If you're playing 5e and planning on playing a deceptive character, you might consider a Rogue with high Charisma. The Rogue class is pretty versatile and it focuses on skill over brute/arcane force. I think you'd enjoy the challenge. Half-Elf as a race would give you the best boost for your Charisma score. Deception should definitely be one of your Expertise picks, and maybe Intimidation for the other. As for Background, Charlatan makes the most sense. Grab Religion as one of your Half-Elf bonus skills to round out your character a bit. Definitely grab Insight as one of your Rogue skill picks. The other skills you can pick depending on how you want to play your character. Persuasion's good for the few times you're being honest. Performance might earn you some coin and entertain your flock. Perception and Investigation are always solid picks, too.

Chances are, the DM will limit the size of your following in some way in order to maintain balance. You might start out with only a single, devout follower until you build up your reputation. Or you may get a few followers but none who are effective combatants. In any case, as the mob gets larger, the DM's probably just going to narrate the mob's involvement or treat them as a single entity rather than put each individual in the Initiative line-up. I would use your mob to maybe distract or assist you in combat rather than doing all the work themselves. If you at least get them to flank, you get Advantage on your attack roll and add that sweet Surprise Attack damage.

The trick to handling the Good-aligned characters in the group is to carefully consider how you use the members of your flock. If you just use them as meat shields and trap testers, that is clearly far south of Chaotic Neutral. As long as you refrain from putting your people in harm's way excessively or unnecessarily , that will go a long way toward pacifying the Goodie-Goodie types. If your group gets attacked, by all means, they will be involved in combat. If you send your mob into the dragon's lair while you wait outside, that's not going to be OK. Send one of your followers to listen at or poke their head through a door? No problem. Have one of your followers open the strangely runed box that has skeletons on the ground all around it? Problem. It will be a balancing act, to be sure.

Of course, another way to get around that is if you decided to play your character as if he believed his own B.S. That would be one way to avoid leaning toward Evil. Tricking people to die for you is bad, but if you're just as convinced as they are that they're dying for the One True Cause then you're just crazy, not Evil. Of course, you'd have to change your build a little bit (Pick Persuasion as one of your Expertise skills rather than Deception, and pick Folk Hero as your Background), but it's still workable.