Where have all the Cultists gone?

[Sonofaspectre]

Ok ... lame title attempt to get a few extra hits on this thread. But still ...

IF YOU ARE A PLAYER IN 7 of 7, STOP READING THIS THREAD!





I need cultists. Or at least ideas for some cultists. What stats, what should they be. My next session will most definently split between two halves of my group, one have doing a tournament, and the other half dealing with a group of cultists. It will be a nice dungeon crawl with traps and anti-combat (cause my non-melee characters/players are doing this, so it will flex different muscles) and I want cultists, along the lines of a Lovecraftian era of cults. I know that the final boss of that section will be a Druid who will transform into a Lovecraftian horror who is probably a pseudonatural monster of some sort, as taken from Comp. Arcane.

Any help and suggestions are wanted.

[kemmotar]

well...i just have to say one thing...

They went ----------------------->that way:smallbiggrin:

[Solo]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Wgah'nagl fhtagn! Wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Machete]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Wgah'nagl fhtagn! Wgah'nagl fhtagn!

sigged


How about some kind of cult of fallen paladins whop were more dedicated to law tha ngood and only found out through their years of service and went Lawful Evil Oppressor style to bring ultimate law and unending order to reality (as in permanent time freeze, total anihilation, all plane consuming empire of oppression like something out of Paranioa?

[Human Paragon 3]

Archevists may make pretty neat cultists (see Heroes of Horror). The idea of dredging up ancient religious rights to fuel their spellcasting seems cool. Hook them up with summoning spells and you're already half way there. Plus they have curse, inflict spells, necromancy, and basically anything else you could want. Throw in some blackgard for taste (and meaty melee power to help out the summons) and you should be good.

[Solo]

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming,

Yet He shall rise and His kingdom shall cover the Earth.

For that is not dead which can eternally lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.

The Old Ones, free and wild and beyond good and evil,

Will teach us new ways to shout and kill and revel,

And all the earth will flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

[Stormcrow]

hehe, I am so sending PCs to look for lost cultists one day, who were kidnapped by the village children :P

As to your dilemma, make them worshipers of a hunk of igneous rock that was grated malign sentience by a magical ritual in centuries past. Thats what I'd do.

[Sonofaspectre]

For a little more information:

My party will have a lvl 4 Transmuter, a lvl 6 Warlock (who unluckily got his eldritch removed from him for the next two days in game), a lvl 5 Rogue, and a lvl 6 Druid (Monk/Barbarian/Ranger/Sorcerer/Spider/Bard/David Carradine/Druid to be exact with all his freakin' variants) who will not be there, but will hopefully be played by a fellow player in his stead.

And I got the Fluff down, I'm pretty sure. What I'm lookin' for is Crunch. What exact stats IS a Cultist? Stuff like that.

[ocato]

Sounds like necromancers to me. Not necessarily the dead bodies and skeletons kind, but you know, lots of smoke and stat drain and obnoxiousness.

[kpenguin]

Ur-Priests are always fun.

[Winged One]

When I saw the Eldritch Disciple PrC in Complete Mage, my first thought was that it would make a great cultist class. Looks like the entry requirements are too high a level for that party, though, and they're really more of a regular evil god type of cultist than a Lovecraftian type of cultist

Straight evil clerics could work. Maybe give them the Madness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/domains.htm#madnessDomain) domain.

However, I think what you're looking for here is the Alienist PrC from Complete Arcane, page 21.

[Sonofaspectre]

Alienist, thank you. Yes, that is what I'll be using for ideas and fun things to deal with.

Madness domain sounds pretty decent as well. Any more brainstorms?

[illyrus]

I'd mix in some simple adepts as fodder. While certainly not equal to a PC class in power, they have some variety of spellcasting such as: scorching ray, mirror image, invis, see invis, cure spells, resist energy, web, buff spells, etc. They have very few spells per day but it's not like they're going to live long anyway in an actual fight. Add in a few scrolls to round them out.

[Rad]

I second the adepts: these people are nuts after all... and that way you can put down a ton of them. Maybe you could make the entire group out of adepts and warriors, and work on numbers.

[Kioran]

Alienist, thank you. Yes, that is what I'll be using for ideas and fun things to deal with.

Madness domain sounds pretty decent as well. Any more brainstorms?

If you use NPC classes, throw some adept mooks at them. Spam them. Take a mass dicount on them since NPCs of lower lvls are not worth their CR, so simply take 50-70% more. Make a running battle, let them sling spells at the party, and since almost anyone of them can heal - have them retreat, fall back and resume the attack somewhere down the road at another preset chokepoint.
In short - harry them. And let the major baddies be Alienists or PC classes. I know they´re weak, and if your Wizard powergames or you´re playing with ToB or similiar, don´t bother with mooks, but at a lower power lvl droves of mooks are very satisfying for the players since they can do palpable damage by killing one or two without outright winning the fight. And Save-or-dying everyone of them is costly........

[Paragon Badger]

Commoners.
...OF DOOM!

Did you ever play Resident Evil 4?

An angry mob of pitchfork wielding psychos is pure awesome. Add chainsaws, bolt-action rifles, and torches and the awesome becomes exponential.

I'm thinking of commoner cultists a la Hot Fuzz, if you've seen that movie, except with much less comical motives. Simple people; the gardener, the town sherrif, the blacksmith, who smile at you during the day, and poison your food during the night.

If you've already defined the NPCs that they met during town, it could be very creepy to see that friendly neighbor Mr. Rogers suddenly your enemy. Expert (the class) enemies would make for great non-combat heavy dungeon crawling.

[Skjaldbakka]

My favorite culitsts are bards. Especially ones that go into that Evangelist PrC. not sure that is the actual name of the class, but the one that uses perform oratory to do cool things like wreath your allies in flame. It fit perfectly with my Black Flame Zealots cultists.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Rogues.

Not Commoners of Doom, but Rogues, who look and act like commoners. More skill points, and you start think there is an assassian's or theive's guild after you.

That'll throw 'im off.

[bosssmiley]

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming,
Yet He shall rise and His kingdom shall cover the Earth.
For that is not dead which can eternally lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
The Old Ones, free and wild and beyond good and evil,
Will teach us new ways to shout and kill and revel,
And all the earth will flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

Looks like those cultists you were looking for are right here in this thread. :smallbiggrin:

Cultist is a mindset, not a skillset. Any human (or disguised) bad guy you want. Make them sneaky, give them hooded black robes (preferably with red or purple trim), wavey-bladed knives and you're good to go.

Also read more WFRP, the "Enemy Within" campaign is all about the cultists. :smallcool:

[Solo]

Cultist is a mindset, not a skillset.

It is also a way of life.

[Ralfarius]

It is also a way of life.
I like to think of it more as a hobby, you know? Dig out someone's pineal gland on Saturday. Mass suicides every other Wednesday. Really, all around wholesome stuff you can take the wife and kids to.

[Keld Denar]

Cultist is a mindset, not a skillset.

Thats deep man....transcendental thinking....like woah



wavey-bladed knives and you're good to go.


Honestly...are there any problems in life that can't be overcome through ritual sacrifice? (preferably virgin)

[Solo]

Are we supposed to sacrifice the virgins or their virginity? I never could get that one straight.

[kamikasei]

Honestly...are there any problems in life that can't be overcome through ritual sacrifice? (preferably virgin)

"We have too many corpses!"

[Rad]

"We have too many corpses!"

"We shall rise a pire of burning living bodies over the corpses; the flame of life consuming from them will eat through the unworthy mass of corpses and sublimate it up towards the sky where the Ancients await"
:tongue:

[Keld Denar]

Are we supposed to sacrifice the virgins or their virginity? I never could get that one straight.

D) All of the above!

[Afraidofsharpie]

Use the psuedo-natural template (not the epic one in SRD, but the +2 or something in one of the completes or LoM not sure which), on normal animals or humaniods and have them be 'Gifts from the Master' or what not.

[kamikasei]

"We shall rise a pire of burning living bodies over the corpses; the flame of life consuming from them will eat through the unworthy mass of corpses and sublimate it up towards the sky where the Ancients await"
:tongue:

Fine. "Our population is dwindling! ...And we don't have any easily subjugated neighbors to sacrifice instead of our own people!"


D) All of the above!

Now I'm curious what c) was. I suspect we don't really want to know.

[Green Bean]

Honestly...are there any problems in life that can't be overcome through ritual sacrifice? (preferably virgin)

I don't know about that. I'm told virgin sacrifices are getting harder to come by these days. I assume that means that they don't make the right type of knives any more.

[ocato]

Fewer virgins milling around, I usually hit the comic shop and the build a bear workshop.

works pretty well.

[Afraidofsharpie]

Local Game Stop usually works for me, also I thought the Build a Bear place was full of kids? Granted thats fine and all but I was pretty sure in the manual the sacrifice needs to be able to drive at the least...

[PlatinumJester]

Make some of them Resident Evil 4 style. You have the main priests/cultists who are harder and then the possesed villagers who are under control of the cultists.

The idea of a group of adventurers in a boarded up house fighting about 100 commoners sounds fun.

Maybe when the PCs try to investigate the town everything seems normal but not quite right atthe same time. They go into the cultist building and meet the head cultist who is pleasant and offers them a drink. However as they finish their drink they start wretching and realise hey have been poisoned and then the monk attacks them.

[bosssmiley]

"We shall rise a pire of burning living bodies over the corpses; the flame of life consuming from them will eat through the unworthy mass of corpses and sublimate it up towards the sky where the Ancients await"
:tongue:

I nominate Rad for the "Cult Leader in the Playground" category. :smallcool:

[Sethis]

If you have access to the "Speaker in Dreams" adventure put out by wizard, take a look. It has some real crazy cultists, and some lovecraftian horrors.

If not, well, send me a PM and I can show you it.

[GunMage]

[QUOTE=kamikasei;3297080
Now I'm curious what c) was. I suspect we don't really want to know.[/QUOTE]

That would have to be a), then b)

If you really need inspiration, look into some of the Warhamer Fantsy Roleplay material. That game has cultists all over the place.

"The Pudding is coming, repent and ye shall be saved."
Best cult leader line ever.

[Enlong]

Everyone's suggestions are good. Cultist mindest is awesome, and you really can't go wrong with Alienists for that Lovecraftian feel. Which makes me wonder, is there a Summon C'thulu spell out there?

(Alienist is my newest character's aspiration. I love it, even though it's so creepy!)

I would also suggest making your cultists have really creepy mannerisms, like speaking in a dreamy monotone, or breaking into laughter over the slightest thing. Really, anything Luna Lovegood does is good. Oh, and you cannot go wrong with rolling hidden Spot checks for the characters without telling them, and delivering unnerving lines like: "you then notice that he isn't blinking", or "his chest does not seem to be moving as he breathes" or "his skin appears quite unnaturally pale; you can make out the web of veins under his skin" or (if you've got a particularly full-leveled Alienist) "you catch the glimpse of some strange shuffling under the person's clothes"

(huh. I just described some undead giveaways, but those also, I feel, fit for a cultist who never goes into the light of day, spending all their time reading forbidden knowledge, and listening to whispers from far-off dimensions. All that was inspired from the Alienist picture in Complete Arcane. Such a creepy little girl)

[EagleWiz]

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming,

Yes, even the anciant old ones need beauty rest.