That is up to the DM. Most DM's never allow the feat fully because it is easy to abuse, and you don't have to give up anything to get it.
As an example I only allow the cohort to provide any mechanical affect. The followers don't get to take part in the game as anything more than window dressing.
If he does allow it then giving some of them ranks in a certain profession might work, but remember these are people with their own lives, and it is not realistic to think they would just give their money to you. Maybe a small portion. You would also have to roll for each person that had a profession, and not every one has a profession just because they have a job.
Buy a tavern (or some other place of business). Put one of your highest level followers in charge. Then employ the rest.
Make one Profession check with all the other using Aid Another. Take average rolls, and watch the income come in on a monthly basis (or however often you come back to check up on them).
It might seem small, but the profits are offset by your operation costs, fees, taxes, wages, bribes, slushfund, future endeavor investments, etc. What's left is your "CEO take home".
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Personally, I'm not a fan of the "use this to make money" thing. The last time I had a player use the Leadership feat (to add a pure cleric/healer to a 3 person group), it was like this:
The player was a "prince in hiding" sent as a diplomat to try and figure out the political situation (playing War of the Burning Sky, it makes sense there).
The cohort was his "bodyguard". Got the impression the player treated him similar to the "butler I grew up with" that happens to be a fairly powerful cleric.
The followers were contacts he could find in a city to gain information on the situation, and send messages or spy for him in areas he can't get to due to his current adventure requirements.
As DM, I used this as a vehicle to give him information on stuff going on, and getting a more broader idea of what was happening outside of his local position, in a campaign where this kind of stuff was important.
Specifical example:
(potential vague spoiler for the campaign)
This was just one way of doing things (magical methods would have worked as well), but it was a nice way to use the Leadership feat.
If someone wanted to use their followers to make money for them using their Profession skills, I'd force them to start keeping track of their followers' living expenses. Normally I assume followers are self-supporting, but if they're working full-time to support their liege they're not working to support themselves.
On the other hand, if the character owns land, it's not unreasonable to assume that he can collect taxes from his followers living on his land. He wouldn't be making anything like the combined results of their Professions checks, though.
If someone wanted to use their followers to make money for them using their Profession skills, I'd force them to start keeping track of their followers' living expenses. Normally I assume followers are self-supporting, but if they're working full-time to support their liege they're not working to support themselves.
The benefits of the profession skill already include living expenses, I think, or every normal professional would starve.
EDIT: Note that it's not big money either. 10 followers using Aid Another on the 11th (which is second level), if he's got say a +7 (2 ranks, +3 class, +2 MW tools) and the others +4 (1 rank, +3 class) means a take 10 of 10+7+16=33, meaning an income of 16.5 gp per week for you. Whoopiefrakkindo. Not like it's going to break anyones game with that boost to your WBL. Especially not since 10 followers are a score of 13, meaning you're probably at least level 7.
EDIT2: Can't take 10 on aid another, and with a +4 mod it's a 75% chance to make it, so counting high 8 will make it giving the above bonus.
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The benefits of the profession skill already include living expenses, I think, or every normal professional would starve.
1 Rank + Class Skill + Take 10 = 14 = 7gp per week = 28gp per month.
'Average' cost of living = 10gp per month (page 405).
Conclusion = no Professional should ever come close to starving.
The benefits of the profession skill already include living expenses, I think, or every normal professional would starve.1 Rank + Class Skill + Take 10 = 14 = 7gp per week = 28gp per month.
'Average' cost of living = 10gp per month (page 405).
Conclusion = no Professional should ever come close to starving.
Oh, sorry. Meant to say every NON-professional. Laborers earn a silver piece a day. Sorry for that.
Oh, sorry. Meant to say every NON-professional. Laborers earn a silver piece a day. Sorry for that.Yeah - that's what the 'Poor' cost of living is for (3gp = 30sp per month). Still not starving... but border-line (which is kinda' the point to being classed as 'poor').
Well, I didn't think that kind of poor was the standard for common laborers actually, but you might be right. Note though that that means if they work 7 days a week they excactly survive... Which is certainly being poor. Just didn't think THAT poor was very common.
Leadership is only an issue if the GM is being lazy, otherwise it's a non-issue.
I've had plenty of players take leadership. They usually don't want the followers, just the cohort. I always make them find things for the followers to do.
1) Had a game with two players having followers. One had his followers travel a day or so behind the party, and assigned them to do things by sending his cohort back to give the orders. Usually it was things like 'Help fix up this town that just got razed by a dragon' or 'Help replant the fields after that Orc warband attacked'. The character was a Paladin of Bahamut.
2) Had another character in the same game use his followers & cohort to run a diplomatic embassy to a major country his home city-state had made friendly contact with. This made the embassy staff much more trustworthy.
3) I personally, in my current game I'm playing in, plan on taking leadership when I can. I plan on having the followers be the street kids in the main town we work out of, who gather information for me and do odd jobs. The cohort is going to be a smith we ran into during play (I hope, assuming the GM approves). We did him a very good turn, and gave him a very nice smithy to work out of (we built it for a party member to use while we are on down time, and saw no reason for it to be underutilized when we are not on down time). We're getting some of the profits from what he makes and sells, and he makes stuff for us at cost.
Your GM may not like the lack of in-game sense of loyal followers giving you the entirety of their earnings (though I can think of a few logical cases where this would make sense) and may disallow it on that basis, but this should not be disallowed from a balance perspective. Min/maxed followers with a Leadership score of 25+ (the highest on the table) will only net you ~1,000gp each week.
Hardly broken at any level.
Actually, you can simply use the "Running a Business" rules in Dungeon Master's Guide 2. They're pretty useful and thorough. I'm surprised Paizo's Gamemastery Guide didn't have such details for running a business. (actually, alot of the Gamemastery Guide was rather underwhelming, sadly).
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1,000 g/week?
I think that kind of depends on how much downtime your dm gives you. If you spend months between hooks, 1000g/week is a LOT of extra buying power over the course of the campaign.
Half a day downtime? Not so much :)
135 1st lvl followers
13 second
7 third
4 fourth
2 fifth
2 sixth
Non-rank bonuses to skill: +3 skill focus, +2 racial (gnome), +3 class bonus, +2 masterwork tools
Total +10
Taking 10,
First lvl gets 21
Second level 22
Third 23
Fourth 24
Fifth 25
Sixth 26
1st: (21/2)x135=1417.5
2nd: (22/2)x13= 143
3rd: (23/2)x7= 80.5
4th: (24/3)x4= 48
5th: (25/2)x2=25
6th: (26/2)x2=26
So that's 1,740 gold a week. I know I skipped a few bonuses, like having them all be clerics and cast guidance on themselves. I'm sure there are more, so you could probably crank it up to 2k or so.
It takes them approximately five weeks to pay off the cost of their tools.
Unnecessary? Totally. But it appeases the obsessive in me.
@Magicdealer
Pay for each follower needs to be taken into account. 3SP per day is the minimum for a trained hireling. A follower still has to take home the bread to his family/etc. Let's assume since they are followers they are willing to work for 2/3rds because you're just so nifty to be around. :)
First : 2sp/day * 135 * 7 = 189gp
Second : 4sp/day * 13 * 7 = 36.4gp
Third : 6sp/day * 7 * 7 = 29.4gp
Fourth : 8sp/day * 4 * 7 = 22.4gp
Fifth : 1gp/day * 2 * 7 = 14gp
Sixth : 12sp/day * 2 * 7 = 16.8gp
Wages total 308gp per week for the followers so they can live. And that assumes they are willing to work for 2/3rds what they could get normally just because you're so darn nifty. :) If they want full market wages, well, then that becomes 462gp per week for wages. I'd guess it'd be somewhere in between the two, so lets call it 385 (halfway between).
Now, you need a big place for all those people to be working. They can't work out in the fields all day. You're looking at 163 people working. Wow, that's huge, especially in a world where most buildings are made of wood and no higher than 4 stories. Let's say they are in two story buildings, each building with four rooms per floor. Each room can hold say 3 people working side by side. That means each building can hold 3 * 4 * 2 = 24 people. So you need 163/24 = 7 buildings to hold all your workers. We don't really have a price for renting 7 craft halls, but let's look at the renting rooms at an inn. An Inn is 5sp per night for common per day, 2 gp for ritzy. Let's use the 5sp per day rate. 24 * 5 * 30 (days) = 360gp per month. Divide that by four to get the weekly portion, 90gp per week. Now we need 7 buildings, so 630gp per week for housing.
So far we've got 630gp for rent, and 385gp for wages. That's 1015gp for expenses.
Now, let's talk taxes! let's be generous and say the country only takes 25% as taxes. I doubt they have really detailed tax codes. You pay 25% of what you sell for. So, 1740 * 0.25 = 435gp.
So, our weekly outpay is 1450gp.
1740 - 1450 = 290gp per week. Still not bad, but nothing to get worked up over.
Oh, and that doesn't think about things like theft and pilfering (we could probably take 10% off the top for theft/etc, and reduce it to 120gp per week profit). Or 10% off to pay the local theives guild as protection to avoid that, either way, it's lowering the bottom line.
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Ahh, but if you're trying to exploit the system then they don't need pay. They are members in your cult, whose sole purpose is to give you all their money in order to achieve immortality in the next life!
Give them their craft skills, and survival checks, and they're good to go.
Because, seriously, 163 gnome-only followers? Might as well lock yourself in with a kender.
Ahh, but if you're trying to exploit the system then they don't need pay. They are members in your cult, whose sole purpose is to give you all their money in order to achieve immortality in the next life!
Give them their craft skills, and survival checks, and they're good to go.
Because, seriously, 163 gnome-only followers? Might as well lock yourself in with a kender.
That's ok,
All those gnomes will last about one month before they all die of starvation due to not making any money to eat on.So, leadership score immediately takes a -163 due to killing your followers off. So you have a number of followers afterwards of... oh, 0. So you get a one time boost of 1400gp for the cost of a feat. Still not broken. ;)
Whoopiefrakkindo
I love this. My Kingmaker character is gonna start using this.
Thank you, Stringburka.
Greg
WhoopiefrakkindoI love this. My Kingmaker character is gonna start using this.
Thank you, Stringburka.
Greg
Yeah, there was a similar quote in a Shadowrun book way back when.
Whooptiefraggindoo (not to be confused with Whoopie Doo, who is the working girl Scooby Doo cousin).
WhoopiefrakkindoI love this. My Kingmaker character is gonna start using this.
Thank you, Stringburka.
Greg
Yeah, there was a similar quote in a Shadowrun book way back when.
Whooptiefraggindoo (not to be confused with Whoopie Doo, who is the working girl Scooby Doo cousin).
Maybe that is why it hit with me... I was a huge Shadowrun fan.
Oh, and even more off topic but the Whoopie Doo reference reminded me of High School Freshman English class and the definition of
1) the way in which words, phrases, and clauses are put together to form sentences.
2) what Madam Fifi pays the cops.
Greg
Hence the survival skill :p They can craft, and take 10 on survival checks to feed themselves.
Give them their craft skills, and survival checks, and they're good to go.
That's ok,
All those gnomes will last about one month before they all die of starvation due to not making any money to eat on.
So you're Santa?