9 cha gives you 3 mercs not 5. The only way to get 5 mercs is if you take magnetic personality at 9 cha then take gain charisma. Merc aren't terrible by any stretch, I'd rather have 4 mercs than 4 players with me. Hell you don't even have to worry about gridcampers as you shoot just as fast or faster when entering towns.
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
Are you sure about that? The current formula for merc followers is Charisma -1/2. This means that with 9 charisma the amount of followers will be:9-1 = 8/2 = 4. With the Magnetic Personality perk this becomes 5.
hey, do you need Ch for anything else ?
Some quests require 4 or 7 ch. I think you need 3 just to talk to npcs though.
Already have a proposed Ch-limit change internally, but its waiting for a later date to be done.