[3.5] Building a Mercenary Group

[soban]

Ok, so I've been doing some thinking that a Thrallherd might make a good mercenary commander. I'm creating him at level 8. First, it does not need to take the Leadership feat, it gets it for free as part of it's level progression. Secondly, while you don't get bonuses, you don't get negatives for followers dying, third losses are replaced within 24 hours. This allows you to take Extra Followers at 6 to double the number of followers you have. I want to build a solid Table of Organization and Equipment.

Organization

Psion 5 (Telepath)
Thrallherd 3

32 point buy

Cha 22 (18+2 Human racial+2 Leveling)

This gives a total of Leadership 17. (5 Psion+6 Thrallherd+6 Charisma)

This gives a total of 60 1st level followers (Private), 6 2nt level followers (Lance), 2 third level followers (Corporal), and 2 fourth level followers (Sargent). 1 7th level cohort. (Master Sargent)

Because of the usefulness of the Teamwork benefits, I'd like to get as much as I can out of them. (However, unfortunately only 8 can be in a single teamwork benefit) To accomplish this I think that a Squad of 10 Privates and a Lance would work well. Basically you have the Lance and seven corporals working together for the teamwork benefit and then 3 specialist privates.

Group Trance, Missile Volley, Search Team, Missile Volley, Snap Out of It, Superior Team Effort, Team Effort, and Team Shield Maneuver are the ones I think might work the best.

Anyway, at the back of HoB there are several templates for various types of soldier and I'm wondering if I can just use that, or if I build a custom one stay fairly close to it.

Equipment

For equipment, no magical items, try to stay within a budget but we also want to assume it is fully equipped.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Extra Followers specifically requires Leadership, and affects your number of followers. Thrallherd is specifically not Leadership, and you specifically get Believers instead of Followers. Extra Followers is incompatible with Thrallherd by RAW, and for good reason. At level 15 you would have a Leadership score of 25 with only Cha 10.

I don't think a pile of 1st level followers would make very good mercenaries. Furthermore, it doesn't say anywhere that you get to pick your followers/believers, you get whatever happens to show up. The classes of those who show up should coincide with the class distribution among the general population. You would only use NPC classes for followers as they're described as low-level NPCs. You'll find on page 139 of the DMG that a given population will be 91% commoners, 5% warriors, 3% experts, and the remaining 1% is split between Aristocrats and Adepts. Note that if you're specifically trying to recruit warriors, you may get a larger percentage of warriors than normal, but there's no guarantee that you'll get anything besides the standard population's class distribution. Plus you have no way of knowing what class each follower has, you can only interact with them in-character to try to learn their capabilities. Followers never gain experience, so they'll never get any better at fighting and you cannot level them up to get them to multiclass.

For a PC, you're better off using those followers to establish and maintain a base of operations. You could possibly use them for information gathering and even espionage, but don't count on any of them being very capable at anything but a mundane profession. If you want an NPC mercenary commander, then you don't need any game mechanics to represent that. Just say he has a great reputation for making mercenaries rich and strong warriors are always anxious to join him.

[soban]

What I want is a PC Mercenary Commander who does not lose number of men if they die in combat. (It's a permanent -2 for every one!)