How to Stage a Haunt

Monday, October 29, 2007

With Halloween coming up, we thought it a good idea to look back to the Foxglove Manor chapter of Pathfinder #2 (which, incidentally, would work extremely well as a standalone haunted house romp for All Hallows' Eve) and explain a bit more about one of the spooky innovations introduced there.

In "The Skinsaw Murders," we present a new way to handle an old classic—haunts. The mechanic for haunts is cool because it allows us to present really atmospheric encounters in a way that combines crunchy game play and creepy flavor. It also allows for a lot of flexibility in ways that classic haunted house monsters like ghosts don't really work. You want a room with walls that bleed? A haunt can do that. With a ghost, it's a little trickier.

You can expect haunts to show up now and then in Pathfinder—when they do, we'll reprint the basic rules so you don't need to always have a copy of Pathfinder #2 on hand. But one thing became clear as I started reading messageboard posts about "The Skinsaw Murders": what's missing is a section that talks about how haunts play out in the game. I posted the rest of this blog post on the messageboard, but I think it's important enough to "graduate" into the blog, so here it is! (WARNING: A small spoiler for "The Skinsaw Murders" is built into the rest of this post!)

The best analogy for a haunt is a trap. Treat them in play as traps, but traps that are evil and freaky and have a malevolent guiding intelligence behind them.

Take the first trap, the Burning Manticore, as an example. The PCs may smell burning hair the first time they pass through the room. The second time, the haunt manifests. Ask the PC who's haunted by burning to make a Spot check. If he fails the DC 20 check, the haunt manifests, makes its attack on him, and if he's hit he makes a Reflex save to avoid catching on fire. If he catches on fire, to his friends it looks like he just spontaneously combusts—he's the only one who can see the haunt, remember. Once the haunt's done its thing, that's it. It's done for a day; it can't be triggered again for 24 hours.

If the haunted PC makes that DC 20 Spot check, have him roll Initiative. Describe to him the image of the manticore lurching to life, its face shifting and its fur igniting, but don't have the haunt do its thing until initiative count 10. If the PC alerts his friends that something's going on, they get to roll Initiative checks as well. Anyone who goes before 10 gets to do something about the haunt (but remember, only the haunted character can SEE what's going on). This includes attempts to turn undead, to run out of the room, to cast resist elements (fire) on the haunted character, and so on. At initiative count 10, the haunt triggers (unless its target is gone, in which case it fades away and can't activate again for 24 hours) and does its thing, then fades away.

James Jacobs
Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder