[RPG] Bring the D&D 3.5e feat Leadership to 5e rules

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I am converting one of my old D&D 3.5e characters to D&D 5e, to use in another campaign. This character had the feat leadership and used it to build a guild. I saw the chapter in the DMG about followers but I wanted to have something more like a table to calculate the amount of followers and cohorts I have, like it was in 3.5e.

Best Answer

Use the D&D 3.5 Leadership feat 'as-is'. D&D 5e doesn't have much in the way of formal mechanics for NPC party members; the major one is an optional loyalty score found on page 93 of the DMG. The general expectation for D&D 5e is that NPC party members are handled in-game through roleplaying.

I will note that looking over the comments on the feat throughout the internet, many players and DMs feel that it is unbalanced in D&D 3.5e.

My opinion is that the the feat is redundant in D&D 5e, and that the heart of having followers is the PC doing the roleplaying in the game to justify having a group of people loyal to them and willing to follow orders even at the risk of death.

The feat's use of a Leadership score is just a formal way of stating a concept that been around since the original release of D&D in 1974: that a PC with sufficient charisma, combined with a high level, attracts followers. D&D 5e reverts more to how older editions handles this: in-game through roleplaying.

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