House rule for the Leadership feat, NPC´s, Kingdom building and downtime

First some basic explanation of the RP element of NPC´s:
Even though I have written in this thread that "the GM controls all of the NPC´s, followers and cohort", I, the GM, go to extreme length to ensure that the none-player characters acts within their OWN interest, and are not influenced by the GM´s personal opinions or feelings, but acts only on my interpretation of how the NPC´s might act, depending on their own personalities. This is very important to me, to ensure that the players feel that the NPC´s act, think and feel according to their own whims. Things that happen to them, and things that have happened to them in the past, influence the way everyone acts. This is a part of the sandbox element, and is one my my greates tools for story progression and world evolution.


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One can easily say that the leadership feat has been both a pleasure and dread to include in D&D for many a GM. I see it as an opportunity for roleplay, and to encourage the players to invest and become more engaged with the game world. It is a totally normal feat, but the way players interpret the feat would require it to be at least an epic feat in my opinion. That´s why I have made a few guidelines: 

Special: Paladins and Clerics receive a +2 class bonus to their leadership score.

Under A Bleeding Sun skrev:

I nearly only use them for the RP purpose of establishing a city or an organization.

I agree to this kind of use. It leans more towards the reason to pick it in the Middle-Earth campaign setting.

Under A Bleeding Sun skrev:

I was playing an undead Lord and my corpse companion was cohort. I basically was just trying to be the most powerful kobold necromancer in all of eberron, and I did a pretty good job of it too. I always had like 5+ minions on the battlefield. It was a lot of fun, but sadly I did not have the longest turns at that table:( And I had so many actions!

This is bad. Combat already takes a long time, and with 5+ separate nonplayer characters it forces the other Player characters to wait even longer for each gimmick to act. Uses for minions usually will involve tasks more suited to the minions level, and not difficult encounters the party faces. Low HD minions cant be expected to survive high level enouncters and aid in any other way than canon fodder leading to their quick demise, hurting the leaders leadership score (which is totally fine). Higher HD minions is possible to recruit/create, but if a player wants minions it could work if they could act on the same initiative, have them deal average damage but rolls to hit etc. Talk with the GM and make it work.

Under A Bleeding Sun skrev:

In both villages I made my cohorts bards, and they were the defacto mayors. I had them pick up minor crafting skills to make us stuff while we were gone, but mostly used them as knowledge fonts. When we'd go and figure out something useful you go and discuss it with the guy with +20 knowledges and see what light he can shed. One of the guys was used outside of his realms a few times (he helped set up a sting and some other things, cause none of us were very talky) but was really more of a side tool for the GM.

1. Minor crafting: Sounds okay.

2. Knowledge fonts: Sure they can aid in such tasks, but what can they really learn from staying in one town coped up inside their homes? It will limit the extent of their knowledge, and ability to help. But. With a evergrowing library they can learn more lore such as history, nobility etc. but they also need input from the outside world to evolve their knowledge of it by experience!

Petty Alchemy skrev:

Leadership is generally banned in my experience, or you have to pick from available NPCs rather than putting out a job ad and sculpting the ideal candidate.
However, the most popular choices are Magic Item Crafter or Band-Aid. Paizo has also added a few archetypes for cohorts, such as Gunner Squire, Herald Squire, Weapon Bearer Squire. Generally these are poor choices

1. "You have to pick from available NPCs"; Yes I concur. Middle-earth is open world RPG so you need to recruit your own followers from what is availible in the timeline the PC is in. By publishing or advertising in public what kind of recruit(s) you want will/might attract individuals that have abilities or the qualities that the player desire. You can also bump into NPC´s during the course of the game and automatically adopt NPC´s as your followers as a product from story developement and the character´s actions.

2. It is not allowed to make gimmick that only suit a mechanical purpose. This is a RPG setting!! But it is of course allowed to advertise what qualities the employer needs, for istance a cartographer, which of course will attract a NPC with the skills of a cartographer.

Jack Assery skrev:

I allow it in my game, although one player wound up destroying one of my games because of that and other regrettable decisions on my part; but I no longer allow players to make their own. The previous mentioned game-wrecker was more of a problem player than that one time, he no longer plays with us. I usually have the players tell me what kind of cohort they'd like, and I do the rest; I also no longer allow PC's to control them either, for power creep reasons. Well the real reason is that during the game that was wrecked by leadership, the player used his control of the cohort to slay party members, as much as he could as this cohort sacrificed himself to give the player a better chance to kill the others. Like I said, wasn't leadership's fault, it was just a tool, and it was my fault for not noticing the bad behavior earlier. After kicking the player, I never had a problem with it, except that I personally dislike GMPC's.

1. I believe the comment speaks for itself, but the GM controls all NPC´s. Even the cohort. Read the intro about basic explanation of the RP element of NPC´s.

137ben skrev:

I allow leadership in games I run. Usually, the cohort complements the abilities of the other PCs. Outside of combat, of course, crafting is a common usage, although it cannot always compete with a PC crafter who is two levels higher and can have higher skill bonuses. If the Leader (or the group as a whole) has their own nation/planet/inhabited plane, the cohort can assist in running it while the party is out adventuring.
In combat, there are so many ways abilities can synergize with each other than almost any role will contribute significantly. Buffer cohort? Great, coordinate your buffs around the party's PC buffer so that you can stack more buffs. Debuffer? Learn debuffs that synergize with the party's abilities. Damage-dealer? A damage dealing cohort that benefits from the party's buffs and BFC is very useful. The action economy is very powerful when utilized properly, and an extra standard action per round is a huge boon.

The main restrictions I have are that
a)You must be able to explain where the cohort came from and how they got to where you are.
b)No cohort or follower can have any version of the Leadership feat themselves.

I am not entirely consistent on who builds the cohort. The player gets some input. Sometimes I'll let the player build it completely, although I may tweak it afterwards. Particularly for a new player, I will give considerable help.
There are considerably fewer ways to abuse player-built cohorts than player-built followers (the biggest offender, of course, is the fact that it is possible to get a leadership score of 21 by 6th level, which is both when 6th level followers become available and the lowest level at which you can take the 3.5 version of leadership. If the player (in 3.5) is allowed to built the followers, they can have their followers learning leadership to get followers with leadership to get followers with leadership....
Nothing like that is possible with cohorts.)
One thing to note that I think is important: Out of combat, I play the cohort. In combat, the player plays the cohort. I trust my players enough not to have their cohorts do anything the cohort wouldn't do (e.g., taking obviously suicidal actions). On the other hand, running combat is very taxing on my attention, and so I want to give control of as many of the characters involved to the players as possible.

1. NPC´s that already excist in the world must be located and convinced to join the PC.
2. Input applied through advertisement in the public or some other way.

Master_Marshmaloow skrev:

My main reasons for banning the feat are that I have too many players (and thus characters) at the table already and I really don't want to slow the game down and my players are really bad about metagaming. Often in prior games with this group when I wasn't full time DM, we had instances where everyone took leadership and people's cohorts could literally read the mind of their leaders and interact in ways that they feasibly could not.

Having a magic item crafter who takes all the crafting feats and allows the party access to all the gear they desire for half price at the cost of only one feat is also a pretty bad idea.

My players also like to cheese things up as much as possible and cohorts create problems when it comes to action economy when the cohort for whatever reason decides their own life is forfeit in favor of buffing their leader.

If you can trust your players not to abuse the feat, and to actually be able to play two characters rather than play a game more akin to WOW or Final Fantasy where the metagame mentality is expected, then go ahead and allow it.

1. The feat is not banned, but Leaderships is supposed to enhance the roleplaying essence of the Middle-earth campaign setting, but also extend the different sources of resources and utility at the PC´s disposal. Every player controls their own character. The GM handles the rest and will make sure the followers act in the leader´s interests as long as they deem it right according to their moral standards.

The characters that you attract using the leadership feat are "living and breathing persons" with their own personality, wishes and desires. Thus the player character can only control them by utilizing their loyalty to them by asking them to perform whatever actions the players want. The cohort or followers will try to follow the players wish according to their own abilities and possibilities, but can decide to leave if they are convinced their leader has strayed to far from his/her path.

https://gamingeveryman.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/190/ Example of how leadership can be handled.




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Coming soon