Cohort Case

[Lokiyn]

Long Story short, at the moment there is a point of contention about the leadership feat and its modifier feats and its counterparts.
We've reviewed the various leadership threads and the books, and at the moment the option from one side is

"All leadership abilities modify the leadership feat only"
Which means 1 Cohort, and 1 set of followers

and

"All Separate abilities, similar or not, to leadership are not leadership and are tracked separately"
which means multiple cohorts and multiple follower clusters based on the specific abilities.


Example

A Dread Pirate Takes the Leadership Feat, Group A contends that they simply receive followers from leadership feat OR Pirate King [ex], whichever is larger.

Group B Contends that although both abilities reference Table they are unique abilities and are tracked separately.

Similarly with "dragon cohort" and "Leadership"
A.) Contends that Dragon cohort replaces or supplants the normal cohort
B.) contends that Dragon cohort adds a new cohort in addition to the normal leadership cohort.

While i hate going to the boards for something so trivial, it appears that it will take the opinion of anonymous strangers not actually involved in the debate to settle it. Sometimes it takes a third party when either side digs in their heels.

[Cagemarrow]

I would go with the ruling that unless the abilities say that they stack or modify existing abilities, treat them as separate entities. I could easily see a Pirate captain with a loyal Crew (Pirate King) as well as a home port with a set of loyal staff/servants (Leadership). Heck it could be fun to try and keep the items completely separate and as a secret identity thing.

[Silvera]

Agree with treating as separate entities.

[Lokiyn]

Another conundrum cropping up in discussion about the leadership feat is whether or not the feat Epic Leadership Modifies abilities granted by classes and groups that are

as if you had the feat

. (as well as other cohort/follower modifying feats)

My personal stance is that the Epic Leadership modifies the leadership feat alone, and that abilities granted similar to leadership are not in fact, leadership and remain unmodified. One the other hand the case has been made that since many (if not all) of these abilities reference the leadership feat itself, changing your characters leadership feat through epic leadership would also affect those abilities.

For example in the Dread Pirate Prestige class you get a group of pirate/seaman followers that are in addition to leadership, essentially getting you leadership x2. The case has been made that with epic leadership the Dread pirate now gains the epic table to use with his pirate followers. My personal stance on this is that you would most likely need to take 10 levels of "epic Dread pirate" to get an epic version of the class ability.

Similarly its been brought up that with the above logic that "extra followers" would also modify and class features or such that grant a form of pseudo-leadership.

[nijineko]

about the epic, i would say it has to be taken once per type/source of leadership, thus only applies to one sort. i second part of the motion that they need epic levels in what grants a source before they can take epic leadership for it, but i don't think it should have to be all 10 levels, per se. just make them take at least one epic level.

[Lokiyn]

Local Dm has ruled that any abilities that reference leadership for numbers are all affected by feats that modify leadership; I personally feel that is a ruling that is going to lead to excessive inflation of followers, but thats just my opinion.


The reason i think that you more than just a simple one epic level to augment the class abilities is to keep it equivalent in cost to the base ability itself

For example, if you had to take 10 levels in dread pirate to get the followers, you should take 10 levels in epic dread pirate to get epic followers. But again, All in my own opinion of course.

[nijineko]

ah, that is a good point / parallel.