Leadership Questions

[Theconiel]

If I take Leadership at 7th level, can I get the actual cohorts/followers at 8th level?

How are the cohorts generated? Are they created by the player or the GM? Or is it campaign-dependent?

[Sekret_One]

You could get a cohort and followers at 7th level when you take the feat, assuming it makes sense.

Leadership is... very storyline and GM dependent. The rules are intentionally vague so the GM has a lot of play room here.

Generally, you get to select an appropriate NPC that you've met to be your cohort. If none are available, you might have to wait or the GM might make a suitable one to be attracted to your cause. Almost all GMs would not allow the player to create his cohort from scratch like a new character, but certain permanent spells might work (an awakened creature/tree, permanent anthropomorphic animal, etc).

I would let the player control the cohort (simply because I think it's tedious to do it any other way), but again a more stickler GM might not.

[Troubleshooter]

For balance purposes, a GM should at least create the NPC himself. The best feat a TWF fighter can spend is on Leadership for his own personal Bard.

[The Emo Bard]

The individual GM should decide how cohorts are created. I personally would let the individual players create their own cohorts (I run a LOT of campaigns where the PCs work for the government, so creating a new character and then saying "This person was assigned to me as an apprentice by my superiors" makes perfect sense within the game world), but I can see why other GMs wouldn't want that.

[The Emo Bard]

Troubleshooter wrote:

For balance purposes, a GM should at least create the NPC himself. The best feat a TWF fighter can spend is on Leadership for his own personal Bard.

Great. Now that you suggested it, I'm going to have to go and do it. What could be more awesome than a knight with minstrels?

What does TWF stand for?

[AvalonXQ]

The Emo Bard wrote:

Troubleshooter wrote:

For balance purposes, a GM should at least create the NPC himself. The best feat a TWF fighter can spend is on Leadership for his own personal Bard.

Great. Now that you suggested it, I'm going to have to go and do it. What could be more awesome than a knight with minstrels?

What does TWF stand for?

Two-weapon fighting. He's saying that, mechanically speaking, the buffs granted by a bard are extremely beneficial for a two-weapon fighter.

[The Emo Bard]

AvalonXQ wrote:

The Emo Bard wrote:

Troubleshooter wrote:

For balance purposes, a GM should at least create the NPC himself. The best feat a TWF fighter can spend is on Leadership for his own personal Bard.

Great. Now that you suggested it, I'm going to have to go and do it. What could be more awesome than a knight with minstrels?

What does TWF stand for?

Two-weapon fighting. He's saying that, mechanically speaking, the buffs granted by a bard are extremely beneficial for a two-weapon fighter.

Thanks.

I realize it's rather powerful, and should probably be a no-no because of that, but the Rule of Cool says it must be done. I wish to be serenaded as I charge into glorious battle!

[Legion42]

Taking the feat can be done any time after the stated level dependency. I usually have my players who want it as early as possible to "hold over" their 6th feat for it or just not gain any benefit until 7th.

As for NPC creation it is all DM dependent. I let my players create them using the NPC rules in the Core Book, but I've also assigned them from the pregens in the Game Mastery Guide or used GM created ones. The only real thing to take into consideration is that the NPC is useful to the PC. If the NPC isn't useful then feat is lessened.

As to the Bard Cohort it works wonders. The Bard can provide so many benefits its crazy. CHA based checks, magical healing, access to Arcane spell assists, performance panhandling and spreading Fame through those performances.

[Troubleshooter]

Consider: Weapon Focus gives you +1 to attack. Inspire Courage starts out at +1 attack and damage to every ally that perceives it, and eventually goes to +4. A not-too-high level Bard can even put up Inpire as a Swift action and cast Good Hope for another +2 Morale bonus to attacks, damage, ability checks, saves.

At high caster levels, I like having Good Hope up right before a combat so everybody has a higher Initiative : 3

[David Thomassen]

Legion42 - the levels when you get feats has changed - we all get feats at 7th level now "7th 53,000 35,000 23,000 4th — " (Table from Classes section of PRD)

[Theconiel]

Thanks!

My character has 7 CHA (dwarf) so I think I'll wait until 9th level to take the Leadership feat. Our GM pushes the feat heavily, probably because doubling the size of the party would allow him to throw badder monsters at us, and allow us to take on the real BBEG.

The Leadership feat almost seems like something my character would not do. He is a dwarf Zen Archer with low charisma, even by dwarvish standards.

I wonder whether anyone will ever mention "knight with minstrels" without my thinking of Brave Sir Robin.

[Turgan]

What's your leadership score? Looks like 5. You would get a 3rd-level cohort then. If I were in your shoes (and if my assumption of the score is right) I would not do it. Dies too easily.

[Legion42]

David Thomassen wrote:

Legion42 - the levels when you get feats has changed - we all get feats at 7th level now "7th 53,000 35,000 23,000 4th — " (Table from Classes section of PRD)

Well crap... now I feel like a twit.. hahaha guess I should review the basics again :) thanks guess I looked at the new table and just skimmed it and I've been running Pathfinder since Beta... Now I'll have to read it cover to cover to make sure of the little things.

[Kydeem de'Morcaine]

Turgan wrote:

What's your leadership score? Looks like 5. You would get a 3rd-level cohort then. If I were in your shoes (and if my assumption of the score is right) I would not do it. Dies too easily.

If you work on getting the possitive modifiers to leadership, you should be able to get it back up to 7 for the 5th level cohort.

[Stubs McKenzie]

Remember once you get a cohort he can level up to a max of your lvl -2, so if you can keep him alive for a little bit he will soon be a strong helper.