Raging Swan Press
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I've never liked Leadership. I think it is too restrictive, but then I always enjoyed the good old days of 1st edition henchmen where anyone could have henchmen it was just that the number you could have depended on your Charsma.
While having lots of henchmen obviously powers up the party, a good GMshould be able tonstill provide challenges for the group!
It is not about being a good or bad GM. There are many ways to use leadership to cause issues. Sometimes the issue can just be a spotlight thing and/or they can cause the GM who is short on prep time to run out of time, just due to that one player. The issues vary from group to group. I just allow the one cohort to keep things simple. I did allow the followers at one point, but I had a lot more free time back then.
I'd rename it to "companion" or "cohort" and thus use it only to determine the abilities of very close followers like a special animal for those who want one but don't get one by class or an armsbearer or a powerful undead or golem you summoned permanently...
Other followers should be determined by role playing, I'd allow really large amounts of them if it's apropriate like the crew of a ship or the employees of a merchant or guards of a castle without a need of a feat or something like that which lowers other abilites of the char, as long as the char don't get weird ideas like leading his low level castle guards into a dangerous dungeon (on the other hand, maybe I would even allow that - the role playing consequence would be mutiny of course)
I use it to "fix" disfunctional situations. as an example, the roughrider fighter is far better with a fighter pegasus cohort.
Actually is a BLAST at enough high level.