The title of the topic pretty much resumes the question...

In my games, I've really never seen an occasion where a leadership roll needed to be made. I've never taken it as a skill, and neither did my fellow PCs, maybe we don't see the point of it.

What about you ? Anyone of you ever tried to play it Henry V-style, all Shakespeare-ean ? "We few, we happy few"...

For those not familiar with the speech of St-Crispian's day : http://youtube.com/watch?v=hDhjpdvA1FQ . Enjoy.

Take a look at the specializations, though -- tactics seems like it should be important. Unfortunately, like pretty much ALL RPGs, there isn't an easy abstraction for using the Tactics skill. And if you actually have things like "okay, the plan is that you suppress this field and I will flank and blah blah blah" then it's really down to the player's tactical skill. Which is because roleplaying games evolved from miniatures warfare games, which are about tactics (and strategy, I guess).

Anyway here's a little something I am thinking of: make an opposed test between the two teams (group leader plus one per extra member, or just give the bonus only to the larger group; also a bonus of some kind for knowing the area/having a map, being linked in AR, having a "good view" through drones/cameras, etc), and let the net hits on that be used as a weaker version of Group Edge (for example you could only use it for bonus dice, not rerolling, and maybe no exploding sixes). Or instead of edge, each hit is a "point" that you can use to negate some tactical aspect -- move through a suppressed area without getting hit, shoot from cover (once) without penalty, ignore someone else's cover (once), things like that.

Thoughts?

The way I use leadership is that a PC will give up their entire turn to make the leadership test and then everyone that can hear/see that PC gets a number of bonus dice to their skill (usually used as a Tactical advantage). Though it has been used very little, so I can only give very little feedback, but it seems to be working so far.

First of all Leadership is the ability you'll generally use to keep the rest of the team in check. To all the naysayers that say you shouldn't use social skills on other PCs I say that's bullshit. If the Street Sam can pull a gun on me and blow my head off then as the face I better damn well be able to use Negotiation, Con, or Leadership to keep that from happening.

That said, look at the specializations. Persuasion could be useful in keeping your nova-coke junkie off the shit for the night. Morale and Gut Check could help keep things together when low composure characters start to lose it. Tactics and Strategy well... there used to be rules for tactics in 3rd edition but I haven't seen anything in 4th ed, I guess you could use it for bonus combat dice when following a plan. Extra dice on ambush tests come to mind or bonus initiative dice because the team is following a strategy and not having to think so much.... I don't know, these two specializations are kinda vague without the additional rules we used to have.

I've always allowed Leadership to be used as follows. 'Course, no one has ever done so:

If a character with Leadership wishes to enhance the tactical position of his/her team, that character must spend the final complex action of a combat turn to assess the current tactical situation. This complex action includes the distribution of tactical information to teammates. If all teammates have networked their commlinks, there is a +2 dice pool modifier for the Leadership (Tactics) skill. Every hit on such a roll adds one die to each teammate's initiative for both the determining the initiative order and and the initiative roll dice pool.

Example:
Alice, Bob, Chuck, and Donna are in combat. Alice is the tactical leader of the group and wants to try and assist her team in handling the situation. She has three initiative passes and during her final one, she makes a Leadership (Tactics) roll. Her Leadership skill is 4 and her Charisma is 5. She has the Tactics specialization providing her an additional 2 dice. However, their opponents are jamming their matrix communications, so she does not receive an additional +2 for a networked team. Alice rolls her pool of 11 dice getting three hits. This adds three to each member's initiative and allows them to roll three more dice during their initiative rolls in the next turn.

Wow. I was going to suggest pretty much exactly this. I can see why no one would use it, though. Many people would tend to think on an individual level and try to use their last action to "finish the fight" rather than give it up to get a bonus to other people's coolness later. Not everyone would see it that way, of course. That would be an excellent niche to bring back the tactical computer, it could give bonuses to the test and (much more importantly) allow the test to be made as a simple or free action. I was really hoping to see more formalized rules for using leadership and tactics in Arsenal. Now I have to hold out hope for Runner Companion. (if that's the correct name) Although I suppose a tactical system could make an appearance in Unwired, too.

i mostly substitute leadership with heavy weapons or some close combat skill or STR or Bod . . playing Trolls that's a valid tactic . . if that fails i use tactical skills like small unit tactics and other assorted things like that to make them see the error in their ways of plans ^^

Another good place to allow leadership would be as a teamwork test for everyone resisting a fear effect, such as a barghest howl. Possibly it could be used to help mitigate a confusion effect, such as from certain illusions. It could mitigate injury penalties. There are all sorts of cool ways that a good leader screaming "Keep it together, soldier!" could give crunchy effects.

I use Dashifen's rule, but have actually seen it in action

In fact, I have a face player that built his character with this house rule in mind (picked up an extra IP so he could still act during the first pass then roll leadership).

It has made the team very quick in certain situations.. they seem to like it a lot (the team) and the social adept player really enjoys being able to buff the others like that. I guess you have to have the right players to take advantage of it.

As a house rule, Leadership could be used to offset the "try again" penalty, as the leader's speech may inspire the other person.

My face has the whole Influence group, and I used Leadership to get a crowd to back away from a burning building about to collapse, before they all died?

i think the proper place of the leadership skill is in dealing with NPCs. its a vital skill for leading a gang, and helps with a tactical squad. adding a bonus to allies is always a plus.

shadowrun dosent have very many situations where you have a character in command of a unit of NPCs, but it happens from time to time

Nah, in 3rd, there was a section for using it to buff your team. Was in Cannon Companion, I think.

I've mostly used leadership as the skill players used to handle NPC's in a combat/emergency situations. I assume that, unless otherwise stated, all the other PC's are motivated and willing to follow the orders of whoever is currently in charge of the situation. If I did composure tests with an regularity I'd also let leadership add dice to those tests.

Situations where leadership has been used to great effect:
1. Player rallied and quickly organized a bunch of UCAS reservists into getting the hell out of their vehicles and returning fire during an ambush.
2. Players rallied and organized people during a fire to evacuate people and fight the fire.
r
There are a number of other situations where I didn't require a roll but conferred a bonus or allowed something to happen because the character in question had a decent level of leadership and was going about it in a way that I thought was appropriate. I also give extra teamwork dice if more than one player has the skill.

I use Leadership in two situations:

1. Social situation: Boosting morale, delivering a speech and leading people around, being considered and accepted as the leader of the team.
2. Combat situations: Every time the PC wants to coordinate their actions or talk tactics together (you know when they spent half an hour deciding on how to be most effective for their 3 seconds combat turn) the leader rolls Logic+Leadership (tactics). The amount of planification/coordination they can do is based on the following table:

* 0 hit: they can't agree on anything.
* 1 hit: they can use a simple or common tactics that isn't dependent to the situation ("bang and clear").
* 2 hits: they can adapt their tactics to the situation (rather than apply a common tactic), but only with a simple tactic (flanking the enemy).
* 3 hits: they can use complex tactics adapted to the situations.
* 4 hits and more : they can talk as much as they want and get an exact coordinated plan of action.

If the situation evolves into something not planned, they can default to the previous level. For example, if they had 1 hit and face an unexpected situation, they won't be able to apply any tactic. If they had 2 hits, they'd be able to use a common tactic.
This will also impact how much the players can talk with each other.

Never seen Leadership used, but Small Unit Tactics is the bee's knees by the current rules. It's the most overpowered skill in the book by some accounts (the only skill that actually boosts your initiative!)

I think that should be Etiquette, as it's allowed to be used to cover faux pas.

We use Leadership a lot, mostly because of the Specialization - Persuasion. Etiuette is to make nice, or a good impression, but Leadership and specifically that specialization are used whenever you're trying to convince someone to do something. Not like Con, where you're trying to convince someone, but actually get them to do it willingly, not through trickery. So it's one the most commonly used social skill in our games besides Etiquette.

Given that Leadership is a social skill, I wouldn't go so far as to allow it to grant tactical aptitude, but it sure as hell would help with getting people to submit to a person's commands or requests. A specialisation in Strategy or Tactics simply represents an aptitude for phrasing things in the right kind of manner for directing people at those particular levels of organisation (long term or larger groups against short term or smaller component groups). Leadership shouldn't grant tactical aptitude that the player themselves do not possess but should make people more willing to listen to what they do present. Equally, people who don't possess leadership should probably have a harder time to get people to agree to what they want to even if they produce the right circumstantial tactic or strategy. Just as you can't describe your character firing a gun effectively without the skill you shouldn't be able to control a group of people effectively without leadership even if you, as a player, have the right knowledge.

It is my opinion that skills should only cover those bits of your game that you are going to abstract away the details of, otherwise particular player experiences are going to unbalance the game. As it is, tactical knowledge can be somewhat imbalancing, but ensuring that fewer people follow the requests of a tactically capable player unless they happen to have bought the skill to cover the act of commanding effectively will limit this imbalancing factor. Games exist to entertain those involved and allowing people to dominate the spotlight purely by dint of having certain experiences in life would adversely impact the enjoyment of other players.

The most common usage of Leadership that I have seen is with the Commanding Voice Adept Power.

QFT

It's mostly for if you want to pose in the wind with your mullet and headband ties blowing. If you don't roll a good Leadership result people find it laughable, but if you do they suddenly want to bone you and they die a little bit inside.

I agree with that, in a way -- being able to get people to follow your plan doesn't really correlate with having a good plan.

Plus I would say that with some groups tactical things (particularly in combat) will be totally abstracted (Tactics roll give bonuses to initiative and whatnot) and in other groups working out tactics is practically the point of playing (maybe a Tactics roll lets the players discuss their tactics a little, or everyone takes it because it would be cheesy not to).

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any other tactics-type skill, unless it's a Knowledge skill (Lone Star SWAT procedures et al), which would be really cheap point-wise.

I was playing in DTFarstar's game, and we were infiltrating a building inhabited by some nasty mages doing some ritual magic. They were attacking a clinic, that we were supposed to protect. After we reached the basement, we found a elevator shaft , and in it, a bomb. The bomb was set to explode via a cyberware scanner, but was discovered and disarmed by my character. Immediately after we were locked into the shaft by an ork. The troll in the party burst through the shaft door and suprised the ork, and a fight ensued. We killed him, and thus began the debate on what to do with the explosives. Now, unknown to us at the time, the ritual was going on below, but we were all arguing over what to do with said explosives. Keep in mind that we had no idea about the ritual, and our mage of the party was afraid to astrally project, because she had some paranoid delusion that as soon as she did she'd be attacked by spirits or other mages with astral clubs and chains, or something. So, as the resident explosives expert, and given the fact that it was 9 kilos of plastique at force 12, my character decided it was his to keep. The mages idea was to rig the explosives, and set them off in the shaft. Of course, that would have solved the problem, but seeing as how half the party was near death, the paranoid mage had mentioned the idea, and I could think of some other creative uses for the bomb, we decided to leave. The ritual went along according to plan, and The clinic was nearly destroyed. We then had to fight the shedim who took over the dead victims of the attack.

Moral of the story: If the mage had used leadership she could have convinced my character to part ways with the bomb and would have stopped the ritual, and the following carnage at the clinic. Also, we would have spent less time arguing.

Heh, good times.

Chris

Just to chime in: In my barrens game Uzz (the face) once used leadership in order to calm an angry mob about to raid a food truck

That was the only time in the campaign the skill was used though The tactics application seems ok to me, but would probably be used mostly by NPCs. BTW, do you allow leadership to be used long distance? As in an officer direction a Specops team from afar through their comms?

I use Leadership to rally those who failed Composure Tests, whether it's a fellow PC or an NPC who failed the test.

leadership sometimes comes up in things like IVY & CHROME when we need to convince people to follow a plan.

Well, I can tell y'all Leadership's getting a workout over in Fisty's Ancients game. All Commanding Voice rolls, but, hey. They still count, right?