Nowhere in the downtime rules does it prohibit you from using followers for ordinary crafting. They just provide an option to use them as Labor, assuming your GM is using the downtime rules, which are also optional. You can easily choose not to do that and use them as ordinary followers.
Nowhere in the downtime rules does it say you can use them for ordinary crafting.
All of the references in the downtime activity of crafting are to the PCs doing any work, with no mention of followers doing so themselves.
The only thing it explicitly permits followers to "do" is be used for Labor.
And they, typically in the form of a follower you assign and pay as a manager or others you organize and equip as teams, can make standard rolls to generate income for the time you were away.
The downtime rules are not a definition of what followers are. All it does is list downtime activities for the downtime system, and it mentions that Leadership followers can be used as labor points for downtime. Your strange interpretation of downtime rules as a restriction against follower activity is absurd. If they wanted to restrict what followers are capable of, they would have simply said so. Instead, it just lists how followers are factored into the downtime system, but at no point does the downtime system demand that everyone only do what is permitted inside the downtime system. By that logic you can't use craft rolls or item creation feats yourself either, since it's not part of the downtime rules. If you want to have your followers to pursue different activities instead of operate by the downtime system, nothing is stopping you from doing that.
First, Aid Another checks can be used to raise Craft results to extreme highs.
First, the end result is that you still have to follow WBL guidelines. While I do confuse where the references are constantly, I'm pretty sure that shows up in the PF stuff somewhere.
WBL is not a hard and fast rule. It's a guideline, one that's often used for balancing, but it's common that in the course of campaigns depending on the amount of treasure and rewards PCs get, they will end up either above or below the projected WBL. And there are plenty of ways to exceed WBL if you try. Ultimate Campaign does present more guidelines on item creation WBL: "As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair, or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats. If you are creating items for other characters in the party, the increased wealth for the other characters should come out of your increased allotment. Not only does this prevent you from skewing the wealth by level for everyone in the party, but it encourages other characters to learn item creation feats." But this is another guideline, a much weaker guideline than WBL itself, and one that I doubt any GM will seriously follow, considering how ridiculous it is. It means a
Negotiator Bard using Fast Talk for discounts and sales is much, much better off than a Wizard who went full item crafter as far as WBL breaking is concerned.
Second, yes, you get a bunch of feats. And you can aid another and cooperate. So after Craft Wondrous Items and Craft Magic Arms and Armor you take . . . Scribe Scroll? Brew Potion? Craft Wand? One other feat I am forgetting? Things like Rings, Rods, and Staves are only craftable at levels above those followers can be. Maybe Craft Construct and cheese in some Eberron homunculus cheddar and start your own von Neumann factory. Other than that, not much to write home about.
Here is the full
list of PF magic item creation feats (there are also non-magic item creation feats). The only one that's really notable there is Craft Construct. A Wizard can use his bonus feat and 5th level feat to get it at level 5. Strictly speaking they can also make rings if they turn them into their Arcane Bond (which lets you craft an item as though you had the relevant feats), but having Wizards gift you their arcane bonds (or retrain their arcane bonds so they can craft items as their arcane bond and then reset the bond into a new item) is probably on the cheesy and dubious side of things.
Oh, and Aid Another is subject to DM imposed limits on how many can help on a project, so once again table variation RAWed out of feasibility.
DM variation is not RAW. DM variation is DM variation.
Pros: They make it explicit that the person taking the Leadership builds the cohort, not the GM, and that the player controls the cohort, not the GM, which is quite handy for settling that debate. Curiously, WBL is not listed, so it's still an open question whether or not the player decides starting items or has to pay out of own pocket for those.
Yes they do. That also sort of makes it implied that the player does not build the followers. So much for the free craft academy there.
And I repeat yet again: my critiques are about Followers; not Cohorts, and to what is possible by RAW.
Pointing out all the things cohorts can explicitly do winds up reinforcing what I keep saying about the rules not letting followers do much of anything.
How the fuck you managed to jump from "Players build their cohorts" to "That implies players don't get to build followers!" is beyond me. That is not how logic works. If you scroll down a bit I discuss some rules that strongly indicate you do get to build your followers the same way you build cohorts if their character sheet comes into play. And even if the GM were to instead decide you don't get to directly build them, if you are running a wizard crafting academy it would be daft for the GM to rule that you do not get wizards and do not get to dictate item creation feats anyway.
Other con: Probably the most ridiculous bit of the guidelines is promoting cohorts acting like jealous lovers who get upset if you spend too much time with other people or animal companions instead of giving them attention. I mean seriously, no. If you are a GM, do not do this. This will detract from the game, not enhance it.
This is mostly a holdover from AD&D days, where PCs could get multiple cohorts (called "henchmen" back then), and their individual relationship to the PCs was intended to be more relevant, with a wonderfully complex loyalty table. Wizard henchmen would not even share spells from their spellbook freely with other PCs in the party, or with their patron.
That's another digression, though it once again highlights the issues with RAW.
This isn't an adequate system of cohort relationships though. As written it just encourages GMs bugging players about not spending enough time with their cohorts, which doesn't really do anything good or make sense given the wide array of personality types and circumstances in which this sort of behavior is profoundly nonsensical. Also, there are a few ways to get additional cohorts in PF, though they come with awkward limitations (the
Daring General Cavalier gives you up to 3 cohorts which are only allowed to take full BAB classes, and
Noble Scion prestige class gives you a second cohort with NPC class levels only that is only supposed to run errands, manage affairs, and perform non-combat tasks for you, which can make for an item creation Adept).
Anyway all this also reminds me that you can also just . . .
. . . do stuff with class ability and feat generated NPCs other than followers.
I know that too and I would not deny it. (Though I would question the rules legality of adding a stat boost to Int of an animal companion, but that is really a whole other topic.)
PF has explicit rules for animal companions of 3 int or higher. It even has an animal companion archetype (precocious companion) which raises animal companion int by 2. There is no limitation against boosting animal companion int anywhere, except for the Awaken spell. So I wouldn't go about inventing a restriction against it. And apes are convenient in that they can use all the item slots regular humanoids can. If you raise an animal companion's int all the way to something like 12 it is very hard for anyone to argue that it is too dumb to craft magic items. And honestly you can have PCs with 5 int (racial penalty to int, some other casting stat) craft magic items fine, so raising your animal companion to 5 or 6 would be enough to put them in the same ballpark, although their modifier to (spell)craft skills is going to suck. Strictly speaking only 3 int is required to be an intelligent creature though.
But you still have a rather stark lack of any direct evidence as to what followers can do.
What you can and cannot do with followers isn't very explicitly listed. Ultimate Campaign suggests that followers should not be directly controlled by players and you shouldn't invest too much effort into building them, but that is for convenience's sake and it doesn't state too much about the rules and limitations regarding followers.
Also, I see that I miswrote the stats for followers.
Technically they get the standard array:
13 12 11 10 9 8
Theoretically they should get the elite array if they have a PC class instead of an NPC class, but there is nothing that actually says that anyway. While not much:
15 14 13 12 10 8
It is still a significant boost of the standard array, producing a whole two +2 modifiers, with a potential for a +3 or a third +2 at 4th level - Leadership Score 17+.
Well, Ultimate Campaign's
Stronghold story feat requires you to staff a stronghold with 100 combat-capable followers "such as fighters or rangers," so we have a direct example that it is reasonable for your followers to all have PC class levels and for you to have a degree of selection over their capabilities.
Ultimate Campaign also says the following on followers:
Follower: Because a follower is much lower level than you, it's generally not worth determining a follower's exact feats and skill ranks, as he would be ineffective against opponents appropriate for your level. In most cases, knowing the follower's name, gender, race, class, level, and profession is sufficient, such as "Lars, male human expert 1, sailor." Since followers lack full stat blocks, the issue of advancing them is irrelevant. If your Leadership score improves, just add new followers rather than advancing existing ones. However, if events require advancing a follower (such as turning a follower into a cohort to replace a dead cohort), use the same guidelines as for cohorts.
So it is assumed that you are not going to be using your followers in any meaningful capacity, so you should generally avoid the labor of statting them all out for convenience's sake, but it also states that if you do use them in a meaningful capacity where their character sheet matters, you should be using the cohort guidelines. And according to the cohort guidelines, you build their class levels, feats, ability score increases, and skill ranks. So it seems you have full freedom to build followers the same way you build cohorts. You are just encouraged to largely keep it simpler than that since drafting and carrying a hundred character sheets gets rather onerous and ridiculous.
So yet again, I know cohorts can do all these awesome things.
I am not addressing what cohorts can do but what followers can do, and how to handle them in regards to strongholds, and by extension any other properties and businesses a PC sets up, whether it be using full 3.5 or PF.
I refer to the OP:
Most basic question; do followers get paid by the PC or are they 'free' and just so what the PC asks from basically hero worship?
Second part of this; if a character has a high leadership score, 24 in this case, and is building or has a stronghold, can those followers be used for the required staff and guards? Would they then have to be paid I'd they were free before?
Not having much luck looking in the books for this answer.
Third question is about income; the independent income from the SBG is a bit fuzzy on where the income takes effect.
It says there is a profit but I'm not sure if, how it's worded, that means all the pay roll is accounted for from that I come (effectively making them free) and you get that 1% on top of everything, or if you have to subtract payroll from that 1%
Those are the questions I am answering, with suggestions for resolution above and beyond the rules.
There is no real resolution to those questions. It depends entirely on the GM, the sort of campaign you are running, the circumstances of your leadership, and how involved you want to be with your followers' lives. The only brightline I can offer is that followers are not hirelings and players shouldn't be made to pay them like hirelings. Beyond that, PF's downtime rules on followers state this: "The Leadership feat can grant you followers—people loyal to you who assist you if they are able. In the downtime system, followers provide additional Influence or Labor to supplement your activities at no cost to you." And in another section of Ultimate Campaign: "Followers can be used like Labor, but aren’t expended like capital because they are loyal to you and don’t leave as soon as an activity is completed." This indicates that you are indeed not paying them under the downtime rules.
