I inadvertently started a discussion on this topic in the Obits page, which is probably the last place people wanted to see it, so I figure if people have things to say, they can say them here, instead.
My particular case:
My party originally consisted of an Elven Rogue, a Human Sword-and-Board Fighter, an Elven Druid, and a Gnome Starsoul Sorcerer.
The initial concerns for the group was a lack of solid healing. Most of my players think that for a group to be successful, they need a dedicated healer in the mix, which, of course, is not the case. The very first thing purchased in every campaign I've run are several wands of Cure Light Wounds. If the party isn't walking around at max HPs all the time, they get really on edge. Whatevs.
So the Elven Rogue decides to leave the group (he was consistently rolling low on HP) and that player rolled a Human Archaeologist Bard, with no healing spells. Odd choice, I think, for a party so worried about healing.
When the bard had around 28,000 exp, he made it known he was going to take Leadership at level 7. He says this while the party is exploring the ruins of Tazion, right before the final few encounters in the ziggurat. I don't like disallowing things from the Core Rulebook, and have had characters that take Leadership myself, so I don't see anything wrong with that. If he had worked into his backstory an NPC that I knew he was going to try to recruit with Leadership, I'd have let him roll that character up as an NPC himself. As it was, spur of the moment, I wasn't completely unprepared. I had kept many of the NPCs the party has met at level 5 just in case someone wanted to take Leadership and recruit one of the NPCs as a cohort.
I like this feeling of realism in my campaigns. I'm not a DM that, if a character takes Leadership, a random NPC just appears at that characters side and how he got there is glossed over. I feel this kills the mood of a role-playing game.
He wants, specifically, a cleric of Cayden Cailean as a cohort. This annoys me, as the last game we played he took Leadership and recruited a cleric of Cayden Cailean as a cohort. I tell him that it's probably not likely that the Pathfinder expedition (the expedition that PCs are helping) would have a cleric of Cayden Cailean in their mists, but I'd roll one up anyways and work him in.
A lot of other GMs don't like the fact that I roll up my PC's cohorts as NPCs. In the past I allowed players to roll them up as full PCs, but that's always backfired with cohorts more powerful than party members. An NPC is supposed to be weaker than the PCs, especially a cohort 2 levels lower. Plus, the Core Rulebook makes reference to Chapter 14. I use the Heroic NPC stats appropriate for it's class, modify those based on race and level, equip him with a few MW weapons, probably one or two magical items, including a fully charged cure wand, and hand him over to the player. If the PCs want to equip their cohort from the loot they earn from that point on, that's their prerogative.
The cleric I rolled up, one Reagan Tenor, is a fully fleshed out NPC. He has a history. I describe his personality and appearance to the PC. I tell him what domain spells he likes to take. Then I let the PC run him, with me stepping in if the PC makes him do something that is radically unlike Reagan Tenor's personality. Immediately the party hates the guy, as I describe him almost like a frat boy with a constant buzz. Not a jerk frat boy, but a man with drunken wisdom and bravado. I gave the man the Drunken Brawler feat, so the guy is always drinking. For flavor, I used some of the alternate channeling abilities for clerics of Cayden Cailean, so his channeling is only half as effective, but it has a synergy with poison and ability damage, something that might play a role later in the campaign. He also has a negative Dex modifier, which the party dislikes.
Whatever, I handed them a divine caster with the ability to cast level 3 spells. It's a powerful resource. I look at Leadership the same way I look at any feat. Having an NPC spellcaster that can buff and heal and serve as a flanking buddy is a much better use of a feat than a +1 Dodge bonus to AC. So I don't want my player's to go crazy with him.
Anyways, poor Reagan dies to a regular shadow while on Shadow Island, his 12 Str quickly drained while he repeatedly cast and failed to touch the thing with a cure spell, the party too busy to come to his aid. I'm not sure if this counts as causing the death of a cohort or not, but the bard's player wants another divine caster to play healer to the party, now, Reagan having survived less than one full session. In my head, the suspension of disbelief... how many level 5 NPCs are with the Pathfinder expedition? Again, reiterate, the party has two characters capable of casting Cure Light Wounds, but this cohort better be built as a heal bot. Sheesh!
So I rolled up an oracle of wind, with a detailed backstory. First time to roll up an oracle, so I thought I'd make one without Cure Spells, but apparently oracles get cure spells for free, so that backfired. Still, it's not the raw healbot that he wanted, and I'm not allowing him to have one. He can either take this oracle, or he can recruit Athyra as his cohort. I'm not filling in any more orders for cure bots.
I understand the draw of taking Leadership, and I want to encourage players that want to do so, but as a DM, I'd prefer it if they worked on it a bit, either through recruiting a cohort many levels in advanced, beginning friendly relations with an NPC they might want as a cohort, or having a cohort in mind at character creation and working on in to the backstory.
I have a character with Leadership in our Jade Regent group. It's a goblin my Enchanter charmed back in the second session of play, and this goblin has been a part of my character's life ever since. When I decided I was going to take the goblin as my cohort, or try, as I wasn't sure if the DM was going to let me, I roleplayed trying to teach the goblin some manners and abilities, teaching him new languages while learning goblin myself. He was going to be a rogue, I decided, back when I was level 3, so whenever we came across locked boxes or chests, I'd hand them to my goblin with a set of lockpicks and let him try his hand at it for a while. We even roleplayed weening him off Charm Spells through the use of Diplomacy and Bluff, permanently changing his alignment to True Neutral. In game time, the process took half a year, while in real time it was some 20 odd sessions. I guess when I think of a player taking Leadership, I just assume they're going to do something similar.
When he hit level 7 and said he was taking it, I explained to him that I was going to roll up his NPC cohort. Well, first I allowed him a choice of recruiting N'kechi, Pezzock, or Athyra, and he passed because he was looking for a cleric of Cayden Cailean. So I told him I'd roll one up. We met up before the session (watched a playoff game, I think) and I showed him the character, explained his backstory and how he tied into the campaign, and why he looked up to the player's character, and the player was completely fine with it.
It wasn't until the first actual encounter, when the NPC cohort didn't do anything constructive, that the party started disliking him. I think the player was still fine with him for a few combats, but he never actually did anything except some minor healing and the casting of a bless spell. Maybe the rest of the party was hoping for a more effective NPC. When we came to the last encounter of the session, Shadow Island, or whatever it's called, I think the player realized he didn't much care for his cohort. He didn't intentionally get him killed, but at the same time, he didn't go out of his way to save him when his Str started dropping dangerously low.
My players should know better than to expect to get away with overly broken builds or feat combinations. This group has been gaming together for close to a decade now. Only two of our current five weren't around when I DMed the Shackled City Adventure Path back when Paizo was still publishing Dungeon magazine, and one of those joined for the second adventure path, Savage Tide maybe?
But this particular player, let's call him Andy, was spoiled by 4th edition DnD and the optimized character builds. Now he can't build a character without first seeing how to optimize him. I disallow certain cheese in my game. For example, only one non-Core splat book per character. If you use Inner Sea Magic, for example, you can't use Faiths of Purity. I might make specific exceptions, but only for good reason. But he has played things like the Switch Hitter Ranger, for example, build almost word-for-word based on the guide. He's played back-to-back spellcasters with almost the same spell selection, as well. Glitterdust spam from two casters has become one of the most effective ways to quickly end a combat.
Point being, he expects his cohorts to be optimized as well. He can't fathom an NPC that he controls not having the most optimized build for his role. He's completely ok with me rolling up NPCs as cohorts, but he doesn't understand why these NPCs aren't better. If he were to roll up a cleric of Cayden Cailean, he'd have much different stat allotment, gear, domains, and feats. He's looking at the NPC and doesn't understand how to play the NPC as an NPC, and not as an optimized PC.
Meh. Has any group had a PC with Leadership that used one of the named NPCs as a cohort yet?
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Meh. Has any group had a PC with Leadership that used one of the named NPCs as a cohort yet?
Kind of.
Generally I don't allow the Leadership feat at all. I have a large (6-person) table already. Combat takes long enough without introducing another combatant. So one of my (very few) pre-campaign rules is if you take Leadership, your cohort is not going to appear on the battlemat.Some players choose to take Leadership/cohorts for role-playing reasons or to manage their characters' affairs behind the scenes, but there's that understanding right up front they're not going to be combatants.
Now for the "kind of" part. I have one player who is courting a relationship with Juliver and another who is in a relationship with Athyra. Though neither of them have taken the Leadership feat, I'll generally let them control the 2 NPCs behind the scene.
Example:
Player 1: While we head over to check the sinkhole vault today, I'll ask Juliver to direct the Pathfinder explorers to continue gathering discovery points in the Residential district.
Player 2: And I'll ask Athyra to head out of the valley and she if she can get an idea how close the Gorilla King's army is. See how many days out they are.
DM (me): Not a problem. Athyra says it may take her a couple days to locate and get "eyes on" the Gorilla King's forces but she's happy to help out.
Now a large part of this has been due to great role-playing. Both players have gone out of their way to specify that their characters are spending free time with the NPCs, giving them extra magic items as gifts and spending time working with/training them. With that sort of *player* investment, I have no problem with them controlling "thier" NPCs, even without the actual Leadership feat.
Another player took control of the Pirate camp and actually wanted to take the Leadership feat. I let him design his First Mate from the ground up and he built a sea-chanter bard. Her job is manage the camp and she also pre-buffs the party before they set out for a day of dungeon crawling with some of her long-lasting buffs. A couple Freedom of Movements, Mass Featherstep, some Heroisms, etc. This keeps her off the battlemat but makes him feel like his cohort is contributing.
That's just how I've been doing things. Shrug.
I have some pretty heavy restrictions on the leadership feat because I'm well aware of how a powergamer can abuse it. Basically, I let players get the leadership feat as an RP reward for spending significant time with an existing NPC.
Basically, I let one of my players take leadership to keep Sasha around since he was roleplaying with her quite a lot. I gave him her base stats, and let him be free to level the character up and control her from that point on. It has worked out pretty well since she is useful, but isn't more powerful than any of the players since these NPCs aren't optimized by design.
We have a small group--3 players and the DM. We make due with whatever we get. The DM makes our followers. I sort of ask for something generally, maybe one or two "hey-this-is-important" points, and take whatever he gives me. No big. But that was the expectation and understanding going in. Also, I'm not someone who cares tremendously about total optimization. I'm fairly easy going, and I'd rather to make the best out of difficult circumstances than optimal ones.