Leader of men and magic. or... leadership and an intelligent item

[FuelDrop]

As a DM/GM, would you allow a magic intelligent item to be a cohort for your player?

please don't say anything about RAW here, as this is clearly not RAW, but i would like opinions from those of you who've got more experience with this feat as to whether this would be
A) not too unbalancing (we are talking the leadership feat, after all)
B) Fun to play with.
C) Interesting (i have no experience with either leadership or intelligent items.)

just to repeat this isn't RAW, but as it's concept rather than execution i felt that Advice was more appropriate than Homebrew.

[Waffle_Neutral]

I don't think it's more over powering than leadership; maybe even a little weaker. It doesn't get as many abilities as character would get and doesn't have as much versatility.

However some of the special purpose powers do seem a little too strong. Being able to cast a 4th-7th spell at-will is extremely powerful. It also doesn't make much sense to me, since they can't cast any 1st-3rd level spells at-will unless it is controlled by the GM, who best not abuse its power.

I'd probably disallow it as a cohort, but if the player expresses an interest in an intelligent item, I'd probably just include one in a treasure hoard or use it as a major plot point in a campaign. There's just so much cool stuff you can do as GM with an intelligent magic item. It could be the Big Bad Evil Guy (kinda like the One Ring from Lord of the Rings) and trick the party into setting its plans into motion.

[LazarX]

FuelDrop wrote:

As a DM/GM, would you allow a magic intelligent item to be a cohort for your player?

please don't say anything about RAW here, as this is clearly not RAW, but i would like opinions from those of you who've got more experience with this feat as to whether this would be
A) not too unbalancing (we are talking the leadership feat, after all)
B) Fun to play with.
C) Interesting (i have no experience with either leadership or intelligent items.)

just to repeat this isn't RAW, but as it's concept rather than execution i felt that Advice was more appropriate than Homebrew.

Generally as a rule, the only time you'll ever see an intelligent item in my home campaigns is when I put one there. And such an item will always come with an agenda, one which the PC's who wind up with it might not find out for some time. Joke campaigns, I'm less restrictive about it.

[Larry Lichman]

I think this is an excellent idea! The potential for adventure hooks to enable the PC to obtain this type of cohort alone make it an interesting option.

Yes, the intelligent item may be able to do things normal cohorts can't, but if you incorporate obtaining the item into the campaign instead of just giving it to the PC, and you replace all of Leadership's other abilities (i.e., eliminate the Followers) so that the only benefit is to obtain the item as a cohort, I don't see any issue with it. After all, the GM would control which abilities the item had, and the interaction between the PC and the item as they discuss strategies could lead to some great role-playing moments.

I say go for it!