Is granting a free leadership feat to much?

[STARGAZER_DRAGON]

So the party is building a stronghold the palidine has made a good sized chruch the mage is starting a mages tower the gunslinger has a stronghold and is in effect named himself king after the old kings death, not that he is king of much more like a cheif.

I was thinking that as each building was compleate the player might gain leadership feat for free with condition that the cohort remains at the stronghold as a kind of leader. Cohort acts more like a NPC so it seamed proper to give it to them for free, just using the leadership to track basicaly how many free guards/preists and junk they get, ones who work under the condition that there food, gear and housing is paid for.

What do you guys think?

[Adamantine Dragon]

Leadership is sometimes considered one of the most overpowered feats. Just sayin'

[Wyrmholez]

Under those circumstances I'd use Leadership to figure out the number of followers, and then if he/she takes the feat you have a pool of candidates ready and raring to go.

[Whale_Cancer]

If you control the cohorts, build the cohorts, and the cohorts stay at home than I think that what you are proposing is reasonable. You essentially control how useful those cohorts are by how you build them. If you want them to have access to cheap crafting, give them a crafter wizard; if you don't, then don't. Etc., etc.,

Could provide for some nice NPCs.

[Isil-zha]

You can treat them as if they had leadership for the purpose of their stronghold, I don't think you actually need to give them the feat. I'd just hand-wave it.

[chaoseffect]

The issue with leadership is that people use it to get a second PC that they control in combat. If the cohort is staying back, then its not an issue (as far as being "broken"). Not sure why the feat is necessary in this situation though to be honest, as you can just rp it as NPCs are under their command and accept them as leader.

[Whale_Cancer]

Isil-zha wrote:

You can treat them as if they had leadership for the purpose of their stronghold, I don't think you actually need to give them the feat. I'd just hand-wave it.

Giving them leadership with those restrictions prevents them from actually taking it, however!

[Ajaxis]

1. Leadership is very powerful, depending on what you allow with it. Disallowing leadership is a common house rule (perhaps second only to ignoring the difference between arcane and divine scrolls).

2. Depending on what/how you allow it giving it out for free may or may not be appropriate.

3. For example, among the AP's, Kingmaker and Skull & Shackles were cases were you could justify giving Leadership for free to all the PCs.

[Big McStrongmuscle]

What chaoseffect said.

My general house rule for leadershippery these days is that you can use your cohort as an alternate PC on a session-by-session basis, but only when you are not also playing your main character. No one player can control two characters in the same session. Your cohort also has to be an NPC you find and recruit, not a character the player generates, so that helps on the free crafting front. And the rest of your followers are mostly for patrolling the countryside, scouting, manning the fort, and other such flunky work.

I have also been known to let players use their cohort to get a warhorse that won't die in the first two rounds of combat.

[Darth Grall]

Personally I hate mechanically fleshing out organizations with things like feats, especially "inherited" ones.

Just build out the organization of the castle yourself and spare them the feat.

[STARGAZER_DRAGON]

kk, think I will give them the effect of leadership without the feat but if they take the feat they eather double the effect or can have a npc cohort tag with them, cource he will want his share of the loot eat up xp and all that junk

thanks for the feadback

[Quandary]

if the PCs get Leadership for free, it should be normal for Enemy encounters to be given Leadership for free and include extra Enemy followers.
if you don't do that, any APL vs. CR comparison is just going to be pointless.
even SPENDING A FEAT on Leadership screws that formula up unless both sides have it.
if you want to include extra NPCs, within the framework of Leadership or not ('paid for' or not),
you should just include them within the APL vs. CR comparison,
possibly looking at it from both sides of the PC vs Enemy equation to undeerstand it better in comparison to if the PCs didn't have NPC support.

[Isil-zha]

Whale_Cancer wrote:

Isil-zha wrote:

You can treat them as if they had leadership for the purpose of their stronghold, I don't think you actually need to give them the feat. I'd just hand-wave it.

Giving them leadership with those restrictions prevents them from actually taking it, however!

good point, on the other hand taking the feat could just enable them to take the cohort on adventures

[Ciaran Barnes]

There is no difference between giving out Leadership for free, and the PC choosing Leadership because you gave a different feat for free.

You could use it as Whale Cancer suggested, where the cohorts are like recurring characters from time to time in the story. I would definitely not allow it to essentially give every player two characters.

[CalebTGordan]

Check out my blog posts on the feat Here.

In short, no I don't think giving it out as a free feat is too over powered if you are in control of the cohort's stats and at times the cohort.

Give the cohort the Heroic NPC stats and Heroic NPC wealth. Do not build them optimized for combat. Make it clear that if the player sends the cohort to its death there will be consequences,

Use the cohorts and followers as your own tools. It is one thing to have a no name NPC deliver news, it is totally different have a cohort deliver it.

[Wycen]

If you give them the feat for free, create the NPC and don't give them any item crafting feats, because that's a popular way of using a cohort.

Personally, my cohort is not as effective in combat as many people think they are. The reason being is that my cohort is a medicine cabinet for my PC and to a lesser extent the group. Many of my cohort's spell slots are taken up by Lesser Restoration, Delay Poison, stuff like that. Sure, that is extremely useful in certain situations, but frequently my cohort is casting Guidance or other less effective actions.

Of course, if the cohort is a non-spell caster you have less to worry about.

[WPharolin]

I was given a free cohort to run an inn once. It was a lamassu. Later in the campaign the barbarian also got a free cohort. It was an awakened cactus. Many lulz were had as I pointed and laughed at his pathetic cohort...until the cactus started taking psion levels. Then no one was laughing.

[CalebTGordan]

WPharolin wrote:

I was given a free cohort to run an inn once. It was a lamassu. Later in the campaign the barbarian also got a free cohort. It was an awakened cactus. Many lulz were had as I pointed and laughed at his pathetic cohort...until the cactus started taking psion levels. Then no one was laughing.

Did the cactus control people into buying ice cream?

[WPharolin]

CalebTGordan wrote:

WPharolin wrote:

I was given a free cohort to run an inn once. It was a lamassu. Later in the campaign the barbarian also got a free cohort. It was an awakened cactus. Many lulz were had as I pointed and laughed at his pathetic cohort...until the cactus started taking psion levels. Then no one was laughing.

Did the cactus control people into buying ice cream?

I made a similar joke at the table and nobody got the reference. He went with psion because of a power called crystal shard or something that shot tons of crystals. He was going for a cactuar with 1000 needles vibe. I still say the ice cream stand was a good idea.

[deuxhero]

chaoseffect wrote:

The issue with leadership is that people use it to get a second PC that they control in combat. If the cohort is staying back, then its not an issue (as far as being "broken"). Not sure why the feat is necessary in this situation though to be honest, as you can just rp it as NPCs are under their command and accept them as leader.

The followers are only SLIGHTLY less broken than the cohort. Either on its own would be the most powerful feat in the game.

[Weirdo]

CalebTGordan wrote:

Check out my blog posts on the feat Here.

This is a very good set of blog posts.

Leadership can be very overpowered, but it will work just fine if you use a "free leadership" as a way to track how the size of a PC's guard staff, church, or university and provide a powerful non-combat ally to assist with these enterprises. My druid took the Leadership feat because she wanted to start a druid circle, and I almost entirely used it for RP purposes. If your PCs see this as an RP aid and a source of minor assistance (low-level casting during downtime, skill use, etc), it will be fine.

It will be particularly manageable if you don't let them take these followers and cohorts on active adventures. Requiring them to pay room and board for their followers won't be a huge balancing factor, but it will keep them mindful of the number of their followers and the fact that they're not just mindless puppets.

[Zahir ibn Mahmoud ibn Jothan]

STARGAZER_DRAGON wrote:

cource he will want his share of the loot eat up xp and all that junk

The Leadership Feat is quite specific on how XP for Cohorts is calculated, and it doesn't involve eating into the shares of the PCs. Loot is a different matter, and subject to how the party chooses to handle it.