Considering some of the modifiers that effect your score can vary given time (such as moving around a lot), it would reason that an alignment change is going to be reflected in that score as well. Your leadership score is, in so many ways, a summary of what others think of you and how well you are able to use that to attract followers.
Considering some of the modifiers that effect your score can vary given time (such as moving around a lot), it would reason that an alignment change is going to be reflected in that score as well. Your leadership score is, in so many ways, a summary of what others think of you and how well you are able to use that to attract followers.
^---- Correct, if you change alignment to be one step removed from that of your cohort and your cohort does not also change their alignment, it would affect your Leadership score with a -1 penalty. If you change your alignment to be opposed to that of your cohort, such as Good v Evil or Lawful v Chaotic, the cohort would leave.
Cohort Level: You can attract a cohort of up to this level. Regardless of your Leadership score, you can only recruit a cohort who is two or more levels lower than yourself. The cohort should be equipped with gear appropriate for its level (see Creating NPCs). A cohort can be of any race or class. The cohort’s alignment may not be opposed to your alignment on either the law/chaos or good/evil axis, and you take a –1 penalty to your Leadership score if you recruit a cohort of an alignment different from your own.
Even though it says the word "recruit" that would be a valid RAW argument that allows you to "recruit" a cohort and then change your alignment and have everything be kosher without penalties, but RAI would argue that it means "recruit and keep/retain". Otherwise you could be chaotic evil, recruit a chaotic evil cohort, and then rules-lawyer an argument that allows you to switch your alignment to lawful good and retain a chaotic evil cohort (or retain a cohort who is lawful neutral/neutral good with no penalties), and that's not how Leadership is supposed to work.
TLDR: If you recruit a cohort and then change your alignment and the cohort does not change their alignment to match your own, you will take a negative to your Leadership score, or possibly lose the cohort if you change your alignment to be a diametrically opposed alignment (but you'd still be able to attract an appropriately aligned cohort in the future after this one leaves).