[3.5] Taking Leadership to get 30+ psions with Deja Vu. Best way ever to PO your DM?

[newbDM]

Yesterday my new kobold psion dug a pit trap in front of the entrance to a fortress before a siege took place, then when the enemy managed to open the door (using the knock spell) and began trying to jump over it into the fort one by one, they just kept jumping back.

It was priceless, that is until I ran out of power points...


So this got me thinking, say you took the Leadership feat, maxed out your Cha stat, and gathered nothing but level 1 psions who all had the Deja Vu power. Could there possibly be a better way to PO your DM, and possibly your team mates?

Now I keep getting a scene in my head where when one of the other PCs does something stupid and/or embarrassing (I am imagining one player/PC in particular who always has a rivalry with my PCs...), my PC/psion would yell "Deja!" as he manifests the power while pointing at the PC (Ace Attorney style), followed a second later by the 30+ psion followers doing the same while shouting "Vu!". Statistically, you'd have to fail at least one check...

What are your thoughts on this?


Does anyone know a better method of breaking DMs/other players into tears with psionics? (In a non-optimization way that is)


p.s. The most satisfying part was that it was an attack by nothing but mages and their summoned creatures. I got to taunt them through the whole thing.

[bosssmiley]

What are your thoughts on this?

Does anyone know a better method of breaking DMs/other players into tears with psionics? (In a non-optimization way that is)

Leadership cheese? Fails noism's 1st rule I'm afraid.

The quickest way to bring the game crashing to a halt with psionics is to muddy the water over exactly which of the stupid number of different energy (ray/beam/orb/wave/giant thrusting psi-loinage) power you're using.

edit: link fixed

[Paramour Pink]

Darn it. Stop pissing off the DMs using Leadership. It's a fun feat that no one else can take when it gets a terrible report card for this stuff.

[Wafflecart]

I'm not allowed to use Leadership anymore, and my DM wont give me a good reason why not, all I did was use my minions to found an island nation which I became Prime Minister of after the campaign.

[Flickerdart]

I'm not allowed to use Leadership anymore, and my DM wont give me a good reason why not, all I did was use my minions to found an island nation which I became Prime Minister of after the campaign.

Maybe he just really doesn't like Australia.

[Paramour Pink]

Maybe he just really doesn't like Australia.

Well, this is the only explanation I could think of.

[Jack_Simth]

What are your thoughts on this?

Wrinkle: Nowhere in the description of leadership does it say you get to write up your followers/cohort. The closest it comes is saying "A character can try to attract a cohort of a particular race, class, and alignment" - "try" - no mention of specific powers known, no mention of feats, and no mention of automatic success. They are, however, all NPC's - which means the DM gets to build them and run them. You can *try* to get Psions, that doesn't mean you'll get them. Technically, the rules don't even permit you to try and select based on powers known. You could get 30 psion-1's that know, oh, Bolt, Call to Mind, and Catfall. All of them.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, many big abuses of Leadership that I see usually involve the player thinking that he gets total control over what kinds of cohort/followers he gets, including what classes/feats/spells/powers they have. Now, a really nice DM may allow this so he doesn't have to do a bunch of work for the player, but you can bet he'll do the work once they try to pull something like this. Also, the DM retains veto power on all NPCs (including cohorts and followers), since they all technically are played by the DM.

[newbDM]

Leadership cheese? Fails noism's 1st rule I'm afraid.

The quickest way to bring the game crashing to a halt with psionics is to muddy the water over exactly which of the stupid number of different energy (ray/beam/orb/wave/giant thrusting psi-loinage) power you're using.

Linkie no workie.

I'm not allowed to use Leadership anymore, and my DM wont give me a good reason why not, all I did was use my minions to found an island nation which I became Prime Minister of after the campaign.

That is so awesome. Well done!

Although, it saddens me that you instantly succeeded where I have failed repeatedly with number characters.

Maybe he just really doesn't like Australia.

Well, Wafflecart never said all his followers were stranded convicted criminals.

[KillianHawkeye]

Linkie no workie.

One of the words in the URL was censored by the forum. It's not hard to figure out, though. Hint: Word begins with the letter D.

[Waspinator]

Honestly, 30 of any kind of caster working together is going to be able to achieve stupidly powerful things.

[Assassin89]

I don't really abuse the leadership feat, unless you call getting such a feat before 6th level abuse. My cohort was chosen by the DM, which reduces cheese for cohorts, but not so much for followers.

[Ganurath]

Honestly, 30 of any kind of caster working together is going to be able to achieve stupidly powerful things.

Especially Human Druids with Widen Spell and Easy Metamagic. Create Water Flood!

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Your Leadership followers are "low-level NPCs" who do not gain XP and thus should only have levels in NPC classes, not PC classes. Your only spellcasting option for followers should be Adepts or Magewrights (ECS), unless your DM is negligent enough to let you abuse it.

[...Despicable..]

Your Leadership followers are "low-level NPCs" who do not gain XP and thus should only have levels in NPC classes, not PC classes. Your only spellcasting option for followers should be Adepts or Magewrights (ECS), unless your DM is negligent enough to let you abuse it.

Not quite. That was a 3.0 rule.

I believe the Epic version of the feat, or something like that, was even corrected in the errata to reflect the changes in 3.5.

[Atamasama]

Leadership cheese? Fails noism's 1st rule I'm afraid.

http://tinyurl.com is your friend.

[Waspinator]

Especially Human Druids with Widen Spell and Easy Metamagic. Create Water Flood!

Or, for a more serious example, 30 level 1 Sorcerors who each have a Lesser Orb of X spell could be a serious artillery unit.

[hewhosaysfish]

I remember when I first browsed through the section on Psionics in the SRD, this jumped out at me:

1) Manifest Death Urge
2) Spam Deja Vu until you run out of power points.
3) ???
4) Profit!

I guess, adding in
"2b) Followers spam Deja Vu until they run out of pp, too."
would just make it even more awesome.

[grautry]

Wrinkle: Nowhere in the description of leadership does it say you get to write up your followers/cohort. The closest it comes is saying "A character can try to attract a cohort of a particular race, class, and alignment" - "try" - no mention of specific powers known, no mention of feats, and no mention of automatic success. They are, however, all NPC's - which means the DM gets to build them and run them. You can *try* to get Psions, that doesn't mean you'll get them. Technically, the rules don't even permit you to try and select based on powers known. You could get 30 psion-1's that know, oh, Bolt, Call to Mind, and Catfall. All of them.

While total control over Leadership followers/cohorts by the players is silly(followers and cohorts aren't slaves), so is the idea that a player has little have control over the kind of cohorts/followers he gets. Even if it's RAW that you can, at best, try to attract specific types of followers.

While he won't be able to decide on the precise build, I think it's fairly obvious that if you're say, a wizard, you'll attract apprentices wanting to learn from you. Or if you're a cleric, you'll attract those interested in faith and worship. Druids will attract wilderness-based followers. Martial characters will attract other martial characters. And so on and so forth.

Otherwise you end up in situations where a wizard is equally likely to attract novices to the art of magic as he is to attract a half-orc barbarian. Which simply makes far less sense RP-wise.

So, really, I think that attracting appropriate followers should be default and not a thing that you have to specifically go out and try to do.

[Lapak]

So, really, I think that attracting appropriate followers should be default and not a thing that you have to specifically go out and try to do.

Sure. But 'appropriate' and 'custom-built' have a wide gulf between them. To make the point clear, letting someone have most of his followers be psionic classes is reasonable if the character in question is also a psionic class. Letting him decree that all of them happen to have the same power is not. Letting a non-psionic character take Leadership AND say that all of his followers are psionic AND that they all have chosen one particular power is well outside the boundaries of the feat. It's common-sense thing that eliminates a lot of potential abuses in one fell swoop.

[Darth Stabber]

But leadership does give you a commoner railgun no matter what.

[lesser_minion]

Forgive me if this sounds like a really stupid question - I'm not too experienced in Leadership cheese.

Commoner railgun?

[Kylarra]

Forgive me if this sounds like a really stupid question - I'm not too experienced in Leadership cheese.

Commoner railgun?

It involves your commoners passing a stick down the line an absurdly long distance and then throwing it at something.

[Ascension]

The problem with the commoner railgun is that it requires a fusion of real physics and D&D mechanics to work. Real physics alone breaks it by disallowing the passing of an object that quickly, D&D mechanics break it by not recognizing the object's momentum.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Commoner railgun?

It's just breaking rules, Leadership is just an easy way to do it as a PC. Short version, passing and object to someone else takes a standard action. Have a line of people about a mile long. Have each ready an action to pass the quarterstaff to the next person. Give one a Quarterstaff. Bravo, you just moved an object faster than the speed of light.

[Irreverent Fool]

It involves your commoners passing a stick down the line an absurdly long distance and then throwing it at something.

It goes something like this:
Handing an item to an adjacent character is a move action (or a free action... Either way, though I believe it falls under 'manipulate an item').

Line up a whole ton of commoners.

Commoner A hands object to commoner B, commoner B to commoner C and so on.

The object traveling down the line of commoners travels the distance of the line in the span of one round. One round is 6 seconds. 1056 commoners in 5' squares is one mile of commoners. An item passed down that line would have to have been traveling at 600 mph to have been passed down the line in that time.

Spoiler

Show

1 mile in 6 seconds
10 miles in 60 seconds
10 miles in 1 minute
60 miles in 6 minutes
600 miles in 60 minutes

At this point, the last commoner simply lets the object go and it keeps flying in the same direction until slowed down by gravity, walls, the air, an army of orcs or what have you.

Try it on your DM sometime if you don't like him very much.

Edit: Ninja'd!

On-topic: Leadership does not work that way. Attempts to make it work that way encourage DMs to read the feat closely an realize that right in the description that it mentions something about the feat being entirely optional at the whim of the DM.

About founding island nations: Isn't that what leadership is for?

obnoxious
sig

[monty]

Re: Commoner railgun

...and at the end, it deals damage as an improvised thrown weapon of its size (unless the item in question is a real weapon, in which case it does that damage). Woo-hoo.

[Chronos Flame]

I don't see the Leadership feat as too overpowered. So long as the DM doesn't let you do things like the railgun or anything anyway. Take my main character for example. He currently has enough leadership score to have over 50 followers or a single follower of his level-2. I took the latter, and as a blaster mage I attracted a follower mage who is more of a utility mage, a mystic thuege. I was allowed to build him myself by asking the DM and telling him exactly what I planned for him to be able to do. Because of it we have a few extra buffs a day and RP wise my character has an apprentice which is pretty cool. If I had chosen the 50-60 1st level folowers I would have been able to scale a small city with all of those lesser orb of X or magic missiles. Or have a small army of fighters following me but think about the fist fireball the party is hit with. You lose leadership score when a follower dies while with you so it's not like I can just say "Well I have 50 more now" so that has it's downside too.

[newbDM]

OK, OK, my bad. I messed up big with the interpretation of the Leadership feat.

It seems this is a touchy subject here...

It's just breaking rules, Leadership is just an easy way to do it as a PC. Short version, passing and object to someone else takes a standard action. Have a line of people about a mile long. Have each ready an action to pass the quarterstaff to the next person. Give one a Quarterstaff. Bravo, you just moved an object faster than the speed of light.

Well, not quite. I love the concept, and it would be funny to try pulling on a DM, but I believe light can travel faster than one mile per six seconds.

However, could you possibly pull this off with the party's halfling/gnome/kobolds? Or perhaps an entire party of halflings/gnomes/kobolds?

[newbDM]

Hmm.

Just wondering. Would it be possible to pull this off with hirelings? You know, the followers you actually pay?