Tabletop Discussions - Leadership Feat

This is a feat that, in my personal experience gaming in person, not many people seemed to like at all. This is a perception I have seen change depending on who you talk too online, however, and a lot of people seem really fond of this feat, and I don't know why. And while a lot of this applies to both systems mentioned in the title, this will be largely talking about Pathfinder.

To start off with, for anyone unfamiliar with these tabletop systems and how they work, Feats are abilities you can take as you level up that grant you various bonuses. Some are simple and basic such as Dodge, which gives you a +1 Dodge bonus to AC making you harder to hit, some allow you to use new weapons, some affect your skills and how you can use them, and some can even have an effect on spell casting.

Leadership allows you to gain a following of characters based on your charisma as well as other factors, as well as a cohort. Of these, only your cohort can be effectively used in battle, the rest of the characters being far too weak to be of any use, and abusing them can lower your leadership score by a fair amount and weaken the overall use of the feat. For most adventuring purposes, the cohort is the main draw and can be as strong as your level minus two. Leadership being selectable at seventh level, if you are building your character with this in mind you can expect a fifth level cohort.

The first problem I have with this feat lies in not the cohort, but the rest of the followers. Being able to form a following, establish an order, or anything of the like requires you to have a following. A lot of characters may want to have something like this, but I have a problem trying something like that too a feat. The game already has a lot of skills that can be used for something like this, such as Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate. What is to stop someone from using these kinds of skills already available to get a following? You already use these skills all the time to establish connections, get information, and all kinds of things, so why would you lock out getting a following? Having that feat implies you can't do it without getting that feat, it's locking good Roleplaying options behind a feat, and that's not something I really like to do when at all avoidable.

That is a bit of a small issue though, as mentioned above the real draw of Leadership in the game is the Cohort. While not as strong as a PC, Leadership has the potential to outclass pretty much every other feat, and many entire class features which are, typically, suppose to be stronger than a feat. And this is without trying to break the game. For example, let's say your Cohort is a Bard. You know have Bardic Performance to buff the whole party, and all you really need to do is keep the bard out of the line of fire. Even when Bardic Performance runs out, the Bard has a pretty fantastic Spell list and can back you up in ranged combat fairly well without getting into the front lines. In terms of what you can do with this feat, that isn't even bordering on what the feat is capable of. Even behind two levels, a Wizard, Druid, Sorcerer, or Cleric has some incredible spells available to them.

Then there is the issue of NPC companions, and whether or not the DM can control them. I dislike taking control of a players abilities from them, and in general I think it's a bad idea for a DM to control an ally unit in combat. But give it to a player in this case, especially a semi-clever player with an NPC that can cast spells, as a DM you are basically forced to rebuild encounters around the selection of a single feat by a character, because now you have an additional spell list to have to deal with.

The feat is terrible for game balance, it's existence implies it's necessity for things that should be roleplay and skill based, and worse yet in the hands of a new player it has the potential to slow down the pace of combat. It's a feat that I don't think has any place in a game, and is best left out of the game.