How to get 1000 minions?

[qwertyu63]

I have a rather arbitrary goal here today. I want a character who has 1000 minions. I am starting with the Thrallherd class. But that doesn't give me enough minions. How can I get more? I want to do this at the lowest level possible. If it matters, I will be an Evil character.

Thank you in advance.

[Komatik]

Living? Because if not, Rebuke Undead => Command a Shadow => Go to town with Create Spawn cheese. The controllable HD limit is yours, not your Shadow minion's.

[Segev]

Wights are also good for this.

[Hytheter]

What level are we talking? edit: oh, lowest level possible... well, you can ignore this

Leadership stacking (using Leadership to get cohort, cohort takes Leadership, his cohort takes Leadership etc... ) can get you an army, more or less. Then also the 6th level followers of you and your cohorts can take Leadership too. I don't know what the eact numbers would be.

Or if you're getting Epic you can use Epic Leadership to get to 1000 with a leadership score of 39, without stacking leadership.
Or Legendary Commander, then you can do it by level 20 something easy.

Then if you stack Leadership after that, well... It gets a bit silly. :P

[qwertyu63]

Living? Because if not, Rebuke Undead => Command a Shadow => Go to town with Create Spawn cheese. The controllable HD limit is yours, not your Shadow minion's.

Very good idea, and I can use it if nothing else can be done, but I see 2 problems:

1: Don't I need 3 levels in cleric to do that? I can get them, but that delays Thrallherd and the Psion abilities that it would be advancing.

2: I would rather the character not be obviously evil. An army of undead would be rather obivous.

Also, this isn't a problem on this idea, but I need these minions to be sentient.

EDIT:

What level are we talking? edit: oh, lowest level possible... well, you can ignore this

Leadership stacking (using Leadership to get cohort, cohort takes Leadership, his cohort takes Leadership etc... ) can get you an army, more or less. Then also the 6th level followers of you and your cohorts can take Leadership too. I don't know what the eact numbers would be.

Or if you're getting Epic you can use Epic Leadership to get to 1000 with a leadership score of 39, without stacking leadership.
Or Legendary Commander, then you can do it by level 20 something easy.

Then if you stack Leadership after that, well... It gets a bit silly. :P

I could use Leadership stacking, but I get a feeling I would have to dodge books.

[Diovid]

Take the following:

The Leadership feat.
The Extra Cohorts feat (Heroes of Battle).
The Assemble the Horde feat (Dragon Magazine #346).
3 levels of the Orc Warlord prc (Races of Faerûn, also available here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030301a)).

Then boost your leadership score through a high charisma score (and/or a high strength score, if you have the Might Makes Right feat), doing amazing things, various items and various feats (such as the Leader feats from Heroes of Battle and the feats from Dragon Magazine #346).

Of course if you're epic you should take Epic Leadership and Legendary Commander feats.

[Segev]

If you REALLY want to practice your book-dodging skills, have your Psicrystal pick up Hidden Talent, Psicrystal Affinity, and Leadership.

It has as many HD as you do, so it has 6 HD and thus can take Leadership.

Hidden Talent gives it ML 1, allowing it to take Psicrystal Affinity.

It's Psicrystal has as many HD as it does, which means as many HD as you do (6).

Have its Psicrystal take the same feat loadout as yours. Repeat ad nauseum.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Thrallherd chaining should achieve this.Have your thrall be a thrallherd and their thrall be a thrallherd etc.

Each thrallherd with a 25 leadership brings 161 believers to the table after that each successive thrallherd will lose 2 leadership bringing 109, 72, 48, 35, 23, 11, 6, -.

How early we can get 25 leadership and above depends on how far you'll go to optimize Charima. With 18+2 racial+3 venerable+3 level+2 enhancement your level 12 thrall would have a leadership score of 26.

Losing that point from leveling will cost you an extra point when you drop below 12, but at level 15 you can easily have 161 believers each from yourself and 3 thrallthrallherds for 644 and the diminishing returns thrallherds will net you just shy of 300 more, add in the thralls themselves and you're close.

[Vaz]

If you REALLY want to practice your book-dodging skills, have your Psicrystal pick up Hidden Talent, Psicrystal Affinity, and Leadership.
Sadly, you do not have a Manifester Level for the purposes of Psicrystal Affinity; only for purposes of Manifesting the known power.

I think there is a way, though, but I can't remember it; Psicrystal Containment, possibly?

[Segev]

Ah, oh well. Such blatant cheese really shouldn't be used, anyway.


Just how inherently loyal must the minions be? An adventurer could get a fair number just by hiring hirelings, I think, depending on what they were to be used for, but they're just there for the paycheck.

As a Thrallherd, you have or soon will have Psionic Charm. Augmenting that makes it last for days, and also lets you start affecting other things.

Handle Animal will let you train animals to obey you and do tricks. Combine with Psionic Charm for willing trainees that remain trained after it wears off. Useful as bruisers to help enforce your will on lesser minions, if nothing else.

Train some of your moderate-level Believers in Diplomancy, and use Suggestion and Mass Suggestion to get people to sign up for your training courses. Your Believers get the trainees up to Helpful or Fanatic. Your numbers are relatively limitless at this point, so long as you can provide the facilities for your cult following to stay together and keep reinforcing their conditioning.

You can also use Psychic Reformation on even your 1st level Believers to give them all Hidden Talent: Psionic Charm. This could get pricey in exp costs, though. But each one can Charm at least one other person for a short time per day, which can help bring in recruits for more normal means of indoctrination.

[qwertyu63]

Just how inherently loyal must the minions be? An adventurer could get a fair number just by hiring hirelings, I think, depending on what they were to be used for, but they're just there for the paycheck.

As a Thrallherd, you have or soon will have Psionic Charm. Augmenting that makes it last for days, and also lets you start affecting other things.

Handle Animal will let you train animals to obey you and do tricks. Combine with Psionic Charm for willing trainees that remain trained after it wears off. Useful as bruisers to help enforce your will on lesser minions, if nothing else.

Train some of your moderate-level Believers in Diplomancy, and use Suggestion and Mass Suggestion to get people to sign up for your training courses. Your Believers get the trainees up to Helpful or Fanatic. Your numbers are relatively limitless at this point, so long as you can provide the facilities for your cult following to stay together and keep reinforcing their conditioning.

You can also use Psychic Reformation on even your 1st level Believers to give them all Hidden Talent: Psionic Charm. This could get pricey in exp costs, though. But each one can Charm at least one other person for a short time per day, which can help bring in recruits for more normal means of indoctrination.

Ooh... I like this. Calling it a cult is also rather apt, seeing as the character fancies himself a god.

Diplomancing and charming would work to pad up the value without crazy cheese.

I chose the Thrallherd because its minionsbelievers are replaceable if they die, with no loss except for the time it takes the replacements to show up.

[Segev]

You will want to be careful about sacrificing believers with this strategy; the DM might rule the fanatical loyalty from your indoctrination camps is to the Believer diplomancer, and not to you. I would argue that your Believer is deliberately directing the fanaticism to YOU, but the DM might be disagreeable. Talk to him about it.

[qwertyu63]

You will want to be careful about sacrificing believers with this strategy; the DM might rule the fanatical loyalty from your indoctrination camps is to the Believer diplomancer, and not to you. I would argue that your Believer is deliberately directing the fanaticism to YOU, but the DM might be disagreeable. Talk to him about it.

Eh, if I'm using this strategy, I can just sacrifice the fanatical guy instead of the diplomancer. Or I can be the diplomancer myself (it is a Telepath/Thrallherd class skill and I'm already jacking up my charisma score).

[Segev]

And just have your minions Charm people into coming to your tent revival? ;)

[Tyndmyr]

There's an epic feat that boosts cha. Start with a high cha char(magic blooded dw kobold works nicely). Level normally to level 6, take leadership. Pledge self to elder evils, all of them. Chaos shuffle like mad off scrolls. That works for essentially any class because having all the cha boosts the crap outta your leadership score.

Doable at lower levels if you have a higher tolerance for cheese, of course, but getting leadership at the appropriate level keeps the cheese factor to ok, still a little high, but hey.

Oh, and for the inevitible "they're not true dragons", that's mostly irrelevent. Enough uses of PoA solves all concerns there, really.

[Vaz]

PAO does not stack with itself. It is the same spell and as the rules for spell stacking state that the effect would just extend its original duration, not make it permanent.

You would still not be a True Dragon, you'd just have the form of one. This isn't high cheese, it is breaking the rules to do so.

Planar Shepherd or Master Transmogrifist or Master of Many Forms would give you the ability to take a Dusk Giant or Barghests feed ability to gain that HD which could then be Dark Chaos Shuffled.

[qwertyu63]

There's an epic feat that boosts cha. Start with a high cha char(magic blooded dw kobold works nicely). Level normally to level 6, take leadership. Pledge self to elder evils, all of them. Chaos shuffle like mad off scrolls. That works for essentially any class because having all the cha boosts the crap outta your leadership score.

Doable at lower levels if you have a higher tolerance for cheese, of course, but getting leadership at the appropriate level keeps the cheese factor to ok, still a little high, but hey.

Oh, and for the inevitible "they're not true dragons", that's mostly irrelevent. Enough uses of PoA solves all concerns there, really.

Nope, far too cheesy. DSC is too cheesy, getting epic feats pre-epic is too cheesy, pledging to Elder Evils to too cheesy.

[Segev]

I think it safe to say that anything that "sequence-breaks" or "early-enters" is probably too cheesy for this design.

Chaining is border-line, and likely only on the "okay" side when it comes to, say, undead and spawn because of the huge vulnerabilities this introduces should some part of that chain break apart.

I think the best bet is diplomancy plus well-trained "missionaries" to bring people in to hear your great word, and then getting them at LEAST up to "Helpful" from there. Liberal use of Charm will help you miraculously turn around the attitudes of unfriendly audience members.