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What's the difference between a cohort and a similarly CRed helpful NPC that accompanies you / stays behind at the castle? Only that the GM decides when the NPC leaves?
Pretty much. That also is the reason players should be able to specify their cohort's design, or at least influence it. They did spend a feat on it.
I have played in a game where I was outshined constantly, and it wasn't terribly fun.
Why were you always opening the door? It seems like you could have replaced your "open door, get hit" role with a Wand of Unseen Servant, whose job involves carrying a scarecrow to the threshold and opening the door. 750gp, 50 encounters are suddenly better for you.
Also, from how you described it, it sounded competitive: Everyone was trying to get kills, nobody was playing the "GOD CASTER" role with party buffs and battlefield control. The play style described also sounds like a game where the casters went nova, resulting in a lot of resting between fights.
If only you had the Leadership feat...
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I have played in a game where I was outshined constantly, and it wasn't terribly fun.Why were you always opening the door? It seems like you could have replaced your "open door, get hit" role with a Wand of Unseen Servant, whose job involves carrying a scarecrow to the threshold and opening the door. 750gp, 50 encounters are suddenly better for you.
Also, from how you described it, it sounded competitive: Everyone was trying to get kills, nobody was playing the "GOD CASTER" role with party buffs and battlefield control. The play style described also sounds like a game where the casters went nova, resulting in a lot of resting between fights.
If only you had the Leadership feat...
For a competitive game, it didn't feel like it. Most everyone (the oracle, sorcerer, many-classed gun-slinging trap guy and ranger) did damage as a secondary feature. They picked it up because control casting proved ineffective for us, skill monkeying only goes so far, and healing isn't always a great tool. We did have a number of buffs, but they helped the archers more than me. Nobody tried to one up each other or rubbed in that they were better at killing things, nobody was being disruptive. In a real game. Where a non-caster got outshined in part due to balance issues.
That said, regardless of the vague line at the end wishing it were an option (it was not) this really doesn't relate to the topic at hand (if leadership being used for guarding and info is OP) except by tangent, so I've said about all I need to on this line of thought.
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Hah, there's still caster martial disparity arguments on these threads.
5th edition destroyed nearly all of those issues (in terms of actual game play).
Spell casters still can do awesome things at high levels that non spell casters can't, but it's not that big a deal for the game play honestly.
Not that I ever had an issue with any of that in my games of Pathfinder.
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Leadership can actually be really helpful if you have an understaffed party. The times I've been in parties with leadership the DM ran the cohort, workingwith the player who picked the feat to build them. I get how it could really cause problems, but the actual experience has generally been pretty benign.
... the most engaging games ... also has some "OMG run away" encounters ...
I happen to love these myself, from both sides of the screen. But, as a GM, I find them very hard to engineer in PF. Unless I am very very careful, it is quite difficult to come up with an opposition team that can beat the PC's yet from which the PC's have even a decent hope of escaping. Scent, teleportation, flying, tracking, shapechanging, scrying, physical movement speed, as well as whole hosts of other magical talents. Anything powerful enough to seriously threaten them, usually has other capabilities that make it nearly impossible for most of the PC's to escape.
The only reliable ways I have been able to manage it are:
- The opposition is dangerous because of positional benefits, so if they change position (chase the PC's) they will lose.
- Incoming waves of moderate enemies.
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... the most engaging games ... also has some "OMG run away" encounters ...I happen to love these myself, from both sides of the screen. But, as a GM, I find them very hard to engineer in PF. Unless I am very very careful, it is quite difficult to come up with an opposition team that can beat the PC's yet from which the PC's have even a decent hope of escaping. Scent, teleportation, flying, tracking, shapechanging, scrying, physical movement speed, as well as whole hosts of other magical talents. Anything powerful enough to seriously threaten them, usually has other capabilities that make it nearly impossible for most of the PC's to escape.
The only reliable ways I have been able to manage it are:
- The opposition is dangerous because of positional benefits, so if they change position (chase the PC's) they will lose.
- Incoming waves of moderate enemies.
You can also do enemies that are locked to locations (either literally, as in they physically can't leave, or effectively, such as guards who will fight butvwill not abandon their post to pursue), enemies that are easily distracted, enemies that are more powerful but unable to keep up with a mounted party...there are a number of ways to do it.
I'm wondering if maybe Leadership should be restricted to those classes that get it as a class feature -- that is, you can't take it as a separate feat, and feats (like Torchbearer) that would have upgraded into Leadership instead stay the way they are originally. (And update those like Battle Herald that if they give you something that modifies Leadership, they instead give you Leadership at that point, unless you get Leadership from another class, in which case the modification kicks in.)
A solution in need of a problem.