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The topic really says it all, I noticed that Leadership is missing from the Feats and I just want to say GOOD! Paizo, please save your Diamonds, you don't need to cast Resurrection on this one.
I've NEVER EVER played a game where Leadership did anything other than grossly expand the power and wealth access a PC has to an abusive or disruptive degree. I don't mean to insult people who liked it, and I'm not saying there isn't design space that should be made to allow PCs to recruit Cohorts, but the Leadership Feat is NOT the way to do it, it's always been to powerful, awfully balanced, and a drain on resources such as "Length of a Players Turn" and WLB. A feat that essentially grants the PC a second Character to play (Albeit at a lower level) is simply WAY out of it's league considering how weak Animal Companions, Mounts, and Cohorts in general are now.
Don't try to balance it, don't make it a Rare Feat, don't gate it behind prohibitive Stat/Level/Feat requirements, just let it die and we can all have a nice Wake in it's memory. If we MUST have this kind of thing, please just roll it into an Archetype that has to be invested in over the course of several levels.
Sincerely
-Themetricsystem
You mean you played in games where GMs did NOT ban Leadership?
Dayum. That's rare.
I think it might be okay as a Rare feat, since that would make it explicitly "by GM permission only." I'm of the opinion that Leadership is an everybody or nobody feat. You can't have one or two people in the party with it, it's too overpowered. I wouldn't be sad if it never came back, though.
Might as well be a game mechanic like in old D&Ds. If your adventure needs the party to hire goons and stuff, then either make an unique system around it (Like Ironfang Invasion) or just pay for the low level dudes. If the story warrants an NPC beocming a party member, you're better off just running them and docking XP appropiately.
Being able to choose to take the feat to force this to happen in the game was what was dumb.
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Optional downtime activities to recruit followers/contacts would be cool. But in the Game mastery guide or whatever equivalent, and uncommon so that no one can assume it is available by default.
I like to use something like leadership to boost the narrative impact of martial types, but I never used the printed rules for it. It also requires a game world distrust of magic to restrict it like that, which I assume doesn't fit with Pathfinder's world.
RIP Leadership. Such things should better left for actual role-playing and campaign planning rather than feats or class features, like in AD&D2.
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Players who get followers should do so because it comes up in the course of the game, either these are people we meet in the course of campaign or characters spend downtime putting together an organization.
Like if we want "you've got people" to be a big part of the story we can still do something like the Silver Ravens in Hell's Rebels or the militia in Ironfang Invasion where the mechanical aspects are not tied directly to a character's normal leveling progression.
On one hand, I liked that there were rules for having a loyal follower/assistant.
On the other hand, it was pretty much impossible to balance. Depending on what the GM allowed, the cohort could be anything from a useless load impossible to keep alive to a crafting spellcaster.
So, yeah, maybe a supplement later on suggesting ways and mechanics for cohorts, followers, and similar (semi-permanent summoned Outsider followers as a substitute for Eidolons?), but only after the main system has been ironed out. Not in the core rule book.
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Actually in this system Leadership can work, minions get only limited action and monsters/npc use a different system of progression.
You can eliminate the feeling of having a secondary pc. Balancing it does not seem difficult.
Agree,
I can't imagine DM's face when his 5man party suddenly becomes 10man party.
Usually with 2 tank-bots, 2 heal-bots and 1 craft-bot, so "default" PCs can do "all the cool" stuff in the party.
With leadership a feat there's a sizable number of GMs who won't let you run an organisation without it. Where do I put the stake?
Maked on the fly.
Leadership Feat 7
Downtime, General, Skill
Prerequisite(s): Expert in Diplomacy; You must be leader in a party or have a position of command in a organization.
You use the Make an Impression (activity), as described in diplomacy section, to make an NPC a follower. The NPC must be of your class and have level = your level -5. You must continue to be the leader in a party or have a position of command in a organization in order to keep control over the NPC.
On success that NPC follow your order and get the minion trait.
On critical success the NPC can be of any class.
There is something to fix but it is feasible considering that the follower has only 2 actions and only if you use a verbal action to command him. Limited to your class only to avoid further imbalance.
Reading better among the feats, there is a similar old-Leadership feat, it's called Lasting Coercion but have only a duration of 1 week.
Lasting Coercion Feat 2
General, Skill
Prerequisite(s): Expert in Intimidation
When you succeed or critically succeed at an attempt to Coerce someone, they help you for up to a week or until their task is complete, as determined by the GM.
I have allowed Leadership in my campaigns, and have used it as a player. GM permission is required.
While it can be abused (the stay at home crafting machine), it can also add in a fair bit to the game.
In one campaign, it didn't make sense for my main character to go adventure/fix a problem, but made a lot of sense for the cohort to do so. So the cohort headed out with the group.
In another game, a mostly ranged/mage party, the rogue wanted a flanking buddy. Roleplayed the recruitment, the cohort became the flanking buddy.
Players who get followers should do so because it comes up in the course of the game, either these are people we meet in the course of campaign or characters spend downtime putting together an organization.
Like if we want "you've got people" to be a big part of the story we can still do something like the Silver Ravens in Hell's Rebels or the militia in Ironfang Invasion where the mechanical aspects are not tied directly to a character's normal leveling progression.
My thoughts exactly. I'm loving the NPC followers in Ironfang Invasion but leadership can go die in a fire.
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If Leadership is being removed, it absolutely needs to be replaced with a robust and fun system for players to recruit and form a loyal organization. Fortunately, some of the ground work for such a system has already been established (Downtime from Ultimate Campaign, Recruits from Ironfang Invasion). I also strongly recommend looking at Legendary Games Ultimate Factions for inspiration (built specifically to support Kingmaker and Ultimate Campaign).
My Kingmaker players are having a blast with Leadership. They're having a ton of fun with organizing their followers, seeing a select random few earn prominence throughout the campaign, and having them form the backbone of their respective organization (army, city guard, scouts, spies, business). However, if we had started after we had gotten our hands on UC, Ironfang Invasion, and Ultimate Factions, I would have opted for removing Leadership in exchange for a combination of those systems to recruit their followers in a more organic fashion, and get the players more involved in that process instead of their followers suddenly showing up.
Downtime as a concept is now built in to the core of PF2, so I think that area of the game should be far more developed than the couple of pages we currently have. I was sorely disappointed by how little gameplay was implemented in that section.
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If Leadership is being removed, it absolutely needs to be replaced with a robust and fun system for players to recruit and form a loyal organization. Fortunately, some of the ground work for such a system has already been established (Downtime from Ultimate Campaign, Recruits from Ironfang Invasion). I also strongly recommend looking at Legendary Games Ultimate Factions for inspiration (built specifically to support Kingmaker and Ultimate Campaign).
My Kingmaker players are having a blast with Leadership. They're having a ton of fun with organizing their followers, seeing a select random few earn prominence throughout the campaign, and having them form the backbone of their respective organization (army, city guard, scouts, spies, business). However, if we had started after we had gotten our hands on UC, Ironfang Invasion, and Ultimate Factions, I would have opted for removing Leadership in exchange for a combination of those systems to recruit their followers in a more organic fashion, and get the players more involved in that process instead of their followers suddenly showing up.
Downtime as a concept is now built in to the core of PF2, so I think that area of the game should be far more developed than the couple of pages we currently have. I was sorely disappointed by how little gameplay was implemented in that section.
Once you reach name level, request the local ruler for some land (perhaps a barony) and use your career savings to build a stronghold. You may require to clear all the monsters in a 5 mile radius before it can be constructed safely. Once done, you will automatically attract loyal men-at-arms to live there!
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But being more serious, things like this can really help the martial characters get more control over the story and such. Back then, Wizards got lesser benefits from this mechanic, so I guess they had figure out MvC or something.
Either way, most Paizo APs don't really support characters settling down and attracting followers, but if you're playing old school I'm sure the DM can come up with something.
Leadership should have never been a feat, but an optional subsystem. If it doesn't fit into your campaign it just gets in the way. If it does fit into your campaign and the PC's are expected to have followers and subordinates, it's a feat tax to participate in that aspect of the campaign. Enough campaigns make use of rules along these lines that it's useful to have them, but not as a feat and not as something generally available.
I agree that leadership was difficult to make meaningful without it seeming to be far more powerful than your average feat. Most situations where I've seen, or used the feat, it was either something that all of the players were encouraged to take, something that was given to them for free due to the nature of the campaign, or the party leader/face was encouraged to take it for the benefit of the party.
This easily could equate to a new optional mechanic that could be added to the campaign and be available to all characters to earn cohorts or followers. There could of course be a feat that could be included in such a mechanic which might adjust certain base values.
I agree having a mechanic or variety of mechanics which would help enable/manage a characters ability to do some downtime actions related to building/running businesses, creating and/or running organizations or factions. Or running castles, settlements, kingdoms and the such would be great add-ons to see in the future.
But it makes sense for them to be an add-on so the GM can introduce it if it is appropriate to the setting. And introducing it, it should in theory be available to everyone, so everyone can play a role in some manner in it, presuming they are interested. That way balance is less of a concern.
Similar to how, probably very few Mythic games only had some characters use the Mythic rules. Although I could imagine an interesting story of more experienced companions protecting and training a mythic prodigy, might be an interesting story I might find interesting. If there was going going to be an unequal access to the mechanic, I would expect all the players would need to agree to such a circumstance up front. (a GM OKing one party member buying leadership for the benefit of the Party for instance, I have seen done, and participated in)
Actually, one of the old-old expectations of fighters was they knew how to command a unit of men-at-arms. So a first level fighter was a sergeant, and I think 2-3 was lieutenant and such. It might make sense to have some sort of feat that would allow someone to grant a conditional bonus to attacks to a unit they are commanding. (potentially only affecting NPC/soldier type units)
Such unit feats would/could be similar to teamwork feats were, and could be part of a mass combat supplement, for instance. (which would be a useful supplement before kingdom building)