When DH2e was first released, Leadership was a truly abysmal Aptitude. It was tied to one skill, no characteristics and a handful of talents, making it the most narrowly applicable Aptitude in the game.

Now that the three Enemies books have been released and added several new Leadership-based talents into the game, do you find the Aptitude is a tempting choice, or is it still overshadowed by other options?

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PS: In my group, I ruled that Leadership could be used instead of Psyker to reduce the cost of Willpower advances, and tied the Command and Intimidate skills to Leadership instead of Social. Basically, I treated Leadership as "presence" and Social as "manipulation." This house role worked for us and made Leadership a viable choice, though if it is now a strong choice without these changes it may become too powerful.

The few extras tied to Leadership really aren't enough to make it a going concern. With your Houserule....mmmmmaybe worth a shout if you liked the rest of the offered "package" from the Role or Background that granted it, but I still wouldn't go out of my way to get it.

I've tried creating characters with the Leadership aptitude, but they always feel quite crippled by it, from a min-max perspective.

Even with the extra talents across the supplements, for the most part those talents are tied to Inquisitor advances and are generally pretty useless in my opinion. I've personally been allowing talents to be selected from OW to complement the absolutely abysmal options that use leadership in DH2. Your house rule seems to work reasonably well but even then the leadership aptitude is probably still the least useful aptitude in the game.

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PS: In my group, I ruled that Leadership could be used instead of Psyker to reduce the cost of Willpower advances, and tied the Command and Intimidate skills to Leadership instead of Social. Basically, I treated Leadership as "presence" and Social as "manipulation." This house role worked for us and made Leadership a viable choice, though if it is now a strong choice without these changes it may become too powerful.

I think you can do the same with a few talents, such as

- Peer

- Contact Network

- Coordinated Interrogation

- Adamantium Faith

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Provide it as a third possible matching aptitude.

I personally wouldn't allow Leadership to be subbed in for Adamantium Faith (that's not something you 'lead,' it's a part of your Willpower and durability), but the other options are good.

My intention with the house role was as much based on nerfing Social as it was buffing Leadership. In the RAW, a character only needs to pick up Social to get cheaper advances in almost every social skill. This certainly isn't the case with combat-focused characters, and arguably even scholarly characters need both Knowledge and Tech to reach their full potential. This approach makes building a very strong social character a more serious commitment, and simultaneously allows more character backgrounds to provide some measure of social ability. Only a few backgrounds allow you to choose Social, but when you can make a halfway competent social character based off either Leadership or Social skills it allows for more character diversity.

For example, the main social character in our group is a Warrior. He picked up Social and Fellowship aptitudes from his background and home world, giving him access to almost all the social skills he will ever need. Meanwhile, he gets to enjoy the combat prowess that comes from being a Warrior, sacrificing very little despite his heavy investment in social skills. Under this house rule, he at least has to pay extra for Intimidate, making him less of a social powerhouse.

No leadership is not useful.

It is useful for inquisitors, but the elite advancement grants the leadership aptitude...

I might even go as far as suggesting to remove it and replace it with social for the command skill and the four non inquisitorial talents (Contact Network, Halo of Command, Inspiring Aura (enemies beyond), Ceaseless Crusader (sister of battle)).

YMMV.

Personally, I'm more inclined to making Leadership more useful instead of getting rid of it. The dearth of non-combat talents is already plenty bad.

Personally, I'm more inclined to making Leadership more useful instead of getting rid of it. The dearth of non-combat talents is already plenty bad.

I feel the same way. In the games I run, social interactions are generally just as common as combat encounters. The disposition system in the core roles adds some depth to interaction, as it encourages players to identify what conversation tactics will work best against particular NPCs and weigh whether getting immediate results is worth damaging their relations in the long term.

I was very hopeful that the expansion books would both add more leadership (which they did to an extent) ability and I was fully convinced they would re-add most if not all the roleplaying skills and talents. Which as we now know they did not. I love the new system overall with only minor hiccups and personal preferences here and there, but still the biggest problem they have is the removal of almost every roleplaying and investigating skills the original had. Lets hope for a few more supplements to add some of these things back, and hopefully more rules for minions, familiars and respective leadership benfits to them.

Luckily though, house ruling with suffice.

I was very hopeful that the expansion books would both add more leadership (which they did to an extent) ability and I was fully convinced they would re-add most if not all the roleplaying skills and talents. Which as we now know they did not. I love the new system overall with only minor hiccups and personal preferences here and there, but still the biggest problem they have is the removal of almost every roleplaying and investigating skills the original had. Lets hope for a few more supplements to add some of these things back, and hopefully more rules for minions, familiars and respective leadership benfits to them.

Luckily though, house ruling with suffice.

What role playing talents are you referring to specifically? Are there a few talents that you found very helpful that weren't reprinted? If so, I may house rule them in as well.