Adapting a Feat From Pathfinder: Leadership

[CeeJay]

I'm interested in adapting this here feat from Pathfinder for an Envoy in my group. I'm trying to work out if there's anything I need to adjust to make sure it's balanced for Starfinder. Nothing much that needs changing jumps out at me, except of course for the part about animal companions, but I'm not sure if there are scaling or balance issues at play that I might miss. Anybody have any thoughts? Thanks in advance for any replies.

[Xenocrat]

Leadership is the most unbalanced PF feat by far, the only way to balance it for SF is by not including it.

[CeeJay]

How do you mean?

(I should clarify here that the player and I have pre-discussed the feat. He's a player I trust not to attempt doing cheesy stuff like ordering up a bunch of Technomantic crafters and sticking them in a room to make items for the party or something like that. I have reason to assume reasonable and within-the-spirit use of the feat without attempting to break the game. My question about balance is outside of issues like that.)

[oldskool]

I don't see a problem with the feat moving into Starfinder as-is. There is nothing mechanically unique to Pathfinder.

The scaling of the cohort is player level minus 2. This is regardless of your leadership score. The cohort is supposed to have equipment appropriate to their level. That last part could be a balance issue if your players give it higher grade weapons and it was min-maxed.

I'd probably consider looking at the Mechanic's Drone for ideas to rule the use of the cohort as an active companion. If that is what they are going for. A cohort left unchecked could imbalance action economy and step on the toes of a Drone Mechanic (if there is one).

Also, Envoy's are deceptively strong damage contributors. As force multipliers, they can make everyone else better depending on what features you pick. That said, a combat focused cohort is going to contribute even more to the Envoy. It may not be noticeable, if others at the table are tallying up effective damage contribution then the Envoy may end up overshadowing everyone else.

Leadership has always been one of those feats that require a lot of oversight. I tend to allow it only when low-level followers are background fluff and not impacting game mechanics (like mass producing weapons for gold, etc.).

[johnlocke90]

CeeJay wrote:

How do you mean?

(I should clarify here that the player and I have pre-discussed the feat. He's a player I trust not to attempt doing cheesy stuff like ordering up a bunch of Technomantic crafters and sticking them in a room to make items for the party or something like that. I have reason to assume reasonable and within-the-spirit use of the feat without attempting to break the game. My question about balance is outside of issues like that.)

The Leadership feat is by far the strongest feat in the game. It isn't even intended to be a balanced feat.

It has good uses(RPing a follower or if you have a small party and want an NPC to round it out), so I would just run it as is if you wanted a PC to do it.

On a side note, crafting is very weak now. So a crafting follower would be very reasonable.

[Metaphysician]

Okay. So, this is an off the cuff idea. Its not even close to balanced, I'm sure, but I want to know what people think.

Leadership ( Feat ):

You have followers who are loyal to you. You have 1 follower whose level is equal to one half your own, rounded up. You have twice this many followers of a level two lower than this. This repeats all the way down to CR 1/4.

Example- a 9th level PC takes Leadership. They gain one CR 5 follower, two CR 3 followers, four CR 1 followers, and eight CR 1/3 followers.