I love stories like The Hobbit where a huge party of would-be heroes go out seeking adventures. I would one day like to run a campaign that is some sort of reflection on that and isn't just focused on one small group of nigh-invulnerable characters (as so many fantasy RPG games seem to be these days). I really never have had the opportunity to run something like this and I think it would be a great experience. But how to work it into D&D 3.5?
In older editions of the game, player characters were allowed to acquire henchmen based on their Charisma scores. In 3.5 we have something similar: the Leadership feat. But something about the Leadership feat has never sat right with me. Perhaps it is the fact that you must devote a cherished character resource (a feat) in order to gather followers. Or maybe I just object to the idea of having only one real henchman (your cohort) and a bunch of glorified hirelings (your followers). Whatever the case, I don't really like Leadership. In the past I have tried various means to reconcile the feat with my distaste for it. In one campaign I granted every character the Leadership feat for free starting at 3rd-level (meaning the player characters could begin training a 1st-level cohort as soon as they reached 3rd-level). But that was not a very satisfying experience. Ultimately, I would like to tie the recruiting of henchmen and other such lackeys into the core rules of the game. But it needs to be a simple system and it also ought to have a basis in the mechanics of the game.
A good many things are calculated in the game using one half of a character's level or hit dice. Especially as one looks at more and more into the later source books for material you can see this rule used, as in the saving throw DC of a dragonfire adept's breath weapon. So let's do away with the Leadership feat, give every player character a Leadership score, and base it on the half-level mechanic. Every character has a Leadership score equal to half his level plus his Charisma modifier (minimum 1); this only applies to the character's natural or inherent Charisma score, not to any bonus he might receive from magic items or temporary boosts such as the eagle's splendor spell (a DM may allow a magic item to count if the character never removes it). Starting at second level (after all a character with henchmen ought to have acquired at least a little prestige), a player character can begin acquiring henchmen (or cohorts, whatever you want to call them). A henchman is a new 1st-level character which you may choose for yourself, but must follow the character creation rules set by the Dungeon Master for the campaign. Furthermore, your total number of henchmen allowed can be no greater than your Leadership score, and DMs may choose to restrict the number of new henchmen to one per level gained with your primary player character based on how he wishes to run his campaign. DMs might also require a little bit of roleplaying (gasp!) or at the very least a DC 10 Leadership check to acquire a new henchman.
Henchmen work mostly like other player characters. However they can never have henchmen of their own. They also gain experience points equal to half the experience points earned by their leader whenever their leader is participating in the same adventure and are likewise only entitled to half a share of the treasure gained. So a player may decide for one adventure to have his primary character sit the adventure out so that his henchman might gain full experience points and treasure for the adventure. However, if a henchman ever reaches enough experience points to equal the experience level of his leader, or his leader dies and is not resurrected, he becomes a full-fledged player character in his own right and may begin acquiring henchmen of his own.
This leads to players developing a stable of characters with which they can choose to play. Thus if a character dies after 1st-level, the player of that character always has henchmen to fall back on, making the death of a character less of a burden for a player and the party. The player already other characters waiting in the wings and doesn't need to create a brand new character from scratch. The DM also does not have the headache of determining how much wealth a brand new character entering the campaign will have or what magic items (if any) he should be allowed; the DM has already decided to allow whatever the henchman has into the campaign. A dead player's wealth and magic items pass on to his henchman as he desires, thus removing another thorny issue that often arises when a player character dies. There is no looting of the bodies of the dead character because his henchmen will receive his treasure. And the player of the dead character gets to keep any truly special items he might have acquired "in the house" so to speak.
I think this would work out brilliantly for a campaign that is friendly to having lots of characters around, especially one with simplified rules (such as I have been discussing already in this blog). I think it also gives players a better sense of attachment to their new primary character should their old primary character die or be required to leave the party for some reason (sometimes a player may lose interest in his primary character and just want him to retire). Obviously since henchmen start out at 1st-level and only gain half experience, they become progressively weaker relative to their leader, but since most henchmen will never become a primary character, this is not so much an issue. (And if you look at the experience table, a henchman will never be that much further behind the primary character than a cohort would; a 10th-level player character's first henchman gained at 2nd-level would be at least 7th-level, for example.) I also love that this rule gives a real tangible benefit to the Charisma score for ALL player characters, as Charisma is often seen as the default dump stat for practically every character who doesn't have Charisma tied to spellcasting (I've even seen paladins dump it or invest very little in it).
And of course none of this keeps a DM from running a four or five man party of superheroes who don't have time for things like henchmen if that is his fancy. This is a take-it-or-leave-it rule for those DMs who want the opportunity to have a large pool of characters in their campaigns even when they have a limited number of players. I imagine this could work out very well for DMs with only two or three players.
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