spazztick |
So, I was playing around with the thought of Awakening my animal companion in my current game right now, reading up on it and things of that sort. So it seems once that happens, you should be able to go all leadership/cohort status with your ex-animal companion... then it can start gaining character levels.... now...
What if that now intelligent animal, lets say an for the sake of it an Ape, it then takes druid as class levels, and gets it's own animal companion. ( You go get yourself another animal companion too! Hell you can make it a group effort. Being friends and all that.)
Then you take him with to kill a handful of trolls, he gets a couple levels, and then it takes the leadership feat itself.
Then! You cast awaken on it's animal companion(Let's just assume you had enough time to really-befriend these companions, and there's no maltreatment.) Then Your Cohort, has a Cohort... and everybody has animal companions.
Rinse Repeat Rinse Repeat. You've recreated Planet of the Apes.
(I'm sure there's a rule somewhere that cohorts can't have cohorts, but it was fun to imagine.)
lemeres |
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The limit here is based upon the fact that cohorts cannot be a higher level than you. It always has to at least be 2 levels lower.
Thus, even if the cohorts have cohorts, this is not an infinite chain, but a set of those Russian Matryoshka dolls that stack inside of each other. So You have you, a max level 20 druid, then your level 18 former AC, then his level 16 former AC.....etc, etc. down to the level 8 former AC and his level 6 cohort who is stuck just one level short of getting leadership.
Admittedly, you could make this more of a branching limb thing by having each take on multiple former AC cohorts....but there is still a finite limit (that I am not doing the math for)
spazztick |
So let's see.. my character is 13th level.
(Me. 13th (1)) - (Animal Comanion (2))
(Cohort:11th (3)) - (Animal Companion (4))
(Cohort of Cohort: 9th (5)) - (Animal Companion (6))
(Cohort of Cohort of Cohort: 7th (7) - (Animal Companion*(8))
(Cohort of Cohort of Cohort of Cohort: 5h (9) - (Animal Companion* (9))
Okay so that's not that crazy, though that's not counting "followers", The stupid crazy amount of stuff the druids could summon.\
I don't know, how could you make it more ridiculous?
Let's make the 7th and 5th level Cohorts Eagles, and be Bards instead. One the Magician Subtype, the other a regular Bard.
(Inspire Courage +2, and Dweomercraft +2.)
boring7 |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ah, Interesting... so you could have cohorts, with cohorts with animal companions. God can you imagine maintaining all that paper work... a quick way to be the most hated person at the table. :D
And I see you already pointed out why it doesn't come up very often.
You can also do this with regular cohorts, or if you're evil you can just do it with lots of undead (really the best option, so many tricks for a lord of death). Indeed, if it's an undead type that spawns "childers" you can have your (let's say Vampire) be the same or even higher level than you, and with a carefully-worded recursive call in your orders all its spawn, completely obedient to it, will be obedient to you as well.
You rapidly have a gigantic army of undead horrors serving you, and filling up the map with game-breaking numbers of minion critters and slowing every combat to a crawl. At which point your gaming group will assassinate you, and the GM will be forced to retire your character because the player is dead.
You are reincarnated as a dire badger, and life is good.
Would you like to play again? y/n
spazztick |
Oh man undead hordes, no wonder every bad guy in history seems to have an endless one.
"You are reincarnated as a dire badger, and life is good."
Would you like to play again?
-YES! :D
So on a more practical level, turning awakening the animal companion (ape) into a cohort, then getting a regular animal companion that flies to replace him, is about as far as I'd ever let this go. (Ape's totally going to take levels of fighter, he's already got custom made armor and has had a lot of work fumbling around with weapon this entire campaign.)
That is unless the DM will house rule allowing the animal to be awakened and stay an animal companion. (probably just take out the class level aspect.)
Artemis Moonstar |
...
So THAT'S how Razmir did it! Sneaky bastard!
I'm so going to do this next campaign. Get a cohort, have them get a cohort, and so on, until I have enough minions with followers to basically hack the map to pieces and start my own kingdom.
Take THAT kingdom building rules!
Also.. Dot... Because this thread is win.
boring7 |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
New game:
You are a dire badger. You wish to devote less time to destroying dire bee hives and terrifying bears so that you can play role-playing games. Unfortunately the BURNING RED RAGE of your species that mirrors the hatred of all things found in the average Mud Crab makes this very difficult.
Do you
A: try and make docile but durable friends
B: become a DM, where your rage can be channeled into TPKs
C: visit a doctor and get a prescription for medication
/I have no idea what I'm doing.
Corvino |
I think there's a problem with your cohort taking Leadership, really. They're a follower, and dedicated to you. It seems unlikely that they'd be able to attract a cohort and bunch of followers themself given that they're a companion/lackey.
You already get a bunch of low level "followers" with the Leadership feat who are pretty suited to staffing your clergy/thieves guild/city watch etc. Let's say at level 15 you have "Great Renown", are known as "Fair and Generous", have a base of operations and a charisma modifier of +2. With a total leadership score of 22 you'll have a Cohort of level 13, a level 6 follower to run the day-to-day organisation, and a few of level 2-through-5 followers to manage the dozens of level 1s.
There's a reason that many GMs ban Leadership, and I can see only a tiny minority allowing Leadership on a cohort.
Ravingdork |
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Better to use the Downtime rules for running a business/organization if you ask me.
Much less investment.
David knott 242 |
The main problem with the whole Leader/Cohort hierarchy scheme is that you quickly get to a point where they are of too low a level to be useful in combat. It is very much like the issue that you face with the basic Leadership feat -- generally, you take the cohort with you on adventures, but you leave the followers at home. The cohort of a cohort is getting very close to follower level power.
lemeres |
Oh, and I remember that there is a different, but vaguely similar gimmick that you can do without leadership (if you twist the rules like a pretzel): The animal ally feat.
Basically, this lets you invest some feats in order to get a ranger style animal companion. The thing is, however, that AC's with enough intelligence (int 3 from putting the ability score adjustment there) can take 'any feats they are physically capable of'. Ergo, someone could make a (very poor) argument that an animal companion could take the animal ally feat, and thus get their own animal companion.
I am sure you get where this is going: wash, rinse, repeat until the lowest chain is too low level to continue this farce.
LazarX |
Ah, Interesting... so you could have cohorts, with cohorts with animal companions. God can you imagine maintaining all that paper work... a quick way to be the most hated person at the table. :D
Just remember that it's the DM's job to keep in mind that cohorts do have minds and lives of their own. At some point the chain of command is going to break down.
David knott 242 |
If I were DMing somebody who wanted to pull this trick, I would ensure that they couldn't get infinite followers (in other words, their followers/cohorts/whatever must be lower level than them) and that only the top tier individuals could adventure with them. Then the organization they founded would become part of my campaign setting.
Dave Justus |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This seems like a recipe for disaster. I have a cohort named Anna, she is devoted to me, but she herself has a cohort named Bob. Bob is devoted to Anna but he doesn't give a damn about me.
Now, maybe Bob is a pretty good person and is ok with the person he has given his life to being completely focused on someone else, but maybe he isn't....
spazztick |
Oh man, my DM would so turn them against me in a heart beat. BUT..
I could see him allowing one Cohort Druid, with his own Animal Companion.
Kind of like a trainee of sorts, but that's only because the game we're playing is getting all frickin' faction oriented.
If I were DMing somebody who wanted to pull this trick, I would ensure that they couldn't get infinite followers (in other words, their followers/cohorts/whatever must be lower level than them) and that only the top tier individuals could adventure with them. Then the organization they founded would become part of my campaign setting.
Somebody already stated that was how it is, basically your cohort can not level up to past 2 levels below you. (So if you're 13th, you can get a 11th level cohort at best.)
I just want to turn my animal companion into an awakened state, and still have him follow me. ^^ (Then I get another companion, which I will not awaken.) But doesn't it make sense to teach your ex-animal companion, to be a druid.. because you're a druid. I mean I guess he'll be smart enough to do whatever he wants... /shrug, who plays the animal companion gone awaken status... the GM/DM?
Tels |
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As always, people forget the worst offender of nearly every 'broken' game mechanic is always the Summoner.
See, the Summoner has Leadership... and his Eidolon has Leadership.
So that's two Cohorts at 2 levels lower than the Summoner does. So now, but the Summoner and the Eidolon have, you guessed it, Summoner cohorts. Those two cohorts, both have Leadership and their Eidolons also have Leadership...
BUT!!! Why stop there? They also take Animal Ally and now all of the Summoner/Eidolons also have animal companions... who took Leadership.
F%!* this game, I quit.
Steve, you a$%~#!%, you always ruin everything!
Aw, come on guys, I was just funning around... guys?
The Poshment |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Question though.
Person A has a cohort (b) and that cohort is completely loyal.
Chort B has a cohort (C) who is loyal to Cohort B
But that doesn't mean Cohort C is loyal to person A. Correct?
The reason why I ask is this has come up in our gaming group a few times when a player wants to crew/gang/pose/or mob of completly loyal goons. I am of the opinion that other than the orginal cohort, the rest are free for the DM to go all Game of Thrones and have them plot the death of the player.
Corvino |
Question though.
Person A has a cohort (b) and that cohort is completely loyal.
Chort B has a cohort (C) who is loyal to Cohort B
But that doesn't mean Cohort C is loyal to person A. Correct?The reason why I ask is this has come up in our gaming group a few times when a player wants to crew/gang/pose/or mob of completly loyal goons. I am of the opinion that other than the orginal cohort, the rest are free for the DM to go all Game of Thrones and have them plot the death of the player.
Haha, that sounds all kinds of fun. One example I could think of of a companion character having a sidekick is from Skyrim. One recruitable NPC (Mjoll the Lioness) has a friend who rescued her once and tends to hang around her. People seem to hate him with a jealous passion, it's odd.
I can definitely see the cohort of a cohort being loyal to them, not to the PC. If the PC keeps giving their boss the short end of the stick then they could indeed get a bit conspiratorial, even jealous or possessive.
Proley |
If Anna is the hero, and has Bob as a cohort, and Bob has Charlie as a Cohort, Charlie is not loyal to Anna.
BUT, if Charlie is loyal to Bob, and Bob likes Anna, and has in fact sworn to protect/serve Anna, wouldn't Charlie acting against Anna put Charlie in direct opposition to Bob? Even if Bob didn't swear protection to Anna, I would find it hard to consider Charlie loyal to Bob if Bob likes Anna (presumably why he's sticking around), but Charlie tried to kill Anna anyway.
Would you trust an employee if they killed your boss so you could get a promotion.
Lets use another example. Anna and Bob are married, Charlize likes Bob. Charlize is absolutely loyal and in love with Bob, so she kills Anna so she can have Bob to herself. When this plays out, Bob doesn't look at Charlize and think "Gee, she's so loyal and devoted to me", he thinks "My god, that psychopath murdered my wife!" at which point I think the leader/cohort relationship falls apart.
So just because C is not loyal to A, there appears to be some requirement that C can't make it their life mission to ruin A, as it would run contrary to allegiance to B.
Dave Justus |
So just because C is not loyal to A, there appears to be some requirement that C can't make it their life mission to ruin A, as it would run contrary to allegiance to B.
I don't see any requirement. There are many many real world examples of person C taking out person A because person C loves person B and person B loves person A instead. Obviously that usually doesn't end up to person C's advantage, but it happens often enough anyway.
Beyond that, we don't have to be talking about murdering person A for person C to be a problem. There are any number of actions they could take to try and reduce the influence A had over B that are far subtler than that, and mostly being things A wouldn't like. Even the mere annoyance of C frequently trying to convince B not to do things A wanted could be significant.
Obviously it would depend on the alignment of personality of the individuals in question. Good and/or lawful people, who most likely have good/lawful followers have an advantage here. The main thing though is that cohorts are individuals with their own agency, not mental slaves of a PC with leadership, and adding on more layers of cohorts increases the difficulty of the original PC getting them act as desired.
Corvino |
This is why the Leadership feat gives you a bunch of low-level followers in addition to your Cohort. They're the ones you get to run errand or staff your organisation because they're loyal to you. As soon as you get a few steps removed you're looking at more tenuous alliances.
As a reasonable example of conflicting relationships:
Person A has a Cohort, B. B also has a Cohort, C.
Person A takes B adventuring and puts them regularly in harm's way. Person C is devoted to B and doesn't want to see them hurt. C asks B to stop going adventuring, directly opposing A's wishes. It's not Backstab O'Clock yet, but it's a good simple example of the conflicts possible.
boring7 |
If Anna is the hero, and has Bob as a cohort, and Bob has Charlie as a Cohort, Charlie is not loyal to Anna.
BUT, if Charlie is loyal to Bob, and Bob likes Anna, and has in fact sworn to protect/serve Anna, wouldn't Charlie acting against Anna put Charlie in direct opposition to Bob? Even if Bob didn't swear protection to Anna, I would find it hard to consider Charlie loyal to Bob if Bob likes Anna (presumably why he's sticking around), but Charlie tried to kill Anna anyway.
Would you trust an employee if they killed your boss so you could get a promotion.
Lets use another example. Anna and Bob are married, Charlize likes Bob. Charlize is absolutely loyal and in love with Bob, so she kills Anna so she can have Bob to herself. When this plays out, Bob doesn't look at Charlize and think "Gee, she's so loyal and devoted to me", he thinks "My god, that psychopath murdered my wife!" at which point I think the leader/cohort relationship falls apart.
So just because C is not loyal to A, there appears to be some requirement that C can't make it their life mission to ruin A, as it would run contrary to allegiance to B.
Ah, Yandere Trope, how we love thee.
spazztick |
Quick fix for any disloyal cohorts of cohorts. "Excuse me sir fellow spell caster in the party, I've got some useful heals and an entire army to back me, would you like a little extra benefits? How about a dedicated healer to follow you around for a bit, at my 'request' of course. All it will cost you is a single spell or two, every two weeks."
--(Dominate Person.) Bwahaha.
Pretty soon the entire campaign will go from progression, to in-house turmoil, leading to the antagonist of the story, to now be an ex-cohort.
CraziFuzzy |
I see no problem with a leadership tree, that is basically how every organization on earth has always existed. It doesn't mean the CEO is there on the assembly line floor helping put stuff together though. In the context of pathfinder's leadership system, it is best to have the underlings with other responsibilities altogether. Combining this leadership tree with downtime, and kingdom building is the most realistic use of your leadership capabilities.
The downtime system has rules in place to use cohort's as managers (still have to be paid, but their loyalty is unquestioning), and followers as a sort of self-renewing labor and influence capital, and even be directly inducted into your organization, where they are more loyal, fighting business attrition, giving your enterprise more stability and more productivity, all, ultimately, as a result of your skilled leadership.
In Kingdom Building rules, cohorts and followers can fill in vacant Kingdom Leadership roles.
Wheldrake |
I seem to recall that the leadership feat is explicitly subject to DM approval. As DM, I would rule that since your cohort is subservient to you, he would not be eligible to also be a leader having his own cohort.
But, if your DM thinks it's a cute idea, why not fly with it? It would make the game unmanageable, with so many action-using bodies on the players' side vying for attention, and even a few rounds of combat would take hours to resolve. Assuming unlimited gaming hours available, why not, but in the real world I can't see this chain leading to a fun gaming experience.
Usual Suspect |
I seem to recall that the leadership feat is explicitly subject to DM approval. As DM, I would rule that since your cohort is subservient to you, he would not be eligible to also be a leader having his own cohort.
But, if your DM thinks it's a cute idea, why not fly with it? It would make the game unmanageable, with so many action-using bodies on the players' side vying for attention, and even a few rounds of combat would take hours to resolve. Assuming unlimited gaming hours available, why not, but in the real world I can't see this chain leading to a fun gaming experience.
I can't see this chain of leadership leading to anything other than Chain Lightning bait for the DM. A couple good area effect spells cleans out the chain of command pretty quickly leaving the PC in question with a lot of angry followers. The problem is that they are followers of now dead cohorts that are pointing the finger at the PC for getting the leader they liked killed on some pointless adventure.
Sometimes it is good to be the King. Sometimes it just sucks thought.