EVERY spiritual head of faith title should be dismantle-able. Not just the papacy.

[Meka66]

In order for the game to consider a faith to be dead, that faith needs to have no people at all following it. Currently however, faiths with a spiritual head of faith will always regenerate their leaders forever once that leader dies, making it impossible for that faith to become dead. There are only two solutions to this problem.

1. Make it possible to dismantle any spiritual head of faith title. (This could be done through a decision enabled when for example controlling any holy site of a faith with no remaining adherents except the spiritual head of faith themselves.)
Or:
2. Do not allow the infinite regeneration of spiritual heads of faith when no other person of that faith exists. (This could automatically dismantle that spiritual head of faith title without any input from the player.)

Option 2 theoretically should be extremely easy to program and implement, so I don't want to hear any excuses.

As a person who only ever plays as non-abrahamics such as the pagans or easterners, this is a pretty important topic to me. I want to be able to look at a certain faith such as Coptics and see that not only does it no longer have even a single county that follows it due to my actions, but the game actually considers it dead and trying to convert to it will be nearly as impossible as trying to convert to other dead faiths such as Hellenism or Zunism.

I don't necessarily disagree that this should be a thing, but I'm unsure what the exact conditions of a generic "Dismantle HoF" decision/interaction would look like. Many faiths endure despite being reduced to a minority, the one example that comes to mind for me is the Samaritan priesthood which exists throughout the game's period despite Samaritans never being a majority anywhere on the map, or having landed nobility.

 

[Meka66]

I'm imagining something similar (but not identical) as Charlamagne in CK2. For example, let's say Norse paganism is reformed, if you crusade into Norse pagan lands, and manage to get control of all the holy-sites, you should be able to perform something similar to the destruction of Irminsul. I don't think that should turn it into a completely dead faith, but if you control holy-sites, destroy the main worshipping symbols and areas, capture the head of faith, that should make it very difficult for a norse pagan to reform it again.

Maybe the answer is instead of killing it, having an ability to "unreform" a faith?

Not impossible, and I think it could make it an interesting challenge to attempt to revive these faith's.

Although, I think this should be something with incredible consequences. Maybe as a ruler, you have a choice to persecute the Samaritan priesthood if they reside within your area, or attempt to foster religious tolerance which might lead to positive development etc, but the attempt of destroying a minority religion like that should be controversial, and filled with potential consequences. There is a reason why the consequences of those rulers choosing to persecute smaller religions or choosing to be tolerant still exist today.

I don't think unreforming a faith is the way to solve this. Maybe having the HoF imprisoned while they hold no holy sites could be our generic "dissolve HoF" decision, but this is a topic that I think would require quite a bit of internal discussion

 

[Meka66]

Currently the Samaritan High Priesthood has no starting head of figure and requires you to recreate the head of faith title. Does this statement imply that Samaritans are now accurately depicted as having an existing head of faith? For the 867 start date, the high priest should be Nethanel VIII and in 1066, it should be Sadaqa I, according to An Update of Moses Gaster’s “Chain of Samaritan High Priests” by Reinhard Plummer.

Unless something changes between now and when the patch goes live, there should be some title history added to the Samaritan High Priesthood in a coming update which will result in it having a holder in both start dates. This is along with a few more misc changes to the Judaism religious group, but you'll get to see more details when the patch notes are released