3.5 team tactics

[SamsDisciple]

Hey guys I have a question and I want whatever creative ideas you can give me.
My dm is gonna restart an old campaign so we can continue the story but I lost all my character info when my computer was stolen. My character was an asian themed bard/mindbender and the dm ruled that my eternal charm = more cohorts. So even though that is already super broken he makes me use less gold so any builds relying on items should be scrapped. The actual question now, what are some good team tactics for my horde of cohorts and how should I build them in order to do such tactics? Btw books allowed complete _______, spell compendium must be approved case by case, the necromancy book (forgot its name) and other core. Absolutely no dragon magazine.

[Kallisti]

Have a lot of Sorcerers and Wizards and throw ridiculous numbers of Magic Missiles at any darkness that dares look at you funny?

[SamsDisciple]

While that is fun that would be tactics for low level followers, I am trying to build 4 cohorts that will stay 2 levels lower than me. Initial ideas would be to have a cleric to beef up a couple of fighters and a wizard to AoE and dispel but that is boring and not necessarily working as a team.

[Human Paragon 3]

An interesting question! There's a couple ways to go. One is to use ninjas, rogues, or even experts to act as a spy network for you. If you actually want to use these guys in combat, it's more challenging. I actually ran into a very similar question when I was designing a band of knights for a campaign I was running. I wanted the main knights to have low-level backup through level 1-2 "squires" to fill out the battlefield a bit.

Now a level 1 or 2 guy doesn't have much to offer when it comes to harming higher level monsters, other than as cannon fodder. They miss their attacks and do little damage. Instead, I focused on having them actually help out the knights through their tactics.

I went with fighter. For feats, I gave them combat reflexes, vexing flanker and versatile flanker. This let them flank from any angle and get +4 for flanking. This by itself really mitigitages their crappy BABs and stats.

Then, I gave them reach weapons to maximize their battlefield range. In combat, I had them primarily aid another. By stacking up aid anothers, they can give you or your friends really big bonuses to hit without having to actually hit the bad guys themselves at all. A couple aid anothers plus a flank goes a long way, especially when teamed with a power attacking fighter buddy. Hope this helped!