Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Strogg 05-20-07, 02:20 PM	Hey what are some cool ways to use them and how can i use them to make money like farming and that?
katarl 05-20-07, 03:09 PM	Just profession checks, craft checks and perform checks. 1st level follower, +4 ranks, +2 ability, +2 mw took, +3 mod, thats +11, taking 10 is 21, 10.5gp/week each. Unfortunately, you still must feed them, and shelter them. A better business move is employing magewrights, who add +5 on top of this with magecraft. Farming through dmg2 is difficult to do without high level characters, 1000gp minimum investment, takes several years just to break even. It's a very long term plan. A cohort with fabricate might be better, make checks 3 or 4 times a day, assuming level 10, 13 ranks, +3 ability, +2 mw tools, +5 magecraft, +3 mod, thats +26, take 10, 18gp/time, 54-72gp/day. The system is designed to stop you from making large sums of money this way, it is an adventuring, not a business simulation game. Still, the noble house feat allows you to take all of the profession/craft/perform ranks of everyone in the house (anyone you allow in), half it, and call that a weekly income without cost. Nobles Handbook. I like doing that instead.
Strogg 05-20-07, 08:56 PM	well right now i know i cant make a huge profit but i just at the moment want to reduce the cost a little by making do something and maybe later on have them make me crap and amass an army :D. i have 148 lvl 1s 12 lvl 2s 6 lvl 3s 4 lvl 4s 2 lvl 5s and 2 lvl 6s. now what could i do to basically start a village and that and and reduce the cost for feeding them and that so later on they can become my army and i have a little more cash to use. Now i might take the higher lvls with me on hunts and that and i can have an ecl 10 cohort so any ideas?
Einvaldurinn_mikli 05-20-07, 09:41 PM	Give each one a full time job buying ladders and selling them as two ten foot poles.
GokanSuzuka 05-20-07, 10:01 PM	Use them to crew the airship that your Windwright Captain friend is getting (pretty much) for free!
tyrecian 05-21-07, 06:24 PM	Best uses i have seen so far were twofold. One involved using Human Bards, and the other involved using elf/human fighters. The bards were human giving them an additional feat, making a 1st level bard have 2 feats. They then took Skill focus in both perform and oen knowledge. This meant that "aiding another" with these skills was very nice. The bards were using the "elite array" as it states that it is best used for non-npc classes and therefore could be used for the dude's followers. At higher levels they had +3 to a max of 4, and using the 15 in char and the 14 in int gave them +2 on both checks for a bonus of +9 for lvl1 followers. This meant that they could make money by being in a band, as long as there were 6 followers, or the PC played with them. "Aiding another" allowed them to get up to 25 on a check taking 10. So each day the PC made d6 gold in town. Also " In time, you may come to the attention of noble patrons and develop a national reputation." So that the PCs and the NPC followers were like a localized rock band. Eventually the band was known throughout the planes. It was a very nice system for greasing palms as well, since they were really well known, and they were backed by a high level adventurer to boot. A very useful use of the leadership with the followers. The other character was a paladin, and used his NPC followers to harry. They were all low level fighters, but he had an extraordinarily high Char (i cant remember, but it was above 18) and a fantastic leadership, since he had a henchman since level 1 that he paid and gave raises to (tailorring his PC for leadership). The idea was that he would give his Lieutentant (at the time of start, he was lvl 2) autonomy to travel about and engage in missions using the minions to collect orc ears and such. The band was expensive as hell for the PC to equip initially, but the campaign was such that they got a lot of masterwork gear and such throughout the campaign (was Age of Worms) and were able to equip the NPCs quite well, therby making their CR higher than normal. As the paladin adventured, his cohorts travelled around and did small jobs here and there that were low level in nature, with a minimal need for him to observe or intervene. Eventually they were pulling in some cash, at least enough to maintain their lifestyle and make some money. That was the best for farming, because by the time he was high level, like you with all your followers, they had developed a reputation and were called upon to help all through the countryside. By this time neogitating prices was done with high Char NPCs with high diplomacy and a general attitude of money based in HD of the enemy. It worked out quite well. If you are allowed it, the magic item crafting cohort is also a nice way in which to make money fast. Mainly because they can sell items at a bazarre and make the actual price of the items (they never adventure though, so DM has to be pretty lenient). This method is useful mostly in campaigns where the DM does not want to deal with cohorts, but has not prohibitted the use of them because he iwll allow them as non-adventuring NPCs.
Tyberian 05-21-07, 06:32 PM	If you have money to spare, start a business. I believe the business investment takes care of paying for the employees so you won't have to worry about that. You could make two businesses: a mercenary company and a trade consortium, thus being able to later both build and protect a stronghold.
Strogg 05-21-07, 06:40 PM	how exactly will one start a trade organization or merc one anyway? for the trade i could always have my cohort follow the caravans and such
penchant 05-22-07, 03:50 AM	I have one character with leadership. He is a Warmage / Holy Scourge who has built himself as a Prophet. His followers (all bards or warmages) travel the land proclaiming his name and spreading the Word of the Prophet. I have LOTS of them. Any town I go to, there will be at least one follower there who will A. know the town and will be happy to guide us. B. will have prepared the way for my coming by establishing relations with the churches and working up a crowd and C. will have some handy rumors to send us on our next adventure. Oh and my cohort is a Bard / Evangelist of course!
Strogg 05-23-07, 03:11 PM	what is a formula for calculating weeks pay per follower anyway?
Tyberian 05-23-07, 05:04 PM	how exactly will one start a trade organization or merc one anyway? for the trade i could always have my cohort follow the caravans and such There are rules for running businesses in the DMG2. This gives startup costs and rules for earning money. in general your employees wages are taken care of by the business. Also, in Power of Faerun, there is a merchant prince PrC, good for a cohort. Using the rules in PH2, you could turn your business into an organization and increase your power that way.
penchant 05-23-07, 06:51 PM	what is a formula for calculating weeks pay per follower anyway? Followers, in general, are self supporting. They believe in the cause and are willing to contribute of their own occord... within reason. This is like the volunteer presidential campaigns, and charity drives. Everyone works for free. However, it is also good to fund them with extra cash. If you have MW gear that you aren't using, pass it down the line. Do whatever you can to improve morale from an RP standpoint because most DMs will hold poor RP against you where followers are concerned.
BW0222 05-23-07, 11:02 PM	Strogg, Start off with the fact that followers (DMG p105) Followers don't demand a share of treasure, although they depend on the PC they follow to equip them and keep them fed. Now, if you hire out your followers doing say profession checks, you might get say 8-10gp or so per week (+4 ranks, +2 wisdom, taking a 10 = 16, even with a skill focus and +3 wisdom say 20). Considering that a typical inn stay costs 1gp/day and they might like some drinking money, a new set of clothes every other week, etc. Even if you got them some type of boarding house, you might be able to break even or make a few gold per week off each of them. Assuming you had 20 followers, at say 12th-level, you might make say 40-50gp per week off of them in the best cases. My guess that crafting assistance, performing (say in a threatre), pick pocketting, etc. isn't likely to gain you much more either. Because they don't gain XP, you can't use them for item creation. I'm not sure why someone at those levels would care about 'pocket change' amounts of maybe a few hundred gold per year. You likely have a half-dozen potions in your pouch worth more than they'll ever make in their lifetime. I'm seeing different uses for followers... * Maintaining a stronghold, house, base, business, ship, etc. which you maintain. Cheaper and more loyal than hirelings. * Non-combat adventuring related activities. A group of priests and builders to help out villages you saved. A group of soldiers to patrol the streets. Men to help cart off goods out of the dead dragon's cave. Men to help set-up defenses in a village you are protecting from orc attacks. Folks to deliver messages. * Scouts, spies, and other sources of information. A few friendly members of the city watch, a man who works at the king's court, a fence who can help you keep you informed about goods passing through the docks, etc. As a source of income, I don't see the purpose. Go out and kill are group of ECL 6 ogres (or have your cohort do so) and you'll have gained nearly a thousand gold without really risking it.
NerdNumber1 05-24-07, 09:41 AM	This only works for evil characters that want their very own undead army. Be a cleric/sorcerer mystic thuge(other classes may work too but I believe that the limit of undead you control is based on the caster level of each class individually, if it isn't just go cleric.) Take leadership and undead leadership (libris mortis) Grab a rod of undead mastery (libris mortis, doubles the limit of undead you can control) and a lot of wands of animate dead. Now have all your followers (make them clerics or at least adepts) from leadership use wands of animate dead to get their limit of undead (4 skeletons for level 1s). Using undead leadership get your fill of undead foot soldiers (and check to see if your DM would allow some of the varient skeletons and zombies in the back of libris mortis). Raise/rebuke as many undead as you can control and have fun. Your living followers should be humans with as many corpsecrafter feats as they can manage and you should stock up on such feats yourself. As for an in-game explanation, you say that you are a profit and have started a cult that praises undeath and wishes to spead its influence through force. That restriction on the undead one can control is too represive for my tastes. First the "visionary" (madman) can't get an undead hoard, what next!;)
katarl 05-26-07, 03:00 PM	The best long term way to make money in my view is to buy a 1000gp, 500gp capital farm in the wilderness, and get a 5th level specialist to run it. Invest 500gp in it every year (125 every 3 months) to gain an average +10 profit. Do this for a number of years for quite a lot of money. It's probably the most cost-effective business. Thus, your profits increase by 500gp/month each year, so each year you're gaining 6000gp more than you did last year. I plan to do this as a lich, with necropolitan specialists, raising mushrooms underground. Faerun will be inundated.
Strogg 05-26-07, 05:24 PM	can some type or tell me the rules and everything for a farm?
katarl 05-27-07, 08:36 AM	I'm afraid that would violate copyright, and the CoC, which you agree to when you join. It's in the DMG2.
Strogg 05-27-07, 01:17 PM	that is fine at least i now know what book it is in :D thank you
Grave_Accomplice 05-28-07, 12:15 AM	Some uses we've thougt up: An information network. Provided you can spread the word, you can use them to widen your search for a particular piece of info. Add 1 week for every follower your using. It takes time, but you get a +2 for every follower you use, provided they have a certian rank in the skill (as set by the DM when the attempt is made). The crew of a ship. Our pilot uses his followers as crew and repairmen. An acting troupe. A variation on the first use. For the week, the troupe rolls against the perform check of the person in charge (could be the cohort you know) with a +2 for each performer working that day. That's the troupes earnings. Then the player has to figure out how to use that to cover expenses...
Manic Man 05-28-07, 12:41 PM	The best long term way to make money in my view is to buy a 1000gp, 500gp capital farm in the wilderness, and get a 5th level specialist to run it. I ran the numbers once, the best is a Shop in Town and the second best is a Shop in Rural areas. The wilderness farm although being realtively cheap to set up is very poor at profit making.
katarl 05-29-07, 05:09 AM	I ran the numbers once, the best is a Shop in Town and the second best is a Shop in Rural areas. The wilderness farm although being realtively cheap to set up is very poor at profit making. Lets see: Farm- Wilderness -10 500 Rural -4 2000 Town 0 4000 City +2 8000 Metropolis +4 16000 +10 nets at low risk, 50gp/month growth each year, thats 600gp/year increase for 500gp investment. 10 year plan 1500 gp paid first year +23, +1 sec, 40hrs +2, guild +1, low risk +1, low resource +1, wilderness -10, spec +2 +21, take 10 +31-25= 6 6x5= 30 -10= 20gp/term profit (240) -1260gp loss second year 500 paid +10 on top, +50/term, 240+100 -910 loss third year 500 paid etc. 340 -570 loss fourth year -230 loss fifth year 110 gain sixth year 450 gain seventh year 790 gain eighth year 1130 gain ninth year 1470 gain tenth year 1810 gain, -25% for specialists half share, is about 450, 1360gp profit for 1500 start up. Shop- Wilderness -10 2000 Rural -4 4000 Town 0 8000 City +2 16000 Metropolis 32000 +10 nets at high risk, 500gp/month growth each year, thats 6000gp/year increase for 8000gp investment. However, wilderness start, 500/month growth each year, for 6000gp/year increase for 2000gp. +11, extra specialists x4 +8, +19 (250 cost) +29-25, +4, 200, 50x12 (600 loan) Start up, 2000+1000= 3000 1st year 600 loss 3600 2nd year 400 gain 3rd year 4400 gain 4th year 8400 gain 5th year 12400 gain 6th year 16400 gain 7th year 20400 gain 8th year 24400 gain 9th year 28400 gain 10th year 32400 gain -25%, is about 8100, making 24300gp profit, for 3000 start up The best, therefore is a shop in the wilderness (?). Thats a bullish market for you.