Digital M@
Explorer
D&D has too many cultists in their adventures. Let’s give them other ideas to replace cultists
1. Organized Crime
1. Organized Crime
D&D General Too many cultists
Jd Smith1
Hero
I disagree.
Cultists are perfect, because they are fanatics, committed unto death, and normally have a deadline to meet.
Organized criminals are nothing more than businessmen with a violent bent. If faced with a tough group of outsiders, they will simply try to buy them off, frame them for something, bribe officials to harass the PCs, or lure them away with false (or real) rumors. They have no reason to stand and fight. They are part of the community, and can simply wait out any storm the PCs can bring, until the PCs leave.
If the PCs (outsiders) start killing locals (criminals) the local authorities are going to take a dim view, especially if they are on the payroll.
Pirates are all right, but heavily used.
Slavers have been used a lot, but they only work if they are in a place where slavery is illegal, and they have a market where it is illegal. If slavery is legal, then the PCs will have a serious problem.
Political groups are good, but they are in practice little different from cultists. The problem with political groups is that the line between terrorist scum and freedom fighter depends solely upon your point of view. Which, as history teaches us, can change 180 degrees extremely quickly.
Historically nations go to war over wealth, religion, or political structures.
Cultists are perfect, because they are fanatics, committed unto death, and normally have a deadline to meet.
Organized criminals are nothing more than businessmen with a violent bent. If faced with a tough group of outsiders, they will simply try to buy them off, frame them for something, bribe officials to harass the PCs, or lure them away with false (or real) rumors. They have no reason to stand and fight. They are part of the community, and can simply wait out any storm the PCs can bring, until the PCs leave.
If the PCs (outsiders) start killing locals (criminals) the local authorities are going to take a dim view, especially if they are on the payroll.
Pirates are all right, but heavily used.
Slavers have been used a lot, but they only work if they are in a place where slavery is illegal, and they have a market where it is illegal. If slavery is legal, then the PCs will have a serious problem.
Political groups are good, but they are in practice little different from cultists. The problem with political groups is that the line between terrorist scum and freedom fighter depends solely upon your point of view. Which, as history teaches us, can change 180 degrees extremely quickly.
Historically nations go to war over wealth, religion, or political structures.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Sounds more like personal experience. I've seen plenty of organised crime and not very many cultists. Maybe your DM is getting predictable?
Personally, I think organized crime could be a much bigger part of a lot of D&D campaigns. The problem with cults is that they tend to be very black and white. Hey, those guys sacrifice babies because they want to return the many-hooved-tentacle-goat-god to our little patch. So, bad guys - not a lot of room for grey there. Organized crime, on the other hand, has a ton of room for grey. For example, in an overly bureaucratic or totalitarian state, OC might actually end up doing rather a lot of good if they are community minded fellows. Depending on the threat, they could either be adversaries or allies for a party. That's only one example, but there's the potential there for OC to be a very interesting addition.
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
organized crime by its nature is too subtle and stealthy for DnD, its just a whole lot of petty mooks whereas the Big Boss stays hidden and unknown. In contrast baby skilling cultist in league with eldritch horrors are starkly evil and worth killing Even if they are just low level neophyte who havent yet been allowed to join the orgies.
That said I do like killing bandits, especially the despicable kind who rape the feilds and pillage the women.
Serial Killers are another good group to use - Human cannibals lurking in the woods outside of town., although they are often just cultist without the dark powers to motivate them
That said I do like killing bandits, especially the despicable kind who rape the feilds and pillage the women.
Serial Killers are another good group to use - Human cannibals lurking in the woods outside of town., although they are often just cultist without the dark powers to motivate them
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
Secret lodges controlled by vampires.
Döppelgangers infiltrated among the emperor's concubines.
A dragon hidden among criminal circles and ruling as a maffia capo.
Titans are using faes against the clergy as part of a strategy for a new titatomanchy.
Time-travelers.
A secret laboratory where wizards created new monsters as biological weapons in the battlefield.
A secret society what is exploring the just discovered elemental planes of metal and wood.
In other universe transgenic uplifted apes rebelled against their creator and they have discovered planar gates to the feywild. To avoid more raids by these ape invaders the planar gates can't be closed but now they go to special regiones in the material plane. Now it is your problem, not theirs.
The feywild is being visited by an unknown deathless explored, these are undeads healed by positive energy and hurt by necrotic damage, controlled by good clerics and turned by evil ones. The aren't hostile, at least in the beginning.
Döppelgangers infiltrated among the emperor's concubines.
A dragon hidden among criminal circles and ruling as a maffia capo.
Titans are using faes against the clergy as part of a strategy for a new titatomanchy.
Time-travelers.
A secret laboratory where wizards created new monsters as biological weapons in the battlefield.
A secret society what is exploring the just discovered elemental planes of metal and wood.
In other universe transgenic uplifted apes rebelled against their creator and they have discovered planar gates to the feywild. To avoid more raids by these ape invaders the planar gates can't be closed but now they go to special regiones in the material plane. Now it is your problem, not theirs.
The feywild is being visited by an unknown deathless explored, these are undeads healed by positive energy and hurt by necrotic damage, controlled by good clerics and turned by evil ones. The aren't hostile, at least in the beginning.
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Yes I agree on that one.
I can understand why a DM would want cultists, as other posters already stated they are fanatically and loyal until death, in contrast to more worldly organizations, so no reasoning why they e.g. would fight to the death and not willing to let them be captured.
Let us take a look at the pantheons of some of the standard worlds:
You got FR Myrkul, Bane, Xvim etc GHK Nerull, Iuz, Incabolous etc. so these are deities associated with evil deat hdisease and undead. Is every follower of them a cultist? D&D says yes. So about how many folks are we talking? In case of Iuz e.g. a lot.
In other cases not so many. Then you got e.g. the temple of elemental evil, the cult of the dragon, the beholder cult and what not and you get more cultists.
So what would the civilized rulers do about cultists? If they are many, then they would wage war. If they are few, then they would hire adventurers. But very frequently the cultists have some doomsday device / plan / agenda to take over the city / country / world / universe. Is this realistic?
Some cultists have impressive resources at their hand e.g. Iuz. Others, not so much. In any case, cultists are a higher threat to whatever society they act upon than e.g. bandits or a thieves guild or bears invading the forest.
So they should provoke stronger reactions, even w/o the adventurers popping in. In the case of Iuz that is not easy, you would need the combined armies of several nations to beat him.
With smaller cults, they should be exterminated quite fast under normal circumstances, just because of their numbers cannot withstand the law for extended times.
Conclusion: The only cults which should exist in-game long term are the bigger ones, the OP is correct, since in official products also smaller cults are often promoted more often then they would naturally occur.
I can understand why a DM would want cultists, as other posters already stated they are fanatically and loyal until death, in contrast to more worldly organizations, so no reasoning why they e.g. would fight to the death and not willing to let them be captured.
Let us take a look at the pantheons of some of the standard worlds:
You got FR Myrkul, Bane, Xvim etc GHK Nerull, Iuz, Incabolous etc. so these are deities associated with evil deat hdisease and undead. Is every follower of them a cultist? D&D says yes. So about how many folks are we talking? In case of Iuz e.g. a lot.
In other cases not so many. Then you got e.g. the temple of elemental evil, the cult of the dragon, the beholder cult and what not and you get more cultists.
So what would the civilized rulers do about cultists? If they are many, then they would wage war. If they are few, then they would hire adventurers. But very frequently the cultists have some doomsday device / plan / agenda to take over the city / country / world / universe. Is this realistic?
Some cultists have impressive resources at their hand e.g. Iuz. Others, not so much. In any case, cultists are a higher threat to whatever society they act upon than e.g. bandits or a thieves guild or bears invading the forest.
So they should provoke stronger reactions, even w/o the adventurers popping in. In the case of Iuz that is not easy, you would need the combined armies of several nations to beat him.
With smaller cults, they should be exterminated quite fast under normal circumstances, just because of their numbers cannot withstand the law for extended times.
Conclusion: The only cults which should exist in-game long term are the bigger ones, the OP is correct, since in official products also smaller cults are often promoted more often then they would naturally occur.
Leatherhead
Possibly a Idiot.
You can't really fight organized crime with a sword or fireballs. They will just evade the fireball, then run away to come back and slit your throat in your sleep. Logical, but an unsatisfying experience all around.
Maybe they just need to lay off of humanoid enemies in general. Come back with a bunch of fey doing a wild hunt, or a horde of aberrations that are fleeing from some other greater force, or a bunch of modrons marching.
Maybe they just need to lay off of humanoid enemies in general. Come back with a bunch of fey doing a wild hunt, or a horde of aberrations that are fleeing from some other greater force, or a bunch of modrons marching.
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
Thats rather the point though - PCs are getting hired to hunt down those minor cults before the grow to be big cults. Thats the premise of the Conan the Barbarian movie and Conan the Destroyer and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and ...
I did a campaign once in which the PCs were all part of the Inquisitors in Mother Church and were charged with recovering Holy Artifacts and hunting down evil cults and heresies
