Pathfinder 1E Building a mercenary company.

[aglondier]

My dwarf fighter/magus is hitting 7th level shortly, and is going to be taking Leadership. We also use the downtime building rules from Ultimate Campaign.
What I want to build is a company of 80-odd dwarven warriors, in such a way as I am not bleeding cash to maintain them.
The downtime building rules is perfect for this. By buying teams of Elite Soldiers, I get 3rd level warriors or fighters who earn me money, rather than having hirelings that I need to continually pay for.

My question here really is, what build of classes, feats and equipment would make for a really flavourful band of elite dwarven soldiers, something equivalent to Achilles' Myrmidons, or Muad'dib and his Fedaykin?

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I think the stereotype is dwarves=tanks, but what I think could be interesting instead would be - again with the Dune reference - having units that are adept in using terrain to their advantage and between that and their dwarven innate toughness being able to punch above their weight.

I'll use an example from Legend of the Five Rings rpg/ccg: there is a House, the Crane, who are politically very strong, have master duelists... but are considered weak militarily. One of their families, the Daidoji, specialize in more of the guerilla tactics and are pretty terrifying to the other houses. They also (illegally) use gunpowder bombs on battlefields where they know an approaching army will camp, and have an archer snipe the explosives from range and take out the army. They will fill in empty ponds and marshes and leave their soldiers basically in the water to attack at night... ninja stuff, yknow? And then they use their political capital to downplay these rumors of illegality.

 

[Alzrius]

Not to be a downer, but the listing for elite soldiers specifies their class and equipment: "An Elite Soldiers team consists of 3rd-level warriors (NPC Codex 267), each wearing a chain shirt or banded mail and using a guisarme, a halberd, or a heavy steel shield and a shortspear."

Now, you can absolutely set their race, and switch around their feats, but in terms of classes and equipment, those are set, short of you supplying the out-of-pocket expenses for them to buy new gear (or, I suppose, retrain their class levels).

 

[aglondier]

Happy to re-equip and retrain in order to get the elite unit i want, I just need ideas for a suitably impressive build.

 

[Tonguez]

Not to be a downer, but the listing for elite soldiers specifies their class and equipment: "An Elite Soldiers team consists of 3rd-level warriors (NPC Codex 267), each wearing a chain shirt or banded mail and using a guisarme, a halberd, or a heavy steel shield and a shortspear."

Now, you can absolutely set their race, and switch around their feats, but in terms of classes and equipment, those are set, short of you supplying the out-of-pocket expenses for them to buy new gear (or, I suppose, retrain their class levels).

Leadership feat allows any class however, so it looks like the OP is taking that and then defining them via the building rules. They’d need a Leadership score of at least 20 to get level 3 followers though, so not sure whats happening there.

personally I’d go with cavalry archers (mounted on goats), maybe a couple of apprentices since OP is a magus. Robbers for seige work and a couple of Lackeys too. Being dwarfs a couple of craftsman blacksmiths works too

 

[aglondier]

I am using both the Leadership cohort and followers, and, the downtime building teams.
The downtime teams are basic level 1 or 3 warriors when you buy them. I plan to retrain them into an elite unit. Which is what I am here looking for, ideas for class/feat/skill/equipment combos that punch above their weight class. I will be using my leadership followers to fill in the gaps, as it were, to make sure they are tactically flexible. My cohort will be my company 2ic.

 

[Philip Benz]

Whatever you do with those NPCs, if you are following the rules of the Leadership feat, you can never increase their levels beyond what Leadership gives you. And they'll only ever have whatever sort of special gear, weapons and equipment that you buy for them. If you're using a different system (I'm not familiar with the downtime building teams stuff), then you don't need leadership for that, but you do need to pay the associated costs and take the associated game time to accomplish your goals.

 

[aglondier]

I'm not asking if the rules will allow me to do what I'm doing (they do, I checked), I am asking for help with making the most effective and flavourful level 3 builds I can. I can and will pay to reequip and retrain them if I need to. Pathfinder has rules for retraining classes, feats and skills, so we're good there as well. The Pathfinder downtime building rules from Ultimate Campaign allow you to recruit teams of soldiers, guards, thugs, labourers, bureaucrats, craftsmen, apprentices, or whatever you need. In this case, a team of 5 elite soldiers (level 3 warrior) that costs me 330gp to recruit, but from that moment on, they earn for me 6sp per day after their expenses have been taken out. Five teams (25 men) would then earn me 3gp per day pure profit. I am building an 80+ man company of dwarven soldiers, with a few priests, acolytes, mages, probably a handful of skirmishers, and a small fort to base them out of...all up, my daily earnings from it should be around 15-20gp and earn me the title of Warthain.
I know what I'm doing, I have tentative approval from my DM, I just need advise on what to retrain my warriors into...