Leadership Talent

[TippetsTX]

I've been reading thru some of the old threads where the removal of the old 'Followers' talents was being discussed. Some proposed replacing those with a new 'Leadership' talent, but I couldn't find a fully fleshed out proposal for the concept.

I don't have one either, but I have the beginning of an idea that takes it in another direction... what if the purpose of such a talent had nothing to do with gaining followers, but instead allowed the character to temporarily share or bestow the benefits from specific talents they have to others?

[MikMod]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

what if the purpose of such a talent ... allowed the character to temporarily share or bestow the benefits from specific talents they have to others?

Sounds like an excellent spell idea:

Borrow Skill: IQ 12, Enables the Wizard to shift a talent between two people temporarily. All participants must be touching at the moment of transfer. ST 3 to cast, plus 1 per turn.

[Skarg]

Spreading talent abilities is an interesting idea. I'd want to see specific examples of suggestions for how that might work or what the limits would be like.

I tend to think of Leadership mainly in terms of being able to be recognized and treated as a leader. People pay attention to you, are liable to:

* understand and do as you order or suggest, or as you would want them to do
* communicate things you want to know
* understand and align with your goals and methods
* not goof off, space out, do random things, steal stuff, etc
* not withhold information
* be loyal to you

That sort of thing.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by Skarg

I tend to think of Leadership mainly in terms of being able to be recognized and treated as a leader. People pay attention to you...

While I agree with your definition, it's hard to abstract some of those aspects of 'leadership' into system mechanics.

TBH, my inspiration for the 'talent sharing' idea came from the familiar movie and TV trope where the hero inspires and trains a bunch of normal folks to stand up to an imminent threat... the 'battle preparation' montage from The Magnificent Seven, for example.

[larsdangly]

I miss the old followers talents; I wish they'd included some variant of this.

[Skarg]

The old Followers talents might be house-rulable, if someone can figure out a way to refine them in a way they like.

The main problem, it seems to me, other than them standing out as "not really how it would really work" was that the mechanic was too simple in a way that looked massively abusable and so put a huge burden on the GM to figure out what the actual limits were and apply them in spite of what the rules said.

i.e. The rules say you can target pretty much whoever you want, and make a plain IQ roll to convert any NPC into an auxiliary character of yours.

So, y'know, "Hi guildmaster, want to follow this 32-point starting charcter?" [rolls dice] "Looks like you do!" ... "Hi, other super-powerful NPCs, want to be my follower..." ... and even if the GM decides there are limits to who can be made a follower, he then has to come up with what the limits are to that leadership. What can followers be made to do? How generous and suicidal and blindly obedient will they be? All up to the GM to add sensible limits that aren't in the rules.

And a good GM can do it, but the rules don't give any guidance, and it's not a simple subject. I'd be interested to see people try to suggest/describe how they'd handle these.

For our part, we ended up just roleplaying it. We had LOTS of NPC "followers" or more accurately, comrades, companions, allies, friends, patrons, apprentices and proteges, as well as hirelings and less reliable hangers-on. We just handled it all with roleplaying and practically no one had the New Followers let alone the Monster Followers talents.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I miss the old followers talents; I wish they'd included some variant of this.

If you miss them, just put them back in. They certainly add another gamey element to play, which might be a good thing depending on your style of play.