Hi everyone,
I plan to start an order of paladins using the downtime rules, with a similar design to the Templars/Teutonic Knights (as in their code, organisation etc.)
The majority of the fighting force would be mounted paladins, not a large army but a skilled one.
Now, the ideal situation would be having them at level 5 so they can get a bonded mount.
And this got me thinking, how good is a level 5 character in perspective? I imagine level 20's are gods among men, and level 1's are slightly better than most NPCs in the world, but I'm not sure on the in between.
Would it be reasonable to have so many level 5 characters in an army? Would I need to recruit them at level 1 and then train them by spending resources? Are there any rules on this I missed, or is this mostly an agreement between PC and GM?
I've only done a few campaigns before, and this is the first where all downtime rules could be used, so any help would be great.
If you made the thread title more descriptive of what your question is, you'll probably get more responses. I can't answer your question, but I can offer that advice.
Leadership could kinda give an example of having followers. They are 5ish levels beneath the level you gain them.
Also, a fighter Lv5 is the peak of our mortal human world, but for pathfinder I don't know how common lv5 paladin's are. That's an NPC with class levels, and I feel that lv5 is kinda high for average, so they're pretty skilled paladins at that point.
There are no downtime rules for training/leveling of followers that I know of, so you are mostly into GM territory. RAW having followers revolves around the leadership feat. If you wanted to have five level 5 paladins then your leadership would need to be 25+.
Another way to simulate an army by RAW is to have 'leadership recursion'. By that I mean - you take leadership and get a cohort, your cohort takes leadership and get's his own cohort, your cohort's cohort takes leadership (etc etc). I'd definitely make sure to run that by your GM first before you try any such thing though.
Stealing someone else's post and math from an old thread -
13 cohorts, of every level from 7 to 19.
Followers by level:
1 - 379
2 - 34
3 - 16
4 - 9
5 - 5
6 - 2