Hello boards, one of my players have decided to pick the leadership feat in our Kingmaker campaign, which is very suitable since he's also the king. And it's good being king, right?
We haven't yet decided what the cohort is supposed to be, some form of divine caster, oracle or cleric most likely. I am mostly concerned with the feat partly out of balance issues, so I have a few questions:
Since your cohorts are loyal to you and doesn't ask for much, you can pull them with you on all your adventures. Does fights have to be balanced for an additional party member, and does the cohort require part of the loot to remain loyal?
Are stats rolled, or used standard/heroic NPC rolls? Or is that entirely up to me as the DM?
I'm mostly concerned introducing an NPC healbot to the group would skew up the balance of fights mostly.
how it should be:
fights are balanced for leadership, as it's a feat
the cohort requires loot (I guess) but only a little, as his level is lower, he might remain loyal for some time without reward as he gains exp.
Stats are rolled or standard NPC, but you can dismiss them and ask for another one, so pretty much a free pick. So all in all up to the DM, but you should work with him, right?
how it is:
leadership isn't 100% balanced for fights.
if you can choose, or recruit followers that even have 1 level in witch, the feat is incredibly broken (human: scar hex and fortune or heal)
not to speak of a witch coven
all of this is my opinion and not set in stone, if in doubt ask your GM, leadership is very "open-to-interpretation" feat.
a healbot seems simple and might not be broken, I would allow it, but monsters might attack him and if he dies, I wouldn't immediatly replace him.
Well we opted for a life oracle in the end, it's fluffy and fits as well. I chose to essentially give it heroic NPC stats and equipment, as well as avereged its HP. This makes it a lot weaker than the PCs, and squishier, but will still accompany them through their adventures.
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Depends on the campaign. I run Kingmaker and 3 of my 4 players have cohorts. However I created the cohorts after a brief discussion with the players involved. As far as I am concerned they are NPC's who are loyal to the player and my players get to control them in combat. They are my NPC's to play however, with their own motivations and views.
In Serpent's Skull I have banned Leadership because it doesn't fit as well. The same can be said of Carrion Crown. Skull and Shackles may see the return of cohorts however.
They are not that unbalancing. Having your own pet NPC sounds great until you realise that you have to outfit them with gear and equipment.
Cohort should be used only as an advisor or assistant in running the realm in my opinion. Completely non combative. Its a highly overpowered feat that many players abuse.
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Cohort should be used only as an advisor or assistant in running the realm in my opinion. Completely non combative. Its a highly overpowered feat that many players abuse.
A cohort is a minimum of two levels below the player character. Unless you have a wide range of player character levels, the cohort should not have a significant impact on combat.
Leadership feat
Haven't seen it used much since DnD 3.0
Back then my GM made us use lower point buy for abilities (otherwise he would be leading his own group of heros), no prestige class (they were a bigger deal then), and gear as a fairly standard NPC (in other words, a lot less than the PC's).
The PC would then usually have to spend a fair amount of cash to bring the cohort's equipment up to the group standard, use his share of the loot to get items good for the cohort, and keep the cohort alive in the really deadly encounters.