I was having a discussion with my playgroup last night and we were discussing who was the party leader. Some people said that it should be the person with the highest charisma - ei the oracle because he had the highest charisma.
I was saying it was the ranger cause historically it is ussually the ranger who is the party leader ex. Aragorn and Drizzt who were both rangers. Ranger's versatility allows him to get in and out of situations and he can either be a ranged striker or two weapon fighter with light magic to augment himself and the party and he has the skills to back up his versatility.
I was having a discussion with my playgroup last night and we were discussing who was the party leader. Some people said that it should be the person with the highest charisma - ei the oracle because he had the highest charisma.
I was saying it was the ranger cause historically it is ussually the ranger who is the party leader ex. Aragorn and Drizzt who were both rangers. Ranger's versatility allows him to get in and out of situations and he can either be a ranged striker or two weapon fighter with light magic to augment himself and the party and he has the skills to back up his versatility.
The leader can be anyone who is willing and capable enough to do it. Also it has to be someone the group wants to follow, you are not a leader if no one is following you.
I think Paladins make the best leaders, but I am bias :)
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Rangers make decent leaders because, well... they know where they are going most of the time. They lead out of necessity as they know how to tail monsters, have the best sense of direction and whatnot.
A party leader can be pretty much anyone, I'd like to give a Barbarian leader a shot one time.
Bards work really well too.
the party leader is better chosen on the character and not the class. Aragorn was the leader because he was the future king of well, everything. He was a natural leader. If it had been a group of elves hanging out in mirkwood, chances are legolas would have been the leader. The leader doesnt need any specific skill set (though talking abilities is useful). He or she can delegate tasks to whoever does them best. The party leader just has to be ready and willing to make descisions and strategies/plans.
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I find that most party leaders are either an unspoken obvious understanding from the very beginning, based on RL skills, or they end up being whoever the party healer wants as leader. Of course, then there is always the exception, like my current group of 10 players who have no leader, and instead make decisions by committee.
the party leader is better chosen on the character and not the class. Aragorn was the leader because he was the future king of well, everything. He was a natural leader. If it had been a group of elves hanging out in mirkwood, chances are legolas would have been the leader. The leader doesnt need any specific skill set (though talking abilities is useful). He or she can delegate tasks to whoever does them best. The party leader just has to be ready and willing to make descisions and strategies/plans.
Aren't they both ranger's though :P
I agree the leader should be chosen based on character not class as there can be many different kinds of leaders!
the party leader is better chosen on the character and not the class. Aragorn was the leader because he was the future king of well, everything. He was a natural leader. If it had been a group of elves hanging out in mirkwood, chances are legolas would have been the leader. The leader doesnt need any specific skill set (though talking abilities is useful). He or she can delegate tasks to whoever does them best. The party leader just has to be ready and willing to make descisions and strategies/plans.Aren't they both ranger's though :P
I agree the leader should be chosen based on character not class as there can be many different kinds of leaders!
Hmmm, good question, normally i didnt think of legolas as a ranger, but as a bow focused fighter. He wasnt really a tracker, just an exceptional bowman with very keen senses. But anyway the same thing can be extended to gimle in a group of dwarves.
Well if he takes Hunter's Bond (companions) I think that could certainly lend credence to him being in a leadership type role.
If you mean that the leader is the person who says how the party gets from point A to point B in wilderness, then the ranger generally is THE man for that. If the leader is the person who sets the goal, then it really shuldn't depend on PC class.
The question isn't which class makes the best leader, the question is where do you want the party to go? Literally and metaphorically.
Besides, I really wouldn't say that Aragorn was the leader of the Brotherhood of the Ring. He just managed high visibility at the end.
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It's been decades before we had an official party leader in a sit-down game (although I could see an exception for Kingmaker, where someone is going to eventually be the king). Never really been any reason for that sort of thing. Everybody has a job to do, and nobody needs to be told when or where to use their class abilities by a member of some other class...
But given a choice, I'd foist the 'leader' role on the absolute last player who wants the responsibility. The people who froth for the chance to boss people around are generally the least fun to be bossed around by.
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I was having a discussion with my playgroup last night and we were discussing who was the party leader. Some people said that it should be the person with the highest charisma - ei the oracle because he had the highest charisma.
I was saying it was the ranger cause historically it is ussually the ranger who is the party leader ex. Aragorn and Drizzt who were both rangers. Ranger's versatility allows him to get in and out of situations and he can either be a ranged striker or two weapon fighter with light magic to augment himself and the party and he has the skills to back up his versatility.
What do you mean by leader?
In most play groups I've been in the group tends to pretty much fall into place. We discuss what our course of action is and follow it. Sometimes we need a party face for negotiations and that often varies based on the situation but mostly it's the guy with the highest charisma.
So what does your 'leader' do exactly?
I was having a discussion with my playgroup last night and we were discussing who was the party leader. Some people said that it should be the person with the highest charisma - ei the oracle because he had the highest charisma.
I was saying it was the ranger cause historically it is ussually the ranger who is the party leader ex. Aragorn and Drizzt who were both rangers. Ranger's versatility allows him to get in and out of situations and he can either be a ranged striker or two weapon fighter with light magic to augment himself and the party and he has the skills to back up his versatility.
Character class has nothing to do with being a good leader. Nothing. In these two book examples you gave above, the leader was a Ranger. Okay, maybe in those examples... although I think Aragorn probably deferred to Gandalf the Wizard every time he was available, and I don't remember Driz'zt ever giving Bruenor the dwarven Fighter any orders either. In the Cleric Quintet, Cadderly was most often group leader, a priest of Deneir, and in the Drow Elf series leadership was formally given to Triel, priestess of Lolth but hotly contested by Phaeraun the wizard. The Dragonlance Companions unanimously followed Tanis Half-Elven, a Fighter. There are probably a dozen or more other examples of various races and classes taking the lead. I honestly don't think that character class has anything to do with leadership.
It can be argued that Sorcerers, Oracles and Paladins would make good leaders because they have high Charisma scores. But in my own experience, I've seen a Warlock with a 20 charisma who was more of an A$$ than a leader, lecherous and extremely crude. And in another campaign, the player who ran the paladin was demanding, blunt, and dull-witted. Both players tried to run the party as leader claiming their high Charisma scores gave them the right to do so, but in actuality their abrasive personalities rubbed the other players the wrong way, so there was no way in the Seven Hells that any of the party would have allowed them to lead in any capacity greater than ordering drinks at the local tavern.
Leading the party has nothing to do with what's on your character sheet, regardless of Charisma scores and leadership feats, or the lack of same. It has everything to do with a player rising to the occasion, taking the lead, taking a stand, and making decisions ...and the rest of the players following him/her because they choose to do follow whatever inspiration he lends to the game.
The leader should be the smartest player at the table that everyone else is willing to follow.
ANY character and class combination can be a leader of an adventuring band.
I'd need to know more about the characters than just their class when deciding who is a suitable leader.
Ha, try getting that past most gaming groups. "I'm the leader because I'm the smartest guy here".
Good luck with that :D
I guess it is predicated with the group trusting each other and being relatively mature enough to think outside the 'me' factor.
Personally almost all the gaming groups I have been in over the last 30 years have not had any 'leadership' issues, exept at conventions. Then you don't really get to pick who your gaming with.
Although "cooperative teamwork" groups work just as well as team/leader groups if your players are all relatively smart and mature.
They usually defer to the person who can most easily find common ground with the majority of the party and can fairly weigh in everyone's capabilities in a given situation. Charisma and wit is part of that, personal connections, debts owed or a wide range of experience is another.
Good chance such a person is not there in many adventuring parties though, so often the one that leads is the one most suitable for the current situation, a bard or paladin might take the initiative in a political environment, in the wilderness it will likely be the ranger, in many cases the party will defer to the one that can scrounge up any knowledge at all which might be the wizard or bard when traveling through ruins of ancient civilizations or the planes.
I think I'm going to go with the Class & Stats don't really matter.
It is more what kind of characters are in the party.
There is a 2E campaign of infamy among my friends, where the Ranger in our group kept trying to be the leader. Here is a snippet.
The rest of the group consisted of a Psionic, Paladin, and a Wizard. The ranger kept messing up rolls and such so during the course of the game the group consider him rather incompetent. When the group would huddle for a plan, the Ranger would just go do what he thought was right without conferring.
Now I will give credit to the Player. He had envisioned Aragorn with the Ranger and the Ranger believed he should be the leader, but gameplay had been his enemy. He had fumbled in nearly every encounter tripping over his own feet or placing an arrow in an ally (yeah our DM was that cruel). During a Dungeon crawl the Ranger convinced us which way to go and led us into Ogre's lair. By this time The Wizard became so infuriated with the incompetence he picked up the Ranger (the wizard was buff STR 15 or 16) and threw the Ranger at the Ogres as cannon fodder. The noble Paladin didn't like this maneuver scolded the Wizard later, but it had protected the Wizard and Psionic from being surrounded.
They worst came when the goal was to sneak inside a enemy camp and if possible take out or capture the leader. The group huddled near the edge of a encampment surveying the area on how to best sneak in the well lit Leader's tent. The Ranger was just trying to prove himself by then, to show the party he was worthy and ran up to the leader's tent. The Party watched in horror as the Ranger stuck his head into the tent (The Player was not paying attention when the DM said the tent was well lit, and thought he was being sneaking looking around with infravision, alas no take backs) What the Ranger saw was a small group of the biggest baddest mofos in the Army look at him and say "Intruder!"
The party rushed to save him again. Almost a TPK, but my Wizard didn't make it.
Most recently I played an aloof, narcissistic swashbuckler. He was the type of person that if asked a question he didn't really know the answer to he would just make something up and he believed what he made up, major Delusions of Grandeur. Now I didn't expect this character to become a leader, but the party ended up with two not so bright barbarians and cleric who kept running from danger. The barbarians were more inclined to listen to the idiot swashbuckler than the intelligent coward healer.