[PFRPG][3.5] Cultist - BASE class {PEACH}

[Noremak]

I do not take credit for the original Cultist class idea, I am expanding upon a DandDwiki stub that I found while looking around online for inspiration. The original stub can be found here: dandwiki.com the Cultist (3.5e_Class) (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Cultist_(3.5e_Class)) I simply am hoping to flesh out this class a little for a campaign I am running. This is my first homebrew post, but I've been a long time reader on these forums so I think I have a handle on how to balance this class. That said I would love other people's input and evaluations of this idea. I'm looking to make an interesting and fun enemy to play as (for a DM or a PC) and to fight against as a PC. I hope that that is what I have made here. Without further ado...



The Cultist
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rCV1Xt9Sy0s/TFcrkAC3OPI/AAAAAAAAADU/ng0wWCY9ByQ/s1600/Kalarel.jpg

"Praise the dark Rakinyga, long may he reign. He will rise and cast infinite pain on those who doubt him, he will make them his slaves and drive them to insanity. Those who worship and praise him will be granted instant death."
—High Cultist Rulaki, Opening Praise for the Ritual of Pain

Making a Cultist

Abilities: Charisma is their main casting ability, dexterity and constitution help AC and HP a lot.
Races: Most cultists are humans, since humans are easily attracted in such things. However every race has their share of cultists.
Alignment: Any non-good.
Starting Gold: As Warlock 4d4x10 hp (100 gp).
Starting Age: Simple

Hit Die: D6

{table=head]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special | SPD 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

1st|+0|+0|+0|+2| Dark Whim, Dark Favors, Rebuke Undead, Vileness, Dark Secret | 1 | 0 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

2nd|+1|+0|+0|+3| AC Bonus | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

3rd|+2|+1|+1|+3| Dark Secret | 1 | 1 | 0 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

4th|+3|+1|+1|+4| Vileness | 1 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

5th|+3|+1|+1|+4| ~~~ | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | - | - | - | - | - | - |

6th|+4|+2|+2|+5| Attract Cult, Dark Secret | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - |

7th|+5|+2|+2|+5| Vileness | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | - | - | - | - | - |

8th|+6/+1|+2|+2|+6| ~~~ | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - |

9th|+6/+1|+3|+3|+6| Dark Secret | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | - | - | - | - |

10th|+7/+2|+3|+3|+7| Vileness | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - |

11th|+8/+3|+3|+3|+7| ~~~ | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | - | - | - |

12th|+9/+4|+4|+4|+8| Dark Secret | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - |

13th|+9/+4|+4|+4|+8| Vileness | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | - | - |

14th|+10/+5|+4|+4|+9| ~~~ | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | - | - |

15th|+11/+6/+1|+5|+5|+9| Dark Secret | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | - |

16th|+12/+7/+2|+5|+5|+10| Vileness | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - |

17th|+12/+7/+2|+5|+5|+10| ~~~ | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 |

18th|+13/+8/+3|+6|+6|+11| Dark Secret | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |

19th|+14/+9/+4|+6|+6|+11| Vileness | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |

20th|+15/+10/+5|+6|+6|+12| Aspect of the Beast | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
[/table]

Class Skills: (4 + Int modifier per level, ×4 at 1st level in 3.5)
Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (history) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Knowledge (the planes) (Int), Profession (Wis), Spellcraft (Int).

Class Features
All of the following are class features of the Cultist.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Cultist are proficient with all simple weapons, but not with any type of armor or shield.

Spells: Cultists can cast any spells on the cleric spell lists spontaneously, provided the spells descriptor is not good. Cultists gain fewer spells per day than other classes (see Spell per Day on the Cultist table). A cultist's spellcasting based on charisma, but is otherwise Identical to that of the cleric.

Dark Whim: A cultist caster level is based on the mere whim of her dark master. A cultist caster level equal her cultist level -3 (and cannot be brought higher using Practiced Spellcaster) for a minimum of 1. Whenever a cultist uses any class feature that calls for a caster level, including casting a spell or using a Dark Secret, roll a d6 and add the result to her caster level. If a caster level is reduced below 0, then reduce the DC by the same amount instead. Thus if Clary, a 1st level cultist cast inflict light wound (-3 caster level but count as 1) if she roll a 6 her caster level is effectively 4. If she roll a 1, her caster level remain 1, but her spell's DC are reduced by 2.

Dark Favors (Su): A cultist is able to call upon her dark patron once per day per cultist level she have. She may reroll 1 dice roll taking the new result even if it lower. Uisng this ability is an immediate action.

Rebuke Undead (Su): As the cleric ability of the same name.

Vileness: At 1st level, as part of the cultist's initiation to the cult, and each 3 level thereafter, a cultist gain a bonus vile feat or aberrant feat. She must meet any and all prerequisites for the feat, however a neutral cultist may ignore the evil alignment prerequisite of feats awarded by Vileness.

AC Bonus (Su): Cultists rarely rely on armors, most of the time they are half-naked doing dark rituals and profanities. Their dark masters understand this. At 2nd level a cultist gain a vile bonus to AC equal to their Charisma modifier.

Dark Secrets: At 1st level, and from then on at 3rd level and every 3 levels thereafter, a cultist gain an unique knowledge. A dark secret never meant to be known, a profanity among profanity. Each time she gains this class feature a cultist may select 1 warlock invocation that would otherwise be available to a warlock of her cultist level.
For this purpose Elderich Blast may be selected as an invocation, even though it is not normally treated as such, and its damage increases by 1d6 step everytime a new Dark Secret is learned by the cultist.
These dark secrets can only be selected once and can never be changed by the cultist, unless they perform an evil ritual described below. Cultists can gain extra Dark Secrets by taking the extra invocation feat. The equivalent spell level of a Dark Secret is also subject to the Dark Whim of a cultist god.

Attract Cult: A 6th cultist attract followers as if he had leadership feat. However she does not gain a cohort. If she actually takes leadership she gain a +2 bonus on her leadership score.

Aspect of the Beast (Su): A 20th level cultist take upon the traits of it elder evil patron, effectively taking upon the Outsider (native) type. A cultist is still considered it former creature type for the purpose of resurrection. Additionally a cultist is granted 2 of the following benefits.

Damage Reduction 15/epic
Regeneration 10/Good
No longer lose any level upon resurrection.
Gain +2 vile bonus to any one attribute.


Ex-Cultist
If a cultist ever become good, she lose all supernatural abilities, spell-like abilities and spells granted by the cultist class. She may also lose them is she lose the favor of her patron. However she may regain all she lost by performing a ritual in which she must sacrifice twice her Cultist level in HD of good aligned creature and another cultist must cast Atonement upon her as part of the ritual.


Campaign Information
- as taken from Cultist_(3.5e_Class) (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Cultist_(3.5e_Class))

Playing a Cultist

Religion: Cultist worship elder evils, some worship them out of madness, apathy or nihilism while other seek their power. Some may even worship these vile creatures out of idealism. Cultist almost never worship deities, since deities use clerics not cultists. Many cultists cult worship fiends.

Other Classes: Cultist are incredibly versatile divine casters, however their devotion to elder evils tend to trouble other divine casters or good party members. Non-good wizards and sorcerers tend to respect the cultist, thank to her divine magic. Otherwise other classes tend to be neutral toward her.

Combat: Cultist are weaker in melee than clerics, thus most of them are debuffer or otherwise spellcasters. Many animate hordes of undeads to back her, others may find enjoyment using evil spells to destroy her enemies.

Advancement: A cultist usually want to reap everything her career offer, many choose to remain cultists until the end. Other simply go into prestige classes.


Cultists in the World


"May my master devour your soul upon his arrival on this pathetic world..."
—Dying words of Oregias, elven cultist.

Cultists are the evil creepy guys and gals sacrificing virgins and spilling the blood of orphans... well generally. Most are insane, others are... well very very creepy. Some are drawn to the cultist class through promise of power. Some may even be raised as cultists, no matter why they are cultists, they are not really nice... generally.

Daily Life: There 2 archetype of cultist, the one who hide her rather... unusual beliefs and live a normal life during daytime but once a week gather with similar guys and gals and perform profanities in the name of Calililku. The second archetype live her life fully as a cultist, she live with others like her below abandoned monasteries or in old ruins and perform profanities 24 hours on 24. The later tend to be killed by adventurers not minding their business. The former require investigation and finesse.... typical adventurer rarely do any of those things so they live longer until they turn the whole town into zombies, tend get killed by adventurers. Rare are the cultists living a full life, some get eaten by their god, sacrificed because for failure. Some survive past all this, but they are lucky ones.

Notables: Viri Mallua, a powerful evil halfling cultist. He was always the favored one of his elder evils. He lead many assault on paladins churched and survived, bringing the hooligans to his altar. He lived a long life as a cultist, but eventually got killed by his assistant.

Organizations: Cultists organize in cults... to their elder evils. Really most are part of a cult... Loner cultists are quire rare but some exist.

NPC Reactions: Most non-evil NPCs shun cultists, after all performing sacrifices and trying to provoke the end of the world don't make you very popular after all. Evil NPCs may attempt to use a cultist to his or her end, but usually distrust a cultist. Really no-one really want to be naked on a altar with a dagger in his or chest... except if you are a really creepy guy or gal.

Cultists Lore
Characters with ranks in Knowledge (Religion) can research cultists to learn more about them. When a character makes a skill check, read or paraphrase the following, including information from lower DCs.

{table=head]Knowledge (Religion) DC | Result
5 | Cultists are usually devoted to elder evils, they draw limited but potent divine power from them.
10 | The power of cultist really depend only on the elder evils whim, thus a cultist magic power's may be quite.. unstable and random.
15 | Some advanced cultist form cults, becoming effectively cult leaders. They are able to empower their magical power and perform rituals easily while regrouped.
20 | Info on all cultist class features.
[/table]

[Noremak]

11/14/11 - Clarified Dark Whim, added aberrant feats as options for vileness, added option to take extra invocations and noted a ritual to change dark secrets.

[bobthe6th]

might let the cultist also learn aberant blood feats with vileness, as it could help the evilness... also the illithid heratege feats could be fun... as is the class gets 7 vile feats, which is basicly all of them. some choices would be nice...

but that is neither here nor there. this looks fun, if a little wide focus. with some invocations this class gets some staying power other than its tiny spells per day.

[Noremak]

might let the cultist also learn aberant blood feats with vileness, as it could help the evilness... also the illithid heratege feats could be fun... as is the class gets 7 vile feats, which is basicly all of them. some choices would be nice...

but that is neither here nor there. this looks fun, if a little wide focus. with some invocations this class gets some staying power other than its tiny spells per day.

Thank you for the feed back! I forgot to mention the 66+ vile feats (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74001) thread that I found while working on this class. With the addition of these feats a cultist has plenty of options.

Adding the aberant feats sound like it would be perfect for the cultist as well. Giving them that weird Lovecraft vibe should one invest into those feats.

Yes the class is broadly focused, the idea was that these guys could be flavored up to work with whatever cult you needed them to be associated with simply by the selection of spells and secrets they had.

I realized that the classes low amount of spells per day was kind of a big hurtle for them, that was why I converted the warlock invocations into dark secrets rather than create a whole bunch of dark secrets for them. This allowed the class to act as Diet-Warlock with a sprinkle of cleric to mix things up, and represented their duel nature of having both a pact with an evil being as well as calling forth the evil gods magic.

In other words, a high level cultist as enough spells to instigate some major disasters, but enough invocations to put up a fight with the PCs. When you add in his cult following, you have enough cleric spells in the mix to really cause problems for a town or village, and enough combat power to put up a good fight for the PC's.

[EdroGrimshell]

Um, would you DM a game where i could play this thing? I happen to love the idea and would love to help playtest it. This would also be great when paired with the True Xenotheurge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122103) or the Blasphemous Preacher linked in the OP, both by Realms of Chaos

[motionmatrix]

Since I can totally see myself playing this class in an evil adventuring group, I would like something that allows me to link to my followers without having them there, perhaps added as a dark secret, to gain a benefit of some kind without them there.

Maybe 1 hp per follower that wears a simple charm and prays at dusk, or some such thing. fits easily into the whole idea. Your master gains bonuses from you, and you from your followers. Maybe the next bump up every 5 followers equals a +1 to caster levels (the Cultist learning to make up for some of his master's whims), and later on something else.

It's up to the Cultist to decide whether he wants the actual help from his subjects, or just draw a bit from each.

Hope my two cents help ya =)

[Noremak]

Um, would you DM a game where i could play this thing? I happen to love the idea and would love to help playtest it. This would also be great when paired with the True Xenotheurge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122103) or the Blasphemous Preacher linked in the OP, both by Realms of Chaos

I had placed this up on the boards to share with they playground, but I hadn't thought about setting up a game for people to play it in. A friends of mine where playing in a play by post that fell by the way side, so maybe they would be interested in throwing something together. I'll check and keep you posted. Thank you for your enthusiasm for the class, as soon as I get enough time to read them over I'll have a look at the two classes you posted too.


Since I can totally see myself playing this class in an evil adventuring group, I would like something that allows me to link to my followers without having them there, perhaps added as a dark secret, to gain a benefit of some kind without them there.

Maybe 1 hp per follower that wears a simple charm and prays at dusk, or some such thing. fits easily into the whole idea. Your master gains bonuses from you, and you from your followers. Maybe the next bump up every 5 followers equals a +1 to caster levels (the Cultist learning to make up for some of his master's whims), and later on something else.

It's up to the Cultist to decide whether he wants the actual help from his subjects, or just draw a bit from each.

Hope my two cents help ya =)

Well, you already get to use your followers as a boost in any dark rituals you decide to do, and I believe there is already some crazy feed back loop where they could all theoretically aid another on the check to perform the ritual anyway... Though for the cultist on the go I suppose a dark secret drawing power from your followers would be alright... I'm not sure how I feel about it. The idea I'd had was that individually a cultist isn't very strong past a certain point, but because you never face just one their individual weaknesses get lost in the crowd so to speak.

Maybe a good dark secret would be:
Power of the Cult
This dark secret allows a cultist to draw power from his followers. When activated the cultist causes one of several possible negative effects to befall his followers, and can select one of several powers for himself. These powers and effect persist for 1 hour per cultist level (Subject to Dark Whim).

By dealing 2 points of damage to each follower the cultist has, a cultist gains 1 temporary hit point.
By dealing 2 points to any one ability score of his followers, the cultist gains a +1 in that score for each 5 followers he drains.
A cultist can stabilize his magical powers by forcing his followers to give up 1 of their highest level spell slots. For every 10 followers drained the cultist can add 1 to his caster level.


Special: Power of the Cult can only be taken after the cultist gains the attract cult class feature or takes leadership.

[Noremak]

So on Saturday's game I threw a hobgoblin cultists at the party. The only spell he cast went to healing himself after ending up on the wrong end of the fighter's war axe. He rolled a 1 on his Dark Whim and ended up only rolling a 3 or so on the cure die. Using his power to reroll any one die, netted him an 8 for the heal and he was up and kicking. I decided to go with baleful utterance for him, figuring that his hobgoblin wepons and BAB made it unnessisary for him to bother with EB. Over all he held his own. Next weekend the party should be facing the current arcs BBEG a 6th level cultist, as soon as they finish dealing with the rest of his small group of followers he's brought with him.

[motionmatrix]

I am turning the BBEG dragon into a BBEG dragon cultist for my current campaign.

It fits very well, especially once you added Power of the Cult.

I know that technically, a dragon could be the sponsor more than the recipient in a cultist "relationship"

I think I may have a dracolich or ancient evil dragonlike thingy be the Master.

If you do get that campaign going, let me know, if I am welcome, I would like to give it a shot (schedules permitting, of course).

[Noremak]

I am turning the BBEG dragon into a BBEG dragon cultist for my current campaign.

It fits very well, especially once you added Power of the Cult.

I know that technically, a dragon could be the sponsor more than the recipient in a cultist "relationship"

I think I may have a dracolich or ancient evil dragonlike thingy be the Master.

If you do get that campaign going, let me know, if I am welcome, I would like to give it a shot (schedules permitting, of course).

Its funny you mention using a Dragon as a cult leader. The game I am currently running is being driven by a game of Xoorvital, so the BBEG cultist the party is about to fight is actually one of the followers of an EBBBEG (Even Bigger BBEG) a Blue Dragon who is the host/leader of the Cult of Blasphemous Sand.

[motionmatrix]

Its funny you mention using a Dragon as a cult leader. The game I am currently running is being driven by a game of Xoorvital, so the BBEG cultist the party is about to fight is actually one of the followers of an EBBBEG (Even Bigger BBEG) a Blue Dragon who is the host/leader of the Cult of Blasphemous Sand.

LOL as soon as I read EBBBEG I knew what it meant :smallbiggrin:

I did not know what Xoorvital means, I googled and found Xorvintaal, a game that dragons play (I assume that is what you meant). Of course, I am effectively using Xorvintaal already without even realizing it.

So thanks, now i have another source to draw from ^.^