Army building

[Aolbain]

So, my character (a cleric of Hextor) have been given a 100 recruits to form a unit of religious warriors with. I have 3 levels per solider to play with.
I was planing to just give them all 3 levels of cleric with war and maybe destruction as domains but unfortunately my experience with 3.5 is not the most extensive so I wondered if anyone here had any good advise.

[dantiesilva]

Well If you want Cleric I would throw the strength Domain in as it grants a bonus = to your level 1/day. Also opens up Enlarge person fun at early levels.

Take two flaws be a human and
Extend spell
Persist spell
DMM PErsist spell
Power Attack/Extra turning
Extra turning

Thous minions should have at the very least a +1 in cha meaning 4 turns a day, extra turning adds +4 making you have a total of 8. Or in other words you can walk around with 1 thing on all day, at such a low level it is not that big of a deal, and using PA and a two handed weapons gets you far.

In turn you could have ranged fighters with two flaws
Point Blank shot
Able sniper
Percise shot
Defensive shot
(Human/Stronheart halfing bonus feat) Far shot
Rapid shot

For a more Spartan style feel take those same human fighters and take all the shield feats, away from books at moment but there are a lot. When you are done you will have level 3s with ACs in the 40ish range. Hope this helps you.

I personally would combine all 3 units and have 50 of them being shields, as to make a large shield wall/Phalanx that protects the general area the archers are hiding in with their maxed hide skills. 25 be the clerics and 25 be the archers. Take the ability from Heroes of battle and you are always hitting your opponents with a roll of 15 or lower. Have the clerics be your calvery/Shock troopers that come in to finish off what breaks through your shield wall and call it a day as your archers rain death from behind.

[Silva Stormrage]

Warlock might be a good option as well for ranged troopers. Eldritch Spear or the one that gives 250 ft range would help tremendously.

Dread Necromancer also would be fairly useful if you want to give your troops tomb tainted soul as they would be able to heal everyone and your clerics could spontaneously heal each other.

I would also look for some ToB classes, crusaders would be fitting thematically and power wise and would be better tanks than clerics. Swordsages would be very effective assassins as well.

[Skysaber]

Lawful Evil clerics means you will be commanding undead. Now one unit of 100 3rd level clerics can have 3 units of 100 1HD skeletons acting in support, or one unit of 100 3HD undead. Varieties are nearly limitless, and you take very few casualties when it's not you, or even your clerics, doing the fighting, but their minions.

Best thing about using undead is that armies are normally a logistical nightmare, having to eat, sleep, get paid, etc.

Clerics can Create Food and Water for themselves, be carried in litters by their undead servitors while they sleep to conduct night marches, have minions on guard at all times to negate surprise attacks and ambushes, etc.

An awful lot can be accomplished by an army unit that can march three times as much as other units (being in places the enemy does not expect you to be allows you to pull off surprise attacks and ambushes), does not care if it gets cut off from supply lines, replenishes its own losses from the dead of their enemies, and where living clerics can heal their own wounds, or those of their minions.

And all that is just with basic skeletons.

Buy a single Phylactory of Undead Turning (DMG, 11,000gp, +4 turning level) and a Flametouched Iron Unholy Symbol (Eberron Campaign Setting, 750gp, +1 Turning level) and pass those around the troops, so each cleric gets to command a wight - and wights can create and command their own spawn, so every enemy who falls before you increases the number of your troops.

This can very swiftly get ridiculous.

Of course, a single pebble with a Celestial Brilliance cast on it, and carried over your army's head by an Unseen Servant, would destroy all of your minions utterly in a matter of rounds. But odds are they won't think of that.

[dantiesilva]

And a good cleric with the right feats could just destroy your whole army in a matter of seconds as well as be practical. Tell me at level 3 how are you getting enough money to raise 100HD of undead skeletons? Also animate dead needs you to be up another 2 levels...So still not seeing how this is working out for you Skysaber. A Level 5 character or using summon undead yes, sadly they only last for 3 rounds max without going into a bit of cheese.

If you want the whole undead army best bet is the Dread necro route, has its advantages, but also its disadvantages.

Let us know what books are on the table please and we can narrow down a lot for you.

[Skysaber]

And a good cleric with the right feats could just destroy your whole army in a matter of seconds as well as be practical. Tell me at level 3 how are you getting enough money to raise 100HD of undead skeletons? Also animate dead needs you to be up another 2 levels...So still not seeing how this is working out for you Skysaber.

I'm not denying good clerics could wipe this out swiftly. In fact, I'd even pointed that out in my post.

As for raising skeletons, he is putting together an army. Presumably he has some budget for that, other than class levels to hand out. For the cost of 50 chain shirts he could instead raise 100 skeletons. Heck, the NPC gear value table grants 2,500gp for a third level character. His clerics could have their full amount of skeletons and still be wearing plate armor.

Wights would be even cheaper. Find one, spawn many.

And the commander could be creating skeletons for his underlings to rebuke. They don't have to make their own. The OP did say he was playing a cleric. I would presume he is higher level than his troops.

Besides, it would be a terrible violation of theme for an army of evil clerics not to be accompanied by hordes of undead. I mean, really!:smalltongue: