But she's practically a cleric with all her magic and SLAs. She can fly without assistance. He's also given her a nice build with regard to melee. Her charisma is insanely high. Sure, she's 6 BAB behind the party melee paladin, but she keeps up with him in damage just the samem and actually beats him for total Lay Hands per day points, and for saving throws. (She has far fewer hit points and has to be more careful in that regard.) He also gave her WBL for level 13, nice bonus i think.

Optimal? Probably not. She's not designed to be...she is designed to be useful, however. Our party consists of a level 15 dwarf paladin, a level 9 ranger/6 fighter, my heartwarder. We until recently also had a really poorly built cleric, but he's "Taking a break," so my cohort's abilities have become all the more important.

This one also has flavor, and she's actually useful to me!

[FlyMolo]

Your characters are definitely interesting. Am I messing up the pronouns here, or is everyone female?

Exciting.

Hell, I can roll with that. CG lesbian paladins should be in every game.



But you are right, kidding aside. This is a master stroke by your DM.

[Talya]

Your characters are definitely interesting. Am I messing up the pronouns here, or is everyone female?

Exciting.

Hell, I can roll with that. CG lesbian paladins should be in every game.



But you are right, kidding aside. This is a master stroke by your DM.

Actually, the paladin still has to be LG (that's where the rules are broken...my cohort is lawful, i'm chaotic. DM's reasoning...she's a knight of an order sworn to serve Sune's clergy anyway, and Sune's clergy are mostly CG (and Sune's High Priestess MUST be CG.) So it would be a contradiction if a ruby rose knight couldn't be a cohort to a heartwarder.

(And yes, they're lesbian. LGBTitP unite!)

[monty]

Couldn't you just use the Paladin of Freedom variant from UA, which would solve the alignment problem without houseruling?

[Reel On, Love]

"Hot lesbian Sunite with a hot lesbian cohort" is nothing new. What's unique here is that the character isn't a stripper ninja and is actually being run by a woman (rather than a Cat-Piss Man).

[Icewalker]

Cool character, I like the sound of the cohort. Reminds me of the 1st edition campaign I play in, where the DM throws up ridiculous bonuses and items just to make characters more interesting.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I actually have yet to see any female obsessed-with-sex characters run by males. I've seen multiple female characters run by males, but none of them were very sexual. the only sex-obsessed female characters I've seen were all run by females (including the bisexual professional in my cyber campaign). Maybe there just aren't that many cat-piss men at my Uni.

[Frosty]

What does the term "Cat-piss" mean? I think many men are aware of the (possibly unfair) stereotpye that men playing female character WILL create sluts and so many try to avoid that stereotype.

Some female characters will be obsessed with sex. Some won't. It really depends on her backstory, her personality, and what events shaped her views. You should play the character how the character would act.

[Rutee]

I like the feel overall. You've established the relationship, so I'm curious. how does the Cohort behave with the party as a whole? Is she a satellite character in the story? How does she behave in combat? Mostly as a buffer and ranged support? Does she melee?

[tyckspoon]

What does the term "Cat-piss" mean? I think many men are aware of the (possibly unfair) stereotpye that men playing female character WILL create sluts and so many try to avoid that stereotype.

If Tvtropes can't help, Urban Dictionary will.

[Frosty]

So Cat-piss is like every bad gamer/nerd stereotype in one spectacularly horrifying (yet curiosity-invoking in a morbid way) package?

[Kizara]

So Cat-piss is like every bad gamer/nerd stereotype in one spectacularly horrifying (yet curiosity-invoking in a morbid way) package?

I'm sorry, but I find that whole business hilarious.

[Tsotha-lanti]

I'm not sure what the alignment problem is, actually. Unless you refer to the FR rule about having to be one step from your deity in alignment, which obviously doesn't apply in all cases anyway (each deity has separate cleric alignments; some allow more than one step difference, some don't allow certain one-step differences...).

Sune is CG and has LG paladins - that's just how it works, no rules or the like broken. (Is she really the only one, anyway? I'm pretty sure Corellon Larethian and other elven deities, for instance, have LG paladins despite being CG deities. Selûne, maybe?)

[Sstoopidtallkid]

One of the rules of leadership is that your Cohort must have a similar alignment to you. He cannot be opposed on the L/C or G/E axis. Plus, if he is a different alignment at all, you take a penalty to your Leadership score. It's a dumb rule, as it prevents all kinds of good roleplaying, but there it is.

[Talya]

I like the feel overall. You've established the relationship, so I'm curious. how does the Cohort behave with the party as a whole? Is she a satellite character in the story? How does she behave in combat? Mostly as a buffer and ranged support? Does she melee?

She has a particulalry comrade-like relationship with our dwarven paladin. (He's a s"Gold dwarf," and actually manages 18 charisma by now.) They share standards of honor and even with very different deities, they have a lot in common, professionally. (And it's hard for any paladin to not respect the daughter of a celestial being, and the party paladin roleplays that well.) She does buff, but she has never used a ranged weapon. She fights in melee with a falchion. With the unusual feats she has, she actually manages decent damage, and her armor class is reasonably high. (Forget divine might, she's got permament charisma-to-damage.) She's going to be difficult to control...not that she's stupid, but she is valorous, and will go head-to-head in melee against any enemy our party is fighting, even though she doesn't have the hit points to match our PC paladin or ranger/fighter.

[Talya]

One of the rules of leadership is that your Cohort must have a similar alignment to you. He cannot be opposed on the L/C or G/E axis. Plus, if he is a different alignment at all, you take a penalty to your Leadership score. It's a dumb rule, as it prevents all kinds of good roleplaying, but there it is.

Sune is CG and has LG paladins - that's just how it works, no rules or the like broken. (Is she really the only one, anyway? I'm pretty sure Corellon Larethian and other elven deities, for instance, have LG paladins despite being CG deities. Selûne, maybe?)

Yeah, there's why he allowed it. Sunite Ruby Rose Knights (Paladins) are still limited to LG alignments. But they worship a CG Goddess, and protect a CG priesthood. They are, in effect, already cohorts of CG characters. Since an exception was specifically made for Sune to have an order of paladins in FR source material (and yeah, she's the only CG goddess that has it listed that despite her alignment, she supports and grants spells to an order of paladins in her name), the exception should extend to them for Leadership purposes.

Elven deities in FR don't allow core paladins. (Obviously in a game where you allow paladins of Freedom, they'd work.) There are a number of Chaotic and Neutral paladin-like PrCs. Selûne actually has an order of monks (the Monks of the Sun Soul worship a triad of Lathander, Selûne and Sune), but no paladins.

[Tsotha-lanti]

One of the rules of leadership is that your Cohort must have a similar alignment to you. He cannot be opposed on the L/C or G/E axis. Plus, if he is a different alignment at all, you take a penalty to your Leadership score. It's a dumb rule, as it prevents all kinds of good roleplaying, but there it is.

What a silly rule. Why would anyone observe that? (And really, isn't one of the reasons Leadership exists that the DM can give PCs succubus cohorts without their knowing?)

[Talya]

What a silly rule. Why would anyone observe that? (And really, isn't one of the reasons Leadership exists that the DM can give PCs succubus cohorts without their knowing?)

That's really not fair. That'd be like surprising the party paladin by having their class-feature mount turn on them and try to trample them. Leadership has a mechanical benefit...turning that against the Leader would be beyond mean.

[SamTheCleric]

DM: "Ok, at 6th level, everyone gets the Leadership Feat for free..."

<2 Months Later>

DM: "While you're on watch, you notice all the cohorts rise from their sleeping bags with long curved knives and begin Coup De Grace on their masters. Roll Initiative."

Player 1: "I hate you so much right now"

[Tsotha-lanti]

Now, I didn't say anything about turning against anyone, but cohorts can certainly have their own agendas and be NPCs in their own right. (I think my player more or less figured out the cohort was a succubus, anyway - but at that point the PC was Neutral Evil and didn't seem to mind.)

Heck, Fiend of Corruption class abilities would make for a nice cohort...

Also, Selûne's paladins totally have their own substitution levels in CoV (Crescent Moon Knight), so Sune's not the only CG non-elf deity with paladins. (Not that there's anything explicit in Faiths and Pantheons or CoV to indicate the chaotic Seldarine have paladins at all.)