[Feat] Leadeship variant ; for when your cohort is stronger than you

[Anomander]

The Reverse Cohort Leadership Variant


While it is true that strong leaders usually attract followers weaker than themselves, another very common practice is for the leader to have a champion.
The leader has the will and the goal; and is often weaker than those that would lend their might to his or her service.

This variant allows your PC to have a different kind of relationship with his cohort. Be the young prince/princess on a quest under the king's most valiant knight.
Have a Bronn to your Tyrion or a mountain to your Cercei.


Variant:

Under this leadership variant, everything remains the same except that the PC's character level is reduced by 2 and he gains a cohort of his original character level. The PC then remains 2 character levels under his cohort and the cohort gains experience instead.
Your effective character level is unchanged (treat it as a level adjustment of 2 that cannot be bought off).
This variant removes the feats' requirement for as long as your effective character level is at least 6.
This does not improve the wealth-by-level the cohort has access to when recruited.

Use your effective character level for all matters relating to followers and determining your leadership score.
Any additional cohorts you may gain use your effective character level as well instead of your character level.

Improved Cohort: Your character level becomes one level under your cohort instead of 2.

[oslecamo]

You seem to be confusing character power with physical power.

Yes, the prince(ss) may not be as durable or hard hitting as their bodyguard, but the prince(ss) is gonna have leet charisma skills and inspiring auras and mystical bloodline  powers and other stuff like that. In your fluff examples the cohort just specialized into being a beatstick while the leader has diversified their abilities, meaning they're not as good at direct combat but can do a lot more stuff. And that's why they're the one that gets to order the other around.

Or if you really want to do this, you can just go "Ok, I'll play my cohort as my main character and my main PC as their servant."

[Anomander]

Not a confusion. Well aware that power isn't only beatstick quality and so on. It is really meant to be used to have the master be actually weaker than the bodyguard. The PC does the questing. You could "play the cohort" but if the master dies then your cohort may not really have a reason for doing all its doing since it is only following the dead master. If the cohort dies, the master can attract a new one. There's a difference.
"Ok, I'll play my cohort as my main character and my main PC as their servant." is mechanically what the variant does. Without the variant there are problem. Such as the servant being the one getting the followers or being a leader instead of the supposed master. This variant mostly keeps everything the same, except that who leads is weaker than the one led, which is the desired effect.

Inspired by the many cases of the servant being obviously higher level than the master.

[oslecamo]

See, in those cases, the "servant" is the main character that people want to play, not the "master". Case in point, The Monkey King. He's supposed to be the minion, but since he's basically better than everybody else, he ended up becoming the most popular character of the series, to the point of getting the story named after him. The monkey king is the one that gets more games and movies based on him, not the monk that was technically ordering him around.

Anyway, it's kinda weird that a feat drains you of two levels, in particular when you're using LA as a crutch and that stuff can be bought off.

As for replacement aspect, what kind of lousy servant are you that you won't seek to ressurect your dead master or at least follow his last words? Or just watch over their descendant/sibling that happens to have the same stats? Meanwhile since D&D doesn't really promote bodyguarding abilities, a level-drained leader is the one that's more likely to bite the dust first.

[Nifft]

Who plays the powerful "cohort" character?

Is it the same player? A different player? The DM?

[Anomander]

See, in those cases, the "servant" is the main character that people want to play, not the "master"

Not necessarily at all. What a player may appreciate when playing such a master is mostly the interaction between the two. It removes the need to have the servant played by another PC. Then again, why not?
The monkey king was coincidentally one of the main examples I had in mind when doing this. Wukong may be popular, but people may still prefer to play Xuanzang. If a player wants to play Xuanzang, having Wukong along as a cohort doesn't really work.

Anyway, it's kinda weird that a feat drains you of two levels, in particular when you're using LA as a crutch and that stuff can be bought off.

No you can't. I specified it cannot be.

As for replacement aspect, what kind of lousy servant are you that you won't seek to ressurect your dead master or at least follow his last words?

Assuming resurrection is available in the campaign. Then again, it depends on the relationship between them. A cohort is not necessarily dedicated to that point.

Meanwhile since D&D doesn't really promote bodyguarding abilities, a level-drained leader is the one that's more likely to bite the dust first.

Yep. That's the trade off for a champion that doesn't waste a feat to have a cohort. Better play the weaker master correctly and keep out of harm's way.

Who plays the powerful "cohort" character?
Is it the same player? A different player? The DM?

Same as per the leadership feat, which is usually whichever way it is chosen to work with a given DM.
Some may let the PC choose what the cohort does in battle, but NPC it outside of battle, some let the PC handle it fully, some DMs NPC them fully. A cohort is rarely played by a different player; they usually have a PC of their own. (I've seen it happen. With a familiar too.).

[Nifft]

Okay, so the basic idea is that your PC will always lag behind the party, but you'll have a dedicated (and to some degree disposable) character which keeps pace with the party, and which the DM might control sometimes (but probably not in battle).

That sounds pretty reasonable, if the DM would have been okay with you swapping characters more frequently than average, since it would be pretty easy to model this exact situation by swapping characters regularly -- but making every character you play take Leadership, and all of them happen to have the exact same Cohort.

The only avenue for abuse would be if you want to somehow have a high-Charisma "low-leader" who has several low-Charisma "high-cohorts". But that abuse is easily solved by simply not giving the "high-cohort" a full point buy -- maybe all Cohorts get the Elite Array, or something equally inferior.

[Anomander]

Cohorts indeed do usually get the elite array.

[Nifft]

Cohorts indeed do usually get the elite array.

In that case, this would be 100% okay in my games.