There once was a player. Said player's character took Leadership and gained lots of followers. The character also purchased a sailing vessel and went on many adventures, attempting to sail to the end of the earth.
However, this character cared little for the followers under his charge. They sailed, fought, and died by his command. After a time, the ship ran low on provisions, and disease broke out onboard. The character had to make some tough decisions that did not sit well with his follower crew.
He continued to push them despite their woes and, becoming desperate men wishing to go back to their families, the crew finally mutinied against their master.
Player: What do you mean they mutinied? They're my followers! I spent a feat to get them. They do whatever I tell them to do! You can't turn them against me anymore than you can turn Spell Focus against Jerry's wizard!
Game Master: They are NPCs pushed to the breaking point. They will act as NPCs in their situation are expected to act.
Player: But they are utterly loyal to me!
Game Master: They sailed to the end of the world with you, did they not?
Player: But I spent character resources on them!
Game Master: A fighter spends character resources in the form of feats and gold on his magical sword, and yet it can still be stolen or sundered, making his feats and other resources meaningless for a time. Like the fighter, you too can expect a reasonable replacement in time. Might I also recommend, you treat your future followers with a little more care?
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Has the GM overstepped? Or is the player expecting too much from his followers? Discuss.
If the followers were at home, running a business or staffing a castle but basically staying out of the way, I'd say that they GM was being a jerk to have them mutiny. Since the followers were actively used and actively abused, I think the GM is being perfectly reasonable.
I'm particularly happy that the GM said, "Like the fighter, you too can expect a reasonable replacement in time." The player did spend a feat, and can't buy the feat again, so I would either allow the character to attract a new set of followers given time (and possibly something to improve his reputation) or allow the player to replace leadership with a different feat.
Wow - what can I say other than . . . .wow!
Your player sounds like a 12 year old. There is no such thing as 'utterly loyal' - especially when you treat someone as less than they're worth. Loyalty is earned and kept through respect for how you treat said person.
You were right and in my opinion went beyond where most followers would have walked away.
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The DM was a lot nicer to the player. Then me if i was runing the game the first time somthing hapend -1 leadership score, and keap droping it untill you ahave a lower leadership then you have crew. Then they preform a Coup de Grace why you sleept. Pleas make a Fort save the DC is 30. O you faild your charter died.
People for get Leadership hase fail safes built in to the feet.
Cruelty –2, Failure –1, Caused the death of a cohort –2 Cumulative per cohort killed., Moves around a lot –1, and Caused the death of other followers –1 Cumulative.
Lets look at the post
Cruelty Yes -2
Moves around a lot -1
Caused the death of other followers -1(counting this only hapend one time.)
Total -4 to your leadership score
Lets say you hade a good leadership score to start out 20
(1st)50 (2nd)5 (3rd)3 (4th)2
That means it droped to a 16
(1st)25 (2nd)2 (3rd)1
You just lost over half of your followers. The other half where the first ones to die. The other half left due to your mistreat ment of them.
Never said I was the GM. ;)
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Character should count himself lucky the followers didn't eat him.
GM is in the right in the situation illustrated, IMO. We run Leadership as gaining the loyalty of people, NPCs that are not mindless drones with no individual wants or needs. If the character that took Leadership cannot maintain their loyalty, he probably shouldn't have been taking the feat to begin with.
As said upthread, if it had been a group of followers watching a fort that all bailed because the GM decided to have disaster strike and kill a number of them, then it would be crossing the line. Followers reacting that way to abuse by the PC is perfectly reasonable. And sane.
Character should count himself lucky the followers didn't eat him.
GM is in the right in the situation illustrated, IMO. We run Leadership as gaining the loyalty of people, NPCs that are not mindless drones with no individual wants or needs. If the character that took Leadership cannot maintain their loyalty, he probably shouldn't have been taking the feat to begin with.
+1, generally.
Leadership to me means that you have gathered people that agree with your stated principles (alignment) and that are willing to work for your cause, looking up to you.
If the player was already openly evil before, the people he'd gotten to join would be evil as well and let's face it, while evil doesn't mean psychopathic, evil people generally aren't as willing to sacrifice their own lives, and would mutiny because of that.
If he was good or neutral before and got regular people to join, and then treated them this badly, he would drop to evil in no time (yes, stuff like this would cause me to slap the EVIL-hammer on the character unless there were some SEVERE mitigating circumstances (forced to do this to save the world etc)).
I think calagnars way of doing it is the best way. However, due to the drop in alignment, he'd take an additional -1 for having other alignment than his cohort. Which would mean at Leadership 15 he'd have a mutiny on his hand where 23 people where loyal and 28 mutinied - where the mutineers are also higher average level. And if the PC had a good cohort, he would also join the mutiny.
So yeah, I think it's even supported by RAW, not just common sense.
What´s all that mutiny talk? Let them eat cake!
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I agree with the DM in this situation.
I ran a game a few years back wtih a player playing a Psion who took the Leadership feat and wound up having a couple hundred followers (high level start to the game). I had them start out in a town where he was one of the town's 'spiritual' leaders, so those were his 'congregation'. Town was attacked, all his followers except his cohort were killed. Over the course of the game, he gained the rest of them back doing various things. It was pretty fun, actually, lol.
There once was a player. Said player's character took Leadership and gained lots of followers. The character also purchased a sailing vessel and went on many adventures, attempting to sail to the end of the earth.
However, this character cared little for the followers under his charge. They sailed, fought, and died by his command. After a time, the ship ran low on provisions, and disease broke out onboard. The character had to make some tough decisions that did not sit well with his follower crew.
He continued to push them despite their woes and, becoming desperate men wishing to go back to their families, the crew finally mutinied against their master.
Player: What do you mean they mutinied? They're my followers! I spent a feat to get them. They do whatever I tell them to do! You can't turn them against me anymore than you can turn Spell Focus against Jerry's wizard!
Game Master: They are NPCs pushed to the breaking point. They will act as NPCs in their situation are expected to act.
Player: But they are utterly loyal to me!
Game Master: They sailed to the end of the world with you, did they not?
Player: But I spent character resources on them!
Game Master: A fighter spends character resources in the form of feats and gold on his magical sword, and yet it can still be stolen or sundered, making his feats and other resources meaningless for a time. Like the fighter, you too can expect a reasonable replacement in time. Might I also recommend, you treat your future followers with a little more care?
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Has the GM overstepped? Or is the player expecting too much from his followers? Discuss.
Why does this sound so familiar? Oh right.. Movie of the Week...
;)The GM was in the right in this instance.
So, here's the other story. Man founds a cult, after a while things start to not work out so he tells his followers to kill themselves, and if their friends and families have second thoughts, kill them first. And they DO! Happened in Jones Town most famiously, but happens a lot in real life.
Also, same thing with sane people:
Secret service are trained specifically to literally step in front of a bullet to save the president. Japanese in WWII routeinly killed themselves to attack the allies out of loyalty and duty to their emperor. Their military tradition has ritual suicide for even failing their lords. And military history is filled with cases where soldiers did NOT mutiny despite situations as bad as this or worse, out of duty and loyalty.
If the leadership feat isn't supposed to describe THOSE kinds of followers, then what does?
So, here's the other story. Man founds a cult, after a while things start to not work out so he tells his followers to kill themselves, and if their friends and families have second thoughts, kill them first. And they DO! Happened in Jones Town most famiously, but happens a lot in real life.
Also, same thing with sane people:
Secret service are trained specifically to literally step in front of a bullet to save the president. Japanese in WWII routeinly killed themselves to attack the allies out of loyalty and duty to their emperor. Their military tradition has ritual suicide for even failing their lords. And military history is filled with cases where soldiers did NOT mutiny despite situations as bad as this or worse, out of duty and loyalty.
If the leadership feat isn't supposed to describe THOSE kinds of followers, then what does?
And just as many (dedicated not loyal) followers ran from old jimmy boy when he started down the path of madness...
The cohort (loyal) would be your body guard type.The Zero fighters (the only ones to preform the Kamakazi ritual) were from the noble classes (think of them as a type of core class.)
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So, here's the other story. Man founds a cult, after a while things start to not work out so he tells his followers to kill themselves, and if their friends and families have second thoughts, kill them first. And they DO! Happened in Jones Town most famiously, but happens a lot in real life.
Also, same thing with sane people:
Secret service are trained specifically to literally step in front of a bullet to save the president. Japanese in WWII routeinly killed themselves to attack the allies out of loyalty and duty to their emperor. Their military tradition has ritual suicide for even failing their lords. And military history is filled with cases where soldiers did NOT mutiny despite situations as bad as this or worse, out of duty and loyalty.
If the leadership feat isn't supposed to describe THOSE kinds of followers, then what does?
You are talking about .00001% of people. Not the avrage person. And they are trained solders and body guards.
Lets not for get the best saying about thes type of people.Let the other !%!# die for his country. Live for yours.
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Moses lead the Israelites through the desert for 40 years.
Despite freeing them from slavery, parting the red sea, and sorting of manna from heaven there was much disobedience, grumbling and worshipping of golden cows. They were so rebellious Jehovah threatened to wipe them off the face of the earth.
So, utterly loyalty can and will be tested in times of stress. Sounds like your guy put his followers under a mountain of it.
You are talking about .00001% of people. Not the avrage person. And they are trained solders and body guards.
Lets not for get the best saying about thes type of people.
Let the other !%!# die for his country. Live for yours.
Actually, most people are prone to obey authority figures. The atrocities of the twentieth century were not committed by a fringe minority, but by normal people given orders.
In addition, it is generally a bad idea to bandy about statistics that are spurious or fit your common sense. The one thing common to common sense is how spectacularly wrong it usually is.
Authority:
Milgram experiment
The banality of evil
The Stanford prison experiment
Statistics and common sense:
Cognitive biases
Fundamental attribution error.
There are seldom any properties of the human being that occur in as small a sample as one in ten million (your .00001%). For example, we think of sociopaths as rare. They are. Antisocial personality disorder in the general population is about 3% in males and 1% in females.
One in ten thousand of us are autistic savants. That is .01% of us.
Moses lead the Israelites through the desert for 40 years.
Despite freeing them from slavery, parting the red sea, and sorting of manna from heaven there was much disobedience, grumbling and worshipping of golden cows. They were so rebellious Jehovah threatened to wipe them off the face of the earth.So, utterly loyalty can and will be tested in times of stress. Sounds like your guy put his followers under a mountain of it.
Fictitious characters don't count.
Of course they do. We're telling stories here, so surely a story told by the three major monothetic religions is a great reference point.
Fictitious characters don't count.
You are right. Thank you. Of course it is.
Game Master: They are NPCs pushed to the breaking point. They will act as NPCs in their situation are expected to act.
Player: But they are utterly loyal to me!
The player needs to read the Leadership again. -2 to his Leadership score per follower who died because of his actions. So if his Leadership score was a 10, that would be -12 to his score (if his cohort died too). The more followers he has, the worse this becomes. If his score was a 14 and only half his followers died, then he would be at -16 which puts his new score at -2. That isn't taking into account the Failure (-1), Aloofness (-1) and Cruelty (-2) which could put him at -6.
Game Master: A fighter spends character resources in the form of feats and gold on his magical sword, and yet it can still be stolen or sundered, making his feats and other resources meaningless for a time. Like the fighter, you too can expect a reasonable replacement in time. Might I also recommend, you treat your future followers with a little more care?
Best response ever. I don't think it could have been explained any better than this.
Has the GM overstepped? Or is the player expecting too much from his followers? Discuss.
The GM did this perfectly. The player needs to read the feat and understand that it actually takes some work on his part.
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Lets explan how it works in combat. You tell me to do somthing that needs done. It gets done. You tell me to do somthing that needs done. Then you tell me how you want it done, and its probly going to get me killed if I do it. Your going to end up with 5.56 rounds in you, and no one knows where they came from. Becous they where thinking the same thing I was when it hapend. I want to live!!!!
There is a reason they put officers in with enlisted men to train. It's so the officer understand what he can expect out of the enlisted men. Geting them kill for no reason is not one of them.
Why do enlisted men carry rifles, and officer pistols?
Rifles have a greater range.
A realy good example is vetanam. There was a high rate of frendly fire.
The leadership feat has rules for being a giant a-hole built in. The hypothetical player in the OP really does deserve a total full scale mutiny and to have their character suffer the effects of a detonating helm of brilliance...however...they would only be technically responsible within the limits of the feat.
Let's pretend the leader is resonably high level at 16th. They have devoted a starting charisma score of 18 with level advancements and magic into having a charisma of 24. They have a stronghold and some special power.
Leadership Score = 16+7+2+1 = 26
They then march and sail around the globe treating their new army like crap, driving them to their deaths, skipping pay checks and eating the last of the lucky charms. They have caused the deaths of 26 followers and two cohorts.
Their new leadership score would be modified by traveling, being cruel, getting two cohorts killed by acting like a total d----e bag, and driving followers to their deaths.
Leadership Score = 26-2-4-1-1=18
You can see quite a swing in the overall numbers commanded by the jerk-off player. Since they are NPC's and within the GM's umbrella. He could have the whole group sticking it out to get paid or for the hope that things will get better. Then when it finally becomes evident that the player really is just going to treat them like slaves the ones that have already dropped off the leadership chart (including the cohort by the way) can decide to throw down without being mind-controled or player-tantrumed back into service.
The end result could be as peaceful as having the followers wander away or they could mutiny. In either case you will still have loyalists that can help the character being mutinied upon, but it is gonna get ugly.
as far as the "wa resources wa" argument goes. If a fighter buys a sword and soaks it in salt water every night and bashes the edge upon every rock in the forest he doesn't get to complain when it finally breaks during a fight with trolls.
RavingDork IS the player... he's also the GM. And as usual this exchange took place nowhere but inside his head. Because he claims he's expanding the rules discussion by tossing out examples like this which are pushed to the extreme borders of nonsense.Wow - what can I say other than . . . .wow!
Your player sounds like a 12 year old. There is no such thing as 'utterly loyal' - especially when you treat someone as less than they're worth. Loyalty is earned and kept through respect for how you treat said person.
You were right and in my opinion went beyond where most followers would have walked away.
If I was "expanding the rules discussion" I would have started the thread in the Rules forum.
It wouldn't be wrong if he was being honest about it. He presents his questions as if they were actual events when they're not. It's the dishonesty that rubs me raw.Hey, cut him some slack. We all get bored on here. Some of us post in off topic threads about gnome vs halfling strippers, and some of us pose interesting, if asanine, rules questions. Ravingdork loves rules questions. I love midget porn threads. In either case, is it so wrong?
Edit: On topic, though, yeah, that's how I would rule it.
Agreed. Personally prefer to leave Leadership at the 'Cohort' Level and instead gives the PC with the feat an inherent +2 (and then +4 at 10 skill-points/ransk) Bonus to two of the following Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate or Sense Motive. Also requires the player to have done something truly heroic (or villainous) and to have displayed the qualities of a leader suitable to their alignment.
Would definitely go with the GM/DM on this situation. People might be willing to stomach hardship for a while, but by the terms of RD's Rules Question, the Followers didn't know they would be sailing on endlessly. Even the most hardened sailors went to port now and then, and a Ship's Captain/Master who didn't take steps to ensure the safety, comfort and loyalty of his crew could at best be reduced to the humiliation of having to hire a new crew when his old deserts him at port, or be tied to a cannonball and be flung overboard when enough of the Sailors go "OI!"
The player needs to read the Leadership again. -2 to his Leadership score per follower who died because of his actions.....
That's the right idea, but check it again....again. It's -2 if he gets a rep for cualty for both cohorts and followers -1 for moving around a lot, but then it splits out to different additional mods for either. For cohorts it's -2 cumulative for each prior cohort killed. For Followers its -1 for causing the death of followers, not cumulative. Calagnar has this pretty much right.
Depending on what the starting effective level is, SOME followers would desert, but if your effective level is high enough, SOME followers would remain loyal no matter what
-- those are the die hard loyalists. They're the guys that stuck with Hitler in the bunker, the guys that will drink the cool aid, the guys that will fall on their swords on command, the guys that got into the dingy with Capt Bly when the rest of the crew took the Bounty.
-- They're also the ones that stuck with Columbus when everyone got panicked they'd never find land.
In short - the rule replicates loyalty just fine.
In this situation if the math came out the character lost all his followers, then the DM would have done right. But if the DM blew off the rules on the fly just because he doesn't believe people are ever that loyal, he's wrong, and the palyer's right, both by the rules, and by story, and by real life. AND he especially did a big disservice to the story since having a mutiny where some remain loyal while others disert and others may try to mutiny is much more interesting and makes a better story of adventure, than just dicking over a player by taking away his feat and making it turn on him.
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That is, assuming he waited all those (theoretical) sessions of abuse before saying anything. If the DM allows the Leadership Feat he's gotta do a little extra work to manage it. The FIRST (theoretical) time the PC began to "abuse" his Leadership Feat the DM should have addressed it. He can do it either by having the NPCs (which are run by the theoretical DM) complaign and ask to be let out of their contract -- (whereupon the PC could've hired new Followers, likely of a different Alignment -- LE maybe) -- and/or by speaking with the (theoretical) Player out of game about the potential problems of playing like a childish, petulant little dick, AKA, a computer gamer who treats everything like a computer avatar.
I think, as with most conflicts, the answer is something in the middle between DM's at fault and PC's at fault.
What Asphesteros and Bob_Loblaw have mentioned is what I was trying to get at in my post a little further up. Having an all or nothing handling with leadership shows weakness with both the player and GM. There is a streak in any person that sits in the GM chair to not only referee the game, but to "punish" players who they feel are deserving of it. Using any rule to punish bad player behavior can feel good, but it's the wrong choice.
In the hypothetical situation I mentioned up above you'd have a player who lost leadership control (but perhaps not situational control if they were all on a boat) over a stagering number of NPC's just using the Leadership feat as written. They went from commanding a loyal force of 164 to 41 (potentially lead by a p.o.'ed cohort).
I have to agree with Asphesteros that a mutiny between loyalists and the fed up NPC's would be more entertaining way to rule the affair. It could go a number of ways depending on how the PC roleplayed the situation. However, that would be as a direct result of the player's in-game handling of their character's actions and less about any out-of-game righteousness.
Now if the player threw a fit about losing any of his minions that becomes more of an out of game issue between the GM and player that can be cleared up by simply reading the Leadership feat rules and debating what is and isn't "cruel" behavoir, etc. This still doesn't really justify taking all the followers away.
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This is why even a caring dictator rules with an iron fist.
Oderint dum metuant..
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Personally, I'd have used the cohort as a puppet and led the mutiny against him/her/misc when things got messy.
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OT: The DM has given the player a challenge that they, the player, helped instigate. If the player can't shake a fist they shouldn't be taking Leadership. The fun part of the Leadership Feat is that it involves people. People, not robots*. That's beauty of the feat - and the key to it's 'balance' within a campaign.
Or not.
*
...Undead *ROBOT* followers! :D
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Note: The above is conjecture.