How do you handle leadership? The story is this, I had a player deciding to play a wizard and of course was versatile with his wizard. He wrote it into his story about a "cohort" wife that ended up being a tag a long and concentrated on damage. The cohort was a sorcerer. Essentially giving him another list of spells and such to pick up where he decided to be deficient. It just seems that the feat ends up being a very powerful feat. At this point I just don't allow it. How would you suggest handling this?
How do you handle leadership? The story is this, I had a player deciding to play a wizard and of course was versatile with his wizard. He wrote it into his story about a "cohort" wife that ended up being a tag a long and concentrated on damage. The cohort was a sorcerer. Essentially giving him another list of spells and such to pick up where he decided to be deficient. It just seems that the feat ends up being a very powerful feat. At this point I just don't allow it. How would you suggest handling this?
It is a powerful feat.
In my current campaign, which has 6 players at the table, I've dissallowed it for speed-of-play reasons.
If I had 5 or less players, I'd allow it with the caveat that no player can have more than one combat-companion (whether familiar, animal companion, Summon Spell, eidolon, or Cohort) for their character.
Also, I'd outright veto any attempt at a 'crafter cohort', who is an obvious ploy to gain multiple crafting feats for one feat.
As well, I'd say the GM should always be the one creating the cohort, with player input on who they should be and how they should function; the Ideal situation though, is that the cohort could be an NPC encountered by the party the players want to recruit.
SGG has a wonderful replacement for leadership in one of their bullet points PDFs. Try searching for it on this site. Still provides a player benefit, but won't slow down combat, and engrains the players into a city or fort, allowing GMs to to show all the fun organizations they have made,
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How do you handle leadership? The story is this, I had a player deciding to play a wizard and of course was versatile with his wizard. He wrote it into his story about a "cohort" wife that ended up being a tag a long and concentrated on damage. The cohort was a sorcerer. Essentially giving him another list of spells and such to pick up where he decided to be deficient. It just seems that the feat ends up being a very powerful feat. At this point I just don't allow it. How would you suggest handling this?
I play in a council of thieves campaign, 5 players, two of us have the leadership feat. and another player is a ranger with an animal companion.
But for the most part, we don't min-max our characters, my character is a halforc sorcerer with draconic disciple, my cohort is a halfling inquisitor, his highest stat is a 16.
Combats are a bit slower, but we don't mind too much. We are not a lot into Roleplaying, but more in storytelling, the characters are all westcrown natives and are very involved with the community etc.
How do you handle leadership? The story is this, I had a player deciding to play a wizard and of course was versatile with his wizard. He wrote it into his story about a "cohort" wife that ended up being a tag a long and concentrated on damage. The cohort was a sorcerer. Essentially giving him another list of spells and such to pick up where he decided to be deficient. It just seems that the feat ends up being a very powerful feat. At this point I just don't allow it. How would you suggest handling this?
I've had a lot of recent experience with this: Party with two characters with leadership, plus a druid with pet, plus a cleric with undead (evil party).
Basically, as I see it, the problem is it can blow party size out of the water. The game is designed for a party of 4-5, and quicky breaks down on the action ecomomy and CR system when it gets bigger than that, regardless if the added characters are PCs or NPCs.
I decided the thing to do is at the start of the campaign, keep it clear that the game's designed for a 4-5 charater party. So, while a 4 PC and plus a pet or cohort is no problem -that's basically equivelent to 4-5 PCs, but 5 PCs plus additional NPCs is an issue.
I'd always require they gear their cohort out of their own money (he doesn't come with equipment), but if you have 5 players and someone HAS to get their petness on, I'd impose more restrictions. For example, for Leadership, I'd restrict them to NPC classes only. And for either pets or cohorts, I'd not let them play them as their own PC, rather require them to use actions. For pets I'd enforce the rule that they must use handle animal skill, and can only issue orders per their known tricks. For cohorts, I'd require them to use Diplomacy in the same way, pre the 'making requests' rules - then the *GM* would move the Mini and take actions as the *GM* deems the npc would (i.e. they don't get to mind control their follower, they have to issue orders which the NPC may or may not immediatly obey, or may not obey exactly the way they intend).
On the flip side, if the party is short players, say you have 2 or 3 players and the NPC are just filling out the party, then I'd do the reverse and let them run their pets and cohorts as their own PCs.
