Uncertainty with cohorts...

Summary:

Dragon cohort feat strange with leadership scores and ecl's

Uncertainty with cohorts...

Psycho9 22 Jun 2013 08:30

Not sure if this is the correct place to ask, but here it goes.

Irthos is going to be lvl 9 (ecl 11) soon, and I was wondering what is the max level cohort he can have if he were to take the dragon cohort feat, seeing as his leadership score would allow lvl 8 char's as base + 3 lvl's more allowed from dragon cohort would technically allow a lvl 11 dragon cohort. Not completely sure what the maximum level dragon cohort he can actually take, because if the original rules were followed the feat would be useless, seeing as the base rules say that the cohort cannot be the same level as the PC themselves…

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The Psychosis is looming, preparing to take over when you least expect it. You should just give in or risk destruction…

Re: Uncertainty with cohorts...

TheMany 22 Jun 2013 09:29

No Cohort can be equal or higher than the character's level. Now I'm not sure if here on BM they will choose to apply that to your ECL instead, but traditionally it's the straight up character's level. LA was built into the point buy here so it should be total class levels in my opinion.

Re: Uncertainty with cohorts...

Psycho9 22 Jun 2013 10:54

No Cohort can be equal or higher than the character's level. Now I'm not sure if here on BM they will choose to apply that to your ECL instead, but traditionally it's the straight up character's level. LA was built into the point buy here so it should be total class levels in my opinion.

Irthos is a special case in that sense due to the fact that not his entire LA was bought off with the PB, which is why his ecl is 2 higher than his total class levels. The main problem I just noticed was that the feat is technically pointless if a standard lvl 9 character with a charisma mod of + 3 can already have a lvl 8 cohort.

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The Psychosis is looming, preparing to take over when you least expect it. You should just give in or risk destruction…

Re: Uncertainty with cohorts...

TheMany 22 Jun 2013 11:18

In my past experiences, LA has to be bought off before you can take any class levels and that the ECL does not work for being 6th level to take Leadership. However that does not mean that taking the feat is pointless. You may not have many followers, but you'd still have a really swell cohort helping you out.

Re: Uncertainty with cohorts...

Psycho9 22 Jun 2013 12:33

Not sure we're talking about the same feats here, I'm talking about the dragon cohort feat which doesn't require leadership.

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The Psychosis is looming, preparing to take over when you least expect it. You should just give in or risk destruction…

Last edited on 22 Jun 2013 12:34 by Psycho9 Show more

Re: Uncertainty with cohorts...

TheMany 22 Jun 2013 12:48

There's two options that I see for Council to decide:

1) As RAW says, you choose only from that table and treat the draconic cohort's ECL as 3 lower than stated in the table, and it's set for good.

or depending if they allow it to scale with the character ->

2) Nearly any feat or class ability that gives you a cohort states that the cohort's ECL/CL cannot be more than 1 less than the character's level even if it would otherwise be higher (such as with Leadership scores saying you get a level 8 cohort but you're level 6 so cohort max becomes 5).

Re: Uncertainty with cohorts...

Psycho9 22 Jun 2013 17:17

The main problem with the second choice would be that feat's like the dragon cohort feat would then be useless. seeing as either way you can just take the same cohort as the person who took leadership, with no other advantages, only the disadvantage of only being able to take one specific type of cohort…

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The Psychosis is looming, preparing to take over when you least expect it. You should just give in or risk destruction…

Re: Uncertainty with cohorts...

TheMany 22 Jun 2013 20:50

Sadly I don't have access to that book right now to look at the table so I can't say which is better. However, it's an additional "leveled" cohort which can be pretty fricking useful to cover things the party might be missing, assist in some crazy ways, or otherwise be totally rocking awesome. Even if it's just the straight-up -3 ECL dragon and doesn't change, if you're creative that's going to be incredibly useful as well even at higher or epic levels when it's combat usefulness declines.