So what can you do with Leadership?

[LordBlade]

I mean, beyond a cohort (which it seems most people turn into a healbot to follow them around)... what useful things can you do with the skill?
What can you do with your followers (if you don't want to use them as cannon fodder)? :p

[BowStreetRunner]

We used it to good effect in an Age of Discovery themed campaign by crewing a ship with the followers. The ship became our mobile base of operations and was always filled with a collection of followers, hirelings, and various allies we acquired along the way. The PC who was captain took good advantage of the rules out of Stormwrack to make sure the crew was capable of keeping the ship...well...ship-shape at all times.

[Bronk]

I mean, beyond a cohort (which it seems most people turn into a healbot to follow them around)... what useful things can you do with the skill?
What can you do with your followers (if you don't want to use them as cannon fodder)? :p

Well, the sky's the limit, as long as the DM allows it.

You could have them all craft, all be merchants, all mercs, form your own spy ring or whatever guild you want. Anything you can think of to do with an ever increasing number of fairly loyal followers.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Nothing you can’t do by just collecting followers normally, without wasting a feat. Unless you want to get into the cheese of your cohort taking Leadership (and so on)

[LordBlade]

Well, I took the feat for RP reasons. Playing a kobold who's out to show the world that we can be proper community leaders, just as good as the humans and elves and such, and aren't just a swarm of fodder. In our campaign we've got a fort built just outside a town, with a mine nearby. So basically the town is full of my followers.

Just wondering what to do with them outside of role playing purposes. Not sure how the crafting things works with them exactly.

[Bronk]

Well, I took the feat for RP reasons. Playing a kobold who's out to show the world that we can be proper community leaders, just as good as the humans and elves and such, and aren't just a swarm of fodder. In our campaign we've got a fort built just outside a town, with a mine nearby. So basically the town is full of my followers.

Just wondering what to do with them outside of role playing purposes. Not sure how the crafting things works with them exactly.

Well, I think just having a functioning, non-evil town is already a great idea as is! Have a bunch of them learn the various profession skills you'd find in a town, like baking, carpentry, and so on, to really wow visitors.

The crafting... just have a bunch of them learn to make something. You could have them make trade goods for you, for sale in markets in other towns, or you could have them learn to make items that are more useful to you personally in game. Either way, they can use the 'aid another' action on each other (or on you, if you craft) to rack up multiple +2 bonuses.

Or, really, the 'aid another' action can be done with most skills, plus combat.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I find they can be useful skirmishers (with or without scout levels) if you arm them alchemically and don't mind the cost. Ideally, you supplement leadership with landlord (Stronghold Builders Guidebook) and use the income from that to offset the cost of arming your minions.

Volley archers are pretty sweet too. Raining arrows on the enemy tends to whittle their health down from a safe distance quite nicely particularly if you've got a bard for your cohort. Heroes of battle has the rules for archery volleys.

For me, personally, I like to make them into a spy network. Divinations are nice and all but nothing beats feet on the ground.

Whatever you do though, make sure you can do it without bogging the game down to a crawl. That's the key thing for -any- form of minion-oriented play style.

[Telonius]

Yeah, "spy network" is a classic one. A few years back when we played Shackled City, I had a character with Leadership. He turned the Lantern Street Orphanage into his Lantern Street Irregulars.

Finding out information is a nice benefit. Being able to spread information is another. A network of followers can be used for propaganda and advertising just as well as espionage.

[Mordaedil]

I planned to take it on my wizard to get a butler to protect me and have magic students I could teach and that could create magic items akin to the stronghold from BG2.

[BWR]

Have a bunch of loyal retainers to take care of your domain for you. Unless you really screw things up they won't betray you, making one thing about running a domain easier.

[LordBlade]

I planned to take it on my wizard to get a butler to protect me and have magic students I could teach and that could create magic items akin to the stronghold from BG2.

How exactly does the crafting magical items thing work with followers? How do you work out XP costs and all that?

[Mordaedil]

How exactly does the crafting magical items thing work with followers? How do you work out XP costs and all that?

As a player, I leave it to my DM. As a DM, don't really consider XP for NPC's to be as tangible as it is for player characters. It is an abstraction after all, not a solid mass you get after you kill monsters and it spills out of them, like souls from Dark Souls. So I mostly would consider the gold you'd invest in them and the days it takes to craft magical items, and consider that these are students in training and they will make mistakes and not get everything right, so I would have the player roll Knowledge Arcana checks for tutoring, and the NPC's would roll spellcraft checks daily for progress.

And because I like the idea of circle magic, but not the implementation, I'd allow several of the students to come together to all make a bigger project and produce a single magical item outside of their levels as if I could use circle magic to determine their casterlevel etc, in order to produce more level-appropriate goods for my player.

Given how many checks they'd have to pass, it would probably take a long time until they could finish them, but it could be done.

I dunno what the rules state about it, I mostly hear about people using leadership to throw fodder at monsters.

[unseenmage]

Carry capacity drag limits and rope.

Build yourself a pyramid. Or rather, have them do it.

[Segev]

You can do this with Leadership, technically, though admittedly Undead Leadership is built for it: model your undead army as followers. It's not loyalty, but your dark power that causes the corpses to rise and serve.

[Tvtyrant]

I mean, beyond a cohort (which it seems most people turn into a healbot to follow them around)... what useful things can you do with the skill?
What can you do with your followers (if you don't want to use them as cannon fodder)? :p

Crew your fleet of spelljammers, your castle, and cathedral. Spelljammers especially can be constructed to provide decent artillery and be difficult to attack the individuals on board.