"You can only breathe fire every couple of seconds, I have so many tiny men that you cannot win."
Leadership is a big enough deal to deserve its own section separate from the other feats sections.
Leadership is an effect that your character either has or they don't. It means that you can attract a cohort and group of followers that are both appropriate to your own level. People can follow you around and be your friend and stuff even without leadership, but having leadership is about being "entitled", in some sense, to having helpers regularly be at your disposal.
If you are 6th level or more you can spend a feat to gain the Leadership trait. Some classes also grant a cohort and/or followers as a class features. Leadership isn't for every sort of game, and so everyone playing should discuss if they want to have leadership be part of the game. Sometimes a group will decide to include either cohorts or followers but not the other, depending on the style that people want. If your class has a leadership component but your group isn't using leadership you should replace that feature with some other sort of effect.
The rules for leadership are basically the same regardless of what your source of leadership is. What changes among the leadership types is the theme of your cohort and followers. More than a single source of leadership doesn't stack, though you can mix and match among your variously themed sources if you like.
Cohorts and Followers can't themselves have leadership.
- Requires: Character Level 6th.
- Benefit: You gain a Cohort (a creature that joins you on adventures, and is generally useful), as well as a selection of other Followers (a group of minions that are too weak for combat, but can help you in other ways). They are generally loyal to you, but if not treated well they will probably abandon you eventually. If your cohort or any followers die then more can be recruited over time, though if you have a reputation of mistreatment then recruiting someone new can take increasingly large amounts of time. Your cohort and followers should generally be thematically linked to your character concept.
When you have a Cohort, that's some sort of single creature with a CR that's 2 less than yours. That could be from actual levels in a PC class, or from being some sort of monster that just naturally has a CR that's high enough.
As you level up your cohort also gets more class levels or additional hit dice so as to keep pace with you. If you have a monster cohort you can advance it either with additional monster hit dice or give it levels in a PC class.
Cohorts should generally not outshine their leader, or anyone else in the group for that matter, so cohorts are best then they've got "support" abilities, such as providing healing, buffs, or being a powerful mount for a PC to ride.
Cohorts always have the Elite Array for stats (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8; modified by race of course) and they get average HP for their level. A cohort based on a monster must keep its normal feats for any monster hit dice it starts with (you can't just replace them all with Combat feats). Skill points can be re-assigned where you like though. Skills and feats gained from advancement above the base form can be assigned as you wish.
Followers are groups of relatively weak creatures that follow your character around and do background tasks for them. They could run a shop, crew a ship, keep your fort defended from low-level threats, enforce your rule within a village, or just be your eyes and ears.
The number of followers that you get is based on your level, as given on the chart below. As there are no standard creatures with a CR of 1.5 or 2.5, use characters with levels in the NPC classes for that. As you can see, CRs above 1 follow a very regular progression, but CRs 1 and 1/2 get slightly more followers than the regular progression would allow.
| Lv | 1/2 | 1 | 1.5 | 2 | 2.5 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 2 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 3 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 4 | 2 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 5 | 2 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 6 | 3 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 8 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 9 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 10 | 12 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 11 | 22 | 11 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 12 | 26 | 13 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - |
| 13 | 36 | 18 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - |
| 14 | 44 | 22 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - |
| 15 | 52 | 26 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - |
| 16 | 58 | 29 | 17 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - |
| 17 | 66 | 33 | 20 | 17 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 18 | 78 | 39 | 22 | 20 | 17 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 19 | 90 | 45 | 25 | 22 | 20 | 17 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| 20 | 102 | 51 | 30 | 25 | 22 | 20 | 17 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 3 |