Royal Feat
February 28th, 2011
Leadership is a great responsibility, fraught with all kinds of difficulties and perils. It can have a profound impact on a person's life, drastically changing the way they view the world, and perhaps somewhat obviously, the way the world views them. I am, of course, referring to the feat, Leadership, rather than the general concept of leadership itself (not that that the same doesn't apply). In fact, Leadership (the feat) is such a large topic that we've devoted an entire week to it. Welcome to Leadership Week, everyone.
So, what could be so complicated about a single feat that we would devote a whole week to talking about it? After all, it would be basically inconceivable to devote five entire articles to, say, Power Attack, or Skill Focus. But Leadership is really a lot more than "just a feat." As feats go, it's really pretty extraordinary. So extraordinary, in fact, that, in the "goode auld days" when the game was 3.5 D&D instead of Pathfinder, Leadership wasn't even included in the same book as the other feats. The information was all kept in the Dungeon Master's Guide, like some sort of ancient and forbidden lore, locked away from the greedy and prying eyes of players everywhere, the sole domain of the DM.
And why shouldn't it be, after all? Boiled down and stripped bare, what Leadership really does is create a handful (or, with a high enough leadership score, well over a hundred) new NPCs. And, as everyone knows (and their very name itself suggests), NPCs really aren't the purview of the players. After all, they are NON-player characters. But that isn't the only reason that Leadership was originally banned from the PHB, and that reason is hinted at by one of the few things that the PHB had to say about the feat, which was that you needed to get your DM's permission before taking it.
In theory, of course, the DM has the right to veto just about any feat, class, race, item, spell, or other miscellany he (or she) chooses, so that's not necessarily the most shocking thing in the world. But, on the other hand, not many of these things go so far out of their way to call attention to that fact, especially from a Wizards of the Coast book, let alone the core rules themselves. Generally speaking, that sort of disclaimer is saved for weird variant rules or questionable 3rd-party content (where it's sort of a given that DMs will be wary of the content, anyway. After all, it's from a third party publisher).
Which brings us back to the question: why is Leadership such a big deal? The simplest answer to that is that it's big, complicated, and, assuming that it isn't just brushed aside by a DM who isn't very interested in dealing with it, it's more or less destined to have a huge impact on the flow of the game. Even leaving aside all of the fun roleplaying opportunities and the potential for interaction with those dozens of low-level NPCs, and assuming that the leader in question is content to more or less allow those followers to fade into the background rather than try to wring every last ounce of usefulness out of them (quite an assumption, to my mind), Leadership is still going to have an impact that can be palpably felt in every combat.
The one thing you can pretty much always count on when Leadership is taken is that the player is going to have a cohort. Essentially, at the low, low cost of a single feat, a player can gain an entire extra character, albeit at a slight level penalty (only 2 levels lower, meaning that this NPC is unlikely to be anything to sneeze at). Sure, he comes with only NPC treasure (though, the other side of that coin is that he also comes with his own treasure), and, if your DM is really cruel, he may even be restricted to NPC class levels. In that case, he won't really be able to compete with anyone in your party (which is probably a good thing), but he'll still be a significant addition to that player's power level.
At the very least, then, Leadership provides one player with a lot more resources. They essentially have twice as much manpower as any other player, which can get unfair pretty quick. I can say from personal experience that one of the most annoying things a player can do, from the perspective of another player, is to "hog the game," using up all the play time on their own activities, and one of the worst ways to do that is to have multiple characters. At the very least, it means they take up twice as much time during combat (more, if they try to get some use out of those 6th-level followers…and don't get me started on ballista crews, and similar), and in more extreme circumstances, they may use their cohort as another PC, having him run off on his own individual activities every time the party goes to town. And, of course, if the player and/or DM is interested in all the roleplay opportunities that Leadership provides (that topic will be covered in more depth tomorrow, I'd imagine, being more of a Grave Plots issue than a Dark Designs issue), then that will quickly turn into a huge time-sink, revolving around one player and, in fact, arising out of nothing more than a single feat.
The number one piece of advice that I have to say about Leadership, then, and I really can't stress this enough, as I think it's just about the most important step to have a fulfilling, Leadership-involved game, is to make sure that every player takes it. If possible, I would even "pool" their followers (perhaps not their cohorts) so that each player would have an equal stake in each follower, and they could collaboratively tackle the various trials and tribulations of leadership, rather than each separately managing their own small army of followers. If, for whatever reason, you don't want all of your players to have Leadership (or your players don't want to), one way to keep everyone engaged is to assign some of the NPCs to other players, allowing them to roleplay some of the character's followers, and giving them something to do while the "leader" character is playing with his army of followers.
Of course, those hordes of followers themselves are sometimes a major headache for DMs. Perhaps the idea of an army is just intoxicating, or maybe players are laboring under the logic that because 130-odd half-trained soldiers are usually a more potent force than a single swordsman, no matter how good, it seems that any player with Leadership immediately turns his attention to how to put all those 1st- and 2nd-level NPCs to use (remember those ballista crews I mentioned before?). This, much like the "extra-PC" issue of the cohort, can dramatically warp the power equation of the game, much to the chagrin of DMs.
On the one hand, having to deal with literally hundreds of low-level NPC warriors at the PCs' beck and call can be a frustrating and difficult problem for the DM. On the other, it hardly seems like a good idea to simply deprive the PCs of such a large part of that feat (even if the feat is, really, a little oversized). Ultimately, my recommendation in cases such as this is to find ways for the player's followers to be useful without necessarily turning them into cannon fodder (or cannoneers, for that matter). If the PCs are stationary, this can be as simple as having their followers perform the upkeep of their stronghold. Allow the followers to provide services at a discount, or produce crops, mine minerals, or otherwise generate some kind of small benefit for the PCs.
Of course, instead of creating extra benefits for the followers to provide, you could instead create situations which punish the PC for not using their followers (think of this as using Perception to avoid a trap, rather than to find a secret door to a treasure chamber). For example, if they have a stronghold or keep, perhaps the outlying farms (whose farmers pay them taxes) are regularly attacked by bandits, and they'll face open revolt if they don't have guards out patrolling the roads. And, of course, those guards need food and supplies, which means they'll need wagon trains getting supplies from the town. And if they want their buildings to stay in good repair, they'll need people to actually maintain the place, etc., etc., etc. The same principle can theoretically apply with more mobile PCs, but it usually requires more of a stretch. Generally speaking, though, providing the PCs with problems that require lots of manpower is a good way to reward Leadership-taking players without actually giving them anything extra (as though Leadership itself wasn’t boon enough).
That's all for this week. See you all here same time next week. In the meantime, don’t underestimate the burdens of leadership.