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GameMastery Guide / Player Characters / The Life of a Party / Party Composition

Adjusting for Limitations

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 66
Before a game even begins, players have the opportunity to work with the GM to create the characters that they want to play and that best serve the game. Occasionally, though, a group’s particular mix of character classes leaves it with limiting weaknesses in need of reconciliation. Below are several options to help you address such issues.

Character Adjustment: Sometimes the players can handle the potential problem for you by cannily readjusting magical items, rethinking the group’s tactics, or taking levels in specific classes that help address the party’s needs. While such options have the benefit of allowing the party itself to control every aspect of how its weaknesses are accounted for, buying new equipment is expensive and the leveling process takes time, meaning numerous sessions might pass before a player’s newly adopted techniques or character options actually begin to help.

Cohorts: The Leadership feat gives a character the option to attract subordinates drawn to his personality and legend. Just because that character might be a wizard doesn’t mean he has to attract spellcasting associates; attracting other cohorts gives him a perfect opportunity to balance his own limitations with a whole other set of abilities. In this situation, work with your players to create NPCs that are both valuable to the group and interesting and plausible within the ongoing story.

How cohorts and followers are run in a game warrants discussion before a character simply takes this feat, however. Are cohorts independent entities—meaning NPCs controlled by you as the GM—or simply appendages of the character who hires them? Most GMs prefer to let the player control the tactical and mechanical aspects of the cohort, while maintaining control of the NPC’s personality, loyalties, and mannerisms. This can make for fun and rewarding interplay between the player and the GM, but it’s important to remember that one player running an entire mini-party of his own risks detracting from other players’ chances for participation, and the more cohorts and hirelings a GM must control, the more likely their presence will slow down and complicate the campaign. Before allowing a player to take the Leadership feat you should discuss such concerns with the player and make sure you’re both on the same page regarding how the feat functions, and how to keep a bevy of followers from becoming a burden.

Hirelings: In many fantasy settings, it’s wholly plausible that a group of adventurers might hire porters, guides, mercenaries, or even other adventurers to fulfill any number of needs. See the

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Adjusting for Limitations