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Following another thread to it's logical conclusion...
It's 7th level, I'm a martial class and I want to pick a feat. I take leadership and make myself a crafter.
The crafter takes Craft Wonderous items at 3rd and Craft Arms and Armor at 5th and you basically have them cast all day buff spells on you in the morning then craft the rest of the day away. They can make most of your equiptment, magic items and possibly even potions.
As a GM, would you allow this to adjust WBL for crafted on a new character?
Honest question.
And for the record, I would. You spent a feat, the cohort "exists" and could reasonably be your cohort for exactly that purpose.
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Seems too good. One feat gets you: several crafting feats, a spell list to use them, and saves gold. I feel it would have to be regulated somehow. Off the top of my head, I would think.they may only craft for themselvs permanent gear, no half price: arms, amor, rings, wondrous items for the leader.
I have seen too many PCs/campaigns get out of hand when the GM decideds to throw WBL ou the window or never payed attention to it in the first place.
At that point you would simply need to determine if you are going to allow or house-rule the Leadership feat out of your game (or house-rule crafting out of your game, PFS style). Just keep it consistent.
Personally I've seen enough situations where the Leadership feat just makes things awkward and annoying to deal with; I'm a fan of simply pretending it doesn't exist, for the sake of everyone's fun at the table.
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WBL is an assumed average...and it certainly affects the power level of characters...but I only use it as a way to determine how much a new character starts with. If one character becomes the entrepreneur, while another chooses to wander in poverty, blowing all of his gold on wine, women, and song...so be it.
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To restate what I said in the other thread: I would allow it, but your cohort's work would count toward your character's expected wealth by level. The character's WBL should still be roughly 'capped' at 125% (or 150% if the cohort and character have multiple crafting feats).
Keep in mind: I wouldn't really allow a cohort that stays back at the base camp crafting to gain experience. If you ever need your cohort's assistance in the field, and you've kept him back at home for the past three levels making your Belt of +6 Uberness, then the likelihood is that your now-five-levels-behind cohort is going get ganked.
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"It's Barbaricus the Mighty! I'm going to go get his autograph.""Wait! No, stay back here. Don't attract his attention. I heard the last fan that approached him, he took and put him in a cellar then forced him to make items for three months."
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I think I might argue in this case that since you only gained your cohort at 7th level he can't have created all the stuff you've had prior to you getting him.
In fact, before this Ultimate Campaign thing, and possibly afterwards anyway, what we used to do was track wealth and feats level by level to see what you could have created when. You have to make the spellcraft die-rolls as well, of course. A bit laborious, I know, but it's hardly something you do very often.
In your example, if you rolled up your character at 8th level then I would have allowed you to use WBL(8) - WBL(7) for him to make items.
Richard
Following another thread to it's logical conclusion...
It's 7th level, I'm a martial class and I want to pick a feat. I take leadership and make myself a crafter.
The crafter takes Craft Wonderous items at 3rd and Craft Arms and Armor at 5th and you basically have them cast all day buff spells on you in the morning then craft the rest of the day away. They can make most of your equiptment, magic items and possibly even potions.
As a GM, would you allow this to adjust WBL for crafted on a new character?
Honest question.
And for the record, I would. You spent a feat, the cohort "exists" and could reasonably be your cohort for exactly that purpose.
As the FAQ tells you to count it. *Your* character didn't craft it so it counts at full WBL. Your cohort crafted it. You're not the same character.
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Aaaand I would have the crafter walk away from your character in short order, as you're obviously simply using him as a nameless buffbot. You might recruit a snivelling kobold like that, though.
Or you have it wholly justified by the back-story of the cohort and your character. For example, you rescued a blacksmith-turned-adventurer from certain death, but because of his injuries in that final battle he can no longer adventure*; he believes that he owes you, and so he gladly works on gear and other projects for you.
He still has a life outside of that; obviously if you treat him badly when you return to town he might leave you. But assuming that you can't create a completely viable and justified backstory for a crafter cohort? Nah.
As for equipping the cohort, what you say doesn't apply for starting equipment; the NPC design rules and Leadership feat say that he begins equipped with gear appropriate to his WBL.
*He took an arrow to the knee.
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Following another thread to it's logical conclusion...
It's 7th level, I'm a martial class and I want to pick a feat. I take leadership and make myself a crafter.
The crafter takes Craft Wonderous items at 3rd and Craft Arms and Armor at 5th and you basically have them cast all day buff spells on you in the morning then craft the rest of the day away. They can make most of your equiptment, magic items and possibly even potions.
As a GM, would you allow this to adjust WBL for crafted on a new character?
Honest question.
And for the record, I would. You spent a feat, the cohort "exists" and could reasonably be your cohort for exactly that purpose.
Yes I would allow it, but as you become more popular the bad guys can find out about you, just like you can find out about them. You might need to spend more money to keep your cohort protected somehow.
I would not make you spend so much money that all of the money from crafting was negated. That would defeat the purpose of what you are doing, but taking one feat to gain several free feats that save you money is something that needs to be watched.
As the FAQ tells you to count it. *Your* character didn't craft it so it counts at full WBL. Your cohort crafted it. You're not the same character.Following another thread to it's logical conclusion...
It's 7th level, I'm a martial class and I want to pick a feat. I take leadership and make myself a crafter.
The crafter takes Craft Wonderous items at 3rd and Craft Arms and Armor at 5th and you basically have them cast all day buff spells on you in the morning then craft the rest of the day away. They can make most of your equiptment, magic items and possibly even potions.
As a GM, would you allow this to adjust WBL for crafted on a new character?
Honest question.
And for the record, I would. You spent a feat, the cohort "exists" and could reasonably be your cohort for exactly that purpose.
Since the NPC is your feat, it really is you to a certain extent, but I do see your point.
The Ultimate Campaign specifically calls out the cohort who only takes crafting feats as "inappropriate advancement" and suggests the GM takes steps to avoid that kind of development.
If you exploit your cohort, you’ll quickly find your Leadership score shrinking away. Although this doesn’t change the cohort’s level, the cohort can’t gain levels until your Leadership score allows for a level increase, so if you’re a poor leader, you must wait longer for your cohort to level up. In extreme cases, the cohort might abandon you, and you’ll have to recruit a new cohort.
Examples of inappropriate advancement choices are a good-aligned companion selecting morally questionable feats, a clumsy cohort suddenly putting many ranks in Disable Device (so he can take all the risks in searching for traps instead of you), a spellcaster cohort taking nothing but item creation feats (so you get access to plenty of cheap magic items at the cost of just one feat, Leadership), a fighter cohort taking a level in wizard when he had no previous interest in magic, or you not interacting with your cleric cohort other than to gain defensive spells from a different class or a flanking bonus.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd most likely shoot down any kind of cohort that was built and played the way you describe in the OP. Then again, I have fairly strict limitations on Leadership in the first place. In short, your mileage may differ depending on the GM.
Hypothetically, if I allowed crafter cohorts... Just to make sure I get this straight:
You want to make a premade lvl 7+ character that took leadership at lvl 7, picked up a crafting cohort, and want your WBL as a 7+ character to factor in the discount from crafting feats?
I'd probably say that WBL up to lvl 6 is spent normally, WBL after level 6 would get the discount. So if you're making a lvl 7 character, it would look like this:
WBL for a 6th level character is 16 000 GP, that you have to spend normally - no discounts. The difference between lvl 6 and lvl 7 is 7500 gp, those you can spend with the crafting discount.
My reasoning is basically that your character is gathering and spending treasure as he adventures and levels up - he's not hoarding all his gold for that magical moment where he turns into a full-fledged PC.
I personally don't think its a bad thing, but I also like a lot of treasure in my games, much more than most GMs do.
Personally, I how I handle Leadership in my games is that I ignore it. All of my players get Leadership as a bonus feat at 7th level, representing their heroism and growing reputations. My players are allowed to build their cohorts however they want, and I often give them additional cohorts as the story demands it. However, my players are only allowed to bring one cohort or GMPC with them on an adventure; the others hang back and either watch their stuff or run their kingdom in their absence; so on and so forth.
Leadership gives you a second character, which by itself is probably more powerful than a 50% WBL boost. I think that the cohort is supposed to be an NPC supplied by the DM though most who allow Leadership seem to allow the player to build the cohort. Actually, one DM let me get a cohort specifically because he wanted the party to have somebody who could craft magic items. My PC had better things to spend feats on than crafting, but getting a Bard who sings for +2 and crafts stuff in the various types of items for one feat was a good deal.
I haven't read the actual rules in Ultimate Campaign yet, but if you're going to enforce a WBL percentage gain on crafting I think it should be based on the WBL of the character with the crafting feat, in this case the cohort. The Leadership rules say "The cohort should be equipped with gear appropriate for its level (see Creating NPCs)", so I figure that the cohort's expected WBL is based on the NPC chart. A 5th level cohort would have an NPC-WBL of 3,450gp with a 6th level goal of 4,650gp, an expected gain of 1,200gp. A 50% gain would be 600gp. If you allow the cohort to craft up to 50% of the expected 1,200gp gain for each item creation feat you'll get about the 25% WBL increase that the guidelines seem to suggest.
I'd still allow the character to craft items beyond that limit, but they'd be at full price. This could still be pretty helpful if you wanted an amulet of natural armor which is also an amulet of mighty fists and a necklace of adaptation (you're not likely to find that in the local magic shoppe)
I would have no problems with this, assuming a RP reason exists for the PC to essentially own a slave who has no life outside of buffing and crafting. Yeah, I get it, we're not talking about a slave, but we're almost treating him like one so I'll need a RP reason for that.
Given that, this is not that big of an issue. As others have said, it only impacts the WBL after the cohort joins, not before.
And there is a time limit - it's not like that cash gets turned into magic items the first day the cohort joins the PC.
Also, consider if the same "martial class" character got a cleric cohort who did nothing but hang back and cast heal spells and buffs during combat. His combat effectiveness would be MUCH higher than it will be with a couple extra cheap magic items, and he'd get the benefit starting the first day he has his new cohort.
As for the WBL why should it see any kind of an increase? When a wizard picks up the improved familiar feat they do not get extra cash to outfit the familiar, the treasure doesn't go up by a share if the druid has a pet or there is a summoner, they split their share with their pets, a cohort should be no different. The character gets to split their earning with the followers, they don't get more because they have followers.
Where is the cohort getting all the crafting money anyway?
The assumption is that the character is funding the cohort's crafting.
The OP mentioned 'martial class'. If a typical fighter wants a new magical sword, he has to either find it or buy it. Assuming he hasn't found what he wants, he might take his treasure into town and hire a wizard to craft that +3 sword he wants, for 18,315 gp (or therabouts). Or, he can go to his cohort and spend half that much to make the same sword. And half the amount for armor, and half the amount for misc items, etc., so that eventually he got all his magical gear at half price, meaning, he can have twice as much as somebody else who buys his gear the normal way.
If the GM follows the WBL tables when creating encounters, and the party rogue has, say, 30,000 GP of magical items but the party fighter has 60,000 because his cohort makes them all, then the guy with the cohort broke the WBL system.
Which, by the way, the CRB and the Ucamp both suggest limits to this sort of thing to keep it balanced.
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Ultimate Campaign talks about leadership, cohorts, and "exploiting" a cohort by treating it as a crafting minion.
It also talks about setting a reasonable cap on the extra wealth a crafting character can have (+25% of wealth by level) and how crafting items for other characters in the party counts toward this extra wealth. So a crafting cohort quickly expends that +25%, especially as the cohort has NPC gear (which is much less than a PC has at that level) and is lower level than your PC.
You are an adventurer, which should attract cohorts of similar mindset. i.e. As an adventurer I am sure that you spent you early years under the tutelage of the the local banker so that he could teach you all the important stuff about financial matters which will help you survive the daily rigors of adventuring. What, you didn't? Why do you think someone that wants to be an adventurer would sit around doing nothing but crafting and house cleaning? Can you tech them anything about crafting? Why would they stay there?
The same mindset does not mean the exact same interest. It can just mean they have the same beliefs in many areas. The cohort could share your philosophical beliefs, but not like to commit violence, or even if he would be more willing, he might freeze up "in the moment". Instead of being a liability in combat, or doing nothing, he does what he can to support those who are able and willing.
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And for the record, I would. You spent a feat, the cohort "exists" and could reasonably be your cohort for exactly that purpose.
In the same book of the WBl explanation:
Examples of inappropriate advancement choices [for choorts] are a good-aligned companion selecting morally questionable feats, a clumsy cohort suddenly putting many ranks in Disable Device (so he can take all the risks in searching for traps instead of you), [b]a spellcaster cohort taking nothing but item creation feats (so you get access to plenty of cheap magic items at the cost of just one feat, Leadership), [b]a fighter cohort taking a level in wizard when he had no previous interest in magic, or you not interacting with your cleric cohort other than to gain defensive spells from a different class or a flanking bonus.
Or, why not get a cohort who shares your adventures. Sure, he's a level below yours, but that's not a huge deal, especially if he can stay out of melee. Now you have a party of 5 instead of a party of 4. More actions, more tactics, more options. Everyone wins.
AND
You get some additional low level followers to hang out back home and defend your property, run your businesses, etc.
Leadership is still a good feat.
One thing to keep in mind is that if the GM allows this but later decides it was a mistake, there are all sorts of ways he or she could screw with your PC and make you wish you'd gone another way.
Accidentally cursed or tweaked items that the PC PAID for are the least of it. Taking your example of the non-adventuring blacksmith crafter, a GM could have the evil wizard BBEG could secretly corrupt the crafting process on purpose. Or NPC rogues could sneak in to the nonadventurer's home and steal this cool and utterly undefended magical loot (because you know they totally would).
Then too, if a GM decides to sharply curtail crafting feats in cohorts, without even getting into the Ultimate Campaign limitation, he or she need only sharply limit the amount of downtime a PC gets to visit his pet crafter. Having a lot of money saved on your person for long periods of time because your crafter lives a very long way away from where the adventure took you does not scream "feat well spent". Further, if the GM hands out magical treasure and some is stuff the party wants and some is stuff they'll sell, the stuff they'll sell will get 50% book value, which is exactly what it costs to craft items of equivalent power. Of course, this is not a recipe for getting uber-equipped at better than WBL. For that, you need the dragon hoard filled with portable and fungible wealth. If the GM limits the amount of hard cash/trade goods PCs find in a campaign, your character will suffer for it.
Just sayin', giving the GM this much control over how happy you are with this choice when your goal is to get more loot for your character through an exploit than your GM would normally provide is probably a bad idea, unless your GM is a total softy.
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Wow, this makes a crafting co-hort worthless, unless you are playing with a GM that does not allow you to get the items that you want from market.
With that said, it makes a lot of GMs happy. At the end of the day, though, doesn't the leadership feat just need to go by the way of the dinosaur. I mean after nerfing the crafting co-hort, the next thing on the list is the tiny sized co-hort I keep invisible in my backpack to buff me all the day long.
I object to the idea that a cohort who
1) doesn't stay at home crafting magic items for you all day like a slave, and
2) doesn't cast buffs on your PC
is worthless.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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To me it just seems to go against the "feel" of a cohort to make a stay-at-home crafter. Cohorts are supposed to be your adventuring sidekick, there with your PC in the thick of things. Followers are your stay in town and perform mundane tasks people. If a PC wanted one of his followers to be an adept with Scribe Scroll, for example, I'd have very little problem with that. At most I'd make sure that the minion's basic needs were covered - if the follower isn't supporting himself with his trade, then who is? Mr arrow-to-the-knee blacksmith cohort who happens to be an ex-adventurer is going to wonder why you can afford +5 full plate but not the cost to pay a cleric for regeneration. Generally people with PC class levels likely want to be adventurers otherwise they would have NPC classes.
I'm a little restrictive on cohorts - generally I let the player tell me what he or she wants and I make something that fits that category, which the player can then approve or reject. Mainly this prevents cohorts that could never survive alone but somehow "combo" really well with just their PC.
To me it just seems to go against the "feel" of a cohort to make a stay-at-home crafter.
No, no, you see it all the time.
Batman leaves Robin in the batcave to stick a few new gadgets in a new improved bat belt. The Lone Ranger leaves Tanto home all the time to make new bullets for his rifle. Obi-wan leaves Anakin home to make new lightsabers. The Superfriends leave Aquaman home to, uh, well, actually they usually did leave him home, but that's a different issue...
Oh, wait, none of those examples were "optimizer" role-players. I get it now...
Wow, this makes a crafting co-hort worthless, unless you are playing with a GM that does not allow you to get the items that you want from market.By no means am I saying that a co-hort is worthless.
Okay. :)
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I must say that the ultimate campaign stuff on crafting cleared up masses of arguments that have been used in the past for wizard super power etc. as a DM I found it an elegant way to limit power gain while still making feat choice worth while.
The use of a cohort to help with crafting is fine, as long as they follow your adventures and craft in the same way a full wizard member of the party has to during or between adventures. Sean has also pointed out the limitations of the plan very nicely.
Nice work again Paizo
Cheers.
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Ultimate Campaign talks about leadership, cohorts, and "exploiting" a cohort by treating it as a crafting minion.
It also talks about setting a reasonable cap on the extra wealth a crafting character can have (+25% of wealth by level) and how crafting items for other characters in the party counts toward this extra wealth. So a crafting cohort quickly expends that +25%, especially as the cohort has NPC gear (which is much less than a PC has at that level) and is lower level than your PC.
Thank's Sean. You've now also sold me on finally buying this one. :)
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I must say that the ultimate campaign stuff on crafting cleared up masses of arguments that have been used in the past for wizard super power etc. as a DM I found it an elegant way to limit power gain while still making feat choice worth while.
The use of a cohort to help with crafting is fine, as long as they follow your adventures and craft in the same way a full wizard member of the party has to during or between adventures. Sean has also pointed out the limitations of the plan very nicely.
Nice work again Paizo
Cheers.
It is almost as if they are so good at writing these things that people would pay them money for it.
I really had my doubts about this book, but now I'm adding it to my subscription delivery...
Damn you Paizo!
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@James - When discussing WBL, I'm generally looking at it from the non-1st level character creation standpoint.
If there is a cohort in the game and that cohort can craft, and it makes logical sense, yadda, yadda, it happens.
Where WBL generally comes into play in my experience is when you need a new character and are deciding how much gold you have.
My experience is games that start from level 1 and proceed are a lot less based on each person having equal gold/gear and much more based on what items benefit the group best on which member.
YMMV.
By rule, crafting feats effect how you count WBL currently. 25% for items the cohort can create seems quite reasonable.
So here's a question. The GM gives out reasonable and appropriate treasure for many levels, keeping everyone about on par with WBL, but the group has a wizard with a couple crafting feats. He uses them to make magic items for the whole group at reduced cost. They also have a bard with a crafting cohort who also makes magic items at a reduced price. Conceivably, this means the whole group is above the expected WBL because of all the crafting.
Now a new guy joins the group and rolls up a character of the group's level. How much starting gear does he get? Normal WBL? Higher? How does the GM decide what amount of gear to let him have?
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So here's a question. The GM gives out reasonable and appropriate treasure for many levels, keeping everyone about on par with WBL, but the group has a wizard with a couple crafting feats. He uses them to make magic items for the whole group at reduced cost. They also have a bard with a crafting cohort who also makes magic items at a reduced price. Conceivably, this means the whole group is above the expected WBL because of all the crafting.
Now a new guy joins the group and rolls up a character of the group's level. How much starting gear does he get? Normal WBL? Higher? How does the GM decide what amount of gear to let him have?
In our group, the new guy gets WBL, period. If they lag, that is the penalty for coming in late. If they are ahead, the GM messed up.
I have only had a "crafting cohort" in one game I've played/run. Generally speaking we have too many players to make leadership work, but that instance was a small group side game through an AP (carrion crown).
But given the other thread, the question seemed the next logical step.
If everyone else has been given normal WBL then the new guy starts with that. The crafters should get a few more shiny toys compared to non crafters. That is the benefit of their feat selection.
It was in response to DM_Blake.
Maybe I didn't make my point clear enough - I'm assuming the crafting guys are making items for the whole party, not just themselves. Everyone in the party is above WBL because of these feats.
Bringing in a new player and assigning a "penalty" because the other guys have played longer seems a bit harsh.
Everyone is saying, and I agree, that if you roll a new high-level character you shouldn't be able to break WBL by using crafting feats or having a crafting cohort because that's metagaming that you never acquired non-cash wealth in your early adventuring levels, or saved it all for the day you finally began crafting, both of which is silly.
So, is it fair to "penalize" a new player because he's new, force his character to start with less gear and feel weak compared to the existing PCs? If not, do you force him to also have a crafting cohort and metagame the system to avoid the "penalty"? Or do you just let him start with extra gear because you know all the other PCs have extra gear - and if you do, how much extra gear?
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I didn't start the other thread. But this seems the logical next question from the other thread.
The question is if you are creating a new character, and that character has taken leadership, and that cohort has crafting, would that savings be counted as a savings toward gear for WBL (as they would for crafting feats) or not.
It seems as if Ultimate Campaign answers this and other questions.
Maybe I didn't make my point clear enough - I'm assuming the crafting guys are making items for the whole party, not just themselves. Everyone in the party is above WBL because of these feats.
Bringing in a new player and assigning a "penalty" because the other guys have played longer seems a bit harsh.
Everyone is saying, and I agree, that if you roll a new high-level character you shouldn't be able to break WBL by using crafting feats or having a crafting cohort because that's metagaming that you never acquired non-cash wealth in your early adventuring levels, or saved it all for the day you finally began crafting, both of which is silly.
So, is it fair to "penalize" a new player because he's new, force his character to start with less gear and feel weak compared to the existing PCs? If not, do you force him to also have a crafting cohort and metagame the system to avoid the "penalty"? Or do you just let him start with extra gear because you know all the other PCs have extra gear - and if you do, how much extra gear?
What if somebody outfits his group with Magic Arms & Armor, Wondrous Items, and Rings ...
Then creates a new character? Or perhaps less weaselly, has 'issues' come up and leaves the game on a temporary(~) basis?
Also, DM_Blake -- the typical solution to this problem seems to be telling the GM that they aren't spending any of their character creation wealth, hoping they can enter the game with a full sack of gold to use with the party.