Shattered Kingdoms

That nerdy stuff is what this game basically is, just the text base version.

Pfft! You say potatoe I say potato.

Edit: Was being sarcastic before.

My only problem with this idea is...nobody stays like veteran/expert or whatever for very long. 90% of people at least get to Master before they "stop leveling".

While you could name this ability "Leadership", I don't think it bears more than a superficial resemblance to the D&D version. D&D lets you get NPC cohorts that you can have help you while adventuring. This point of the SK system is to strengthen ties between high and low level PCs, regardless of whether or not you normally adventure together.

Also, on the point of that this is supposed to be "public knowledge", personally I don't want it in titles, it'd be ugly(and take up space). I think you could maybe like script the astral watchers(NPCs with the astral boards) to give out this info for coin. Like you could say something to them like "I need info/wtfever" and they'd say "About who?" and you say a name, and they'd be like xxx is Exemplar to Bob and Joe. Or xxx is Cohort to yyy. Or xxx does not have a <wtfever> with anyone.

I think it'd be neat if the range on this was Journeyman1-Master1(so the cohorts can have a "complete character"), if you advance past Master1 you'd be like too learned or wtfever to work under someone like that(and it would be scripted to warn you, if you were a Cohort and attempted to advance past Master1), and maybe make it so that you have to be at least Champ1 to be an Exemplar.

I really like most of the ideas of the initial posting. Just some remarks.

I don't like the being stuck to only one exemplar. I really do like the idea that the pair must reaffirm their exemplar/cohort status, every so often. Whatever that is, 1, 2, 3, or 5 IC years, I don't know.

As a bonus to the exemplar, I would like to see an actual pk advantage. If the cohort is in the same group as his exemplar. It will temporarily raise the cohort's attack/dmg lvls to a status lower than the exemplar. This would only work while attacking someone/group that includes a pc. I know that I don't know how that part of the battle system works but my point is basically make them equal to their class - 1status in everything when it comes to PvP.

For instance, have a rogue exemplar (Champion) and a fighter cohort (Apprentice), if they enter a pvp the fighter would be considered a Master in the terms of combat stats.

That is sort of like..beyond ridiculous, IMO. Sorry. =/

I think what he's asking for is something similar to what City of Heroes had - where you could have your 10th level character play with your friends 40th level character by having them get side-kicked, which raised their effective level to something like 38 (friend's level - 2).

It worked well for that game, so I don't think it's a ridiculous concept. But I question whether it fits our game, as the MMO super-hero genre is very different than what we are going for on SK.

Well considering in SK, when you die, you lose all your equipment, yes that is ridiculous. A GM priest and Apprentice level warrior really should not stand a chance against a single GM warrior.

Give them a boost sure, but something of that magnitude is crazy.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it misses the mark just a bit.

One of the problems SK has is that it's unsatisfying to be a bit player. The game is designed around players with a lot of time to kill. And that makes sense, really. You can't build a decent storyline around characters that meet up once every RL month.

But if you're looking at lowbies with no time to level quickly, why would anyone pick them as a cohort? An exemplar only gets so many cohorts, and he only gets a bonus when they're both in game.

Of course, low-time players isn't what the original concept was trying to solve. But I think it's worth considering if we can't solve both problems at the same time.

Offhand, I'd suggest not limiting the number of cohorts, but also not letting the bonuses stack. Charisma can be included in the size of the bonus.