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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Coroc" data-source="post: 7866319" data-attributes="member: 6895991">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.</blockquote>

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