Building a holy leader in a strange land

[Eisenkrote]

Hey all.

So I'm currently playing in a 3.5 ed D&D game, in the 2e Al Qadim setting. The character I'd like to play is a religious zealot who is seeking to bring his faith to new lands. I'd imagine some sort of build around the Leadership feat would allow me to build a base of followers to my faith. I'd appreciate any advice you could offer to set me in the right direction.

We roll our stats, so I can't guarantee my stat block. Right now the party is at 7th level. Any of the standard books are allowed.

[Helluin]

Divine Bard/Evangelist with maxed out Perform (Oratory)? I get the feeling that it wouldn’t be very effective in combat, though, and your key ability doesn’t become available until lvl. 10 at the earliest.

[tiercel]

Even if you want to go the obvious Cleric route, the right domains can take you a certain amount of the distance, particularly if you are Hextor-ish (say, the Tyranny, Domination, even Charm domains, SpC). If you want more uses of your domain-spell enchantments, the Spontaneous Domain Casting ACF (PHB II) lets you roll that way.

Of course, if you like slinging around enchantments as manifestations of “your god’s will”, that implies you could just go Enchanter or even Beguiler, if you wanted to be a little more subtle in terms of starting up a hidden heretical cult, rather than the more lightning-rod “THE WRATH OF HEXTOR COMPELS YOU!” but it really depends on how you want to work your influence.

Either way, charm monster is very nice for its day/level duration in making fresh minions be only a failed Will save away. Diplomacize/convert them well enough while they are charmed and you may not have to keep re-applying magic.