The best feat for a cohort

"SeaHen" <seahen123.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b74fed9c-3acd-4e3a-bd50-408a8da1ef29@d62g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>I just thought of the best feat to have a cohort or follower take --
> Leadership.

Dude. Already been done:

<http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.dnd/msg/ad7b4b7cbeeadfb0?>

--
^v^v^Malachias Invictus^v^v^

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the Master of my fate:
I am the Captain of my soul.

from _Invictus_, by William Ernest Henley
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

SeaHen wrote:
> I just thought of the best feat to have a cohort or follower take --
> Leadership.

> The best part is, *you* only have to take the feat once.

Of course, the problem with such hierarchies is that most of the people
aren't actually following _you_, but rather your lieutenants and
sub-lieutenants. So if one of those lieutenants were to be turned
against you he'd subvert a significant chunk of your organization along
with him. And if he's not around right now, his followers wouldn't
necessarily follow your own direct orders.

Seems like this could be an interesting approach for a villain to take.
The heroes would have to map out the tree of loyalties and decide which
is the most vulnerable branch of the organization to attack the root of,
taking into account that the higher up you go the harder the fight will
be and the more directly loyal to the villain the target is.
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

On Mar 6, 8:42 pm, tussock <sc... DeleteThis @clear.net.nz> wrote:
> Brent wrote:
> > SeaHen wrote:
> >> I just thought of the best feat to have a cohort or follower take --
> >> Leadership.
>
> <snip: cohort chain>
>
> >> The best part is, *you* only have to take the feat once.
>
> > My initial reaction is to disallow, citing an obscene loophole. However,
> > the more I think about it, if I were in the situation of DMing this
> > conundrum, I'd be inclined to allow it and burn [...].
>
> No, OK dude, just no. The "infinate" chain has the same basic power
> as a second cohort, which is to say, not much at all. All cohorts must be
> allowed by the DM, if you're suspicious of it the correct thing to do is
> say so.
> Letting a player build their character in a way that's explicitly at
> your discretion and then screwing them for it, that's just wrong. This is
> a game, it's about having fun.
>
> Be more fun. Seriously, it's fun. Fun is good. Trust me, this is
> usenet, no one would mislead you here.
>
> --
> tussock
>
> I'm like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gunna get.

Fun is the reason I'd burn the munchkin who tried this. D&D is for
fun, not for winning. I am a pro-active DM, if you will. Rather than
simply disallowing activities which go against the spirit of the game,
I try to engender the spirit of the game into those who play. That way
we all play as equals, together, on the basis of a mutual
understanding; rather than daddy DM calling the shots for the good of
the helpless and self-destructive players.

The very proposal of implementing an obvious loophole at the chance of
me letting it slide is fundamentally against offensive in two ways.
Firstly, it assumes I am an idiot- that in itself would make me
predisposed to the 'harsh' end of the spectrum. Secondly, and more
importantly, it reveals how broken this player's concept of D&D is.
That disappoints me, more than anything- primarily in myself. If I had
have been successful as a DM, the player would try to assemble an army
in-character, calling on the loyal friends of his cohort and
recruiting amongst mercenaries. To try instead to achieve this through
the meta game is indicative of a kind of rules based entitlement.
Entitlement is the scourge of humanity.

...I can always distill all my problems back to entitlement.
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

Brent wrote:
> SeaHen wrote:

>> I just thought of the best feat to have a cohort or follower take --
>> Leadership.

<snip: cohort chain>
>> The best part is, *you* only have to take the feat once.
>
> My initial reaction is to disallow, citing an obscene loophole. However,
> the more I think about it, if I were in the situation of DMing this
> conundrum, I'd be inclined to allow it and burn [...].

No, OK dude, just no. The "infinate" chain has the same basic power
as a second cohort, which is to say, not much at all. All cohorts must be
allowed by the DM, if you're suspicious of it the correct thing to do is
say so.
Letting a player build their character in a way that's explicitly at
your discretion and then screwing them for it, that's just wrong. This is
a game, it's about having fun.

Be more fun. Seriously, it's fun. Fun is good. Trust me, this is
usenet, no one would mislead you here.

--
tussock

I'm like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gunna get.
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

On Mar 8, 10:52 pm, Allen Wessels <awess....DeleteThis@EXPUNGEpacbell.net> wrote:

>
> Personally I'd explain that Leadership works differently in a follower.  
> It would certainly help in command situations, but followers are loyal
> to their leige.  Either you signed up to be in the leige's retinue or
> you're angling for your own followers.  Pick one.
>
> Your tone speaks volumes.
>
> - Allen

Indeed. Brent is a DM who hates his players.

There are do ways to look at the recursive Leadership.

1) By practicality all the cohorts would not be accompanying the
party. Therefore, the first cohort does and the rest are background
NPC representing the player's business/army/minions/conglomeration/
guild. The player character is the leader of an organization among
many organizations. They are background fluff the DM can use behind
the scenes to represent DM fiat of events happening. The player in
turn can set his own plans in motion to achieve goals. Perhaps he can
send some cohorts on their own adventure because the party can't be at
two places at once and both adventures need to take place. Maybe for
a lark the playing group plays that adventure with the cohorts.

I forget which, but there are some books that discuss factions, not
the Planescape variety, but rather organizations. These organizations
have wealth level and influence level. With the recursive Leadership,
instead of the player character joining one as a 1st level character
moving up the ranks, this character is starting his own.

It's mostly a roleplay function, but there can be some practicality.
If each cohort is a different class, different cohorts can accompany
the character on different adventures for the particular talent
needed. The player just has to accept the lower level of the not his
main cohort.

Also, if there's only one player in the group, recursive Leadership is
a mechanic to justify NPC tag alongs. Because the player paid the
initial feat resource he has more say in their make-up and action than
if the player hadn't and the DM just created some by fiat.

2) The DM sees the recursive Leadership as folly. It will disrupt the
game and be unfair to the other players who aren't taking Leadership
because the player is monopolizing activity to involve all the
cohorts. The DM says it wouldn't work because if the cohort gained
Leadership the cohort would be adventuring for himself and no longer
accompany the player's character. If the player does not accept this
ruling, then the problem is no longer about recursive Leadership but
rather DM-Player relations since the issue is about the DM making a
ruling the player doesn't like.

Instead, Brent wants to throw a hissy-fit because he forgets it's his
campaign but not his game. It's the players' game too. When a player
asks "May I ...?" the Brents of the world say "No" reflexively. The
better DMs of the world say "Let me study it." and mean it. The
eventual answer can still be No.

Gerald Katz
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

On Mar 6, 8:55 am, SeaHen <seahen... RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:
> I just thought of the best feat to have a cohort or follower take --
> Leadership. Think of it: if you're 17th-level, you can get a 15th-
> level cohort, who can in turn get a 13th-level cohort

[...]

> can give you 5 + 8 + 15 + 30 + 40 = 98 lv1 followers, 8 lv2, 3 lv3, 2
> lv4, and 1 lv5 in addition to your own.

Under the RAW, this appears legal. However.

1) The PC doesn't get to order every detail of his cohort. I, as the
DM, am under no obligation to give him a cohort with the Leadership
feat. (I would agree that he could order the cohort to take the feat
later, but that may involve some waiting.)

2) More to the point, if the PC is 17th level, the lower-level
followers and sub-cohorts are not going to be following him into the
dungeon. If they do, they won't live very long. So their utility is
somewhat limited. Also, as has already been pointed out, their
loyalty is to your cohort, or his cohort, not to you. If your cohort
dies or turns coats, whoomph -- all gone.

3) This will stress hell out of each level of "middle management": is
the cohort's obligation to the boss, or to the sub-cohort? If the PC
tells his cohort "never mind rescuing your friend, I need you for this
expedition to the Outer Planes", well, I see a loyalty check coming
up. This can be avoided, but only by the PC chasing around helping
cohorts' cohorts' cohorts' on adventures 10 levels lower that will eat
up time without providing XP.

4) At a meta level, this is a buttload of bookkeeping. Anyone who
wants to keep track of 98 followers is probably not someone you want
to game with.

N.B., this is not a new idea. I've gamed with some serious munchkins,
and one of them came up with this a couple of years back.

The munchkin end of the table batted it around for a few minutes with
minimum input from the GM (me). They pretty quickly decided not to
bother, mostly because of reason #4, but also because they'd tried to
munchkin-game the Leadership feat already without great success. (The
problem with Leadership is that your cohort is always a level or two
lower, which makes him fragile. But if you let him die, your rating
suffers and the next one will be even worse. This means you have to
put a certain amount of attention and effort into keeping your cohort
alive, which is antithetical to the munchkin mindset.)


Waldo
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

On Mar 9, 4:08 pm, Hadsil <forum... RemoveThis @netzero.com> wrote:
> Instead, Brent wants to throw a hissy-fit because he forgets it's his
> campaign but not his game. It's the players' game too. When a player
> asks "May I ...?" the Brents of the world say "No" reflexively. The
> better DMs of the world say "Let me study it." and mean it. The
> eventual answer can still be No.

It's not a hissy fit, nor is it reflexive. Demonise me all you want, I
just don't have time for munchkins in my games. If a player comes to
me with an unusual concept, I won't condescendingly tell them to 'let
me study', I'll study it with them. We'll sit down and work out a way
to include their concept. This kind of sincere exploration is a
wonderful thing. But dishonest conniving and intentional undermining
of the game itself is quite another thing. The difference in
fundamental, one player seeks to make more of the game experience, the
other seeks to demean it.

I will spend weeks creating a martial arts system for a player who
wants it. Hell, I create an entire world to fit their backstory. But
if a pithy little munchkin wants me to 'be reasonable' about him
eroding the game experience, he can piss off. Truth be told, I very
rarely encounter this problem because almost everyone I play with are
mature, creatively engaged geniuses. I can think of only once when I
ever had to negatively reprimand a gamer, he was a first timer so I
went easy on him, and he ended up shaping up to a great player.

I don't see how it makes me a player-hating DemonMaster for simply
disencouraging min-maxing over inclusionary in game development.
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

On Mar 9, 4:36 pm, tussock <sc....RemoveThis@clear.net.nz> wrote:
> And yet, I'm rubber, and you're glue.

This one always used to knock me out of arguments in grade 2. It still
does, albeit for different reasons.
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

Brent wrote:

> Truth be told, I very rarely encounter this problem [...]. I can think
> of only once when I ever had to negatively reprimand a gamer, he was a
> first timer so I went easy on him [...].

So, you just pretend to be a bully on usenet, and IRL have never done
more than tell a newbie how the game works, without being harsh at all.

How special. Welcome back to the real world, though. Try the shrimp.

--
tussock
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort 

Waldo wrote:
> 4) At a meta level, this is a buttload of bookkeeping. Anyone who
> wants to keep track of 98 followers is probably not someone you want
> to game with.

The only reasonable uses I've heard of for massive numbers of followers are:
a) the staff of a stronghold of some kind, where most of them remain
faceless.
b) the basis for some sort of mass-combat game, with the actual number
of soldiers being some small multiple of the number of followers (5 in
the 2 cases I can think of).

neither of which involves huge amounts of bookkeeping. Both concepts
suffer from Leadership giving only one "competent" subordinate but I
suppose a DM interested in non-adventuring cohorts might waive the "one
cohort only" rule.
 >> Stay informed about: The best feat for a cohort